I am Huaichen, with a single surname, the same as Xie.

My job is that of an ordinary university professor, lecturing on ordinary college physics—less than one-ten-thousandth of physics.

Actually, I'm also a cosmologist.

You must not have imagined that this seemingly poor, unkempt, and even somewhat depressed little teacher would be inextricably linked to the vast universe.

That's what I thought, too.

I was mediocre-looking, and my lectures were rigid and programmed, and boring. In addition to whispering and snoring in my class, no student will like my class.

So what does it matter? I take money in class and leave after class. Besides, I don't like them, and I don't need anyone to like me.

Human survival depends on carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, oils, water and inorganic salts, not anyone's liking.

The so-called love and love are nothing but the product of adrenaline and hormones.

A person's whole life is governed by hormones.

However, it's not that I'm not uninterested in the world. In other words, I'm interested in the whole world, the whole galaxy, and the whole universe.

Naturally, I don't have the romance of a science student, let alone the flowery rhetoric of a liberal arts student. I just think it's beautiful, it's beautiful, it's a feeling that can't be described in words.

But the formula can.

You're going to think I'm inexplicable again.

It doesn't matter, I don't care.

I don't even care about myself, this low-rent house of more than 50 square meters is all my home.

I usually stay in the lab, which is more convenient. Once in a while, when you go home, you need to simply sweep the dust first.

It's not that I don't have money, I use the remuneration for papers and lectures, even if I buy a house of 500 square meters. But I'm more inclined to buy some experimental equipment, such as ...... Large Hadron Collider.

But that's not enough – I don't have enough money and equipment.

Far from enough.

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at the somewhat depressed face.

In the vastness of the Milky Way, there is a tiny blue dust at the edge of the third arm, and above this dust is an even smaller carbon-based particle, contemplating its own existence.

It's funny.

I smiled self-deprecatingly, washed up briefly, and set off for the lab with my briefcase.

I've always lived alone, with only colleagues, no friends, no lovers, not even parents.

At my age, it is the best time to fulfill filial piety.

But I was undoubtedly unlucky, because my parents were so unlucky.

I never met my father, all I knew was that he was a cosmophysicist. This is a fact that I only learned when I was growing up and digging out his honorary certificate from the depths of the cabinet.

Until then, my mother had been hiding from me, saying that he was just an ordinary employee of a state-owned enterprise.

It is said that when they had just learned of my existence and had not yet experienced the joy of parenthood, an experiment caused by a mistake accidentally took my father's young life.

Since then, his mother has kept silent about him.

It's not that she doesn't love it anymore. It is precisely because the love is so deep that everything about him becomes so heavy.

The better the memory, the more burdensome.

For her, her father's death was a huge blow. No amount of compensation can be made up, but it can't smooth out this deep gap in her heart. So much so that in her eyes, the whole of science became her enemy.

When I was in elementary school, my mother was obsessed with a mystical religion. They are very hidden, but they are very influential, and they are specifically targeted at her as a victim of science, and they are preaching a set of unbelievable creationism.

Therefore, when I was a child, I expressed a strong interest in the vastness of the universe, and my mother's face was ugly.

"The Lord is watching you!"

My mother always scared me like that. So, I don't have a lot of affection for this religion. Like the ghosts or the big bad wolf that other children fear, the so-called gods have become something that scares me.

When my mother said that, I knew she was angry. It's just a signal.

She is sometimes stern and sometimes gentle. Her emotions are capricious, uncertain, paranoid, extreme and neurotic. Since I was a child, I have grown up under such a bitter outpouring of love.

Because I've been living in this environment, I don't feel anything wrong. It wasn't until I got to know more lively and cheerful classmates after middle school that I realized that not all families are like this.

At the very least, their families are sound.

I have always lived in a heavy, self-inflicted sympathy. I was often overwhelmed by this superfluous affection—could it be that they thought it would replace my missing fatherly love?

It's common sense to accept it with a smile, but I don't want to.

And the more I show this rejection of help and sympathy, the more pity and sympathy I will attract.

Humans are such creatures that like to be bored with themselves. I hate their complaints, their dissatisfaction.

Desire is a bottomless abyss. People who have not experienced suffering and loss never think about what they have, but always think about what they have.

