Qian, is this how you manage the tomb? ! "
The tombkeeper was a young man who seemed to have just arrived and was not very sensible. He answered in fluent English: "No one has visited this tomb for at least ten years - besides, we only repaired it half a year ago!"
With this sentence, Li Shenzhou remained silent.
Yes, he himself, who was considered a friend of the deceased, was so negligent, how could he dare to disturb a strange foreigner.
He looked towards the cross tombstone.
The photo is a little blurry, but you can still see a young figure. And they are all old.
Li Shenzhou stood in front of the tombstone and slowly lowered his head deeply.
"Actually, I wanted to tell you about Li Leyuan." The memory was suddenly interrupted. Li Shenzhou came back to his senses and smiled sheepishly at Chentian, "Sorry, people tend to have random thoughts when they get older."
"Oh? What's wrong with my wife?" Chen Chentian opened his eyes and stared at him with interest.
Li Shenzhou was speechless and choked. In the end, he just sighed and said to Chen Chentian: "It's not your wife, I mean another one."
As if all the light had been drained away, Chen Tian sat on the sofa, stunned for a long time.
"You tell me."
***
Li Leyuan died on his twenty-first birthday.
In the early morning in China, he called. That day, Li Shenzhou was staying up late to finish playing World of Warcraft and was about to take a shower when he received a call from Li Leyuan.
Li Leyuan on the phone was very calm, without any disturbance, but he was like a black and white movie he had seen before, depressing and gloomy. He could only be heard saying: "Li Shenzhou."
"Do you want to play the midnight bell?" Li Shenzhou yawned, not hiding his tiredness.
The call was abruptly interrupted. No sound. Inexplicably, Li Shenzhou felt a little frightened and confused, but he didn't care so much. He put on his pajamas comfortably and wrapped himself in a quilt.
Four days later, Li Shenzhou's mailbox received another email from Li Leyuan. The email contained only a few digits and was written in Chinese. It was a simple four words, but now that I think about it, each word is heartbreaking: "Don't tell him."
At that time, Li Shenzhou's inner doubts deepened even further. He didn't care about fishing at work anymore and replied in Chinese: "What's wrong with you??"
After a few hours, there was still no reply. Li Shenzhou became a little anxious and made another international long distance call, but no one answered. A wave of irritability suddenly surged in his heart, and he made several calls without giving up, but no one answered the call. Li Shenzhou was a little annoyed. It happened to be time to eat at that time, so he left these troubles behind. He took a few good friends out to have a good meal... and then forgot about the matter.
He learned about Li Leyuan's death two days later when the foreign police notified him. At that time, a full week had passed since Li Leyuan's death.
"This's police..."
With a skilled London accent, he once again tested his not very good English skills; and his not very strong mind.
Fortunately, after the police said so many things, Li Shenzhou finally understood one sentence.
Li Leyuan is dead, and his last contact was him.
Until he got on a plane and flew across several countries to London, thousands of miles away, Li Shenzhou's mind was in chaos. Don't know what to think, don't know what to say. It was as pale as a frozen corpse crawling out of the morgue.
Aren’t people good? Why did it suddenly disappear... He swore on his computer playing World of Warcraft that this was not scientific at all
However, he is indeed dead.
Li Leyuan had not had much contact with him. Apart from knowing that he was Chen Tian's lover and that he had gone to the airport to see him off, he was not a very familiar boy at all.
He remembered that he heard Chen Tian say that Li Leyuan liked Tagore's "The Birds"; Oscar Wilde's fairy tales; and Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince"; he also remembered that he was a not-so-outstanding boy, not handsome but handsome. She's not effeminate or pretentious, and her grades aren't particularly good...otherwise, she wouldn't have gone to the philosophy department.
The boy who liked to laugh committed suicide due to depression.
He could hardly imagine how those shining eyes became clouded, but he could see the layers of helplessness and despair revealed in the diary he wrote in Chinese.
"I feel like I don't look like myself anymore. There are strange people and strange things. There are blond and blue-eyed foreigners everywhere... "
"I wanted to call my mother and talk to her, but she just told me to 'get lost'. She said she didn't want such a disgusting son like me."
"I am not wrong, and love is not wrong. I love someone, and he is a man. That's all. Why should you judge me as wrong?"
The police told him that they had read the diary and concluded that he committed suicide due to depression. And they also found solid evidence that Li Yueyuan had seen a psychiatrist and was reticent and withdrawn at school.
