And Yingxiu only went back once after coming to the city, at the end of the second year he came to the city, and his grandfather died in his hometown. Like me, he spent more than 40 hours in a hard seat back to the city where my school was located, the provincial capital of our hometown, and then a four-hour bus ride that he had planned to stay home for a week. When he left, it snowed heavily, and all the roads were covered with heavy snow, so he had to stay at home for half a month, and when the Spring Festival was approaching, he returned to the city against the flow of people returning to his hometown. He was deducted from two months' salary and almost fired.

He made a lot of friends in the city, and his familiarity with the city made most locals feel ashamed, and the only person he met who knew the city better than he was a homeless man with only one arm. On his way to work that day, the homeless man who had lost his left arm stopped him and begged him, and he took out a coin from his pocket and threw it into the iron box held by the beggar in his right hand, making a bell. As he was about to leave, the beggar stopped him and told him that if he asked him about any building in the city, he would tell him exactly where it was. Yingxiu has always been conceited of his natural talent in landmarks and directions, and asked more than 30 relatively unpopular places in a row, and the beggar answered fluently, without the slightest mistake. This surprised Yingxiu: "Before that, I thought that there was no one in the world who was better than me in this area. He said to me as he recalled the incident. He gave all the change to the beggar, and in later days he tried to find the beggar again. But it had been more than a year since I saw the beggar again - and it was his corpse that I saw. It was also my second summer in the city.

A hurricane called Linlin swept through the city. Three days before the hurricane, all residents of the city were notified. When the hurricane came, there was not a single person on the streets of the city, and everything that could be moved was brought into the house, except for the car. Factories were closed, schools were closed, and anything that required going out was banned. I had already found a relatively stable job at that time, working in a company in charge of hand painting, and the day before the hurricane, Yingxiu and I both had a holiday, and by that time I had already moved out of Yingxiu and rented my own house outside. Yingxiu asked me to go to his place and wait for the hurricane to come.

"Come to me, buddy. Yingxiu said on the phone: "You have never seen a hurricane, you will be scared to death in the house alone." ”

Yingxiu prepared water and food for a week, sealed the windows with wooden boards, and covered the room tightly, as if he was afraid that a ghost would come in through even the smallest cracks. In the afternoon the wind started to get stronger, and at first I didn't care, it was quite strong, stronger than all the winds I had ever seen in the north, but I thought it was nothing more than that. In less than two hours, the wind was several times stronger, making it seem like there was nothing in the world except the wind. I was indeed frightened, the hurricane seemed to blow everything except the car and the house, Yingxiu nailed the window to a book-sized window, through which I could see the apocalyptic scene outside, I was afraid that the hurricane would take this house with us into the sea that we could never discern the direction of.

Yingxiu had already experienced such a thing and seemed careless: "There's nothing to worry about, it's like this for the first time." He prepared the candles, and sure enough, at night, the power system was interrupted, and Yingxiu lit the candles to bring the light back to the world. The hurricane lasted three days and three nights, and Yingxiu and I, like everyone else in the city, stayed in our rooms, and gradually molded in the humid environment amid the howling of the hurricane.

Needless to say, that hurricane called "Linlin" reminded me of Hai Linlin. It's been a full year since I last saw her, and when I was in that time, I always felt that time had passed incomparably long, but when I thought of Hai Linlin from this hurricane called "Linlin", and when I looked back on the past year, I felt that time had passed like a white horse, and everything seemed to have changed overnight. I often think of Helen, and with that familiar sense of loss and frustration, it always brings me back to the night when I sat on a campus bench waiting for her, and that morning when the sun was late. I often tell myself not to think about that experience, but when I do, I can't help but think about it more.

Time is always a panacea that heals all the self-inflicted injuries of humanity, and so do I. The longer I spend in my new city, the less I think about Helenlin. Once, I didn't think of Hai Linlin once for nearly ten hours from lunch to before going to bed at night, and I felt both excited and sad when I found out about it—it turns out that no matter how unbreakable the memory of human beings is, there are flaws, and no matter how unbearable things in the heart can actually find a fulcrum. But the hurricane called "Linlin" made all the fading feelings clear again, and it was true that the hurricane only blew for three days and three nights, but I knew its name from the news a week before it arrived, and it was not until more than a month after it was evacuated from the city, as the city returned to normal after the devastation of the hurricane, I felt that everything was being lost.

