thirsty

My name is Lu Xun. When I was a child, my mother told me that "Xun" means waterside.

I remember her words, she said, life is shore, suffering is water.Water always has an end, always has its ups and downs.If the water dries up, or if the water overflows, the shore is no longer a shore.So life cannot be without suffering, but don't let suffering completely overwhelm yourself.

At that time, it was difficult for me to understand what nonsense she was talking about, not to mention that my Chinese was much worse then than now.

She is my language teacher. She likes to teach me Chinese the most. She reads Tang poetry and Song poetry to me, and tells me Chinese customs. Unfortunately, I didn't like to hear these things at that time.

You know, at that time, I had never seen what she said about the old Beijing Spring Festival. I had never eaten sugar figurines, rolled hoops, or visited temple fairs... I rejected those beautiful things but I had them. something that can't be done.

Mom is very busy, and she keeps teaching me to be good.As soon as she left, my neighbors often came to take care of me. They are a pair of warm-hearted and kind old Taiwanese. I can only speak Chinese when I get along with them.

Maybe it is because of this that my Mandarin still has a little Taiwanese accent (laughs).

It's just that I don't like to talk very much. At that time, I knew that the water of suffering that my mother said had drowned me.

I became suspicious of everything, even myself.

I only believe in one thing, my mother told me, be good, be good.

So I studied hard at school, I went to play football with the boys between classes, and in the afternoon I walked a long path alone with my schoolbag on my back.

At the end of the path, I went home, locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat in the closet.

I like that kind of darkness, that kind of quietness, like now.

But I can't be good all the time, I will fight with boys for many reasons, such as they say bad things about the police, or they bully little girls, or they hate beggars on the street...

Every time I return to the empty home with a whole body of injuries, I think of my mother saying, be good, be good.

But what is "good"?

I wanted to escape the life I was living at that time, the feeling that the water was over my head, drowning to death, and there was no cure.

One vacation, I went to the big desert alone. I wanted a place without water. I would rather die of thirst than drown.

In the desert there, water and nutrients are pitifully scarce, but the strange thing is that all the leaves of the plants there are not green, but brightly colored flowers that secrete a lot of nectar.

At that time, I thought, if only I could be a flower in the desert, life gave me poor soil, but I can still survive and bloom flowers, which are bright and beautiful.

I walked through dunes, meadows, and salt marshes, and when I got home, I hid in the closet and cried a lot.

Since then, everyone has said that I have changed.I still haven't seen the sunlight coming in, but I know that even if there is no sunlight, flowers can bloom in a dark place, as long as there are no poisonous thorns, that's enough.

In my life before the age of 15, except for a few kidnapping cases, there were not any big storms, and most of the time I was suffering day after day.

During the several times I was kidnapped, I was rescued by myself, my father's former colleagues, my mother's friends, and the local police.

I knew at that time that it was profitable for others to kidnap me. Of course, it was not for me, but for something that could be exchanged by kidnapping me.

When I was 15 years old, there was a case involving a criminal gang, in which some police officers and social figures were involved. In the end, my mother and Jacob's mother took the charge and went to jail together. They haven't come out until today.

When I went to visit for the first time, my mother said, Ah Xun should be good, listen to her mother and leave here, live a good life by herself, and don't come back.

We sold the house, and I went out alone with the money my family gave me.

Later, I went to school in other places and worked as a field interpreter in my spare time.At that time, I didn't know what to do. Maybe life passed like this. If you can live, it will be a day. If you can't live, you will regard the blood on the battlefield as your destination.

I remember when I was a child, I went out with my mother and saw homeless people on the street. My mother said, A Xun, your mission is to let these people find their true belonging.

But what is my belonging?

do not know.

The water overwhelmed me, and I sank until I gave up breathing.In this world, there is nothing worth longing for.

It seems that when I was in Iraq, I met Xiao Xiao.

The two of us got separated from our respective teams, met by chance, and stayed together in a crumbling little house to hide from bullets.

He always said that I have a bit of talent, but after so many years, I don't know where he has his eyes on me (laughs).

We talked for a long time that night when we had nowhere to go, and he kept sharing his work and life with me, and finally he asked me if I would like to go with him.

Later, I did go with him.

So before I graduated, I had already officially worked at Dead Leaf Butterfly.I lived a life similar to that of Xiao Xiao's. For the first time, I realized that I could laugh happily even when I was covered in injuries. Maybe, this is a job I love.

The so-called justice and kindness are subjectively defined by most people.Rather than being externally restrained and supervised by these things, I prefer to believe that this is something that people instinctively come from, and everyone has it, but the degree of compliance is different.

Mom was right, my mission is to keep good people from being homeless.I don’t know when I really understood this truth, maybe it was the first time I went to the battlefield and a little girl pulled my pant leg and begged me to take her away, maybe it was the look in the eyes of the boss who saw the privately selling equipment when I went to the black market to check , probably when a wounded young man on the battlefield begged me to shoot him...

I knew no one could get me out, no one could save me, and I had to go upstream, stick my head out and breathe hard, to make sure I was truly alive.

I read Nietzsche's words in a book before - what doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

For me, what kills me makes me feel alive; what kills me brings me back to life.

……

It was a long speech, Lu Xun didn't know how much Bai Shen understood, and he didn't even know if Bai Shen fell asleep.

