After the fact

Author: Thus
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features:
Thus, a native of Shanghai, has previously worked in foreign affairs education, advertising creativity, and magazine editing. Currently, he is a freelance writer, columnist, and a super busy leisure person.
Thus, a native of Shanghai, has previously worked in foreign affairs education, advertising creativity, and magazine editing. Currently, he is a freelance writer, columnist, and a super busy leisure person.
In the city, there are some people without a fixed home, and their love is the same. Immature men and women cannot bear immature children. Being in the same space with the one you love, closed off, is happiness. But all happiness is being tortured, and the closed-off happiness will be shattered by fate.
We naturally cohabited, day by day until a year. We could not be apart from each other, because once we were apart for a second, our hearts would open to others. Therefore, no one denies love. But this love can only be imprisoned, confined to one room. To leave this room is like two drops of water merging into the sea.
Author Thus states, "Deciding to be a freelance writer might be the most important decision of my life. It changed my nature in the crowd. I will never belong to any group. This isn’t loneliness; it’s just an edge state, distant from the so-called white-collar life and the original campus. I’m detached from everyone, warm today, missing tomorrow. Born in 1976, some have married and had children, some struggle to earn money, and some are lost, unsure of what to do next. I live among computers, books, music, and movies. There’s nothing more. Sometimes I feel life is crippled. I think a lot, do little, know a lot, but confirm very little."
"Cohabitation Notes" narrates A: An Uncontrolled Gamble
In our story, we were never just two people.
I had my "him," and he had his "her."
The other two people didn’t join our lives but were always in our imagination. Until one day, when someone entered reality, our cohabitation years became a burst soap bubble. I didn’t reach out to pop the bubble because I wanted to believe I could hold onto reality as well as imagination. But the original beauty was all wrapped in a thin bubble, deliberately protected, which was also deliberately escaping reality.
I remember that winter morning when he and I, in tight black clothes, met at the supermarket downstairs. I didn’t see any other crowds; they must have still been buying zongzi and eggs. I always felt that other people’s lives didn’t change, only we were flipping, chaotic, and living without reason; first chaotic, then finding reasons. I always thought everything would be fine, and if I regretted it, it would be too late. But youth fears losing control the most! Overconfidence in oneself or overindulgence; emotions, habits, careers, and dreams all too easily lead to detours. What I once thought were just interludes would linger in life.
He is no longer the one I remembered, nor the one I will be in the future. He is just that moment.
We, in tight black clothes, went upstairs to my small apartment.
At night, I used to type phonetically incorrect homophones—cohabitation is a gamble, the bed is a wound, the boyfriend is a fellow prisoner, foundation is a graveyard, night is a plaything, love is a nurturing, separation is a struggle, and it’s all another kind of meaning.
Homophones are like omens, leading to the same destination.
We might have had hundreds of hours of calls, long-distance, relaxed, talking about others, talking about the girl he was determined to pursue, until she became our main topic because she was a special friend to me. So, we both thought that the distance between us a year ago would bring us a separate fate, but it didn’t.