Chapter 25 2.

2. Remember those pink balloons floating in the empty room by the Suzhou Creek on your 18th birthday?Later, the house was not completed as expected, and the remaining half-destroyed scaffolding was erected there precariously for a long time, and then it lost its color due to wind and rain, and the steel bars that had not been repaired The cement has been exposed to the outside for a long time and rusted unscrupulously.So, in the end, this house became one of many unfinished buildings, which became old and damp quite calmly.Sansan found it by bicycle alone in the winter of her first year at university.It was raining that day, even though I was wearing a raincoat, the fine raindrops still covered my eyelashes coldly.Across the Suzhou Creek, a stretch of garbage docks was completely demolished, and a new green belt was built.Those trees seemed to become shaded overnight, and they were lush regardless of the seasons.Sansan fumbled up the stairs along the route in his memory.It was dusk as usual, but cracks had appeared in the walls, and the smell of fresh white cement and lime powder had disappeared.The river was at high tide, drowning the swaying tide-loving plants on the bank, washing dead water hyacinths to the bank, and when it receded again, you could see the tenacious moss in the wet mud.The river water has no peculiar smell at all. She can hardly remember what the pungent river smell was like when she took the 21st tram to her grandmother’s house and passed the Yokohama Bridge when she was a child. It always seems to be mixed with rotten watermelon skin and summer The rotting smell of cabbage leaves in winter.At that time, there was no need to look at the stop signs, and you only needed to rely on your sense of smell to know where to get off, but now it is only when the tide is high that there is a faint smell of the past from a place that seems very far away.They erased everything so cleanly that it was as if there was no need for memory.It was also dusk, but the sun did not shine in, and the corridor was very dark.She climbed up, not knowing why she came here.There were thick cobwebs on the corners of the walls, and she could only secretly hope that there would be no mice scurrying out.The humidity is so bad here that moss almost grows on the steps.

Later Sansan found the empty room.The balloons are still there, but of course not in their lively form.They have lost all their air, as if they were dead, but they are still glued to the ceiling with persistent glue. From a distance, it looks like countless used condoms are frantically glued to the ceiling, with different colors. It was pink again, but the tan of aged rubber.The window is still open, looking straight out that crazy summer has passed for so long, and there is no smell of imminent movement, and the pale winter seems to be able to freeze the river.Standing here, she was trembling by the wind blowing through the hall, and only then did she feel like she was reborn after a catastrophe.At that time, there was still no news of Astro Boy, but she felt that he was by her side for a brief moment.This feeling was that he was passing her by, and she suddenly felt relieved that she would never meet Astro Boy again.Probably because of the lingering winter rain outside, otherwise why would there be a feeling of heartbreak?

Is it raining heavily in your place?Have you cycled to work in the supermarket with an umbrella again?Do you have to turn a lot of small streets?Will those green plants stretch out their branches and leaves to caress your sleeves?I always take it for granted that what happens in my place will happen in your place, and now it’s the stinging season here, and it’s raining all day, but I finally don’t have to stay in the classroom with beating fluorescent lights to do test papers anymore. Just standing behind the sink washing the never-ending dishes and crying from the cigarette smoke from the nearest table.I can't touch you, I can't talk to you, we gradually become like strangers, as if you really don't know how much I like you.I'm just like you, we're both sad idlers.If Dad knew that at the age of twenty-five I was just standing behind the bar in a coffee shop numbly wiping a glass with a dry cotton cloth, he would have stopped loving me a long time ago. It was in vain, he saw my idle heart very early on, but he was powerless, because I was Tang Xiaoxi who was trapped at the pier, and I was destined to be abandoned by the clockwork iron cock in charge of time.Now I don't lie anymore and don't hang out with the wild children of Yan's house. I even graduated from a third-rate major in a prestigious university, but I finally broke his heart completely.Because he no longer has hope in me, so he no longer has hope in himself.I was afraid to see him, just as I was afraid to see my mother.

