This story began with a comment I wrote in response to a song in 2012. At that age, when I knew nothing of the world, I wrote the first half of the story. Later, after graduating, starting work, and traveling from place to place, four years passed, and I finally had some new ideas for sorting through those heavy memories. I feel guilty toward the people in this story. I've been so irresponsible, leaving them standing far off in a realm of nothingness, watching this utterly cold world.
This has taken a great deal of time and energy. During my travels in Beijing, I sat on the roof of a youth hostel every night, revising the story. Memories surged like the wind and clouds, reminding me to ask when I could finally draw a line beneath it all. Their story seemed to have slipped beyond my control at some point, each person's fate already headed in its own direction. Of course, it's hard to say. How difficult it is to seek inner peace in the reckless flood of life, just as most of us are submerged in our nine-to-five jobs, forced to face one unexpected turn after another. The one thing we can do, thinking for ourselves, still feels like an unaffordable luxury and an unnecessary indulgence.
Dali. I mention this place in the story. Of all the cities I've visited, Dali is the one I most want to return to. It means a great deal to me. Even though I've been away from that city for long enough to have almost forgotten how much of my life I spent there, with no story to tell, just passing through and stopping to look around, I still believe that one day I'll return. Like migratory birds crossing the winter to come home, stars streaking across the night sky and shining on, lights along a deserted road, faces in the darkness, sails on the sea, a lighthouse by an island, white mist rising at dawn, letters with no known destination. I left, and I came from far away.
It's actually... Even slower than Uncle Q's place. .