Chapter 47: too painful

Six years ago.

The silent and cold He House.

No laughter, no company.

Although the maids prepared a cake for Yu He as Jiwei He and Zhishu Lv had instructed, Yu He did not go to eat it. For his birthday, his parents were away, both were in Yanzhou with his brother, and they said they had a very important client to talk to today, so they had to see if they had time to catch a flight back after the talk.

He doesn't have many friends, and most of his classmates are polite and distant, so inviting them to his birthday party would be too tight.

On that day, Qingcheng Xie was also not in Huzhou, he had a meeting, and indeed, as Xue Xie had asked in his text message, he was away on a business trip.

Yu He stood in the living room, and the large European-style windows became unpredictable and bizarre ink paintings, framing the pouring rain outside.

Dang... dang... dang...

The big clock in the villa rings every hour, each time striking the time on the clock face accurately.

From afternoon, to dusk, to nightfall.

"Young master ...... don't wait, Mr. He and Mr. Lu said that they can't come back today ......" Jia Guan, who couldn't bear it, went up carefully and put a shirt on Yu He. "Go to bed early."

"It's okay, actually today can't be considered an official day." Yu He turned back, actually still smiling, "You go busy, I'll rest later. I'll watch the rain for a while longer."

Jia Guan sighed softly and went down.

Is it really okay and doesn't matter?

Not at all. He's just waiting for-

He felt that there should always be someone in the world who could come to him through the storm, think of him, think of him, and be with him in the dark.

He's not that bad of a person, he doesn't have to be punished like that, alone to this point, does he?

He waited.

Waiting for ......

" Yu He! Yu He!!!"

I don't know how long it seemed, it was when the clock was about to strike midnight, he heard someone knocking on the door outside, the girl's faint voice seemed very small in the wind and rain, like an illusion.

His eyes widened slightly as he hurried over and opened the door.

Standing outside is a panting Xue Xie - the only one, of the opposite sex, who knows him well. The only one, who has been by his side for many years, is a playmate.

Xue Xie cloaked in a raincoat, face forehead are water, cold and cold, there is no temperature, but when you look up at him, it is warm.

She sniffled, smiled, and took off her raincoat to reveal the birthday cake carefully guarded underneath.

"Finally catching up aren't we?"

"...... What brings you here ......"

"I don't want you to spend your birthday alone, how pathetic." Xue Xie wiped the water that was still trickling down her hair, "Made you your favorite chocolate flavored cake, God I'm getting drenched, so much rain, live to see the ghost ......"

Yu He In that moment, all the resentment in his heart seemed to be dispersed, and all the vacancies were filled up.

He clutched Xue Xie's cold hand and pulled her in, and he felt his voice speak with some hoarseness. He said, "I guess I shouldn't be alone either ......"

"How can that be. How can you be alone? You still have me, I will always be by your side."

"......"

"Happy 13th birthday, Yu He." The girl smiled brightly, becoming the brightest ray of light in the dim villa.

Yu He doesn't remember much about the rest of the story because of the time that has passed.

All he remembers is that he went back to the fridge later to look for the uneaten chocolate cake, but it was no longer there.

Of course, along with that cake disappeared the snacks that the nanny had baked for him that he hadn't touched.

Seeing his gloomy face, the nanny did not wait for him to get angry, busy to explain: "Those things are not fresh anymore, to eat bad health, that's why they are poured ...... If you still want to eat, we will make it again tonight."

The cake that Xue Xie brought on a rainy night will not be the same as the one he made.

Yu He said, "It's okay, forget it."

......

Yu He looked at the projection in front of him and fell into an ice cave, he clearly remembered that day, Xue Xie was here ah.

He that day ...... was ...... was accompanied by someone, someone who thought about him ......

But -

The information on the projection was personally retrieved and deciphered by Yu He, and the cloud storage traces were backed up, so it would never be fake.

"Brother, Aunt Lai is sick, I'm hanging with her, when will you be back from your business trip? These procedures in the hospital are messy, my head is big, if only you were here ......"

How did this happen?

How did this happen!!!

He flipped out of the computer, flipping his fingers like flying, his expression almost twisted, his eyes tending to be crazy, as if he wanted to dig up the graveyard of information, to open the coffin and expose the corpse, to find the long-buried truth.

He retrieved the information of those days extremely quickly.

Xue Xie's, Qingcheng Xie's, Jiwei He's, Zhishu Lv's.

The truth is like a non-decaying corpse, in the cloud information library, towards him with a cold smile of mockery.

Fake ......

Fake ......

Fake!!!

Because things have been going on for a long time, a large number of chat records can no longer be captured, but the information successfully restored is enough to prove that Xue Xie on that night, on the night he needed her most, she -

Never came at all.

Yu He even saw the message she sent to Qingcheng Xie the next day: "Brother, Yu He asked me if I would go to his house to play for his birthday, but Aunt Lai was so sick yesterday, I was really busy dizzy, I forgot to return him, I'm really sorry, can you apologize for me and him ... ...I dare not explain to him ......"

Qingcheng Xie : "You don't have to get so close to him."

......

Retrieve further.

