My name is Xu An, the most ordinary and peaceful art student. My life was supposed to be about mixing colors, drawing boards, and graduating peacefully.
But from that day on, my world was forcibly torn apart.
Old people often say that people have three fires.
If the fire is strong, evil spirits will not invade; if the fire is extinguished, hundreds of ghosts will roam at night.
And my life fire is extinguishing little by little with an extremely strange light and shadow composition.
Just when I thought I would be completely swallowed up by the rules, I met him.
His name is Yan Guixin, and he is the owner of a paper-making shop in the old city. He wears an extremely well-tailored black long gown with dark patterns all year round, and the material glows with a faint light similar to cold jade in the dim light. The neckline was embroidered with fine vine totems that seemed to be entwined like living creatures with silver thread. The cuffs were wide. As he raised his hands, his clothes fluttered, as if there were countless pale paper butterflies fluttering in the shadows.
He held an oil-paper umbrella and walked towards me under the scorching sun. He stared at my shaky life with his bottomless eyes and smiled softly and sickly:
"Xu An, your fire is almost out."
"The outside world is too dangerous. Come back with me, okay?"
I thought I was prey that strayed into a monster's lair.
It was not until later that I discovered that the hundreds of ghosts roaming the city at night and these suffocating folk rules were just a gentle cage carefully woven by him in order to justifiably imprison me by his side.
I tried my best to use color and perspective to deconstruct those absurd horrors, trying to find a way to survive in this fatal situation. And he just stood in the shadow, tracing my outline over and over again with his fingertips stained with paper dust, waiting patiently for me to bow to him.
Later, when I was finally cornered, with red eyes, I asked him why he did this to me.
He just held me tightly in his arms, kissed the tears from the corners of my eyes with his lips, and said in a hoarse voice:
"Xiao An, you are too bright."
"It's so bright that a monster like me, who lives in the gutter, is afraid of risking his life, but also wants to drag you down and drag you into my underworld to be my only color."
At that moment I realized that he didn't want to kill me, he wanted to sleep with me!
Purpose: to deconstruct the unpredictable abyss with the rationality and color of a mortal body; to reshape the indescribable rules with the paranoia and delusion that spans life and death.
