Half past twelve. I sat in a small restaurant and ate duck blood vermicelli soup. The off-white foie gras is wrapped in a faint bitter taste, and when I was a child, I didn't like this part the most, and I ate it first every time, so that the soup was all that I liked. But today, this rich bitterness brings me a different taste, maybe the sun is too cold, and I don't like to eat duck liver makes me feel satisfied.

The phone rang. Huang Minxue called, but it was Mr. Huang on the other end of the phone. He asked me where I was and if I had eaten. I said I was eating outside the hospital. He told me that everyone is fine, go back with peace of mind, and if there is anything to do, you can go directly to him or learn. I said no problem, thank you, teacher. Teacher Huang didn't say anything more, only one sentence left, hard work.

"Is that you?" The girl's voice sounded across from me, followed by the sound of the bottom of the bowl falling firmly on the table. I looked up and saw that it was Mei Mei.

"It's me. What a coincidence. "I put down my chopsticks.

"What's wrong with your hand? Got injured in yesterday's game? ”

"I was dragged and dislocated. I guess I won't be able to play again this semester. ”

She turned and went to the front desk. After a while, I came back with a small plate of duck liver and intestines, and a small pot of rice that was poured into my soup.

"Thank you. What drink would you like to drink? I invite you. I said.

"No." She waved her hand. So, we started to hula and eat hot vermicelli soup again.

"What's written on your hat? It doesn't seem to be English. She asked, looking down.

"Yes...... Well, Viva la vida, which means 'long live life', is the name of a Mexican painter's work, in Spanish. "I think I read it right, I learned what taught me.

"It's a good match for you. Whether it's this hat or this sentence. She said, taking a bite of the dark red duck blood.

After eating for a while, she asked me if I was used to eating with one hand. I said it was fine. When we were done, we walked out into the street. I guess it's time to say goodbye. Before I could speak, she asked me where I was going, and I said to take the bus back to school. She said, I'll take you to the station.

The sycamore leaves are falling. Some have dried up and withered, and some are still half green and half yellow. Falling into the street, we stepped on it by chance, making a crunching sound. This is the last thing they have left in the world. I heard it and walked over to think about my dangling left hand. It didn't make a sound at all, it seemed to be asleep. When she arrived at the station, she had no intention of leaving. So sitting on the benches waiting for the bus, we watched as a car sped away with dead leaves.

"What are you thinking?" Mei Mei asked me.

"I'm wondering if I'm running away again." As I spoke, I saw the sycamore leaves that had been picked up by the vehicle slowly drifting into the murky water on the side of the road.

"Why?"

"Someone apologized to me today with a ...... Very special way. I could see her efforts, and it was genuine. But the person who really needed to apologize is gone. I can't accept an apology for him, I can't forgive him. So, I left in a hurry. I felt like I had run away again. I looked at her on the other side of the chair. When she heard this, she let out a shallow sigh, it was not winter yet, and there was no white fog.

"So, does this matter have anything to do with you?"

"Related. Suffice it to say, I should go with that person to apologize instead of accepting her apology. My sins are no lesser than hers. ”

"Huh? How so? Be specific. ”

"It's like, I'm the one who piles the firewood, and she's the one who lights the fire."

"Where did the fire burn?"

"My house, her house, burned down."

"But no one wants to burn down their house." She moved closer to me and looked me in the eye. I turned my gaze to the ground, looking at the leaves that had been trampled on. It was torn to pieces, and its barely preserved body was covered in filthy dirt.

"You don't have to comfort me. Isn't manslaughter homicide homicide? Legally, there may be a severity or a severity, but what about conscience? Oh, 'I didn't mean to,' but the man is gone. What if it's not intentional? There is no difference. ”

"You mean your brother."

Nod. It's no surprise to be seen through. I'm making it clear.

"Did you find the person who lost the bottle?"

"Not really. I bumped into it, quite a coincidence. I met it yesterday out of nowhere. ”

"I knew you didn't look for it." She shook her index finger at me.

"Why?"

"You're not a person who does what you say you will do, you don't have that kind of action. Even if you do, you'll be overwhelmed, am I right? ”

"You're right." I have to admit it. She didn't say anything more, and I held my chin in my hand and continued to look at the cars that stopped and hurried by. The car I was waiting for had not yet arrived, and no one knew which intersection it had reached.

"Not happy?" Seeing me staring blankly at the road, she poked my right shoulder with her finger. I shook my head, there are so many things that I don't feel happy about, and it doesn't make me sad if you tell the truth.