And this diary, which has no "research value", has become almost all his relics.
According to the police, he cut the veins in his wrist and immersed his wrist in warm water in the bathtub and bled to death.
It is said that the water in the entire bathtub was a dazzling red, but the yellow-skinned boy who knelt down in the bathtub had a peaceful smile on his face.
"There is no injustice in heaven, but I can only go to hell."
This is the last sentence in Li Leyuan's diary.
***
"You lied to me." Chen Chentian smiled and said to Li Shenzhou. His expression remained unchanged, and even the arc of his smile did not change. "This joke is not funny at all."
"What I said is true." Li Shenzhou looked at Chen Chentian with no expression, but there were tears in the corners of his eyes.
The arc of Chentian's smile widened a little: "You lied to me. He lived a good life abroad. He married a foreign woman and had a pretty good figure. He also got a green card and became a Chinese. Now he lives in a small villa in the suburbs of London. Here, his daughter is already married, and soon his grandson will go to middle school... "
Li Shenzhou suddenly closed his eyes tightly.
He couldn't bear to interrupt him, everyone knew that it was just a fantasy.
"This joke is not funny at all." Chen Tian said, but the smile at the corner of his mouth slowly faded away. As if he was afraid that he would not believe it, he repeated it again seriously, "It's not funny at all, really. "
"I have been diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. People who are about to die do not like to lie. Because they have told lies too many times before." Li Shenzhou just said this sentence slowly, turned around, and never looked back. He didn't dare to look at Chen Tian's expression, "I'm currently hospitalized in the Municipal People's Hospital... Anyway... I'm leaving first."
Li Shenzhou fled in despair, making noise like a deserter from a country that was subjugated.
***
April 13th is a beautiful day. After two months of delay, the critical illness notice from the hospital was finally sent to Li Shenzhou.
Chen Chentian asked the driver to drive to the Municipal People's Hospital. People were coming and going in front of the Municipal People's Hospital, and there was a constant flow of vehicles.
"You can stop here, I'll go visit my old friend by myself." Chen Tian said to his driver, a moment of sadness appeared on his wrinkled face, "I'm already old... Xiao Wang, while you're young, you can make fewer mistakes Some mistakes."
The young driver nodded in understanding: "Mr. Chen, go slowly. I'll wait for you in the hospital parking lot."
Holding the flowers, Chen Tian walked step by step to Li Shenzhou's ward without taking the elevator.
Opening the door, the room was bright. Li Shenzhou was surrounded by his wife and children. When he saw Chen Tian coming, he said to them: "You guys go out first. I have something to say with Chen Tian."
Li Shenzhou's wife glared at him with red eyes: "We have been an old married couple for so many years. Is there anything I can't know? Don't I just want to be with you now?"
Li Shenzhou's children were reasonable and invited their mother out half-coaxed and half-pushed.
"Everything I told you that day is true. I'll write you the address of the tomb... Go and see him when you have time." Li Shenzhou said, pulling out a piece of paper from the bedside table and writing it with a trembling The address was written in hand.
"I know." Chentian said. Li Shenzhou's writing hand suddenly shook. "I know it all...but I can only lie to myself."
Li Shenzhou's expression showed deep shock, but he soon smiled bitterly with relief. The smile was ugly, so he insisted on finishing the address and handed it to Chen Chentian.
"I used to think that Li Leyuan was the most cruel, but then I discovered that I was the most cruel. Even if I knew what was going on, I could still deceive the world." His expression was deeply tired. "Now I know that the most cruel It's you."
"You are much stronger than me. You understand everything, but you still pretend not to know, love, marriage, and having children; for more than 40 years, you have not mentioned Li Leyuan to anyone once." Li Shenzhou finished this sentence in one breath, There was a long silence in the room, "Tell me, do you really mean it?"
Chen Chentian didn't answer. He read the address on the note over and over again. Finally, after a few hesitations, he stuffed the address into his wallet: "I thought I had it."
Li Shenzhou stopped talking and just waved his hand to tell him to get out.
Chen Tian originally thought that he would not cry. Time is undoubtedly the best antidote.
But some things have no cure. Just like Li Leyuan's stubbornness, stubbornness, and extreme cruelty to himself; or those eternal love and hatred of young people. You think it is so far away that you can't see the edge, but in fact, it will not go away, like It is like a ghost that follows you everywhere, a plague that blooms in your heart. The plague is everywhere, but people have to calm down.
He returned home and said to Li Yueyuan who was watching TV