"This one belongs to Kitahara! This one belongs to Mr. Soldier! Kitahara, do you know? Didn't the volcano we went to before just have a lot of small yellow flowers nearby? But I found that there are also many small yellow flowers on the mountains covered with volcanic ash!"

"I really don't know how these plants survive in such a harsh environment. Also, I just pulled out the flowers on them without damaging their rhizomes. They should continue to bloom next year!"

The boy opened his round and bright eyes wide, and his voice was lively like a blue sheep jumping - oh, it was no longer a blue sheep jumping around on the cliff, but more like a little blue sheep doing a tap dance.

It feels lively and cute.

There was still a large handful of flowers in his arms. He looked at them with some distress and then ran to give them to someone else not far away.

Kitahara and Kaede watched Najib running away, with a smile in their eyes. They lowered their heads and gently sniffed the fragrance of the flowers that were forced into their hands, and turned sideways.

Gide glanced at Gide, who had a somewhat confused look in his gray eyes, and couldn't help but curl up the corners of his lips.

"Nice-smelling flowers, aren't they?"

He said this, and at the same time poked the canvas with the end of his pen, raised his head and looked at the blue sky, and found that a faint rainbow had hung on it at some point.

Gide was obviously a little helpless about this bouquet of flowers and the enthusiasm it represented. He stared at these poor little flowers with serious eyes for a long time, as if there was a bomb hidden in this bouquet of flowers, and finally answered in a stiff tone.

:

"Ghosts don't need flowers."

"If you say so, I will definitely bring several bouquets of flowers when I go to your cemetery in the future to make you angry to life."

Kitahara and Kaede blinked and said teasingly, then they threw the pen into the pen holder very casually and stood up from their seats.

"Well, do you need to have lunch? It should be winter now. I have a delicacy here that is suitable for many people in winter. Everyone who has eaten it says it is good."

He stretched out and asked lazily and casually. His orange-gold eyes narrowed slightly in comfort, like a cat basking in the sun, and seemed to have some light cunning.

Gide opened his mouth, wanting to refuse: "Ghost doesn't..."

"Hey, you don't want to tell me that you can only eat if I put a few sticks of incense in front of you when you eat, Mr. Ghost? You don't look like you are from the East, or are you from the West?

What new taboos do ghosts have?”

Kitahara and Feng interrupted each other and blinked innocently. After seeing each other's slightly frozen expressions, they couldn't help laughing and stretched out their hands generously:

"Let's go? It just so happens that we cook this kind of food and eat it on the day of ancestor worship."

There is no problem at all in worshiping ancestors and eating hot pot during the Winter Solstice.

Andre Gide held the flower in his hand silently and lowered his eyes, feeling that this was not a clever trap.

But the flower in his hand was very fragrant, reminding him of the irises that bloom in France in April, May and June: a brilliant blue-purple color, with diamond-like dewdrops on the petals, interpreting the romance and tenderness in the heart of a country.

Although the romance and tenderness were never truly given to them.

Gide did not extend his hand.

"When will we eat?" He hesitated for a while, then asked.

"At night, well, just at night! Just when the sun goes down."

Beihara and Feng naturally retracted their hands, looked up at the sky, and wondered where to find a large enough iron pot. At the same time, they seemed to have remembered something, and asked with some vigilance:

"By the way, you shouldn't be like those unlucky French people I know who like to throw snails and butter into water and boil them, right?"

Gide: "?"

He wanted to ask "why not", but in the end he said seriously: "It doesn't matter."

The traveler nodded with satisfaction.

He has really had enough of the hot pot variations created by the Paris Commune. Is hot pot with butter snails considered hot pot? Of course not, just like strawberry Mapo tofu cannot be called Mapo tofu.

Even if it's called strawberry stewed tofu, it won't have as much of an impact as strawberry mapo tofu.

So when it was time to eat hot pot in the evening, the story developed into another style:

"Na, Ji, Bu! You can't add three tablespoons of honey to the hot pot soup base! You can add it to your own saucepan!"

"Hey, hey, but I think everyone will like to eat honey, the sweet one tastes the best!"

Gide slurped his beef quietly and looked up to see the Arab boy "Bai Liu" who was traveling with Beihara and Feng. He suddenly hid behind one of his team members and looked at the traveler with his hands on his shoulders.

The somewhat young team member was completely confused and didn't know what to do. He didn't maintain his rigid expression well, and instead gave people the impression of being a little stunned.

