I arrived at the city at noon, as I had left, and as the plane turned to correct its course, I saw the whole sparkling sea, like a stream of stars that would never dissipate. A few years ago, when we were painting her at her house, we were bumped into by her husband, who was divorcing her, and he pressed me to the bed and threatened to strangle me. Afterwards, she sincerely apologized many times and asked me to dinner a few times, but I refused. More than a year later, she contacted me on social media and asked me to redraw the unfinished painting for her, and at that time, she had divorced her lover and was living a single life. But by that time I was ready to leave the city, and the incident that almost cost me my life, I did not promise her, but gave her the contact information of the colleague who went with me to the small county town to draw mountains.

We kept in touch on social media on and off, and when I left, I didn't know if I would ever return to the city, so I just thought of her as a passer-by who had appeared in my life. After the business trip was decided, she sent a message to my social media app in the past two days, and I naturally told her that I was about to return to that city. She offered to pick me up at the airport, and she made me feel overwhelmed. The first two days I was busy with work trips during the day and tidying up work at night, so I had little time to spare. And she didn't bother me all the time, just messaged me every night to get an early rest. Her hospitality was completely different from the usual intermittent and superficial greetings, like an unknown storm hidden under the calm surface of a lake, but it was difficult for me to detect. It took me three days to finish the work that I had planned to do in five days, and with the two that I had originally set aside for myself, I had four days to myself in the city. And she knew like a prophet that my work was done, and when she picked me up at the airport, she knew when I would return, so she asked me what I was going to do for the rest of the day. I told her there were some personal matters that needed to be taken care of.

"It's nothing more than a wandering. She replied, "Feel the city again." ”

She wanted me to repaint the unfinished portrait of her from a few years ago. She felt that she had done half of the thing, plus the impact on me in the end, so she occasionally chatted with me on social media, hoping to soothe her feeling that she had been stuck in her throat in this matter for the past few years. On several occasions, she wanted to come to my city to see me in the hope of finishing the painting, but she never said anything because of her apologies for me.

It was hard for me to decide on her request, and I thought back to the last time I painted, Haishi was painting a portrait of the girl who met on the bus, and the portrait ended up being trampled on the ground beyond recognition. For the first time, I felt that I hadn't painted for so long, and since I learned to paint, I hadn't touched a brush for a longer time than that, but I didn't feel as much as I did this time. I seem to be reminded of the most important experience in my life - it turns out that I used to paint for a living, and I have made up my mind more than once that I will not let myself get lost in the circle of painting, but I have to pick up the brush again because of the problem of vitality, and every time I pick it up again, I have a deeper disgust for painting, and I also deepen my determination not to paint again next time. And the city I'm in, and it's in this city that I started my life after I was a student. Just as I am grateful for the two piers at the gates of the city I am in, I am grateful for the city.

I don't know if I should say yes or not. I walked down the street that afternoon to the bottom of the building where Zi Ye had lived, and the appearance was the same as it had been a few years ago, unchanged in the slightest. After that, I took a taxi to the yard where I used to live, which was being demolished, and the half-demolished project was in a messy place, deserted. The path I had to go to work and get home was covered with grass and allowed only one person to pass, and the smell of the sea breeze and the sea still wafted in the distance. I couldn't find the location of the building I used to live in, but I could find the approximate location by the path, several buildings had been dug up in half, and the rooms of the people who had lived in them were exposed, like a bombed city in a war movie. I stepped on the broken wall and searched hard, and finally, in the middle of several piles of rubble, I saw the floor tiles that put together the kapok balls, after the kapok tree was frozen to death by the century blizzard, the landlord put together a kapok pattern on the ground tiles in the original position, I remember it clearly. I looked back at the ruined floors around me and saw a half-dug room, with the three paintings I had painted on the remaining wall. I was sure that it was the room I had lived in, half of which had been dug up, and there was nothing left of furniture except for the three paintings. The house next door where I used to swap with Qiu Pei has been dug up, and I remember what Qiu Pei told me when he got out of the car when he left: "You are sad even when you are happy, you will never be able to play the piano well." "Along with the stories that I once had in there, together with the desolate scenes, they became ethereal.

I sat on a pile of rubble from afternoon till sunset, with the occasional intermittent whistle from the sea to the east, where I had been for a month, and had been inspired by the captain of the ship, who had also come from painting. Taking advantage of the fact that it was not completely dark, I climbed the crippled wall and easily climbed to the half-room. In the dim light of the evening, I looked at the three paintings carefully, the pictures were covered with dust, some tattered, and no longer had their original style, and in the whole ruined environment, exuding a garbage temperament that would sooner or later be shattered to the point that there was no shadow left. I created it, and now I saw it before it was about to be destroyed, and I feel sorry for it and for myself. Once, in another room across the wall from this room, I shamefully let Qiu Pei smell "the breath I exhaled was full of the smell of another woman", and for a long time I blamed myself for this, blaming others for my misfortune. I took the three paintings down and leaned them against the wall, sitting against the wall myself, my eyes looking through the pairs of rubble, watching the distance gradually obscured by darkness.

I slept all night in a room with only half of the room, and the next morning I took the three paintings I had taken down to the place where I had first seen the sea. Listening to the sound of the waves, I sat for most of the day, and the iron boat was still tied there, as if it had never woken up. I think more of Qiu Pei, her pale face frightened by snakes, the care with which she taught me piano lessons, the way her hands fluttered on the keys, the dream-like coast-like stage in the hotel banquet hall, the words "Mr. Lou, please respect yourself" that seemed to come from the other side of the sea, and her hair, which tasted the same as Hai Linlin. She was accompanied by the nooks and crannies of the city I had been to and the various things I had experienced, all of which were indelible, and I felt that I could not forget them, nor should I forget them, and they should always be with me for the rest of my life. I make a living drawing in this city, and it seems that only painting can stir up all my memories of the city, and I feel that I need them urgently.