For a week after Ella's death, the sky was overcast and it rained heavily.
Dong Sao couldn't accept this fact, and after fainting at the funeral, she was admitted to the hospital. When Xia Chan went to the hospital to visit her, Dong Sao's hair was completely white, and she fell asleep, holding a stack of photos of Ella in her hand, from a few years old to eighteen years old, the pictures were forever frozen on that smiling face.
Ella left and never came back.
Ella's life stopped at the most beautiful age. It seemed to be such a beautiful thing, but why did the sad elegy sound every night?
In a week, Xia Chan attended Ella's funeral, received a shocked call from Wu Zhizi, received concern from Gu Tong, and witnessed Da Fei crying uncontrollably.
Her lost eyes were too sad and desolate that she could not see the death slowly approaching, the cold black sickle cutting another lingering face.
You will miss a lot in this life. When you are burying your head in sorrow and licking your wounds, there will always be something that will quietly walk away from you without any sound.
It wasn't until the morning of a week later that she realized something had gone wrong.
When her eyes fell on the dusty brass key hanging on the wall, she realized what was wrong.
This week there was a person who never showed up. No phone calls, no text messages, no news from him in the music room, and he was not seen at the funeral.
He seemed to have evaporated into thin air, without a sound.
Xia Chan crossed the alley to buy breakfast on the street across the street. The LED screen in the middle of the building was still playing the scene of the "Youth Band" coming to the city to perform. There was a familiar face in the picture. He was facing the audience and singing along with the music. His voice was moving . This voice had appeared around her countless times. In the chorus, he waved his hands, nodded to the beat, and smiled ostentatiously. The shining lights shone into his dark eyes, and his eyes were only on the smiling girl in the audience.
This is the last time they saw each other.
Then a sudden rainstorm hit, and the stage and the audience were in chaos. Everyone panicked and looked for a place to hide from the rain. She received a call from Dafei in a panic. She left in such a hurry that she even forgot that there was someone behind her.
She didn't know what was happening behind her. She was too anxious at the time, and her mind was full of Ella, without any other rational emotions.
The accident happened without any warning, and she had no extra energy to think about other things. Now recalling what happened in the past few days, she felt that everything was very strange.
Monet, he's gone.
At first, she thought Monet was sick and took a leave of absence because of being caught in the rain, but his phone was unreachable and no one knew where he had gone.
When she rushed to the music room on Ziwei North Road to look for someone, a strange thing happened. The vermilion door that was usually open was locked. She stood outside the door and knocked for a long time, but there was no response.
Probably because she heard the sound of her knocking on the door, a little girl with pigtails from the neighbor's house stepped over the threshold, shaking a bunch of keys in her hand and calling in a baby voice: "Sister Piaopiao..."
She walked over to support the child, looked at the keys in her hand, squatted in front of her and asked softly: "Baby, where are your parents?"
"Xihu...brother said it's for you..." The little girl pouted. She had just learned to speak, so her sentences were incomplete.
At this time, a woman holding a baby came out of the house. While feeding the baby, she smiled and translated the little girl's words: "Girl, what Mee Mee meant is that the key was given by the brother of this family, and he wants her to help give it to you."
The woman looked at Xia Chan and smiled gently: "Are you a friend of Monet's child?"
Xia Chan nodded.
"That's it. He said a beautiful girl would come here in a while. I guess it must be you. He gave us the key." said the woman.
She asked in confusion: "Xihu is..."
"Wife." The woman smiled and walked over to lead the little girl into the house. "Meimei asked who the beautiful sister Monet was, and he teased Meimei and said she was his wife."
Xia Chan took the key, said "thank you", and watched the woman walk inside holding the child in one hand and singing a lullaby.
After their backs were out of sight, she turned around, unlocked the door, and gently pushed it open.
This place has not changed. Although it was destroyed once by Monet's father, it has been restored to the way it was when I first saw it.
Xia Chan walked from the main room to the stairs and looked for any trace of Monet in the music room, but there was none, nothing at all. It was so quiet here as if the owner had never been there.
The pots of flowers had all withered, and the leaves had begun to turn yellow due to lack of water. Nothing inside had been moved, except for the repaired wooden guitar, which had disappeared along with the person holding it.
It was gloomy outside and the drizzle had stopped.
The desk has been tidied and is very clean.
She walked over and could feel the presence of someone. Looking at the dark computer screen, she pressed the power button unconsciously.
There was no password set for the computer. The familiar Windows sound rang out, and the wallpaper on the desktop made her breath catch: Monet put his arm around her, and she looked at the camera innocently, with a bright red plum blossom on her long black hair.