"After knowing that Xianxian was hit by a falling object, I did want to go and find the murderer. But I've been procrastinating...... I thought, it's not just that I'm not capable enough to know how to do it. If you want to do it, there will always be a way. I just want to procrastinate, for no other reason. Maybe it's because I know subconsciously that I've just found that person, so what can I do? Go and kill him? No way. I don't have the guts, and ...... I don't want to be a bad guy. I've done a lot of wrong things, and I can't go back wrong. So what else can be done? Let him go to jail, repent, make reparations? Everyone else has done it, but what about me? Maybe I'm afraid, afraid that if I find this person, I will have the opportunity to put all the responsibility on him, so that I can be debt-free and light. But I also have the blood of strings on my hands, and I can't forget it. When I met that person in the past two days, I realized more clearly that I was no different from her. We all have sin, sins that cannot be redeemed. The strings can't come back, no forgiveness anyway, no remedy. ”

"I interjected, has the murderer been sentenced? Got punished? ”

"She was sentenced to three years, albeit with a suspended sentence. Things in her family were a mess, her husband and daughter died early, and the conditions were not very good, and she drank and played cards every day, and finally caused this incident. When she came out, her hair was all gray, and she was left with only a son, who was the same age as us. ”

"So, I ask you, do you feel you need to be punished? Even if it's an unintentional mistake. ”

He nodded without hesitation.

"At first, I thought about asking my parents to beat me up. But they didn't beat me again after the strings were gone. Everyone around me was very kind to me, even a little too much. The better they treated me, the more I felt unworthy of this kind of preferential treatment. I feel like I'm going to be sentenced too, I don't know how long it will take, and even if the heaviest punishment is given to me, I have nothing to say. But nothing, not a word of scolding. In fact, she is the same, and we have not received the punishment we deserve. Now that I think about it, maybe the absence of punishment is the punishment we will receive, and we are destined to carry our sins to the end of our lives. In fact...... Many times I imagined, imagined myself talking to a chord, hoping that he would answer me. But you also know that it's not possible. I couldn't hear anything. I also thought about when I died, and when I saw him, I knelt in front of him and begged him to forgive me, just like that aunt knelt in front of me today. ”

"So, did you think about what else you could do other than accept the punishment?"

"I don't know, I don't know."

"I guess you don't know what your brother really wants. As a result, you lack a purpose and don't know how to live without your brother. In other words, before you lost your brother, you didn't think about how people should live, and you didn't think about what the meaning of life was. Is that so? It's normal, we were all kids then, even now. However, when you go to play football and go to the literature club, is it because you feel that your brother likes football and literature more? Do you want to try to be what he is? ”

"I don't know. To be honest, I couldn't figure out why I was coming back to play, so I just went away. Before I started junior high school, I hadn't touched a ball for two years. The game is not watched either. ”

"Do you like football yourself? Do you like literature? ”

I bit my lip and thought about it and told her that I don't hate it.

Not bad. I just don't like to play. I've been kicked, you can't guess. When I was very young, I wore short-sleeved shorts with the same hair as a boy, and in December, the cold wind blew through. Dad wanted to raise me as a boy. I barely bothered myself in the wind and followed him, practicing passing and receiving. Do not use the toes, use the inside instep. That's what he taught me. I'm sorry for how I talked about myself. You have to know that whether you play football or study, it is your own choice, not someone who imposed it on you. You don't like it, but at least you don't hate it. And your choice happens to be in line with your brother, which is a very happy thing. She said.

However, I couldn't be sure if my brother wanted me to do so. The living cannot truly imagine the world of the dead. I can't take my own will as my brother's. And even if I realized myself in football and literature, it was only self-realization. If I take this as salvation, "fulfilling my brother's wish," then I am a selfish and disgusting person, blindly moving myself. No one has the right to "inherit" his dreams, and I have said this to my group of friends. Xianxian is gone, and there is no way for anyone to fulfill his wish (not to mention that this wish is only our self-righteous imagination), because there is no one to replace him. He is a human being, a unique human being. There is no other string in the world. I say. All his desires belong to him alone.

What are your wishes? What is the meaning of your life? How are you supposed to live? She said, handing me a piece of gum. Don't rush, you can think about it and take it easy. But think clearly, I'm asking about the meaning of your life, the meaning that belongs to you alone, not anyone else.

Repeated chewing. Sugar juice and saliva splash in the mouth. It occurred to me that when I chewed up its sweetness, covered it with my saliva, kneaded into candy wrappers, or spit on the street, it would take root where it fell, sticking to everything that came near it, and blending itself with them. Perhaps life is a chewy, sticky, spitted gum in a corner, uncontrollably sticking everything around it to itself, whether it's dust or impurities.

"I've talked to a lot of people about life in the past two days. First, I talked to a seriously ill friend about whether people have the right to end their lives. Later, he talked to another person, and he was willing to use his life to make up for the mistakes of his relatives, and he would not hesitate to destroy himself. I agree that one cannot give up one's life, for whatever purpose, whether it is selfish or selfless. But I can't come up with many convincing reasons for it, so I can only find ways to impress people. Maybe you'll hear my thoughts and think they're too naïve to mention. ”

"Nope. But I want to ask you a question. I remember you memorized a poem, Wen Tianxiang's "Song of Righteousness". 'Heaven and earth have righteousness, and they are mixed with manifolds. Do you think Wen Tianxiang gave up his life? ”

"I ...... That was not what I meant. I, I mean, man, he can't ......" I stammered suddenly, and as my jaw habitually pounded against my roof as I became emotional or nervous, I heard the trembling of my teeth.

