My 26-year-old female tenant: Gufan on the Island

When I want to drink all night, I always book a room near the bar. Of course, I know that drinking like this is not very appropriate, but it can help me get rid of the bad mood that is self-defeating and will bite me from time to time. I want Le Yao to try it too, as I feel that this is a kind of spiritual communication, but I don’t know if she will misunderstand it.

So I turned my head to look at her again, but she fell into silence; in her eyes, there was a beam of light that came from nowhere, allowing me to see her pupils clearly. The shape of her pupils was like a dense nebula, and finally formed a boundless universe.

One flower, one world; one grain of sand, one Tathagata.

Perhaps, each of us is a universe. I suddenly felt that all the pores on my body were opened, and then the universe was shaken. My thoughts were clearer and brighter than ever before. The next moment, through Le Yao's eyes, I seemed to see everything in this world.

I saw Robben lying on the hospital bed, feeling depressed; I also saw Fang Yuan leaning over his desk, thinking hard about a plan; and on the other side of the ocean, Jian Wei, who was silent for a long time in front of a cup of bitter coffee...

It was time for CC's bar to close. Looking at the unsatisfactory turnover, and because of the selfishness in human nature, she gave a bitter smile after turning off the lights.

These are what I saw at that moment. These sufferings were kneaded into a ball by an irresistible energy, and finally shaped into life and infused into a matrix.

All living things suffer, and no one can escape it in this seemingly boundless universe.

The city in the sky keeps floating upwards, and the lone sail on the island is rootless, but in the end it is to form a closed loop between the two, constantly capturing the souls that want to escape.

……

Le Yao finally chose to book a room with me in an old hotel. We each had a box of beer beside us. Outside the window was a city that had fallen into complete silence. The viaducts stretched to the edge of its body like blood vessels. Occasionally, a few lights were still on, chasing after souls that had nowhere to hide, and after a "whoosh", they were swallowed up...

I drank up the wine in the glass and finally said to Le Yao, "I don't know what happened. I seem to have fallen into an emotional abyss."

Le Yao glanced at me and said with a half-smile, "Is it because I said I would give you a child?"

I was a little stunned...

At this time, Le Yao said to me again: "You said, the ultimate meaning of life being divided into male and female genders is to continue life?"

I was stumped by the question, and it took me a long time to answer, "Rather than the ultimate meaning, it's more like a division of labor... Each of us is guilty, and the purpose of continuing life is because we have all been sentenced to life imprisonment... Because our crimes are different, we are divided into men and women... In the end, in the name of love, we torture each other, suffer each other, and sink into each other..."

“It sounds so desperate!”

After sighing like this, Le Yao finished the wine in her glass.

After a moment, she sighed again: "If what you said is true, not having children is also a kind thing."

"At least, not having children before you truly feel happy is a kind act."

After a long silence, Le Yao replied: "If I can never feel happy, then am I not even qualified to have children in this life?"

I chose to remain silent because this proposition seems too heavy and too dangerous. We seem to be trying to challenge the mission given to us by genes and trying to avoid that sin by giving up reproduction.

……

I must have drunk too much. Drinking too much will make me detach from real life and think about things that can never be verified. So I stopped drinking, leaned back in my chair, looked at the flashing neon lights outside the window, and tried to regain some clarity...

Le Yao also seemed to want to get out of this heavy mood. She also leaned back in her chair, but instead of looking out the window, she picked up her mobile phone and tried to enter the virtual world.

Virtual world?

Even if you go in, what can you get?

Isn’t it just one illusion after another?

……

"Zhaoyang...you...look at this news..."

Suddenly, Le Yao spoke to me. I turned to look at her. Her hand holding the phone was shaking. She continued, "The man in the news... seems to be someone you know... the Chen Bailu you know..."

My heart suddenly tightened and I felt dark inside, because Le Yao's reaction had already given me enough hints.

Chen Bailu was shot and killed last night in Utica, New York; when the police asked to check his property, he made a gesture to pull out a gun and was shot and killed on the spot.

The photo of him falling to the ground was blurred in the news, but I recognized that he was still wearing the guitar-shaped bracelet that I gave him in college.

I couldn't breathe anymore, my mind went blank, and suddenly several images of me and him came to my mind...

In front of me, he has never been depressed, always with a smile on his face, and seems to have infinite visions for the future, visions of a complete family, visions of self-reliance, visions of his sister Chen Qianyu having a good life, and visions of a sunny day...

But at this moment, he fell in the photo, as thin as a piece of paper, as if everything had vanished with the bullet that pierced him.

My heart ached and I shed tears...

……

I don't know how long it took before Le Yao beside me said to me, "Zhaoyang, doesn't he have a sister? The two of them depend on each other. Do you want to call his sister and care about her feelings?"

I came to my senses and took out my phone from my pocket, but I couldn't get through to Chen Qianyu. I choked up and said to Le Yao, "He was a mute and didn't know anything in a foreign country... He must have just wanted to sign, but was mistakenly thought to have pulled out a gun... His death was too unclear..."

I couldn't control my emotions anymore. I completely broke down and cried, "Why is life so unpredictable? Why... If I knew it would end like this... I would never let him go abroad... You know?... I didn't satisfy him until he left... He wanted me to take him to the bar... But I kept telling him that living in the country was no longer a realistic thing... So, did I harm him?"

Le Yao couldn't bear it, and started crying with me: "You said it yourself... Life is unpredictable... If everything can be predicted... How can there be so many accidents and misfortunes..." She also choked up: "Chen Bailu is really too pitiful... Maybe you are right... If you don't have the ability to be happy, not having a child is also a kind thing... His parents shouldn't have brought him into this world..."