One Life, One Incarnation, Beautiful Bones

25

Chapter 8.1 - Inevitable Times of Parting (1)

This place was more peaceful and quiet than expected.

Shi Yi was very glad that, although his mother had requested that she accompany her the whole time, she did not speak again. Shi Yi was genuinely reverent when she offered up her incense. With palms and fingers pressed together prayerfully, she knelt on the kneeling cushion, which already had two deep permanent indentations on them, and bowed three times worshipfully to Buddha.

Raising her head again, she looked at the smiling Buddha statue. It was said that, how one's eyes viewed Buddha was different when comparing one who believed in him as opposed to someone who did not believe or a good person as opposed to an evil one. Compassionate, merciful, smiling, and numerous other descriptions, but in her memory, the Buddha always had a slight smile and that never changed.

She suddenly wondered, why was it planned this way?

She remembered everything, but Zhousheng Chen did not remember any of it.

When Shi Yi knelt down, she had forgotten about her knee that was still recovering, and only after she was rising back to her feet did she feel some pain. A hand came and supported her by her upper arm, helping her back up. "If there is a next time, you do not need to do that just so you can wear a cheongsam. You actually also look very nice wearing a tracksuit." He still remembered, that day he had taken the short rest at her home, when he stepped out of the guest room, Shi Yi had been wearing a light blue tracksuit as she sat cross-legged in a slightly darkened room and watched television with a headset on.

In particular, before she had noticed him, she had a little gesture where she would cover her mouth as she laughed at those scenes in the television drama she was watching.

Even now, he could still clearly remember that image.

"It's okay. I didn't completely remove all the bandage, so there should be no problem." She asked quietly, "I didn't see you just now?"

"I am an aetheist," he lowered his voice and answered her, "so I stood outside the main hall of the temple and enjoyed the scenery."

The two of them walked out of the main hall. An ancient temple of a thousand years. Even simply standing in that place allowed peace to gradually settle into the heart.

"But I very much believe in Buddhism," she laughed. "What should we do then?"

He turned back to glance at the Buddha in the main hall. "I completely respect that."

"What do you see?" She was curious.

"What do I see?"

"I mean, when you look at him, what does he look like to you?"

Because of Shi Yi's question, Zhousheng Chen looked slightly longer at the statue. "Compassion."

She gazed at his face from the side, not saying a word.

For some people, even if they had forgotten everything and their voice and appearance had changed, who they were within them would not change.

At that moment, a shadow of the past seemed to superimpose itself on the him who was before her right now. That shadow had once said, Shakayamuni gave up his wife and child to embark on the ways of Buddhism because of the compassion he felt towards living beings[1]. She clearly remembered these words of his, and hence, she never once blamed him for what he had said: "never forsook the world, only forsook Eleven."

Noticing her silence, Zhousheng Chen lowered his head and looked back at her. "What's wrong? Is that not the same as what you see?"

"Not really the same."