"Are you going to leave or not? Can you please stop blocking the road?"
Gao Yuan was slightly stunned by the dissatisfied accusations from passers-by, and then he came back to his senses from the short animation in front of him. He hurriedly apologized, stepped aside to let the crowded people behind him pass, and stayed where he was, inexplicably unwilling to leave.
He looked at the short animation that was playing repeatedly on the LCD screen on the wall.
"When I was six years old, I saw an illustration of a python swallowing a wild animal, so I drew my first picture with colored pencils - a giant python digesting an elephant in its stomach. I proudly showed it to the adults and asked them if my drawing scared them."
The dark brown giant snake in the picture has a bulging center. It does not look like a snake digesting an elephant, but more like an irregular hat.
So the adults said, "What's so scary about a hat?"
"In order to make the adults understand, I had to draw the elephant inside the python. I think now they should understand that I drew a giant python digesting an elephant, not a hat, right?"
But the adults said, "Stop drawing these pictures of pythons with their bellies open or hidden. If you have the energy, you should spend it on meaningful things like learning geography, history, and mathematics."
The little man on the screen shook his head and sighed: "After that, I stopped painting, and I no longer dreamed of becoming a painter. The failure of my first painting made me very discouraged. Adults didn't understand anything, and I had to explain everything to them all the time. It was so tiring."
Perhaps the plot in the short animation was so touching that Gao Yuan couldn't help but think of himself when he was a teenager - he also loved painting, and sometimes he was so eager that he would risk being caught and boldly draw on the Chinese textbooks. It was common for him to add beards to the famous writers in the books and change their appearance.
When he was younger, he would also draw all kinds of weird things, like black roses, grass that looked like bugs…
Most of the time he could not get praise from adults, but was corrected in a rigid manner: Roses should be red, how can there be black roses? How can there be such strange grass in the forest? You clearly drew a furry bug.
When I grew up and became addicted to painting, my parents were no longer as permissive as they were when I was a teenager:
"How old are you? Why are you still idle and obsessed with cartoons all day long? Only children like these things. When will you grow up?"
"I have no objection if you want to paint for fun occasionally, but you have to focus on the right path. Can painting be used to make a living?"
"Others can make painting a career because they have talent, but can you? When you were a child, you couldn't even draw a rose well, and you want to make a living by painting in the future? How is that possible?"
After hearing so many words like this, even Gao Yuan himself couldn't help but doubt himself.
He thought that maybe his parents were right, that his talent was not enough for him to make a living by painting, so he gave up painting, which he had loved for a long time, and turned to study finance, a major that satisfied his parents. After graduation, he successfully entered a securities company and lived a regular and stable life.
Only rarely would he occasionally think of his childhood dream of painting, the blooming black roses, and the grass that looked like furry insects.
By then he already knew that the grass that looked like a bug existed. It was a bug in winter and a grass in summer, so it was called Cordyceps sinensis. It was a plant of the Cordyceps family of the Hypocrea order. But when he mentioned this old story seemingly unintentionally, he only got a casual remark from the adults:
"Really? I don't remember anything like this happening."
It turned out that the blows and twists that ruined his dreams were just trivial matters in the eyes of adults.
Gao Yuan stared blankly at the short animation in front of him.
It is seven o'clock in the morning. The subway passage is crowded with people going to work and school. He should have been rushing to his workplace and starting a day of regular work, but now, looking at the short animation in front of him, he is in a trance, unable to take a step or utter a word.
…
It was already eight o'clock in the evening when Lin Yangbing dragged his tired feet down from the No. 3 subway station.
In the past, we all got off work at 5pm, but recently there have been too many things going on in the company and we are often very busy. After finally waiting for our boss to let us go, it is often 8pm in the morning, sometimes even later, up to 11pm. It is very rare to get off work at 8pm like today.
Too tired.
He was already extremely exhausted, but there was nothing he could do.
There was no way. He was still young and it was time for him to work hard. He couldn't just go out and have fun while his peers were working overtime. Even if he could get over it, what would he do during the holidays and class reunions
Can you hold your head up high in front of your family, relatives, classmates and close friends with the meager salary you earn
He sighed and slowly continued walking forward. When his eyes unconsciously fell on the LCD screen on the right side of the passage, he was stunned.
Lin Yangbing hadn't originally planned to watch the video above - he didn't know what it looked like. Normally, at this time, it would just be some commercials playing. But when he saw the content on the screen, he was actually stunned.
"These adults just like numbers." The little boy in the picture said: "When you tell adults about your friend, they never ask questions like how he sounds, what kind of games he likes, or whether he collects butterfly specimens."
"They only ask you questions like: how old is he, how many brothers he has, how much his father earns, they think that's how they know their friends."
Lin Yangbing was stunned.
He suddenly remembered that two years ago, when he had not yet broken up with his first love, when he visited her home at that time, he actually had a lot to say - about how he would treat her well, his ambition, his plans for his career, their future... and many, many, many more.
But all this was wiped out by the hesitation and obvious neglect on the other party's parents' faces when they asked about his salary.
Lin Yangbing was caught off guard when she saw the content in the video and almost burst into tears.
Yes, this is the adult world.
If you are going to talk about your house and your job, then you can't say "I have a job that suits me very well", "I like my current job, it's very close to my current house, and I can sleep in ten more minutes in the morning. Although the current salary is not high, the development prospects are very good", or "I have a beautiful house where I can hear the birds singing in the early morning and the sun shines in through the windowsill," because people often don't understand.
But if you say, "I have a job with a monthly salary of 50,000 yuan," or "I have a house worth 10 million yuan," then everyone will show an expression of admiration and envy.
Just like his ex-girlfriend's family.
They didn't pay attention to his tenderness and cherishment towards the girl. Compared with the many efforts he made for their future, they cared more about whether he had a high-paying and decent job. So when he talked carefully about his considerations and arrangements for future work and family, the other party's disappointed and indifferent attitude after asking about the salary was enough to shatter his motivation and aspirations for three years of hard work.
The relationship ended so suddenly and quickly that he didn't even have the chance to tell her and her family that he really loved her very much.
"Fuck," he cursed, holding back the bitterness in his heart, "Are subway ads this fucking heartbreaking these days? Are you going to let people live like this? Fuck."