However, the envy of their family's freedom and openness was real.

I think that until now, my introverted, reticent, escapist personality, and a little bit of social phobia have something to do with my mother's long-standing oppression.

But I know she loves me dearly. In this world, she is the only one in me.

I had to respond, this heavy and bitter love.

In fact, she was young, hardworking, beautiful, kind, and although that naivety was an easily exploited stupidity, all in all, she was one of the most beautiful of all the human beings I had ever seen.

However, misfortune befell this beautiful woman again.

This time her god will take away the last of her beauty.

It was a peculiar illness that accelerated her aging and quickly stripped her of her voice and smile in this short period of time, and with it, a large number of geriatric diseases.

At the same time, the disease is still frantically eating away at our meager savings.

It's like in a fast-forward video, and I see her life passing by in minutes.

Flowers wither, fruits rot, candles go out, dew dies.

Is it such a slow process for the heart to stop beating?

Her body sped up the rate of oxidation.

My mother, who had such a good face, ended her life in unbearable ugliness. Her God, to whom she believed, did not come to her rescue, and the people of the church drained her last money for unfounded reasons.

So she left me with nothing but the picture of her beauty quickly withering.

In this way, I am the unfortunate one.

At that time, I had just graduated from elementary school.

With the help of social welfare and distant relatives, I suffered from other people's faces and grew up with nothing. With an indifferent heart and a deep hatred for incurable diseases, I walked through the doors of medical school.

I think my original intention has changed.

I'm just saving people for the sake of saving people, that's all.

However, I know that money is precious, so I dare not relax at all in exchange for learning opportunities. Coupled with my usual strict and clean style of washing even the test tubes, the god of luck still looked at me a little.

I was chosen by an old professor. He advised me to change my direction when I was admitted to graduate school.

Cosmic Astronomy.

No one interfered with my choice anymore.

I think this was probably my first and only rebellion against my mother.

Under the guidance of famous teachers, my learning efficiency has improved by leaps and bounds, and I am far ahead of other students in the same school.

I am grateful to him, and this gratitude has never diminished until the end of his old age.

That was the second time I had faced death head-on.

I couldn't help but wonder, why do people live?

Since death is predestined, is birth also necessary?

What is the significance of the process in the middle to this vast world and the vast universe?

Only the universe itself is eternal.

After the death of my esteemed mentor, I became even more helpless.

Or, in fact, what bothers me is the aging process.

I soaked myself in the materials and papers he left behind, like a fish soaking its gills in water, trying to filter the barren oxygen.

I am an adult and stay in school to become a teacher. In this way, after a few years, some small papers without a beginning and end have attracted the attention of the academic community.

And it was these inconsequential things that gave me a little bit of money, and a position commensurate with it.

But my pressure continued to grow.

I understand more and more the mentality of many girls who commit suicide today.

They are not afraid of death, they are just as afraid of aging as I am. Rather than this, it is better to freeze your life forever in the most beautiful flowering season.

The school assigned me a student. But he was also unfortunate that there was a major change in his family.

Life is such a short thing, I don't know when disaster will come—just like my short-lived parents.

At that time, I happened to encounter a bottleneck in academic research, coupled with the school's various index tasks and thesis needs, the team I led by inheriting the will of the old professor was stagnant in all aspects.

Eventually, the project was halted and the team was dismissed.

Probably, it's me who is too incompetent.

Every minute after that, I lived in self-blame. The quagmire of self-loathing bound me and made me sink slowly, unable to extricate myself.

It would be too cruel for me to witness the demise of beautiful things, and I can't accept it. And everything around me is passing, and there is nothing I can do.

One weekend, I drove to the pier.

It was a deep night, with no stars and no moon in sight. Only the never-ending sea breeze with a slight fishy smell hovers between the waves and the shore.

I propped my hands on the railing and stared silently at the gently turbulent sea.

The vicissitudes of life, the changes of the sun and the moon.

I think that one day, this sea will evaporate, dry up, or be filled in and piled up into towering mountains under various climatic and geological processes.

I can't imagine it - after all, I didn't have a chance to witness it.

Although I am only a drop in the ocean, I think I still have this sentimental power.

- To be continued -