When I learned that a hurricane called Linlin was coming, I felt like I was destined for it. During the three days when "Linlin" was raging in the city, Yingxiu and I hid in his old house, listening to the sound of it crackling and banging on the window, it enveloped the whole room and my world, and I felt that every moment because of Hurricane "Linlin" I thought of the Linlin I met at the art exhibition. Especially when "Linlin" blows a wooden board, a discarded lunch box, a pair of slippers, or the handle of a harpoon against the window, the feeling is even more pronounced, and I feel that what is being scraped is not hitting the wooden board nailed outside the window, but my already moldy heart.

Yingxiu and I searched for everything we could do to kill our boredom in the apocalyptic wind, and we reminisced about the past of our high school life together, and we mentioned things to each other, some of which he remembered, some of which he didn't, some of which he remembered, and some of which we remembered. When the memories of the past dry up, we play chess, and sometimes we can think about it for half an hour. We play chess in different ways, for example, one side only uses Shi Xiangquan and five pawns, but can take two moves at a time, and one side has all the strength, but can only take one move at a time. All of this was not for the sake of winning chess or studying higher resourcefulness, all the things that were done in the house for the past few days were for one thing - to pass the time of boredom. Of course, I think more in my heart, I need to hide myself, and when I really can't control the secret hidden in my heart, I will pretend to say: "'Linlin', 'Linlin', are you going to destroy this city or destroy me." "Yingxiu didn't know the story I was hiding, he thought I was just saying a wordy poem to sensationalize.

The hurricane brought heavy rain that could even flood the sea, we were trapped in our houses longer, and we consumed food and water significantly faster than expected, with five days of food and water consumed in just three days. Under Yingxiu's plan, we had to cut back on the amount of food we ate, hoping that the remaining food and water would allow us to survive the heavy rain that blocked the whole world. We searched for everything we could kill time, and we spent almost all of our time in sleep during the days when the rain was pouring. Before that, I had only once in my life that I had slept this long time – when I saw Helen back on a campus bench. There was no electricity in the house, we didn't bother to light candles, and the house was pitch black at night and dark during the day, and I could even smell myself slowly rotting. We only eat one meal a day, and even so, we don't feel much hungry because of the long sleep.

Finally, on the morning of the third day of heavy rain, the wooden planks that Yingxiu had nailed to the windows were hung up by the wind that accompanied the heavy rain, and a beam of white light illuminated the room, and it was the first time in a week that I had seen such a bright light. Outside the window, the rain and fog were hazy, the visibility was less than a finger, and the water on the window glass poured down, washing away the insects that had been hiding between the glass and the wooden planks.

Hurricanes and heavy rains imprisoned the city for eight days, rivers of water in the streets, water in some places buried cars, several cars were blown to the roofs, trees blown down by the hurricane lay down the streets, frogs jumped up and down the steps, drowned pet carcasses and garbage washed up in the water, water overflowed from the sewers, sticky food waste mixed with human waste covered the entire crosswalk, the city was filled with the peculiar desertion after the rain, mixed with the stench coming out of the ground. Yingxiu's room is filled with three toads with horrible bumps on their backs, and Yingxiu bags them all in the same way he did when he first entered the house - burn them to death. I think Yingxiu is too cruel.

"It has to be. Yingxiu said: "The amphibians that crawl into the house after the heavy rain have to be burned to death. ”

As we went out to collect water and food from the government, the damage caused by the hurricane and heavy rains was gradually recovering, and the government was organizing people to clean the streets and clean up the city's garbage. Hurricanes and torrential rains left 14 dead, 56 injured and nine missing, and the nine missing people were still not heard from when I left the city a few years later. Among the people who died, there was the beggar that Yingxiu knew. The first to discover the beggar's corpse was Yingxiu. We went down the filthy street to get food and fresh water, and in a very hidden corner, the beggar died, covered with a tattered coat that covered half of his head, and I don't know whether he was frozen to death or starved to death. Yingxiu recognized the beggar by only half of his leaking face, and he stared at the corpse for a long time, and then went with me to the place where food and fresh water were distributed by the government without saying a word. He told the staff where the beggar had died, and the body was quickly disposed of.

"He's dead. Yingxiu said, "I was going to try it again." ”

It took a week after the hurricane and torrential rain for the city to return to its original order, and in the square in front of the city library, people held a mourning ceremony for those who died in the hurricane and torrential rain. On that day, Yingxiu and I also went.

"After the hurricane, everything has to be restored. Yingxiu said.