"Why are you doing worse than the little hooligan girl next door after graduating from the best university? Why waste your youth and time? How much capital do you think you have left to squander? Do you think you are only sixteen years old? "All the condemnation has stopped working on me.I hate their puzzled and disappointed eyes, as if my fate must be like theirs.But I'm just that girl with a bone on her head.I am not unhappy, all my unhappiness is just the hope they imposed on me. I'm that bad girl who messes around and wastes time. Even love is so fragile that I can't find a tenable reason.What do you like?I like the squashed soft-shell peony cigarettes in your shirt pocket I like the thick key chain on your jeans I like you singing Jay Chou songs in karaoke I like talking to you and bickering with you I like being in When you cross the street in a hurry, you suddenly turn around and search for my hand.But why should I hide my hands in my pockets?You will never know that I love you, and you will never know that I loved you.One night, at a good friend's birthday party, I was drunk a lot, and when everyone around me was crying and laughing, I just wanted to use that cowardly courage to call you.But I don't have your phone number anymore.Someone in the toilet was holding the toilet and was crying and vomiting desperately. I blindly and desperately flipped through the phone's address book and was extremely sad.It's like I can't find you anymore, I can't tell you I love you anymore, the best times have just vanished into thin air, that bad stubborn and cowardly little girl is trapped in endless fog and ash .If I met you sooner, I would hide with you in the abandoned observatory and smoke Peony brand cigarettes. We would review our homework at KFC on Qinghai Road. We would wave plastic hammers and scream on the crowded National Day carnival road. We would go to Wujiaochang together. Watching the first rock show in my life in the warehouse.I want to fall in love with you, and I want to do with you what all teenagers should do.

We must not miss anything. Is it useful to say these now?Is it useful to tell you the past of Yan's house and Wanhangdu Road now?Will you still be patient with me?Will you finish listening?I know it's too late but I still want to make it up, I want to make up for the time soaked in the fog.Every evening, I sit behind the window glass in the store, and I still smoke. Since Astro Boy handed me the first cigarette, I have been out of control.Sometimes I hate the smell of smoke that stains my clothes and hair in those typical Shanghai humid seasons. I hate the smell of smoke in every pore of my body, but the smoke that rises from my body The smoke is confusing, but it really looks like love.The dusk was still so wonderful, the sky was about to get dark, the doorman in the dilapidated movie theater on the opposite side pinched the clock and went to the side of the rolling door to turn on the switch, and then the old neon lights on the porch lit up.I really want to share with you these brief twilights, like those crazy dark days with the Astro Boys.Do you care?Would you sniff like a grown-up?It can only be said that it's too bad. I was already twenty-five years old when I met you. No matter how long the former teenagers struggled, they will eventually grow into adults.If you are going to rumble forward like them, I have no reason to blame you at all. There is no need for you to accompany me here, because my surroundings are so small and lonely.Even if you are here for a while, listening to me tell my secrets, I will be frightened, worried that you will suddenly get bored, and worried that you will suddenly want to live like an ordinary adult.There is nothing wrong with this, but for me, the so-called abandonment and betrayal are nothing more than that.

In fact, I am already tired of all this, I am already tired of this infinitely long but unwilling to leave the teenage years, just like the rainwater that filled the room in countless summers, and the panting and roaring sewer pipes.I'm tired of sitting cross-legged alone in the middle of the room like a fucking twelve-year-old girl, getting scared out of my wits by thunder that literally rips the sky apart.I don't want to live with endless memories anymore, it's horrible.I know that Lin Yueyuan is dead, and I know that I will never see Astro Boy again, but it really doesn't matter to me.Because I was originally a person who lived in memory. As long as I closed my eyes, the image of them standing on the pile of rubble screaming and cheering at me appeared in front of my eyes.In that world where the eyes are closed, the sycamore tree at the gate of Wanhangdu Road has not been uprooted by the typhoon and then broken in the middle, the Paramount Cinema is still called the Hongdu Cinema, and the burning briquettes stove and The mixed smell of damp and rotten wood eaten by termites can be smelled just by fanning the nostrils, as well as No. 9’s sweatshirt stuck to his back when he played volleyball on the playground, the winter when Helen returned from Hainan Island A row of light brown freckles on the nose, everything came to life, everything that died, everything that was dismantled, everything that disappeared, came back to life, as if time had never passed.So being neglected and abandoned means nothing to me, not even death, just the memory that wears away all my patience, passion and love, which never dies.I know that memory is not as long as life, but I am really exhausted.Is it necessary to wait until the night of white hair before being released from the never-sailing port, and to spend this never-ending juvenile time until the time when all relatives and relatives are deserted?