This is a selfie he took when the four of them had a winter gathering and she and Monet sneaked out. I didn't expect to see it here.
After leaving the music room, she went to the cemetery at Dujuan Mountain, the classroom at school, and every place she could think of, but still found nothing.
It started to drizzle again. She walked aimlessly on the street, feeling inexplicably uneasy. The words of the past flooded into her mind.
"Don't be angry with me. I feel bad now."
“Only when people are really close to death will they realize how happy it is to be alive… Now, I just hope to live a few more decades without any illness or disaster…”
"Axia, I just want to tell you that no matter what happens to you , it will pass. Being alive is good."
"I hope you can promise me one thing. If, I mean if ... I am no longer by your side, you must remember me..."
When he was studying, Monet would always disappear for a period of time every month; in the music room, he would curl up on the sofa with a pale face and ask her to accompany him; when he was singing, he suddenly fell on the stage and said that he had low blood sugar because he had not eaten... There were too many scenes, and in fact, too many unreasonable things, but she had never thought about the reasons.
Death...live a few more years...no longer around...
The ominous premonition kept echoing in her chest, and all the memories kept rewinding, like an old black-and-white movie, playing over and over again. Her eyes and heart ached inexplicably, and countless ignored details gradually became clear in her mind.
Everything points to a truth that people are unwilling to believe.
She was too careless. For so long, relying on his roguery and deep affection, she never noticed his sadness and sorrow.
Suddenly, a sentence I once read popped up in my mind: What we see is often not the truth, but just a distorted illusion. Just like a clown, he shows his ridiculous side to the audience, and no one knows where his tears fall.
The saddest thing in the world is the clown.
Monet is such a clown. He lets sadness fester in his heart and only writes happiness on his face.
Suddenly I remembered that there was another place and another person.
That person must know Monet's whereabouts.
The rain on the ground splashed everywhere, the red skirt fluttered on the street, and the running figure disappeared at the end of the drizzling road with a glimmer of hope.
Inside the auto repair shop, the faint smell of red wine floated in the warm air. Lin Jiaxuan's eyes fell on Xia Chan, with no expression of surprise on his face.
She stood there, like a thin rose, with pale lips, panting, and an anxious face that was indistinguishable from sweat and rain. Her clothes were soaked, and she looked very embarrassed.
Lightning struck, and heavy rain began to fall from the sky again. The wind made the waterproof cloth rustle.
"I'm here to find Monet." Her voice, as cold as rain, contained too many emotions, and the light reflected in her eyes, "Where did he go?"
"Aming, get her a towel." He looked at her expressionlessly and said lightly.
"Can you tell me?"
She pursed her lips stubbornly and stared at him without blinking.
A white towel was handed to her and she looked at it without moving.
She didn't move, so he didn't answer.
Her fingers moved, and she compromised by taking the towel and wiping her hair. He looked at her quietly without saying a word. Xia Chan wiped vigorously, from her hair to her arms, and then to her face, until there was no drop of water left.
"Okay."
She threw the towel on the table in front of him angrily, and someone brought her a cup of hot tea and placed it on the table.
Lin Jiaxuan's mouth curled up into a smile: "What do you want to know from me?"
"Where is Monet?" She walked up to him, just wanting to know the answer.
"foreign."
There was a look of disbelief in her eyes: "So sudden? What is he doing abroad?"
"To cure the disease."
She was stunned. The facts and her guess were the same, but when it came from another person, it felt different. His face was still calm, without any obvious emotional ups and downs, as if he had already known the hidden truth.
She lowered her eyes and spoke carefully: "Monet...what disease does he have? Can it be cured?"
Lin Jiaxuan remained silent, and she waited quietly for his answer.
“Lung cancer.”
His cold voice sounded like a cruel judgment.
The last ray of hope in her heart was ruthlessly extinguished. After hearing these two words, she stood there dumbfounded and dared not move. This naked answer made her feel at a loss, and she even lost the courage to continue asking.
After a long time, Lin Jiaxuan squinted his eyes, as if he was lost in memories: "My adoptive father and Uncle Mo were good friends when they were young, and they fell in love with Aunt Qing at the same time. Aunt Qing is Anai's mother. I am eight years older than Anai, and I have met Aunt Qing several times. She is like a beautiful poppy flower, and men cannot get close to her. Beautiful things are poisonous. Aunt Qing is addicted to smoking and got addicted to that stuff. When she smokes, she is simply desperate. In the end, Anai is also very pitiful. I am afraid this is why my father asked me to take care of Anai. Aunt Qing died of cancer, and I didn't expect that Anai would be harmed."
