Three years after the breakup, Chen Jingran knocked on the door with the pain of his mother's death. He naturally held my hand in the taxi, and there were unspoken secrets hidden under that familiar cocoon—the habit of taking photos for reporting, and the smile of the strange girl on the screen saver, all of which undermined the sadness of reunion. In the steaming heat of the old duck soup, he mentioned the night when he chose his major in his senior year of high school, but I was distracted staring at his hand hiding the ring. When he invited me back to Ling City to attend the funeral on the grounds that he "needs you," he easily avoided the question "in what capacity." Although I knew it was a trap wrapped around an old love, I saw in his red eyes that the boy who was drunk and called "brother" at my father's birthday party overlapped with the man whose spine was bent by life now. And that looming ring, like the sword of Damocles hanging between the two of us, reflects a dangerous light in the funeral invitation...
Intention: A game between two egoists