In the golden cage

?

Just as one has to be terminally ill to realize survival, it seems that one has to go to the end of the road before he can repent of his mistakes.

Ji Shaoting had already grown into Li Chen's flesh and blood. When he broke away from Li Chen's life, the bloody tear left not only wounds, but the entire skeleton collapsed.

Desperation, anger, pain, Ji Shaoting has been away for nearly a month, these emotions violently collided with Li Chen at the beginning, and now they still recur from time to time.In the dead of night, when he was lying alone in the dark thinking about Ji Shaoting over and over again, these negative emotions lingered like ghosts.

Missing to the extreme, Li Chen's heart would suddenly burst into a ruthless force, causing him to grit his teeth, hating Ji Shaoting so much that he just wanted to swallow him alive.

But more often he thinks about his own problems.The conversation with Dr. Li was indeed useful. Now Li Chen is trying to rebuild a human figure from his scattered bones, a human figure that will be forgiven by Ji Shaoting if he meets Ji Shaoting again.

This was actually the only reason he actively sought medical treatment.

He did have a problem, or rather, he always knew he had a problem, but he just didn't want to admit it.

In the conversation with Dr. Li, he tried to look at himself apart from himself, and analyzed all the important nodes of his family background, growth experience, and personal history from the perspective of a stranger from a third party—especially the most grand one. Occasion: The first meeting with Ji Shaoting under the street lamp.

The doctor told him that the illusion that he thought Ji Shaoting was an angel might be because in his lonely childhood, he once had this hope: he hoped that an angel would come to accompany him.

Later, Li Chen went back in detail and remembered such a past event.When he was a child, he did something wrong and offended his stepmother and was locked in the basement.

It was surrounded by darkness, and the only source of light was the narrow skylight above the head.

Li Chen looked up at the window for a long time.At that time, he was still at the age of believing in fairy tales, waiting for someone to come from that light and accompany him through the long and endless confinement.

The night he met Ji Shaoting, Ji Shaoting stopped in the street lights.

Dressed in dim radiance, the coat on his shoulders is his wings hanging down.This image of being infinitely close to heaven immediately filled Li Chen's lack of nearly 30 years.

Extremely full, even overflowing.Because of the tear stains on Ji Shaoting's face, fragile and helpless, not the look that an angel should have, so he can be taken home and locked up without violating the oracle.

He can do whatever he wants with Ji Shaoting, manipulate and control him to his heart's content, and imprison him forever where he can see.

Li Chen has always been aware of the orders he imposed on Ji Shaoting, forbidding him to go out, asking him to quit his job, and cutting off all his social networks are tantamount to imprisonment.

But he indulged his own desires and wanted to absorb everything he could from Ji Shaoting.Because I couldn't control it when I was young, so when I grew up, I played with Ji Shaoting like revenge, wishing to make him into a marionette and control him in the palm of my hand, every move is within his five fingers,

As the conversation deepened, Li Chen could see his own dark side more and more, and was afraid of it: If Ji Shaoting didn't leave and let the situation continue like this, he would really become a man who completely lost himself. Li Chen directs all matters, big and small, and even asks for Li Chen's permission before breathing.

Li Chen became more and more aware that he had never truly loved Ji Shaoting.

He was using Ji Shaoting as a blood bag, filling himself with his vitality.He was dragging him into his own perpetually cloudy world, not into his clear sky.

The treatment is indeed useful, and everything Li Chen said helps him understand himself, Ji Shaoting, and the relationship between them more deeply.

But even so, he didn't know everything. From the very beginning, he was determined to hide part of the truth from the outside world: what he did to Ji Shaoting that night, those things that he would think he was really crazy in retrospect.

Li Chen knows that concealing his illness will lead to misdiagnosis, but this is exactly what he wants: he does not want to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or paranoia or any other mental illness.

A mental patient is not worthy of an angel.

Ji Shaoting is already far away from him, and he can't increase the distance between them.

Because what if, what if, he meets Ji Shaoting again?

Although Ji Shaoting would not despise a mental patient, he would be even more reluctant to approach Li Chen who is a mental patient.Li Chen can't take this risk, he has to get better, open a new chapter, and meet Ji Shaoting again with a brand new look.

The cloakroom was still littered with remains of clothes, Li Chen began to miss Ji Shaoting in another way, instead of lying on the bed and letting his emotions torment him, he turned on the light and got out of bed to sew up Ji Shaoting's torn clothes .

Soon all the tattered clothes were mended, and with Li Chen's clumsy stitches, each stitch was an explanation of true love: it was healing, not oppression.

After sewing Ji Shaoting's clothes, Li Chen started to buy clothes, thinking about buying one at a time, until later when he opened the closet, each piece of clothing was so crowded that it was about to spill out.

On Ji Shaoting's birthday, he cooked for the first time himself, trying to imitate Ji Shaoting's cooking skills, which are not proficient but somehow suit the taste.It's just that he couldn't do it well no matter what, the oil and salt were too heavy, and the boiled vegetables in white water actually smelled fishy.

Facing the brightly colored dishes, Li Chen thought that the dishes made by Ji Shaoting were just like him, light and peaceful, and should be used slowly in daily life, instead of filling up the appetite with big fish and meat. Lose the flavor.

Li Chen lit a candle, facing the empty chair, imagining Ji Shaoting's lowered eyebrows.

The mole on the eyebrows and tail was reflected in the flickering candlelight, and when its owner raised his head from the meal, it disappeared into the darkness again, and his eyes turned into the candlelight instead.In this way, light and darkness flowed back and forth on Ji Shaoting's face, forming a rich style.

"Tingting," Li Chen whispered obsessively, as if he was talking to himself, and seemed to really regard the illusion opposite him as Ji Shaoting, "Happy birthday."

After the meal, he went to pick up the birthday card that Ji Shaoting had drawn for him, and locked it in the safe just like the marriage certificate.

Li Chen often looks at these relics that Ji Shaoting left behind.Tonight was even more different. He opened the card back and forth, watching the three-dimensional cake pop up and put it in, like a child who received this kind of 3D greeting card for the first time.

He pressed the greeting card to his heart, thinking that he should also draw one for Ting Ting.

Ji Shaoting still has the leftover materials for making birthday cards, and Li Chen thinks about patterns with various colored cardboards and colored pencils.It was his first time doing this, and he was extremely unskilled in the business, so he had to look at some real samples for reference, so he searched for the Christmas cards sent to Ji Shaoting by the children last year.

The most beautiful one is of course the greeting card from Harria, who studied fine arts. It was painted in watercolor, with the dark blue sky as the background and glitter as the stars. Li Chen opened it first.

Then he froze, his heart stopped beating.

This densely written card is full of her gratitude to Ji Shaoting, her achievements in the Academy of Fine Arts, her Christmas wishes, lines of neat and elegant English cursive scripts, and finally ends with a PS: Do you still remember our agreement? ?

In the memory, Ji Shaoting's voice lingered in my ears:

"Later, I contacted her for a long time, and finally sent her to an art academy. Do the math, she will graduate in one year."

"I promised her I would go to her graduation."

Ji Shaoting promised her that he would go to her graduation ceremony, this summer, at this Academy of Fine Arts named Alberta.