Xijun: After the Sunny Day

I have a sister. Not my biological sister. Her name is Xijun, she is the girl who lived downstairs when I was a child, and she is also the girl who only occasionally calls me many years later. She rarely acts coquettishly, rarely screams in pain, and even talks about being sad like a joke. She said that she had no friends, that life was very tiring, that she wanted to keep a cat in the future, that she wanted to go north, and that she wanted to go to Suzhou again when the weather was nice. I always thought she was just a little colder than others. Until one rainy day, I heard that she died on a sunny day. Later I found out that she did not leave suddenly. She has only been pushed away by life since she was very young. Her parents' quarrels, relocation, lack of understanding, silence, calls for help that no one understood, and those little wishes that were not realized in time all weighed on her like a long winter. After she left, I found the old books, tickets, calendars and letters she wrote to my future self. In her letter, she asked her twenty-five-year-old self: Have you ever gone to the north? Do you have a cat? Have you ever found someone who doesn't have to explain why you're unhappy? But she will never be twenty-five. After that, I often dreamed about her. In the dream, I was finally no longer the one pretending to be asleep. I found her in the name of my brother, held her hand, and took her away from that sunny day. But after waking up from the dream, there were no new calls on the phone, and the world was still dawning as usual. I finally understood that once some people are missed, they can only be saved in dreams. Empty and sad.