Lin Jiaxuan's tone was rarely filled with sadness. "Lung cancer can be inherited, but the probability is very small. I didn't expect that Anai would suffer from it. The early stage of the disease had a long latent period and no symptoms. It was only discovered two years ago."
It was the first time that Xia Chan heard Lin Jiaxuan talk so much.
"My mother loved to play and squander her health when she was young, and she liked smoking. Before the divorce, she was diagnosed with lung cancer." The sad words lingered in her mind.
Only now did Xia Chan understand that what he said about "she doesn't deserve it" actually had this meaning.
When she came out of the garage, the rain had stopped and the air smelled of soft soil and grass. She walked on the empty street like a soulless creature.
Lin Jiaxuan's words were like a brand on her heart. Her mind was blank, she didn't know where to go, and she didn't know what to do.
Xia Chan didn't know how she got home. As soon as she opened the door, she fell to the ground.
She slept on the floor. When she woke up, crickets were chirping loudly outside and the night sky was filled with stars.
Her wet clothes had been blown dry. Her head and throat ached. She struggled to get up and took a hot shower in the bathroom. Then she went to the kitchen and made a bowl of dumplings and ate a few bites.
She didn't have the energy to wash the dishes. In the dark room, with no lights on, she groped her way to the bed in a daze, fell on it, buried her head in the quilt, and fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke up, there was a halo of orange light outside the window and the sound of cars drifted into the room. I didn't know what time it was outside, and I didn't know if it was the early morning of the next day or the evening of the first day.
She had a feeling of emptiness. Everything around her was changing and spinning rapidly, and her heart was drifting with the sounds in the wind.
Everything seems to be in a dream, and there is a face in the dream imprinted in my heart.
She opened her eyes, but couldn't wake up.
The night was long and she fell asleep again without realizing it. In her fuzzy mind, there was still a familiar figure, but she was not sure whether he had come back or was saying goodbye.
Deep-rooted sorrow permeated the distant morning and evening. She wanted to ask him to wait barefoot, but where her hand touched, she shed tears of heartache.
The sound of the electric fan gradually became clearer. She had no strength in her body and tilted her head to look out the window. The sky seemed to have been washed by the sea, revealing a sense of lightness. There was a light blue kite floating alone.
Her head no longer hurt. At around 1:00 p.m., she got up from the bed and took a cup to drink some water. When she came back and passed the kitchen, she tripped over the threshold. The cup in her hand fell to the ground, and the pieces flew everywhere, splashing hot water everywhere . A few pieces of the cup scratched the back of her hand, and scarlet blood flowed down her arm.
She was now afraid of seeing blood. These warm liquids always reminded her of Ella.
She always felt that she was still dreaming. Ella's death and Monet's departure seemed like distant and unreal dreams.
The refrigerator was empty, so she changed her clothes, took her keys and money and went out shopping.
For some reason, she still felt that life had not changed. It seemed that those two people would still appear on this road she walked on. However, when she passed by the pavilion and those Metasequoia trees, she realized that those people had indeed never come back.
Compared to Jiang Huainan, she found herself missing Monet more.
Perhaps she herself did not realize that since she met Monet, he had been like a stubborn virus that had been forcibly implanted into her life, penetrating into her blood and entangled in her life.
You don’t feel it when it exists, but once it leaves, it makes people extremely sad.
Sure enough, he was a complete rogue, a bastard who broke into her world and left irresponsibly.
Mrs. Dong was still in the hospital. In the evening, Xia Chan brought some fruits to visit her. Now that Ella was gone, Mrs. Dong was alone, lonely, and sad.
While sitting on the bus, she watched the cars outside coming and going, the red lights came on, and cars of all sizes lined up in long queues.
Xia Chan frowned and looked out the window unconsciously. A car away, the window of the red car next to her happened to be rolled down, and through the half-open window, the profile of a pretty woman wearing sunglasses fell into her eyes.
"boom--"
Fireworks exploded in her mind and her chest was hit hard by a heavy stone. She stared at the man, his eyes filled with hatred that seemed to burn through her.
With just one glance, Xia Chan recognized who it was.
Qin Xiaosi!
The source of sin that brought about entanglement and harm, the executioner who stood behind the scenes, watching coldly with a pair of scissors in his hand, and cutting the rope of their happiness.
She is still staying in this city!
Xia Chan sneered in her heart.
Qin Xiaosi, do you still remember the crime you committed with your hands?
I can't be so tolerant and pretend to forget, deceiving myself that nothing happened. Now that you're back, I will never let it go.
Your inner demons have been eliminated, but our tragedy has just begun. As the director of all this, what qualifications do you have to talk about happiness? What reason do you have not to be there?
There is no winner or loser, so let’s perish together!