NOVEL WEB Dear Zhishu:
Are you doing okay on your own out there? Do take care of yourself, I’ve been missing you a lot.
I’m doing fine; by the way, I’ve been cooperative with the medical treatments. Jingwen told me that you probably wouldn’t want to see me living as a walking dead when you come back.
It’s just I really miss you in most of the days so hard that every breath hurts my heart and lung. However, you don’t come home; I can only live through the days… Which is okay, though, if you decide not to come back. You used to wait for me all the time; now it’s my turn.
Zhishu, I don’t know why but I haven’t dreamed of you for quite some time. The more I miss you during the daytimes, the emptier my dreams are during the nighttimes. Is it because… you don’t want to see me anymore? I’ve been looking back at the past lately and to be frank… I find me cruel. Everything was so unfair to you. I regret all the time, I hate myself for not treating you better before, I blame myself for not actually indulging you for once. And now I’m sorry.
Yet you are just gone without looking back once. You don’t give me one chance to amend.
Do you remember you said you love dogs the most? I didn’t allow you to keep one because I thought dogs were dirty. Now our Akita is half a year old. He’s nice to the one he is familiar with but he’s still unfriendly to strangers. No matter how busy I am, I always spend time taking care of him every day. You love animals so much. When will you come back to free me from the chores? Assistant Song is about to lose it. That puppy has ruined so many plants and important files in his office during the days.
I went to find Ziyu Ai after the new year. I begged so hard to keep your coat. How could I leave the coat to him? I remember I bought you that coat seven years ago. I took you to see the snow, when it was so cold and that coat was ridiculously large. You just cast it on you and snuggled up to my chest. You’d worn that same coat for the next seven winters, which I keep in my mind.
Ziyu Ai’s eyes were still ice-cold and filled with hate. Nothing wrong with him though, after all, he liked you a lot. But the last time when I went to claim your coat, he looked at me with pitiful eyes which I resented the most. He still wanted me to suffer but he said nothing else except you were dead.
I didn’t and I still don’t believe him anyway.
I was thinking that day when I got back home, “What if you are really mad at me? What if you won’t come back again? What should I do then? What should I do?” I thought for a long time. I suddenly figured it out, I could go to those places to find you, where you always wanted to go but I never took you.
I just gave the company to Jingwen and Assistant Song. I don’t really care about profits and losses. Too many memories about you linger in the company anyway.
Last month when I was packing before going to Florence, I accidentally found the sketch album in your treasure closet. It was from our high school. I drew a lot of your side face when you were listening to the teacher very carefully. And later, there were front faces because I finally got to see you face to face after we were together.
But you’ve been hiding it very well. I thought you’d trashed it a long time ago. It must have been hard for you, now that I think about it, to bring nothing but my album fourteen years ago when you snuck out of your home to go with me. Perhaps because you were shy or something, you never told me this. I was in a fog.
Seven hours on the train from Milan to Florence, I was immersed in the sketches of you. I seemed to see you at the age of 16 sitting next to the window with sunlight all over your hair and eyelashes.
A French couple sat next to me. They were old but they still loved each other; they held each other’s hands tight. They smiled at me when I looked at them; they said hi to me in English.
I showed the sketch album of you to them after we talked more. They said you were pretty and I was happy to hear. I said, “This is my one and only love”. I felt great as if you were right next to me and someone asked me about you, someone remembered that we were together and always will be together.
Florence is beautiful, just like the painting collection you once showed me. Golden pinnacles of the churches in the sunset, a warm colorful fairytale town, but you weren’t there waiting for me at the end of the story.
I stayed at home for two months after I got back. Jingwen was still worried about me. He told me to have my heart checked but I knew I was fine. My heart disease slowly disappeared after I got through the first several months without you. I don’t want it to agonize, too, because that generally means bad things are on their way.
I donated my bone marrow the week before I went out again. It wasn’t about having a conscience. I just thought of you. I hope that everyone can donate their bone marrow so that one day, it will be used on you.
I went to Argentina this time. I visited Iguacu Falls. You were once very much into Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung. You watched Happy Together for dozens of times. I didn’t like watching movies but I did remember some lines.
Maybe I have become sentimental. When I stood before the Iguacu Falls, I suddenly recalled Lai Yiu-fai standing before the fall on his own. He and I were both thinking, ‘there should be two people standing together right now.’
Do I get to start over?
Zhishu, I start to hate traveling once I think of you. The loneliness became heavier as I watched more and more beautiful scenery on my own. Because I can’t help thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you were with me?’
But I have learned to wait patiently. I will be making atonement in the days without you to feel the desolation and pain I imposed on you, every day, every night, every minute, every second. After counting all the wrong paths I have walked, all the wrong things I have done, I start to know that I don’t get everything you want in life. Maybe it’s too late to go back. I don’t ask for your forgiveness; I just want to wait for you with all my strength and life.
I don’t even know if I will have a next life after all the sins I have committed so all I can do is waiting for you with all of my heart in this life.
Because I love you.
Wish you the best!
Regards.
Wenxu Jiang, the person who awaits you.
Mar. 17th, 2016.
The end.