Many things can be repeated, leaves will be greener when they are withered, and things that have been forgotten can be remembered again, but people will not be resurrected when they die, and youth will never be repeated again when they are gone.

Xie Juinian finished a story. In the simple and narrow beef noodle restaurant, only the old electric fan was still squeaking at them. Zhu Xiaobei was not a silent person, but under the guidance of Juinian, she seemed to have walked in the old time. Those people, those things, and those faces were vivid and vivid. She could close her eyes and outline every subtle change on the face of the boy at that time in her mind... She felt that everything should not end, but Juinian's story was really finished.

Only then did they notice that the sky was completely dark and the dinner time had already passed. The crowded shop had already gone empty. Apart from the boss lady who settled the bill under the dim light and the waiter who was busy packing up the leftovers and preparing to close, they were all left. The beef noodles in front of them had already cooled like ice, and a layer of red oil was formed. Zhu Xiaobei felt that his heart seemed to be covered with such a thick layer of things, which seemed even more stuffy and greasy after it was cold.

"Wu Yu...he died like this? You were in jail like this?" Zhu Xiaobei squeezed out a sentence from his throat after a while. Although she had known Ju Nian's criminal record, and judging from the various signs she learned, there was no other possibility. However, she still felt that it shouldn't be like this, not! The two children running together in the sun, the boys and girls who were as white as this under the pomegranate flower, were so beautiful and kind. They were in their little world, so why did one end up dying and the other end up jailing?

There was a faint smile on the corner of Ju Nian's mouth, and the broken shadows of her short hair covered her eyes. "Xiaobei, you can read martial arts novels too. In the novel, if all the protagonists fall down from the cliff, they will be saved by experts, or by chance, they will learn peerless martial arts skills and be reborn from then on. But in the real world, most people do not have such luck. If they fall down, they will die."

Before Zhu Xiaobei recovered, Ju Nian called the waiter to come and collect the money, "I promised that I would like to invite this."

In front of her smile, Zhu Xiaobei felt that refusal was a boring thing, so he smiled and pushed the bowl in front of him to the side, saying, "This boss lady didn't drive us away, she is a strange person. Ju Nian, this meal is just for me to have a farewell meal!"

"Really go?"

"certainly."

"Then here..."

"Are you talking about Han Shu?" Zhu Xiaobei knew it very quickly, "Don't let me see him now. If he appears now, I would like to slap this kid into outer space."

Ju Nian smiled, thought for a while, and said, "Xiaobei, that's him in another story after all, and it's all about the past. He's not bad, you..."

"Stop talking, I know what you mean. Before you told me, I always thought that something must have happened to you and him in the past, and he is the male protagonist in your stories. The funniest thing is that he thought so much. Damn! In fact, he is just a passerby. Yes, Ju Nian, so you forgive him easily. Similarly, for Han Shu, I am also a passerby. I am a straw troupe halfway, so I will disperse. Find a good person to marry, haha, it's like buying a lottery, it would be strange if you won't be punished by God once you buy it." She spread her palms at Ju Nian half-jokingly, "Master Xie, help me see the palm lines and calculate my marriage. Is it really going to be the day when I retire, and I will wait until my first night at the age of fifty-five."

Ju Nian closed Zhu Xiaobei's hand, "The life is getting thinner and thinner." She also laughed and comforted, "Xiaobei, you must be blessed. When you are so depressed, you will think of people who are worse than you, such as me."

"I can't compare with you. Really, if I were you, I don't know how many times I've died." Zhu Xiaobei said the truth.

Ju Nian said: "It is difficult to say death, it is not easy to say it is easy to say it. If you can't die, you have to live."

If you can't die, you have to survive.

During the years in prison, Ju Nian had repeatedly said this to herself.

After leaving the beef noodle restaurant, Ju Nian and Zhu Xiaobei waved goodbye at the fork in the road not far away. Ju Nian looked at Xiao Bei's slender shadow pulled by the street lights. The woman who was always full of taboos and extremely profitable actually had a bit of desolation. Ju Nian knew that maybe the purpose of Xiao Bei's trip was just to seek an ending, and Xiao Bei was an open-minded person after all, and she would be able to come out one day. All she needed was time.

Only time is invincible.

However, Ju Nian did not win the forgiveness of time back then. It was just a little bit that the incident happened too suddenly. Her little monk left, leaving her with the vastness of the whole world. Perhaps only a second, the moment before, he said in the softest voice: "You have never said it", and was covered by an endless sea of ​​blood in an instant. She was not prepared, as if she stepped on the flat road, and everything was left without a trace, falling, falling... until she was doomed. Nightmares followed one after another, and she couldn't cry and couldn't relieve it, because she didn't have time to wake up. He left, only she was left, and he went back.

Ju Nian rarely mentions the details of her prison life in those years, and even in the stories she told Zhu Xiaobei, she doesn't mention them at all. She doesn't want to say many things because she doesn't expect anyone to understand them. It's like you should never try to let a healthy person experience the overflowing despair on the hospital bed. A healthy person says "health is really important" in his mouth, but in fact he will also squander health and will not really understand the pain of illness.

Including Ju Nian herself, she rarely recalled that time. She only knew one thing - there are only two things in the world that are forever irreversible, one is life, and the other is youth. Many things can be repeated, and the leaves will be greener when they are withered, and the things that have been forgotten can be remembered again, but people will not be resurrected when they die, and youth will never come again when they leave. Wu Yu can't survive, and Xie Ju Nian's youth also died eleven years ago. Now she has been released after her sentence, just like an ordinary twenty-nine-year-old single woman, living in a plain manner. The waves of the old days and the years in the iron windows seem to have not left a clear mark on her. But she wakes up every morning, looking at the still smooth and tight skin in the mirror in the cool bathroom, and her eyes tell her that she is no longer the girl she was back then.

