Yearn For
There were some regrets in life that cannot be revisited, such as those forgotten things and those who we’ll never see again. Unless there was a miracle.
Unless that miracle is happening right now.
Bian Shengjian looked at the familiar street in his memory, which was flanked by old buildings that had not been remodeled on both sides, and even the small convenience store by the road had a strong sense of nostalgia.
Bian Shengjian was still holding Lu Shen’s hand and hadn’t let go, as his palm was full of sticky cold sweat.
“You…cough, cough!” Lu Shen coughed a few times suddenly, and his already pale complexion lost a bit more blood.
“What’s wrong?” Bian Shengjian frowned at him, and tentatively patted him on the back a few times. “Feeling better?”
“Cough… I’m fine.” Lu Shen covered the corner of his lips and forced a smile. “It’s just a little too much, sorry.”
Bian Shengjian didn’t know what he meant by “too much”, but his eyes soon quickly moved to the spire of a residential building in the distance. That was his former home.
He took a few deep breaths, but the hand on his side was still shaking, as if he had Parkinson’s disease.
“According to this time period, your mother should be in the Affiliated Hospital of the University of Medical Sciences.” Lu Shen looked at him with a pale face.
“In the…..” Bian Shengjian just wanted to take a step, but suddenly retracted it, his face became a little complicated. “What is she doing in a hospital?”
Lu Shen saw his hesitation, and coughed a few more times. “Don’t you want to witness the truth of those years with your own eyes? How would you know if you don’t go in and see?”
“I know.” Bian Shengjian’s tone was very low, “…..this way.”
The two walked lightly through the hospital door, and everyone who passed by had different degrees of sadness written on their faces. It was really a place that made Bian Shengjian feel extremely disgusted.
Lu Shen didn’t say where his mother was, but Bian Shengjian ran to the stairs the moment he entered the hall, as if it was a telepathy between mother and child. However he stopped at a certain floor upon going up the stairs. When he looked up, he saw the sign on the top clearly marked with the word “Psychiatry” in white letters with a green background.
Bian Shengjian wanted to turn around and leave in an instant, but Lu Shen stretched out his hand to support his shoulder and squeezed a few times. “Go in.”
“I… I’m a little scared.” Bian Shengjian said silently.
“No matter how scared you are, this is the truth!” Lu Shen’s voice suddenly rose, and his tone was serious. “Since you are already here, you must face it, understand?”
“Understood.” Bian Shengjian gritted his teeth.
He could feel that he was getting closer and closer to the person in his memory, but his heart sank a little bit uncontrollably, as if he was going to be torn in half in his mind. As he walked to one of the doors of the consultation room and stood there, he suddenly heard a woman inside shouting in a very agitated tone. “This is impossible!”
Bian Shengjian’s body trembled violently, and his feet seemed to be nailed to the ground, unable to take a step forward.
“My mother…will she see me?” Bian Shengjian could barely hear his own voice when he said this.
“Yes.” Lu Shen nodded, “She is also half the target, but she can only see me and you.”
Before Bian Shengjian could speak again, there was a sudden sound of things being overturned on the ground, followed by the doctor’s helpless voice. “Ms. Qin… please calm down and trust my objective diagnosis. “
“It’s impossible! How could I have this disease! Impossible!”
The woman sounded very alarmed, mixed with a hint of crying. “My son is still so young… How can I…”
“Sorry, but after several examinations on you and several psychological evaluations you’ve done before, I can be sure that…” The doctor was still trying to persuade, only to hear the woman suddenly yell, “I don’t believe it!”
After a few seconds of silence inside, the door handle moved, and then a beautiful woman in a long dress, who was wiping her tears, rushed out, almost colliding into Lu Shen’s body.
“I’m sorry…” The woman’s white hand was covering her mouth, gave Lu Shen a random nod and then stumbled forward.
“Mom…Mom! Ummph…”
The moment when Bian Shengjian saw the woman’s side face, all the voices in his ears disappeared instantly, and the blood in the whole body rushed to his brain at once, almost to the point of hearing the surging sound in his heart. But the second he opened his mouth to shout, a hand tightly covered it, forcibly forcing all those voices back.
“Shh…don’t shout, it’s not yet time. “
“Ummph…what are you doing!” Bian Shengjian, with red eyes, tried to pull Lu Shen’s steel-like wrist to argue, but in the gap between their confrontation, the woman stumbled to the other end of the corridor and disappeared.
“Shengjian! Calm down!” Lu Shen roared, “It’s not that I don’t want you two to meet each other, but not now!” From the first time he saw the woman, he knew that this person must be Bian Shengjian’s mother, because she had the same eyes and nose as his.
But not now.
Bian Shengjian bit Lu Shen’s hand with great force, and immediately left a bloody mark.
“Get out of my way!”
“Let’s go and have a look to find out why your mother was so agitated just now.” Lu Shen looked very calm and didn’t even look at his bitten hand. He only leaned into Bian Shengjian’s ear and said in a low voice, “Remember the third rule of our agreement?”
