Why are we, the spirits of all things,

The encounter is not as good as a small tree?

Today you shake it, smile superiorly,

Tomorrow it will turn into dirt under the roots.

Why are these words written by hand,

Is it longer and stronger than this hand?

They will throw the rotten hand away,

And silently survive on a piece of broken paper.

Therefore, I have lived proudly for decades,

As if he had been the director of everything,

In fact, they are in their long-term order

I was only a small actor for a while.

- Mudan

I am a witness, not a participant. I am not the hero of my story. I'm not a lyric poet at all, and even though the events I saw disrupted the course of my life, which had no meaning at the time, and even though they still weigh heavily on me, affecting my behaviour and the way I see things with all their weight, I still think, in telling these things, in the cold, calm tone of an ethnographer: I have been to that devoured world, and here is what I saw there.

—George Perek

"Brother, have you ever heard the saying 'football has nothing to do with life and death, football is higher than life and death'? I think the meaning of the previous sentence is that football is just a sport, and don't think that winning or losing a game is more important than life. In the latter sentence, I think it means that the sport of football can bring more meaning to people than life and death. Some people are gone, but because of his love for football and because of our love for football, everyone will remember him. Through football, we have overcome death and oblivion, and those who have fallen will return to us at some point......"

Mom told me she was going to burn paper money. I realized that today was the winter solstice, so no wonder Miller had also gone home, and I was left alone in the dormitory. I went to the cafeteria early and had free laba porridge to drink, which was much thicker than the white porridge for breakfast on weekdays, and there were a lot of dried goods that should have been filled into moon cakes. I drank two bowls and was full, and it was right not to go to the window to order.

I want to go outside. Although sometimes I wish I could only live in the dormitory, today I don't want to lie in bed and wait for the darkness to fill the small space little by little. After changing into a pair of red sneakers, I pulled the door, put on my hat, picked up my keys, and put my hands in my pockets as I walked towards where the sun was setting.

To the west of the school is an undeveloped lake area, with withered yellow reeds interspersed with occasional greenery that belongs to the weeds that can be found everywhere. There is also garbage, plastic bags hanging on the reeds and flying like flags, and broken cardboard boxes being swallowed up by the soil, revealing only half of their bodies. Lying on the ground waiting for the rotting bottle of mineral water to lie in the fading sun, the walls of the bottle were still full of water droplets. It's going to be around for a long time, the biology teacher said, and some plastics will take decades or even hundreds of years to degrade.

Hundreds of years from now, people may still burn paper on the winter solstice. Will they burn by the lake surrounded by reeds? I don't know. Maybe by then, the lake that I haven't yet reached will cease to exist, just as I will cease to exist in that distant future. Our descendants burned paper for their predecessors, and we, who were our predecessors, have been forgotten by them, only as a few rows of lead letters printed on the family tree, and as carved carved red on the tombstones.

There will come a time.

The lake is at the bottom of the slope, and a mound of earth on the slope is marked with lime powder in several circles, and there are iron buckets in the circles. It must be a designated burning area in the street or community. There were a few elderly people with children who were burning it, and they carefully folded the yellow bubble wraps on top of each other, touched the flames with the tip of the paper, and only after confirming that the contents in their hands were starting to burn did they stuff them into the bucket without hurry. The children who were with them seemed a little flustered, and they might have taken it as a game, throwing gold or silver ingots into the bucket like a ring on the ground. Ingot made of paper is far less heavy than the real thing. Falling into the dry winter winds, they mostly fell to the edge of the barrel. The buckets were spitting tongues of fire, and the children did not dare to approach them, while the elders picked them up as if nothing had happened and threw them where they belonged. A child threw a large stack of banknotes with the words "Heaven and Earth Bank" into the bucket, and then quickly jumped behind his grandparents, as if to avoid the fireworks that were about to burn into the sky. The fire was smothered by too much paper, and the old man didn't say anything, but pulled a few times with a wooden stick, and the burning light rose up again.

