Chapter 14
Only after everyone had gone to bed that night did Yuan Sheng dare climb down from the bed. Half-kneeling on the floor, he picked up the two dusty fish tails, pressed them together between his palms, then slowly climbed back onto the bed.
It was clearly New Year’s Eve. Outside the building, everything was bustling. The lights in every household were on, cheers and the sounds of fireworks blending into one continuous din, so loud that all the bricks and tiles seemed to tremble, startling the night birds on the top floor into sudden flight.
When there were too many noisy sounds, the sounds of sorrow could be buried beneath them. When there were too many happy people, those in pain could hide themselves away.
At three-thirty in the morning, almost everyone was asleep. Qin Liming no longer knew whether he had passed out drunk or simply fallen asleep. Either way, he was unconscious, and neither husband nor wife noticed Yuan Sheng standing in the doorway.
He was fully dressed, without even carrying a bag. The only things he had on him were the two dried betta fish tails tucked into his pocket. His whole body felt empty. He stood quietly in the doorway without saying a word, looked at them twice, then gently closed the door.
It was still a long way from dawn. Yuan Sheng put on his shoes and took the few coins sitting on top of the cabinet. In the stairwell, he reached into a hole in the wall and pulled out the phone he had rented from the little convenience store outside his school. He squatted at the entrance to the residential compound and called his grandmother, but the old woman’s phone was always switched off at night. Yuan Sheng called several times, but no one answered.
He squatted there for a while longer. The uneven, pitted road before him was filled with moonlight, so bright it seemed about to spill over, like a trail of silver coins scattered along the ground. Yuan Sheng tilted his head back for a minute, then dusted off his clothes and stood up. He rented a shared bicycle and rode to the bridge.
There was a great river running through Lincheng, flowing down from the snowy mountains to the west. Its water volume was considerable. Later, the road had been closed for a long stretch of time, the old bridge reinforced on one side and fitted with colored lights. Once night fell, quite a few people would come to take photos, and a night-market culture had grown up around it.
It was normally a very lively place, but because it was New Year’s Eve, and because it was the middle of the night, there was almost no one around.
Yuan Sheng parked the bicycle to one side and rested both arms on the railing. A biting wind rose over the river, like a fine blade slowly carving into flesh inch by inch. He narrowed his eyes and let out a deep breath.
There were only three people on the bridge. Qin Yao and Chen Huai were standing on the opposite side of the roadway. Their hair and clothes were soaked through with the cold air, without a trace of warmth. Qin Yao gave his hand a very slight tug and had just begun to say, “He’s going to jump...”
Before she could finish, Chen Huai let go of her hand and rushed toward the other side. A car passed through him midway, going straight through his body. His movements were frantic. Yuan Sheng had climbed onto the railing.
The night was unbearably dark, like lump after lump of wet charcoal that could never be lit, hard and filled with the breath of death. Everything before their eyes was black as a blind child’s world. Only the headlights of cars occasionally passing across the bridge brought a little light.
Chen Huai’s pupils trembled. His emotions seemed to have been magnified countless times for no reason, even he himself unable to understand them. Chen Huai opened his mouth, wanting to shout, but discovered that he could not even call Yuan Sheng’s name. It was as though he had forgotten that he could not touch anything at all. The veins on his arms bulged as he reached out to grab Yuan Sheng’s clothes.
The person who had climbed onto the railing seemed prepared to sink into the river. He wanted to be like the two betta fish tails in his pocket and return to the water. He wanted to see his fish again in another world, the one big fish and the one small fish.
Chen Huai’s throat caught. Yuan Sheng seemed to hear something. He turned around blankly, and his body was suddenly dragged backward as though gravity had reversed.
Qin Yao shouted for him to stop. “This isn’t reality. You can’t chan—”
With a loud “bang,” Qin Yao’s voice stopped. Even the tip of the foot she had stretched out seemed to tremble, then landed unsteadily on the ground. Her legs went weak, and she collapsed.
Yuan Sheng had been hit by a car.
Right before their eyes, after Chen Huai inexplicably managed to catch hold of him and pull him down, Yuan Sheng rolled onto the road, and, as if by coincidence, a car came along and struck him, sending him several meters away.
It could not be changed.
Even if they stopped him from jumping into the river, Yuan Sheng would still die on New Year’s Eve in all kinds of inexplicable ways.
Chen Huai lowered his head and looked at his own hands, then at Yuan Sheng lying on his side on the ground, blood pouring out of him. His five internal organs suddenly began to ache violently. Holding onto the railing, he started dry-heaving. His eardrums hurt as though they had been pierced through, and his fingers had completely lost their strength.
But none of this made sense. Logically, if you felt sympathy for someone, how could the sorrow be this violent? Yuan Sheng had nothing to do with him. At most, he was simply a little more unfortunate. Their closest connection was only that he was Qin Yao’s brother.
So why, exactly?
Chen Huai looked at the blood. It was like seeing the blood that morning when Sun Fusheng had jumped from the building, that same vivid, scalding blood, as though it were about to burn straight through his eyes.
The driver did not even get out of the car. He immediately made a U-turn and drove away, his foot pressed all the way down on the accelerator. Yuan Sheng felt his vision blur into a mass of red. He seemed to see someone. He opened his mouth, but what came out was not a voice, only great mouthfuls of blood.
Like the return of light before death, Yuan Sheng struggled to pull himself up from the ground. One of his legs might already have been broken. He could not put any weight on it and could only drag it forward for several steps. He picked up his phone, pried open the casing, and took the fish tails out. Blood from his hand stained the plastic film. At that moment, the phone screen suddenly lit up.
