(a)

I was standing on the platform at King's Cross station on the London Underground, waiting for the Underground to arrive.

I flew to England to attend a funeral in Kaohsiung.

As Kaohsiung expected, his sudden death interrupted the investigation clues of many problems, making these things only unsolved.

After a series of fruitless investigations and inquiries, the matter gradually settled down under the mediation of some big people behind the scenes, and evolved into a simple commercial debt problem.

Kaohsiung's business empire collapsed under the multiple blows of stock prices falling to the bottom, loans expirating, customers canceling orders, investors withdrawing their capital, and key members being arrested or going out to avoid trouble, and finally embarked on the road of filing for bankruptcy liquidation.

But at the same time, his family and friends have been able to get out of the lawsuit and be able to take care of his affairs without interruption.

After his body was cremated locally, he was brought back to England by Sue and buried in a small cemetery near our common holiday home.

Kaohsiung was baptized as a Christian. This was a religious choice he made in order to marry Sue.

Sue had been eager to bury him in the cemetery of a nearby church, but the church politely refused because he had committed suicide and violated religious teachings.

Su insisted that he did not want to send him back to Chinese mainland and be buried with his parents and ancestors.

Judging from Kaohsiung's transfer of half of the property rights to my holiday house, Kaohsiung himself does not want to go back to rest in the cemetery of his ancestors.

After Su prepared various things in the early stage, he widely sent out a notice of the funeral to relatives and friends.

(b)

Standing on this platform, I had a feeling of something unusually special.

The last time I was here was in 2005.

That year, a terrorist attack occurred in this London subway station that shocked the world: the London Underground serial bombings.

Four al-Qaeda-instructed terrorists attacked a number of London underground stations and some public places, causing a series of explosions during rush hour, killing and injuring the world.

As I have written before: on the eve of any sudden death, the moment of farewell is always uneventful.

At the time of the terrorist attack, I was on holiday with a few colleagues in the UK, and we were on the motorway from Oxford to London.

Suddenly, all the electronic displays on the highway showed a message like this: "All exits to London have been closed, ask the driver to turn on the radio and listen to the latest news." ”

Then, we heard on the radio the news of a series of terrorist bombings in the city of London.

My first instinct was to turn on my phone.

I'm trying to make a phone call to a colleague who is in London to see if they're safe, and I'd like to make a call to a friend I know in London to see if they're alive. But no matter how many times I switched networks, none of them could get through.

Later, I learned from the newspaper that all mobile networks, including Vodafone, had been disconnected that day.

Because telephones from all over the world poured into London like a tsunami, its vast and well-developed communications network was completely paralyzed by the crash of that wave.

When the end of the world comes, people are doomed to be separated and cannot find their loved ones.

(c)

I arrived in London at 7pm that day, and I saw a lot of police officers walking around in the lobby and hallway of my check-in hotel. The explosion site at King's Cross MRT station was only 500 metres from where I lived. This is the first place where an explosion occurred.

In the lobby, I saw that the floor-to-ceiling window glass on one wall had shattered, and the protective rope was pulled, and several workers were rushing to work there, nervously changing the glass.

After taking the elevator upstairs, I found that opposite the suite where I lived, I didn't know what important person lived. A tall black bodyguard in a gray suit stood guard in front of his door all night.

Every time I went in and out, the black bodyguard stared at me with high vigilance. Just as I stared at him with the same guarded eyes.

As soon as I checked into my hotel room and settled in, I was inundated with reconnected calls.

Friends from all over the world called. Because many of them know that I arrived in London today, and that I would normally arrive at 10am, which is about the time of the explosion, and they know that the hotel I booked is near the tube station.

I watched TV in my room all night, and all the shows were buoyed by the latest developments in the Big Bang.

Many people are telling how their loved ones say goodbye to their families in the morning and go to work, only to be never returned, to flying pieces or to be heard from again.

I also answered and made calls overnight.

Lust scatters people, but death brings people closer.

(iv)

The next day, Miss L, a local Chinese tour guide who had made an appointment to meet us and take us to Windsor Castle, the Queen's summer palace, did not come.

I waited for her in the lobby for 2 hours and we agreed to drive to Windsor together today. The hired car had already arrived, and the driver was already waiting impatiently.

