To My Youth [BL]

[30] His Memory: The Boy at the Shore (1/2)

Three years ago, I should have stopped lying to myself.

I wasn't even aware of when I was lying to myself, but there was this disturbing discrepancy between my own lies and the truth.

A few weeks after Wu Fei and our mother drifted away, this detachment continued ripping larger and larger.

However, this isolation had already bloomed before, but that incident was like water to this bud of displacement, nourishing it into something more significant.

I think it started when our mother got remarried and started showering more love towards her new husband, He Rong, and his sister.

I wasn't upset about that.

I honestly wasn't.

Or maybe I convinced myself.

It wasn't her fault.

Though it felt like the title of 'mother' had simply become just a title, or rather, a contractual label.

Even with our father, it was the same. It was my fault for thinking like this that I hated myself for having these thoughts.

It was selfish of me to feel lonely, because they all had their own problems to deal with, too. It was cold in both their homes. It was cold everywhere.

Our mother's house was large, and everyone within that house truly appeared to look like a happy family.

After staying there for more than a week, I didn't dare intrude on them further. And now, I could no longer return there because she was no longer here.

It was amusing how I developed an underlying fear of talking to people in the past, afraid that the people who were always by my side would somehow see past this fabrication of my own existence.

But the more I used my precarious achievement of placing over that mask, the more I felt myself crumble and burn into ashes, washing away with the waves at the shore.

Looking back, I would sometimes sit silently and blank out if I wasn't near people.

When the nights were cold, I would sometimes purposely stand outside at the bus stop and allow the chilling wind to brush past me, hoping I would get sick. That way, I knew I was still living, and my body was still trying to keep me alive.

Being near people and engaging in idle chatter with neighbours and others was probably the only way of keeping me sane, yet it also tired me.

I would have become so empty if I was to stay alone for too long and not speak to anyone.

Perhaps these were just the effects of loss, but I was afraid I would still live with this constant emptiness after weeks, months, years.

Losing everyone and even myself. But in the end, I did get better after a while. I really did.

There was plenty of oxygen, yet none of it reached my lungs, let alone entered my nose. To constantly move between these two foreign houses, where both Gu Heiyu and I felt like we were a burden to our parents, was tiring.

After a few years, I became accustomed to it. I was worried about Gu Heiyu. I didn't want her to have the same thoughts as me. I didn't want her to be like me because I was pathetic.

I had drowned myself in this acceptance that I was rather a failure, but I didn't want her to feel the same.

During my years in school, the only way I knew I was still living, that people still recognised that I was a functional human being, was if I was surrounded by people.