The timeline moves forward a little bit more ......

It's even more alarming to the eye.

He turned to a certain record.

It is a conversation between Qingcheng Xie and Jiwei He.

"Yu He seems to have some kind of imagination when he is helpless. The object of his imagination is that little sister of yours." Jiwei He said, "What I recently discovered unintentionally, some of the things he said to me, actually never happened at all, Dr. Xie, this situation ......"

"It's normal for him." Qingcheng Xie replied, "I've always known this behavior of his."

"How did this happen ......"

"Yu He lacks a friend around his age, but his heart refuses to really open up to anyone his own age. His mind is special and precocious, and most of those who are around his age are not able to understand him. His long-term isolation causes him to need an outlet for his feelings, and at this time the nearest peers to him can easily become his own reflection."

"A reflection of yourself?"

"Yes, a portion of children with autism, or other psychological problems, will grow up imagining a friend in front of whom they can submit their hearts without reservation. That friend may not exist at all, or may exist in part. They are imagined by the patient in the sense of fulfilling a strong desire within the patient."

Qingcheng Xie explained to Jiwei He: "In fact, not only children with mental illness, but also normal children will have some unrealistic fantasies when they are lonely, such as being ostracized in class and having no friends, they will sometimes imagine a friend for themselves, thinking that only they can see and communicate with that friend. Only they can communicate, which is a child's instinct for self-psychological protection."

"It's just that people who don't have the disease, they can tell that it's their imagination, it's a hallucination, it's not reality, and they know very well that it's a sense of solace that they crave. But a child like Yu He. He actually has a hard time recognizing that - especially since he's still doing partial imagination."

Jiwei He : "Part of the imagination means ......?"

"Xue Xie does exist, is my sister, is the closest of his friends around him, and is really good to him." Qingcheng Xie said, "But my sister I know well, she has always been very warm to people. Yu He is a very close friend of hers, but not to the point of being a close friend, there are things she won't do."

"For Yu He, however, his spirit needs to be sustained, and the things that Xue Xie doesn't do, but that he wishes she could do, are left to his own complementary imagination. He only has this one friend, and he doesn't want to be disappointed in that friend, and his subconscious will repeatedly convince himself that those things happened, that Xue Xie actually did them."

"But it's so metaphysical, I find it hard to believe-"

"This is not at all mysterious, the human brain is a very complex and sophisticated instrument, a person's memory if deviations and is repeatedly stressed and repeated over and over again."

"Just like there are people who sometimes confuse reality with dreams, another example is the so-called Dela Man effect."

" The Dela Man Effect?"

"This is not a rigorous academic concept, but it is suitable for interpretation. He can always be understood as a group memory error event, go to the Internet to search and you can see many cases. For example, did ...... Mickey Mouse wear backpacks?"

This time Jiwei He took a while to reply, seemingly confused by Qingcheng Xie's sudden and cute question in the middle of such a serious conversation.

"Wear it."

"It wasn't worn. But a large part of the population believes that it was just wearing a pair of strappy pants all along. That's the Dela Man effect. It's an inherent impression created by a false memory being reinforced by the human brain."

"He can think of it this way, Mickey Mouse equals my sister, which does exist, but she doesn't actually have backpacks at all. And Yu He relies on her imagination to fill in the two non-existent backpacks and firmly believes that this is the way things really are."

Jiwei He : "...... So, is this paranoia?"

"It can't be defined that way. For Yu He, it's just his self-protection, self-relieving, self-redemption." After Qingcheng Xie posted this message, it took a long time before the next one came out -

"Mr. He, with all due respect, the company you and Mr. Lu have given him is too little; even a healthy child at heart can rarely endure such neglect, let alone the fact that he is a patient himself."

"He is not loved, but he is strong, maybe not strong, but he knows that it is useless to cry, it is useless to plead, nothing can make him get the response he needs, so he has gotten used to internal conflict, to self-defense. The Xue Xie he projects is actually his own reflection, his inner self comforting him, and he is using Xue Xie's mouth to tell himself the words he wants to hear."

"......"

Yu He looked at these dusty messages and he thought about those longings deep in his heart ......

For example, I will always be there for you.

For example, what he has not been able to wait for, a face-to-face, happy birthday to you.

Aren't these the words that he so dearly wishes someone would resort to?

But he couldn't wait ......

Qingcheng Xie's message: "Because no one said to him, and he is a person with high self-esteem, and it is impossible for him to say to himself, his brain can only rely on part of his imagination, both to meet his wishes and to maintain his dignity. This is a human psychological protection mechanism for themselves, and you do not have to worry too much."

Jiwei He's message: "You already knew this?"

"Probably observed it for a while. It was something I couldn't tell him, it hit him too hard."

But I kept Xue Xie away from him," Qingcheng Xie says. Xue Xie is not the one he should be emotionally attached to either. Neither she nor I are, Mr. He. Sooner or later, we had to leave."

"I am a doctor, I am not Yu He's relative. I can't spend my whole life on one case, and Xue Xie is even more so. I can only give him detachment, and the kind of love he's missing and wants, I can't give him. The same goes for my sister."