Bai Shen didn't speak, but held his hand tightly.

He thought, let me take you out, Lu Xun, escape from all the gloom and despair in your past, hold me and don't let go, let me take you to see a better scenery.

"Tell me, Lu Xun," Bai Shen said softly, "Bi An Hua."

Lu Xun was silent and did not speak, the silence in the air swallowed them.

"How...in your capacity should I convince myself to tell you?" Lu Xun asked.

Bai Shen couldn't answer for a while, he really didn't think about this question carefully.

Lu Xun continued: "My colleague, doctor, or teacher?"

Bai Shen could feel the bewilderment and uncertainty in his tone. Lu Xun didn't really trust him completely. He was hovering on the edge of trust. Bai Shen felt that maybe he needed to give him a hand, let him come closer, let him He really believes in himself.

"Your lover," Bai Shen said, "is this identity acceptable?"

Lu Xun narrowed his eyes, as if he was a little sleepy, he buried his head deeper into the quilt on Bai Shen's shoulders, and replied, "Yes."

"My mother has two Bianhua flowers tattooed on her back shoulder, the mandala flower on the left and the manjusawa flower on the right," he said.

"Heaven and hell?" Bai Shen had checked Bianhua for Lu Xun before, and it seemed that it was mentioned in it.

"Well," Lu Xun said softly, "She didn't explain it to me. I think it might be because she thinks that Dad went to heaven, but she can only go to hell."

"But she didn't go to jail because she did something wrong." Bai Shen said.

"But she thinks she is a sinner," Lu Xun grabbed Bai Shen's clothes, "She thinks that she and her father will never see each other again."

"...Then, what about you?" Bai Shen asked, "Where's the tattoo on your back?"

"It was when I was 15 years old, before she went to prison, she took me to Wen." Lu Xun said, "She asked me to always remember, never to see you again."

Bai Shen patted him on the back: "Have you ever thought that she wants you to bid farewell to your past life?"

Lu Xun didn't speak.

"You still haven't come out yet, have you?"

Bai Shen knew that Lu Xun didn't say a lot of things, even if it was important, he just skipped it hastily.

What happened to those kidnapping cases?For him, did PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) stay?Xiao Xiao said that Lu Xun's bipolar disorder existed long before he entered the withered leaf butterfly, that is, when he was a teenager, or even earlier, what caused the serious psychological disorder?

Lu Xun didn't say anything about these issues.

Forget it, if you don’t say it, don’t say it, you can walk the long road slowly, and you can say the deep words shallowly.He could wait until the day when Lu Xun could tell the past calmly, he thought, they could live in a quiet place, raise some flowers and plants, take a dog and go for a walk in the avenue in the evening.

There are so many things to look forward to in life.

Bai Shen approached his ear and said softly: "When I was studying, I also read a sentence, which was said by Leonard Cohen - there is a crack in everything, that's where the light comes in."

Lu Xun smiled: "I don't understand."

"If you don't understand, then you don't understand," Bai Shen also smiled, "Lu Xun, I wish you just the right amount of suffering, and more importantly, joy that you will never forget."

"You should read less poetry in the future," Lu Xun said, "You who like art are always literary."

"Really?" Bai Shen asked casually.

"Well," Lu Xun replied, "I paid special attention to your pillow book last time when I was at your house."

"When?" Bai Shen asked.

"The time I beat you up." Lu Xun said with an embarrassed smile.

"Okay, what is it?" Bai Shen asked again.

""The Little Donkey and Me," Lu Xun replied, and said with emotion, "When I read this book, I seemed to be only six years old."

Regardless of his ridicule, Bai Shen asked him, "Can you read at the age of six?"

"It's the English version." Lu Xun said.

"I don't watch that now." Bai Shen said.

"Then what are you looking at?" Lu Xun asked.

Bai Shen thought for a while: "When I left, I must have read "The Interpretation of Dreams."

"Then do you know how to interpret dreams?" Lu Xun asked.

"No." Bai Shen answered honestly.

Lu Xun kicked him with a smile: "Go to sleep then, I'll be back tomorrow."

"En." Bai Shen replied, rubbed his furry head, and closed his eyes.

Early the next morning, they got up and went to the revolving restaurant on the roof of the hotel to have breakfast. Lu Xun pulled Bai Shen's sleeves and motioned him to look out.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can see the black smoke rising from the fighting in the east. Damascus in the east and west suburbs is very ironic because of their complete differences.

"Here, you can see such a scene almost every day." Lu Xun said.

Bai Shen didn't know how to answer, looked at the black smoke billowing outside the window, and said after a while of silence: "Everything will be fine."

Everything will be fine, whether it is the world or his life.

The author has something to say:

Be a star, wandering for thousands of years

Pray thousands of times, will there be someone

Twist and turn, take me away

Endless trials, useless barren years

When every star is whimpering and weeping

every fantasy is disillusioned

can you believe you will show up

This is "When Every Star" is my latest single cycle, composed by Ashin.

I think Lu Xun is like a person who needs to be saved. He has his own beliefs, but he has always been looking forward to someone who can take him out of his miserable life.

This is just a story. In the story, the protagonist will be saved by someone.But for ordinary us, the star that has not yet fallen is ourselves.

:)