It was getting late, and the old man and the children were getting closer. A black bird slid overhead, hissed and fell into the reeds by the lake. The old people had words in their mouths, and in the whimpering wind, the wrinkled faces carved out of the debut were old and reverent, like every grayed old photograph. When they say a word, the child learns a word. In the open land, only these whispers flowed.

I looked at them in the wind. No one paid attention to me until an old man came up to me. She wears a cotton hat that is not so carefully woven, her head is shrunken, her body is rickety, her toothless mouth is open, and she tries to make sounds like a baby. I didn't understand what she was trying to say, but she quickly held up a paper sign in a plastic case. The words written on it were very large, saying that they were deaf and mute, and what was written after that, I didn't look down.

I dug into all my pockets and only touched the keys a few times. I just thought about walking around casually, didn't take anything with me, and ended up only turning over a coin. I grabbed the coin and handed it to her, a pair of calloused hands with frostbite on the backs.

She took the coin in her palm, held it, and pointed to the sign. I looked at it again and said it was two dollars for a pack of napkins.

I don't have another coin left. Without saying anything, I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head helplessly, and turned away. It was getting late so fast, except for the deep red, the blue silence had disappeared overhead.

If there was another dollar, I would give it to her.

Someone was touching my arm with something. I turned my head to see the old man with his waist down to his knees. She handed me a pack of napkins, although I only gave half of the money. Seeing that I didn't mean to take it, she pointed to my forehead with a paper bag. I must have been sweating again, I had just walked a long way, and the cold wind had not dried the sweat yet.

I took it, didn't say thank you, just nodded to her. She may have laughed, and I could see a slight ripple in the wrinkles that occupied her cheeks. While she was still thinking about it, she was already walking forward step by step, and it seemed that with every step she took was likely to fall. I kind of want to help her, but how far will she have to go, and how long will I have to help her?

She walked away alone, towards the place where the sun had set. Is her home there? Is there a loved one waiting for her?

The old man and the child who burned the paper were gone, and the unburned and burned ashes floated in the air. Burning is short-lived, but ashes are long-lasting. The reeds will die, the flames will cool, and only the sun will rise in the east and set in the west, always running. For us, the only thing we know for sure is that we are constantly moving in the direction where the sun is sinking, and finally becoming the name that Ash is looking for in another world.

Feeling a little tired, I walked over to the bucket where the heat was still conducting, and looked at the pack of napkins with the little light that remained. It had a strange scent that none of the brands I've ever used. I pulled out one, and it was so strong that I couldn't imagine how I could rub any part of my body with it.

The sun hasn't quite set yet. Mom must have burned it out and passed on all her thoughts for me and Dad, even though I didn't do anything.

My sister must have burned it for me.

But he didn't receive my gift today. But I have nothing left now, except a messy string of keys.

I wanted to find the paper money that had been dropped or burned in half, but I knew that it was someone else's. From an early age, we were taught not to take other people's things. So, I thought of the napkin in my hand. But who will burn this? And I just thought, I won't use it, give him what I don't want? I did do such things. He didn't see through it, and he was happy for a while, and I was complacent.

I've done this kind of before, and I'm still doing it today. I haven't grown at all. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't think about anything, I didn't prepare for anything, I didn't even remember what day it was, and I gave you such a packet, but I didn't have anything else on me. I'm sorry, I don't want to make excuses, I'm just so confused, I can't remember my days, I don't know what to do. You're angry, you should be angry, and I'll just give you a pack of paper that's half sold and half given. What can it do there? You can't buy a single popsicle. I know that my mother will give you living expenses, my sister will give you pocket money, and I want to give you something. But what do I have?

I'm damned. If you can feel me, be there for me. Scold me, hit me, I don't fight back or fight back, I just want you to beat me and scold me. If I could, I would do anything.

Nothing happened. The wind blew through the reeds and swept through my hair, which I had hidden under my hat. It occurred to me that I should take my hat off. I covered my face with it. The new ashes scattered in the cold, and it seemed as if it was the only one in the world that existed forever.