Linrus is a collapsing star.
Years of rust accumulated in his bones, and leaden blood flowed under his skin. Those unburned canvas fragments, like faded nebulae, float in every corner of the cheap rental house.
Zhou Haiyu burst into the ruins with the smell of sea salt and glutaraldehyde.
The medical student's slender fingers stroked the mottled rust, like touching ancient craters on the surface of the celestial body. "Pathology, page 317," he said, "Metal oxidation is slow self-immolation." Moonlight filtered through the rusty security window grating, forming tiny salt crystals on his eyelashes.
They began to exchange pain in the wet night:
Lin Xiuxing taught him to identify lithium salt tablets mixed in acrylic paint;
He interpreted the gray shadows on the X-ray films for Lin Xiuxing——
"Look, does this lung lobe look like a stranded jellyfish?"
Until midnight on a high tide, Zhou Haiyu's stethoscope slipped into the other person's shirt.
The moment the metal probe was placed against their hearts, they heard at the same time:
Deep in that rusty heart, there was a distant, tidal roar.
"When the entire mountain range begins to rust, the ocean kisses its wounds."
Intention: "Flowers grow in decayed places, and seas bloom in desperate places."
