My Founding Brothers

In 1979, thousands of guns fired along the border. Jianjun and I, two half-grown children who came from the educated youth in western Henan, stepped into the battlefield. He is my brother, my comrade-in-arms, and the only brother in my life. We went to the countryside together, served as soldiers together, lay down in the cat's ear holes to smoke together, and agreed to go back alive to meet the girl named Yang Xiuhua. But the battlefield does not recognize brothers. Good intentions will explode into grenades, civilians will hide their bayonets, and the comrades who were joking and laughing yesterday will become a new grave on the hillside the next second. He stepped on the trap for me and spent half his life to get me back. Later, I came back. He stayed in the deep mountains forever. From that day on, I became two people. Honor his bedridden mother, protect his beloved girl, and bear all the wounds and nightmares left by the war for him. A cigarette, smoked from three to two, to one, to half a cigarette. A note with bullet holes and a photo of the enemy's father and son will accompany me throughout my life. The war lasted only twenty-eight days. But I spent fifty years to repay a life, a promise, and a youth that I can never get back. Others asked me what I was afraid of when fighting. I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid - I'm alive, but he's not.