Maybe you won't know the feeling you bring to my heart until a long time later, maybe you will never know that I love you, or you know but you think it's a joke, or you know but you don't have the courage to love me, or you I know but you forgot me like everyone else.I don't care about these.It would be great if I could let you know my love while you were still a teenager, but I believe there is only a little time left, and then I will watch you become an ordinary adult like them, and this A little time is not enough for us to talk about love.I'm a little sad because I feel my youth is gone.What if one day there are wrinkles on the skin, wearing Converse sneakers is no longer beautiful, but the heart is still a stubborn 12-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on a stool waiting for the typhoon to pass?What if the typhoon never crosses the border?

One day, I clearly remember that day, when I rode my bicycle home in the evening, it was the time when the middle school students were leaving school, and those children who were playing and rowing on the road unscrupulously riding in a row made the rampage bus do nothing.At that time, summer had come to an end, and the air was filled with the sweet smell of rotten flowers. Every time it rained, the rose petals would rot on the concrete floor.There was smoke and dust on the road at dusk, but I suddenly burst into tears, because I didn't know where I was going to ride.Those roads that will appear when you close your eyes, go straight down Xinzha Road, pass Jiangning Road, Xikang Road, Shanxi Road, Changde Road, Jiaozhou Road, and Wanhangdu Road. Turn left, the first intersection is toward Turning right is the house with a sycamore tree at the door.Further on, past the hairdresser's stand and cigarette paper shop, is the entrance of Yan's house. There is a urinal there, which stinks to the sky in summer.Further forward, further forward is Yan's house that shines in the dream, those crazy little alleys, those tile clouds covering the sky.I am familiar with that path, even if I close my eyes, I can return there.I know the car repair stand along the way, the wonton shop library and the homes of those classmates. I know which small road has the least red lights and all the shortcuts connecting alleys.

And I'm crying because it's all useless.The old house on Wanhangdu Road is no longer my home, it is full of rats now, the house I stayed in for 14 years was transformed into a retail hardware store, and later turned into a photo shop that no one patronizes at all museum.The vegetable farm has long since disappeared. The sycamore tree that fell to the ground was towed away by a truck the day after the typhoon passed, and the leaves fell off the entire road.Why would I even ride down that road?Only in the dream state can I get back there effortlessly, and now, what do I do now?Now I'm lost, and I desperately look around at the shattered roads around me with moist eyes, as if I've been caught in a scam and conspiracy.Even though it was a familiar road name, it lost its familiar appearance. I rode down the memory but couldn't get home at all.It is not my home, I can no longer park the car in the alley, and I can no longer take out the keys tied with silk thread from my neck to open the door.There is no door, no alley of Yan's house, nothing.

My Shanghai has been altered in a mess.I hate those construction sites. I hate those pile drivers and cement mixer trucks.I cried like in a bloody nightmare, lost my mind.But this is not a dream, this is not the time to wake up with fright.I have stayed in memory for too long. If one day I was suddenly dragged out, I would get lost, sad, and die.I know that one day I have to pay the price for those years of lying, I know that I have begun to accept the punishment, but I want to know how long, how long the world will forgive me for those years of wanton growth, How long before I step out of the background.This never-forsaking youth makes me feel that no matter how barefoot I try to catch up with you, I will never be able to keep up with your pace.You, you all grow up in peace and then grow old without looking back at all.

But I'm really afraid of being forgotten by you like this. Forgotten by you, it's as if I, together with Shanghai, have been altered along with those backgrounds. Zhou Jianing At home at 4 am on March 5, 2007