She told me not to worry, speak slowly, and she will listen carefully. I steadied my chin with my hand.

Wen Tianxiang did not throw away his life in vain, but took it to the extreme. Life is only once, it is finite, but some great deeds can change it from finite to infinite. The hero's death is decisive and rational, he knows clearly and clearly where he is going, and he still does not stop and does not hesitate. One must recognize that life is precious—not just one's own life, but the life of others—before one is qualified to make a sacrificial choice. It is precisely because of this that the sacrifice is tragic. I've heard from friends that *** also encourages young people to die for the country and honor, but that's false. Many children who are a little older than us, even as old as us, have been bewitched by this kind of bewitchment, fanatical and ignorant, and they will casually throw their lives into the flames, and in the end there will be nothing left. This kind of death is not tragic, it has no value, it can only be said to be tragic. It's not a war year anymore, but there are still people who die tragically and there are people who die patheticly. But what about my brother? What about his death? Before we could find meaning in life, it slipped away. This death is nothing but sad. What about myself? It's pathetic, and it can only be sad. ”

"So, you haven't found the meaning of your life yet, have you?"

"No lying, indeed. But I feel like it makes sense. I talked to another friend about this this morning. He also couldn't tell what it meant to be alive, but he could play the guitar and sing, and he could release a kind of life energy. As he played, he and I could feel at the same time that life was not empty and empty, it was not just the dryness and boredom that I found in the darkness and absurdity, it also had that vigorous fullness and expansion, which was incomparably wonderful. However, my friend is a man who does what he says. Even if he sometimes retreats and hesitates, he can always force himself to rise to the occasion. There is a difference between me and Him, just as there is always a difference between the sick and the healthy, between the dead and the living. He was clean, he didn't do anything wrong, so he had that emotion and strength that he was sure of and that death couldn't stop. What do I have? The blood on the hands, it can't be washed off. How dare I talk about the meaning of life? Life has meaning, and I ruined Xianxian's life and meaning, and I ruined myself. ”

"I'll just ask you a question." She removed her hand and looked at me coldly, colder than the sun today. I nodded subconsciously.

"Are you alive or dead?"

I didn't dare look her eyes, something was stabbing me in the calmness and peace.

"I ...... I'm definitely alive. But my life may have been hopeless for a long time, it was no different from death. ”

She jerked to her feet and walked over to me, and a not-so-tall shadow suddenly enveloped me.

Syllable.

A slap on my cheek. The strength was not small, and my face was turned around. Instinctively, I lowered my head and covered my hot face with my right hand. I wasn't angry at the attack, I just lowered my head next to the dangling arm. I don't remember how many times, but my sister warned me that if I said anything more, she would slap me. She hadn't fanned her once, and it made me look forward to it more or less. Today that wish came true, even though it was another girl who slapped me.

"I fought for your brother."

"Yes."

"Are you embarrassed? You seem to know exactly what you're talking about, right? ”

Another slap came, on the other side, left and right with the bow. Now it's hot on both sides, symmetrical.

"I'm trying to beat you up this time."

I didn't dare reply. She sat down next to me.

The first time I saw her cry, her body trembling slightly.

"I'm angry. I can't stand this kind of unreasonable muddy. To be honest, you are a nice person, educated, very peaceful, trustworthy, and have your own ideas. More importantly, you know how to understand and care for others. Otherwise, I wouldn't want to deal with you at all, let alone beat you. I am so disappointed by your words, I believe that every friend of yours will want to beat you up when they hear you say such things, you are wasting and wasting your most precious time, people can't treat their lives like this. Your experience makes me sympathetic, and my reflection on myself is valuable, but it's not the reason why you say that, it's not ......"

"But, I, I don't want you to sympathize." I covered my eyes with my last remaining right hand, not wanting to shed any more tears in front of others, "I don't need anyone's sympathy." I was so cared for. Who do you think I am? Complaining every day, begging for a little love from others, begging for a 'It's not your fault'? That's not what I think. I don't want to talk about myself at all, and I don't want to bother anyone. It's just that sometimes, I really can't hold back...... But that's often talking about something else, and I've never taken the initiative to talk about my experience to anyone other than you. I don't want to be comforted. Everything is self-inflicted, and I just take it. ”

"It's still what it looks like. When you say that, I think the two of us are still a little bit alike. I never tell anyone about my experience, although I mentioned it earlier. Yes, sometimes I can't help but want to say it. Maybe you are too. Would you like to hear my story? ”

Wiped his eyes and nodded.