“…Remember.” Bian Shengjian threw his hand away, lowered his head and rushed into the door of the consultation room. Lu Shen then immediately followed while frowning at the man in the white coat who was bending over to pick up the scattered papers one by one, which looked like medical records.
“Qin Wei… this is your mother, right?” Lu Shen asked in a low voice.
“Hm.” Bian Shengjian squatted down and looked at the medical records scattered on the ground from various angles. When he read the black characters on a white background printed on one of the pages, his pupils shrunk to a tiny dot in an instant.
Bipolar disorder. Alternating episodes of depression and mania.
The piece of paper in front of him was picked up by the doctor, and after he finished sorting it, he put it back on the table with a long sigh. “Alas…”
Thud thud
A knock sounded on the consultation door.
“Come in.” The doctor sighed while holding his forehead.
“Doctor Huang, the section chief, asked you to go… What’s the matter?” The nurse who entered the door asked with concern after seeing the mess in the room.
“It’s nothing, just a patient who just left.” Dr. Huang sighed, “I persuaded her many times, but she just wouldn’t cooperate with the treatment.”
“Is it Miss Qin?”
The nurse asked curiously.
“Yeah.” Dr. Huang still sighed, “I feel that her situation is much more serious than when she first came here… Forget it, why is the section chief looking for me?”
“Oh, he’s asking you to go over and get the report from the previous year.” the nurse replied.
“I see.” Dr. Huang nodded, got up and tidied up the table casually before leaving the consultation room with the nurse, leaving behind two “people” they could not see.
“Do you believe it now? Your mother was…” Lu Shen whispered.
“Since when?” Bian Shengjian’s voice was unexpectedly calm.
“I really don’t know this,” Lu Shen sighed deeply and hesitated, “You…you didn’t notice any changes in her back then?”
“I don’t know.” Although Bian Shengjian’s tone was calm, his eyes were obviously out of focus, as if an empty shell was reacting instinctively. “Before I…I originally had a brother and a sister.”
“What?” Lu Shen looked at him.
“My mother has poor health and weak physique. She had two miscarriages before she gave birth to me,” Bian Shengjian murmured, “so when I was a young she always liked to call me San Bao…”
(t/n San Bao-Third Treasure)
“I only found out about this later.” Bian Shengjian reached out his hand and pressed his eyes, “Do you think this has anything to do with her illness?”
“Then when you were young, did you feel that your mother cared about you very much, or was particularly afraid of you getting injured?” Lu Shen asked immediately.
“I…” Bian Shengjian’s throat was a little tight, and he looked confused. “I don’t remember.”
Lu Shen took a deep breath.
Perhaps this is a spontaneous protective response of Bian Shengjian’s brain. After all, he has been traumatized in childhood, and this aspect of memory is likely to have been diluted or selectively forgotten.
“Wait.” Bian Shengjian suddenly sat up straight and looked at Lu Shen without blinking. “What period are we in now?”
“Probably a few days before the accident,” Lu Shen rubbed his forehead, “Because this action did not conform to the regulations, I couldn’t see everything here clearly.”
“That is to say,” Bian Shengjian’s tone trembled a little, and it was only at this moment that he finally realized the question that he had forgotten. “There are two “me” here.”
Lu Shen’s hand rubbing his forehead froze.
“…that’s right.” He nodded, “but the you in the past can’t see the you from the present, so don’t worry.”
“Then…” Bian Shengjian bit his lip, “how should I explain it to her…”
“How to explain to her that she has an eighteen-year-old son now?” Lu Shen smiled, reached out and lightly touched Bian Shengjian’s face. “No need to explain, it’s already obvious from your face. “
“What?” Bian Shengjian looked at him in astonishment.
“Your eyes and nose are really exactly the same as your mother’s.” Lu Shen’s fingers slid down and brushed the corners of his mouth vaguely. “She’ll be able to tell.”
“…Really.” Bian Shengjian raised his hand and touched his face, completely unaware of how warm Lu Shen’s action was just now.
“Hm,” Lu Shen put his hand on his shoulder, “so now, it’s your turn to save her.”
******
A long way away, Bian Shengjian saw the woman in a long dress standing under a street lamp, the bag on her shoulders had slipped down and hung on her elbows, her back looking lonely and desolate.
“Doesn’t she have to pick you up from school?”
Lu Shen was a little surprised upon seeing the woman’s back.
“She is now…”
Bian Shengjian stood there and watched silently, until his eyes turned blurry, he stretched out his hand and wiped it, then looked at her again. This was the person he thought about day and night. Now standing in front of him like this–it felt like a dream.
Maybe I’m just truly dreaming.
“Go.” Lu Shen gave him a slight push on his shoulder, “This is your only chance.”
Bian Shengjian didn’t speak, and tried to control his stiff legs to move forward step by step, until it got faster and faster–
“Mom!” He roared, his tone trembled, concealed were his yearns for the past eight years. And love.
The woman turned her head in astonishment, the makeup on her face had been smudged by tears, but there was still a fragile beauty in it, like a rose blooming again amidst the frost.
Bian Shengjian reached out and hugged her tightly, his wet face buried in her fragrant hair.
The smell was familiar. As it was back then.
“I miss you so much.”