It was almost 11 o'clock when she hurried in in a trench coat.

She told me that she had to change routes several times due to public transport and traffic control in the city, and that she had to run the last part of the way.

She gasped for breath as she told me about the day at home from yesterday.

Yesterday morning, she was having breakfast with her son and was about to leave for the day as a guide, when all of a sudden, she saw the window glass of her house tumbling like a wave, and at the same time heard a loud bang!

For a second or two, they couldn't hear anything.

After a blank mind in horror, her 12-year-old son suddenly said, "The aliens are coming, and they are attacking us." ”

This sentence immediately smashed L's nerves. She scolded her son: "Don't talk nonsense! ”

Then, she asked her son to close the door and stay at home honestly, and ran out into the street.

She saw the chaotic crowd running around, but strangely enough, there were also a large number of calm people walking in the chaotic crowd.

Some are running wildly, calling, looking for a phone, talking to strangers, some have blood on their faces and hands, but there are also many who continue on their path and say their words as if nothing had happened.

For a moment, L didn't know what was going on in this world.

She suddenly couldn't understand the world. She stood blankly on the streets of London after the explosion.

After 30 minutes, she got a general idea of the situation: a terrorist attack! Someone has attacked peaceful London, attacked peaceful Londoners!

The sound of explosions was still faintly heard all over the city, and the terrorist attack was clearly still going on and not over!

When the word "terrorist attack" came to her mind, the first thought that came to her mind was: son! My son! He's alone now!

So, she turned around and ran towards the house.

When she opened the door, she was stunned!

Because there is no trace of my son!

He wasn't at the table where he had just been sitting. He's not upstairs either, he's not in any room in the house, he's not in the yard of the house! He's nowhere to go! He's gone!

L felt like he was going crazy. She went crazy and began to look for her son.

She ran blindly around her home, unconsciously bursting into tears.

Just as she was about to scream and decide to call the police, she bumped into someone.

Then she heard her son's voice say, "Mom, you look like you've been kidnapped by aliens." ”

L hugged his son and couldn't say anything. She hugged her son in the street and cried silently.

The son felt shy and a little dumbfounded under her embrace.

L said, "Little Ancestor! Where did you just go? I can't find you anywhere! ”

The son said, "I'm going out to look for you." ”

The son said: "Just now a neighbour was saying that foreigners had invaded London. I remembered that you went out, and I thought that war had broken out. So I went out to find you. I went out into the street, only to find that everyone was going back to work. ”

"There are no aliens, no foreigners," he said. So I think you're going to work too. ”

(5)

That day, L sat on the couch in the hotel lobby and told me what she had experienced.

Then we drove together to Windsor as if nothing had happened.

At noon, when we were eating at Windsor, there weren't too many people talking about London. Life is as calm as usual. The streets are still full of people, and the middle-class residential areas are still green and quiet.

L said, "Do you understand now?" This is the British. ”

(f)

Later, I heard that two employees in L's company had lost their loved ones.

One of the sons lost his mother.

Before the big explosion, he and his mother said goodbye as usual and went to work.

His mother also told him to remember to unplug the charging vacuum cleaner if he came back first, so that the charger would not get hot.

He didn't look back and said, "Yes, Mom." ”

This conversation about the charger is the last conversation in their lives.

The son later said, "If I could have known that this was the last time I would have spoken to my mother, I would not have said that to her." ”

"I've never told her how much I love her," he said. ”

"We've lived together for so many years, and I've never had time to tell her what a good mom she is, and we all love her so much," he said. ”

Another wife lost her husband.

They had just quarreled the night before over the family's expenses, with the wife insisting on selling a holiday cottage that it would not last a few times a year, and the husband advocating that it would not be possible to buy the same cottage for the same price in a few years. They argued about it for two hours, and then they each went on to watch a TV. Then go to sleep with your back to each other. Then they got up silently and had breakfast together, and then went out to work separately.

They didn't even say goodbye. They were in a quarrel before they said goodbye.

When the husband's death was finally confirmed, the wife's face turned pale.

Then, the only thing she could say was, "I didn't say goodbye to him, I didn't say goodbye to him when I came out in the morning." ”

She kept repeating it, and she said it many times.