There is a saying in life: God closes a door and will open a window for you. When he is in prison, Ju Nian will laugh every time he thinks of this sentence. The door of the cell is closed, leaving only an iron window of square inch. Doesn’t this just confirm God’s sense of humor?

The prisoners who have just been sent in are called "new collectors". "new collectors" are the most helpless group in the closed world. In addition to going through the training of the first time in prison and the "education" of old prisoners, the most saddest hurdle is yourself. No originally free person will not feel the despair of the world as subverted after being imprisoned. You are no longer a normal person, no longer a dignified person, or even no longer like a person. Twelve people are crowded in a small cell, and they have heavy labor indicators that are breathless every day, and they are hard to see the light of day, psychologically distorted roommates, and strict prison guards... The "new collectors" are crying as soon as they come in, and there are many people who are seeking death.

Before meeting Zhu Xiaobei in the beef noodle restaurant, Pingfeng, who was sitting with Ju Nian, was the same group of people who were put into jail as her. Ju Nian was just over 18 years old and was one of the youngest prisoners in the prison. Pingfeng was a month younger than Ju Nian and was as thin as a child of fifteen or sixteen. At that time, they were locked in the same cell. Every night, Ju Nian could hear Pingfeng's crying.

Ju Nian rarely cries, she just can't sleep.

The prison in the middle of the night was as dark as death, without a trace of light. Ju Nian slept in the bunk near the window, and could not see the specific location of the window. She always sat, facing the direction of the window, listening to Ping Feng crying, and staring quietly. A night passed quickly and sometimes slowly, and time seemed meaningless. Due to a series of procedures for criminal proceedings, when the verdict was officially issued, Ju Nian had spent nearly three weeks in prison. Next, she had at least 1,800 nights to spend like this.

That night, Pingfeng was tired from crying and gradually fell asleep. Ju Nian suddenly heard a slight sound from the direction of the window. She knew that it was the sound of insects flapping their wings. There were flies, mosquitoes, fleas in the prison, but they were all small bugs, and the bigger ones rarely flew in. The sound was weaker than dragonflies, beetles, etc., but they were stronger than small flying insects. They wandered and struggled, and they could not find the exit. Ju Nian could not see it. She thought, it might be a butterfly. Why didn't a butterfly that transformed from a caterpillar, wander among the flowers, but returned to this corner that could not be shining on the sun?

Wu Yu, is it you?

Ju Nian silently recited in her heart. It was you who finally broke out of the cocoon, but you couldn't bear to leave me, so did you come back to see me?

She groped and reached out her hand blankly, but it had not stopped in her palm.

All night, Ju Nian leaned on the iron bed bracket, listening to the sound of her wings flapping, and her heart was hard to tell the joys and sorrows. She hoped that it would stay and stay with her for a moment, and hoped that it would fly away, go to the place it yearned for and never come back... The sky gradually brightened.

The prison stipulates that it is five o'clock in the morning in the summer, and six o'clock in the winter. After getting up, you must fold the quilt like in the army, and then sit neatly on the edge of the bed waiting for the prison guards to open the prison door - they call this "Kaifeng". Next, each cell takes turns to go out to wash, go to the toilet, and then return to the cell to have breakfast. There are no toilets in all the cells. The toilets are usually locked at the end of each corridor. They will only open at the prescribed time, once in the morning, once in the evening. The first ray of light in the morning shines into Ju Nian's cell. The entire prison has already woken up, but it is not their turn to Kaifeng. Ju Nian is eager to use the light to find the traces of butterflies. Sure enough, she found it on the edge of the iron window.

Then there is no butterfly, it is just a gray moth.

It is ugly, dirty and mottled, and its bloated body. What makes people despair is that it has deformed wings, which obviously has just broken out of the pupa. Somehow it has fallen here and is destined to be unable to fly.

Ju Nian remembered the story about caterpillars that Wu Yu said. Yes, he was right. Every butterfly is transformed from a caterpillar, but he also forgot that not every caterpillar can become a butterfly. Maybe it will die in a cocoon and will never see the light of day, or after a death-like struggle, it will realize that it is an ugly moth, and its wings are not healthy.

Ju Nian was sadly finding that he understood what Wu Yu wanted to tell her. However, if he knew that this was the ending, would he be willing to accompany another caterpillar in the deep underground, and carefully share that little pitiful sunshine? Or maybe he was destined to leave, no matter how cruel the ending was, it was his choice.

However, Wu Yu's story was not finished, and he did not tell whether the colorful butterfly that could not become a butterfly would fly away if he could not become a butterfly. He could not fly with her, and he would never return to the caterpillar, but the butterfly could come and go freely. He did not tell whether there was no caterpillar, and the remaining other one should spend the next years alone in the dark.

Ju Nian couldn't bear to see the moth struggling hard. She stretched out her finger gently and wanted to push it, but it was useless. As soon as her finger touched it, it fell from the windowsill to the floor. She didn't have time to do anything else. A big foot wearing shoes fell down and immediately stepped on the moth on the ground. When the big foot was lifted, Ju Nian only saw a small stall of disgusting slurry and half of its broken wings. It was so difficult to live, but it died so easily, and there was no chance to struggle. This was the sorrow of being a bug.

Ju Nian felt sad and looked up at the person who was standing down.

"Why, are you feeling unhappy?" the man asked her.
Chapter completed!