"......"

Yu He didn't read the rest of the message, and it was no longer important.

It was enough for him to know this.

Enough of that.

Qingcheng Xie had been lying to him, and Xue Xie was also a fake. The two of them, one had given him the strongest creed of encouragement to believe that he could return to normal society one day, and the other had given him the most tender companionship, and she had come to his side in time at every time he was desperate and helpless.

Like that night of pouring rain, she knocked on his door, shouted his name through the storm, took off her raincoat, and held out the piece of chocolate cake he wanted.

It never occurred to him that maybe that piece of cake, that Xue Xie ...... didn't even exist.

And his poor, humble self-congratulation, but also all fell into the eyes of Qingcheng Xie, by that man looking down, mastering.

No one has ever loved him.

He was the one who acted like a fool! He was too stupid, too demented, too eager to walk into the warmth of the crowd, to be a normal person, to put away his ugly green face and fangs, he created that little faint light from his bloodied cranium.

Qingcheng Xie saw it, but he said-

"I can't spend my whole life on one case, and Xue Xie even more so. I can only give him detachment, and the kind of love he's missing and wants, I can't give him. The same goes for my sister."

But if one has love in itself, why should one even lie to oneself?

What kind of liar will deceive the world and deceive people, but in the end, they deceive themselves the deepest.

Only the poorest and poorest liars will be like this.

He has so little and has shed so many tears that he has to get even a happy birthday by imagination. What else could he live on with such a smile if he didn't cheat himself?

So even in front of himself, he wears a smiling masquerade, clasped to death and refusing to take it off. He even swindled himself.

Qingcheng Xie is right, he has dignity.

He does not want to be seen as a sick person, does not want to be seen as a crazy person, he knows that with the position of the He family, I do not know how many people are waiting for him to fall down to see his ugly look at his corpse on his blood revelry, for this reason he is getting better and better, he simply does not want to brighten his sores to any one to get pity.

Yu He stood in the empty living room for a long time.

So long that time seems to have become somewhat blurred, his gaze thin and sharp, over and over again swept through this cold tide of information in front of him, and finally sharp gaze also seems to be eroded by the tide, becoming detached and trance.

He slowly closed his eyes.

A false face, symbiotic with flesh and blood, is now cruelly torn off by Qingcheng Xie, who raises his hand and touches his own face without a sound.

Ouch.

It hurts so much ......

It hurt so much that it made his heart and made his whole being tremble.

It was as if he had nothing left in that one night.

Qingcheng Xie's credo is false, Xue Xie's intimacy is false, the comfort he gives himself is false, and finally even his self-esteem, even the hard shell he uses to protect himself, the mask, is also in pieces. It was only then that he realized that his own ridiculous clown-like face had been exposed in front of Qingcheng Xie for so many years.

So what exactly is he holding on to?

And why should he be so stupid! Risking his life to accompany that person, perhaps just for a word of approval, in order to repay Qingcheng Xie gave him a ray of hope ......

He didn't even want his life to please a liar, to please a mortal lie!

Yu He lightly laughed, bowed, leaned against the wall, the laughter is getting louder and louder, more and more crazy, like the grave of the ghost of the fraudulent reincarnation, the inner sickness cloak in the darkness of the night and wandering out, he added his forehead with his hand, laughter nearly tends to madness, seems to anger like hate, like sadness like madness, tears can not stop dripping down from the face ......

It was so painful.

He saw Qingcheng Xie open his hand to him in front of him, but a cold scalpel lay in the center of his palm.

That's the truth.

He saw Xue Xie smiling and handing him chocolates, and then with a wink she just looked at him from afar.

That's the truth ......

He saw again ......

He saw him again standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, a fierce storm outside, the antique desk clock inside the old mansion striking twelve times, the night late, surrounded by an infinite dimness.

But no one knocked on the door.

There was never a knock on the door.

He then waited, from dark, until dawn, the wind and rain have stopped, the long night also centralized, and he could not wait for a sincere happy birthday.

This, then, is the truth.

He saw him again lying on the restraint bed, needles pricked down, mouth and nose hooded, he was struggling and crying like a dying beast, but he could not call out the name of any one.

He is an island.

There is no bridge.

That's the fucking truth! The truth!!!

An unloved child, in order to fight with the disease deep inside, in order to try to live, he cheated heaven and earth, cheated himself for years ......

This moment.

Yu He leaned against the wall, the bandages on his shoulders had been ripped away with a vengeance, he let his wounds crumble and blood flowed, only blood could make him feel comforted and feel real that he was indeed alive! He has a skin, the blood flowing out when warm, he is a living person, he lives ...... he lives ......

He grabbed his hair to death, his fingers were white at the knuckles, his veins were sticking out, he was like a blind and broken clawed dragon, he lost the treasure that he was treated tenderly and the cave he was hiding in, he was forced to expose himself to the light of day, every ugly scar on his body could be inspected and ridiculed at will.

The dream, finally, is awake.

He has struggled for almost twenty years and he is still a madman.

No one ever loved him, no one ever cared for him.

He had nothing but a poorly crafted lie.

He hadn't even gotten anything.