A group of people looked at each other, winked at each other vigorously, and signaled to each other:

what to do next

?

I don’t know. I’ve never seen this kind of thing before. Wouldn’t most people just think of us as plague gods and run away when they see us with guns? No one took the initiative to join us.

So do we want to scare people by pointing a gun at them?

But they don’t mean any harm, and the meal we are eating is cooked by the other party. There is no need for us to attack those who can’t end our fate, right?

Having said that, does adding honey really make it taste better?

I don’t know.

Gide looked around and noticed what his team members were exchanging, so he fell silent slightly.

He felt that his team members seemed to be a little too lively recently. In the past, this group of guys would not "chat" so happily. They were often as quiet as if they were going to a funeral.

The former soldier stood up after eating half full, not wanting to disturb this rare good mood for ghosts like them.

At night, the stars beside Lake Natron are very bright.

Gide was blowing the cold wind and quietly looked at the flamingo with one foot resting on the lake, or maybe he was looking at the stars reflected on the lake, and he didn't know what he was thinking about.

He didn't know how long it took, maybe it was the time when everyone was holding on, but he felt another person sitting next to him and lay down directly leaning on the soil.

He knew it was Kitahara and Kaede.

In fact, Gide had always been a little wary of the enthusiasm and kindness of Kitahara Kaede and Najib, but after getting along for a long time, he himself had to admit that this person was harmless, had a soft personality, and even had no sense of caution.

Just like it is now.

Kitahara and Kaede raised their hands, forming a square frame with their index fingers and thumbs. Their eyes looked through the frame at the bright and flowing stars above, and finally bent slightly.

"The stars are very beautiful tonight." He said softly, "I always feel that Lake Natron looks like the starry sky."

Gide said nothing.

"Actually, I'm quite curious as to why you came here, because there is almost nothing here except the scenery, and there are people with eyes like yours..."

Beihara and Feng thought about it for a while, and finally they both laughed: "Ghosts are either chasing death or chasing relief."

Gide still didn't speak.

"By the way, didn't you say you wanted to be buried here before? Are you serious? This will determine whether I will bring a bouquet of flowers when I pass by this lake in the future."

Gide finally raised his head.

"I thought you would be the kind of person who advises everyone you meet to live a good life."

He said in a tone similar to sarcasm.

"Eh? Is this the image I have in your mind?"

Kitahara and Feng opened their eyes wide, as if they were quite surprised to receive this evaluation. Then they couldn't help but burst into laughter, and it took a while before they straightened their expressions.

"Because I can see that you have spent a long time deciding on this matter. This is not a hot-headed choice like many people do. Compared with death, living must be full of content for you.

Painful and pointless."

Kitahara and Kaede paused for a moment, looked up at the sky, their orange-gold eyes reflected the stars, and their voices were blown away in the evening wind by the lake: "And I don't have any qualifications to ask a person to endure without knowing there is no end.

Painful, waiting for the dawn that doesn’t know when it will appear.”

No one is qualified to ask for this.

Because they are not the ones enduring the pain, and they don’t know how desperate the other person’s life is, let alone whether dawn will really come.

All attempts to stay and persuade are too light, and instead permeate with incomprehension. They can only make the other party clearly aware of this huge and terrifying loneliness that leads people step by step towards the abyss.

It's just like what Oda Sakunosuke said to Gide at the beginning in the original work. It's like what Dazai Osamu said to him when Oda Sakunosuke planned to go to Gide for a duel in the original work.

It makes sense, but it means nothing to the parties concerned.

Gide seemed to laugh from the side.

It's hard to say what the laughter actually represents, but in short, it's

At the end, he said in a voice with imperceptible tiredness:

"Then there's no need to bring flowers. I don't think anyone will bring our bones here for burial."

"Then tell me the day you plan to die, and I will collect the body."

Beihara and Feng smiled nonchalantly and raised their heads to look at the distant starry sky: "In our home, it is etiquette to send soldiers home: I think you are all going to call this place your home."

Gide wanted to ask, "Do you treat everyone you meet like a wishing machine?" But in the end, he just made a sarcastic voice.

"We are no longer soldiers." He said, "From the moment no one needs us. We are just a group of people who are eager to die..."

"Ghost." Kitahara and Kaede added in a brisk tone.

Gide suddenly found that it was difficult for him to brew certain emotions in front of the other person. What emerged in his heart was more of a feeling that was so complicated that he didn't even know how to describe it.
To be continued...