Yuan Sheng could no longer make out the number on the screen, but as if he had some kind of premonition, he used the last of his strength to swipe to answer the call. Then he collapsed onto the ground and could never get up again.
Qin Yao ran to the other side and helped Chen Huai up. Chen Huai gripped her hand tightly and moved toward Yuan Sheng again. Qin Yao shook her head.
“It’s useless... You’ve already tried so many times.”
“I grabbed him just now.”
“I know.”
“He can live.”
“...He can’t.”
The whole world seemed to fall silent, leaving only the sound coming from the phone’s speaker.
“Ge, is that you?”
Yuan Sheng gave a soft “mm,” his voice as light as a feather.
Qin Yao’s voice on the other end of the phone was hoarse. She had probably just woken up. She had taken Grandma’s phone and hidden in the bathroom to call him.
She sounded very happy. “I knew you’d definitely call us on New Year’s Eve! Grandma said you were going to come over during summer vacation, but then you didn’t... It must be because Mom and Dad wouldn’t let you come. Just wait, I already talked to Grandma. I’m going home tomorrow.”
Compared with the silence on this end, Qin Yao was all chatter. “Let me tell you, I’ve gotten quite a bit taller. I’m so tall now that, just by height, I have to sit in the third-to-last row. Oh, and there’s lots of good food and fun stuff at Grandma’s. I’ll bring a bag tomorrow and take some over to you, then we can go down to the sports field and play soccer. I can kick the ball now, I—”
“Hello? Are you listening to me? Are you secretly making this call from home? Should I keep my voice down a little... Ge? Ge?”
There was no sound.
“Did you fall asleep?” She lowered her voice. “Okay, then... remember to wait for me. Good night.”
The wind, the birds, the fireworks, the river.
Be quiet for a while.
Some people are going to sleep.
Some people will never make it to the waiting.
“...”
Qin Yao picked up the phone after the call had been disconnected. After calling the police, she called an ambulance. For them, that was all they could do.
Yuan Sheng had already been carried away by the ambulance. Chen Huai sat on the steps of the bridge, rubbing his face hard, until even the corners of his eyes had been rubbed red.
The wind over the road no longer carried only cold. It also stirred up the thick smell of blood. Qin Yao saw that Chen Huai’s hand was still trembling nonstop. She paused for a second, then took hold of it, stopping his fingers from shaking.
Qin Yao’s voice was as light as the wind too. Perhaps she had already used up all her strength just now. She sounded somewhat powerless. “Why are you even sadder than I am?”
Chen Huai was silent for two seconds before speaking in a statement of fact. “I know him.”
The hand holding his suddenly tightened for an instant. Qin Yao herself did not notice that her nails were almost digging into Chen Huai’s flesh. Her tone remained very even. “I don’t remember anything like that. You remember?”
Chen Huai suddenly turned his head to look at her. Qin Yao quietly watched him, and heard Chen Huai ask in a calm voice, “When we first met, you said you came to save me. What did you mean?”
Strands of her hair were carried away by the wind. Qin Yao tucked them behind her ear, then deliberately gave a light laugh. “I told you already. Only I can save you, and only you can save me. It’s a two-way relationship.”
“I saved you when you wanted to kill yourself, gave you something to long for, and got you to live until now. Doesn’t that count as saving you?” she said.
It was not just that.
Looking into her eyes, Chen Huai had a certain answer in his heart. There was no way that was all there was to it.
“I know him, and I know you,” Chen Huai said with certainty. “It’s just that you don’t want to tell me.”
The down jacket was being blown by the river wind as though a thin layer of ice had formed over it. It could not even keep his body warm. Chen Huai stood up. Qin Yao was still sitting there, her lashes lowered, casting a layer of shadow beneath her eyes, her hair light and soft as it lifted gently in the wind.
When he was not far from her, he could smell that lingering fruity scent that never seemed to fade. Sometimes it smelled like freshly picked fruit, sometimes like soft fruit that had been left too long and had already ripened into rot, changing back and forth.
He had clearly never seen her use perfume, and Chen Huai did not know where the scent came from. It was just that whenever he thought about these layers upon layers of unanswered doubts, his nerves would begin to ache, as though some self-protective mechanism in his body were preventing him from thinking any further.
“If you want to know,” she said, “then go find the answer in my memories.”
Qin Yao lifted her head and smiled faintly. “If we knew each other before, there will be something about you in my memories.”
Chen Huai looked down at her. Suddenly, he felt that the smile was not entirely sincere. It even seemed bitter, like a mint leaf.
The wind in the early hours of the morning blew in beneath the hem of his clothes.
Dawn came.
“...”
Yuan Sheng had already planned to jump into the river. Before he died, he had written his suicide note and placed it together with the two fish tails he cherished, tucking them into his pocket.
After learning of his death, Qin Yao rushed over from Grandma’s house and cried bitterly. The doctor placed the two severed fish tails into her hands. That was all that remained of him in this world: a few brief words in a news report.
“What is it that destroys us?
Family, society, what exactly is it that destroys us?
Who was it that burned away the bones of my growing pains?”
Because his one journey into this world had brought him nothing worth entrusting himself to, his suicide note was very simple. He could take nothing with him, and leave nothing behind. So on the paper there were only a few concise words.
【A bird in a cage, when will it fly?】
Yuan Sheng.
You never got to live.
From now on, no calamity, no dreams, no death, no life.
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