The Day the Chains Were Loosened, He Cried and Called My Name

This is a story about waiting. On the day he entered the palace, the chains on his ankles were worn to pieces. The emperor ordered someone to untie him. The guard who squatted down smiled and blew on his wound. At that moment, he seemed to hear a long-lost Southern Xinjiang tune - in this cannibal palace, meeting an old friend in a foreign land. The guards would sneak into the cold palace in the middle of the night to deliver medicine to him, listen to him playing the piano under the moon, and feed him spoonfuls of hot porridge on the winter solstice. "I will make it for you every winter solstice from now on." He believed it. Until the guard came back seriously injured from the north. He knelt before His Majesty and begged Your Majesty to save the life of the guard. Until the guard was poisoned and the pain was unbearable. He knelt down again, but this time he begged His Majesty to grant him death. On the day of the Winter Solstice, he was like a fish being put back into the pond. He carried the piano on his back and looked back to the palace step by step, but the man had turned into a butterfly and flew away. Forty years later, he still played the piano. I remember that year he said: From now on every winter solstice, I will cook porridge for you. But he forgot to say: If the person who cooked the porridge is gone, the porridge will be cold. The string is broken, is the lovesickness in the string still there?