Give a bellflower to the drowning ghost

54

Wang Ze finally bypassed the ranger and ran deep into the forest.

The ranger felt that his expression was probably smiling.

How could it be possible to catch up? No matter how hard you struggled, it was useless.

Too late.

Night falls.

Darkness swept over him, like those terrible nights.

He giggled twice like a broken exhaust fan, touching the skin that had been hit by Wang Ze's fist, causing him to cry in pain.

"Too late……"

-28

The writer leaned against the window, watching the sunset in the sky: "In ancient times, after the sun went down, the day was considered to be over. I wish there were only eighteen hours in a day, ten hours of work, and eight hours of sleep, which was just right. .”

He raised his hands, gestured his thumb and index finger into the shape of a photo frame, and squinted his eyes to frame the sunset: "Because of the pressure to make a living, I can still work ten hours a day. After all, this job can reduce contact with other people I don’t even need to meet with the editor as long as the manuscript is delivered on time. But when it gets dark and I’ve finished writing what I can write in a day, I can’t find anything to do.”

"It's too early to go to bed at seven, and I can't sleep at all. But I don't have anyone I want to see, and I don't have anything to do. Every day after sunset, I have to keep checking Weibo and refreshing the webpage in order to let the time pass quickly. Constantly switching TV stations, I once tried to turn on the TV to play the news, put a laptop on my lap to play animation, and ended up using my mobile phone to check Weibo.”

"I insist on working every day to support myself, but the only thing I can do is work... It's boring, right, and I think it's boring too."

He watched the last ray of the sun disappear at the edge of the forest.

"Fortunately, I don't need to do this kind of thing anymore."

The writer reached out and patted the ranger on the shoulder.

The ranger turned his head, and the writer blinked and smiled at him:

"Then, I'm leaving, see you by fate."

-29

The ranger couldn't remember what happened after that.

They made an appointment before that he should go down the mountain to buy something, make an alibi, then come back, and then go down the mountain to call the police-a bit like the practice of burying the truth after killing someone.

But he just sat by the window, watching the darkening forest.

-30

He regretted it.

-31

The ranger opened the gate and rushed into the forest.

He is more familiar with this mountain than anyone else. He has traveled every inch of the land here, and is familiar with every tree here. As long as he observes the direction in which the branches and leaves of the shrubs are pushed aside, he knows which land the writer has stepped on and which land he has picked. Where does a flower go.

Should be in time.

The moonlight was hiding behind the dense tree shadows, and he could only fumble and run forward clumsily, panting.

In a daze, it seemed that he had returned to the night when he was looking for his adoptive father. He was still so weak, running around like a headless fly in the mountains, his feet were as soft as two pieces of tofu, his body was covered in mud, and his heart was full of Fear.

The fear is not that the adoptive father has left.

It's the fear that there is actually a tiny fluke in my heart:

—if he really had killed himself, we would all be free.

-32

If it wasn't for you to have such thoughts, how could they die?

-33

The ranger ran to the edge of the lake, and without even stopping, he rushed straight into the water.

The lake water at night was icy and heavy, as if it lost its ownership of the body the moment it was immersed in the water.The lake took away his weight, leaving only the sound of surging liquid in his ears, replacing his vision with blurred bubbles, everything was completely different from the shore.

Probably, because he has reached the underworld.

At the bottom of the lake, he found the writer.

Around the writer, there are dots of buttercups floating along his fingertips to the surface of the water.Besides the flowers, he took only one stone into the lake, and that knee-high stone had a rope tied around his calf to keep him firmly in the lake.

He didn't even bother to maintain that poetic image of Ophelia, he couldn't wait to die.

-34

The writer is dead.

Many visitors came to the village, for the writer's death.

First came the town police, who questioned the ranger, asking again and again to recall the author's death.

Thanks to them, the ranger actually started to feel a little numb.

Then there are relatives and friends who do not exist in the writer's mind.They came from all over the house to search for the writer's belongings in the ranger's house, almost unanimously thanked the ranger for taking care of the writer, and expressed appropriate sorrow and regret.

Only then did the ranger know that the writer's mother had died of illness for several years, and his biological father, who had been divorced from his mother for many years, was the only legal heir of the writer, but the writer never mentioned these two people.

Presumably, these two blood relatives did not make the writer have any nostalgia for this world.

Of course, the Rangers themselves were unsuccessful.

After that, it was the writer's admirers who found the "legendary lake" with different purposes.

Some people brought photographic equipment and clothing, and jumped into the lake with great interest to shoot tribute works.

Someone came with sacrifices, expressed deep condolences, and piled up the writer's book and flowers by the lake, and the rangers spent a lot of time cleaning it every day.

The more daring guy came to the ranger's door, speculated about him with curious eyes, and said some inexplicable words within the ranger's hearing range.

Someone asked him: "Do you want to try to publish a book? Just write how you found out that the writer committed suicide. It will definitely become popular."

Rangers don't find this kind of stuff very interesting.

Someone thought the forest ranger didn't hear it, and said with relish with his companion: "I want to go back and write a story about two people dealing with each other in the mountains because of money disputes. In the end, although the writer won, he also found himself tired of life in the world. So I pretended to be my own body from the ranger’s body, and lived on as a ranger. I lived in seclusion in the mountains, and after a few years, I became enlightened, and then published a new book with a new identity... It’s definitely topical.”

As much as they hoped so sincerely that it was the ranger who died, they must be disappointed.

-35

With status, money, someone shed tears for him and the crazy writer died.

And the neglected social loser, the forest ranger, lives, and although at first he would have liked to die in the lake too, he survives without drama.

He put away the writer's sleeping bag, used the generator sent by the writer to maintain his life, slept for eight hours a day, patrolled the mountains for ten hours, spent the night doing nothing, and occasionally used the game console left by the writer to pass the time.

The writer can't find a reason to keep himself alive, so what should the forest ranger rely on to live in this world with a cheeky face.

He found the answer in the writer's relics.

That thing was caught in his suicide note, and when the dust settled, the police decided to hand it over to the ranger.

It's the writer's slightly funny little pink barrette.

Instead of sinking it into the lake with him after the ranger retrieved it from the mountains, the writer chose to clip it to a piece of letter paper.

The first page of the suicide note just explained that his suicide was only related to depression, and mentioned his will and some simple funeral affairs, while the second page with the hairpin simply wrote a line:

"Thank you, you made me feel that I didn't feel sorry for anyone, including myself."

"I'm finally forgiven."

-36

The ranger felt forgiven, too.

Or maybe he just let them off the hook.

Perhaps, as the writer said, he just respected the wishes of his adoptive father, not because he himself neglected to take care of his adoptive father, which led to the death of his adoptive father.

maybe.

Maybe he can also rely on this value to continue to survive the remaining six hours of the day.

Until one day, he found an exquisite strawberry cake by the lake.