ASHES CH14: Ripples

Luo Zhi slowly opened his eyes.

He looked at the ceiling, thinking seriously for a few minutes about where he was. Having no success, he had no choice but to pick up the phone lying next to him.

He couldn’t quite remember after which exact sleep or fainting spell he woke up that this situation started occurring.

In short, after waking up one time, Luo Zhi looked at the words on his memo app. Although he recognized every character, he could no longer discern their meaning, and it was difficult to string memories together through deduction.

It was as if a squirrel dedicated to eating memories lived in his brain, taking a little bite each day, leaving more and more blanks.

It didn’t hurt, it was just a tingly, numb, and uncontrollably sour sensation, leaving him completely powerless.

It was like… when you reach back to grab something and accidentally hit your funny bone hard against the corner of a cabinet, resulting in an intense, paralyzing soreness that instantly sweeps through your arm.

At first, Luo Zhi was a bit scared, but he quickly adapted to this feeling.

This feeling was very relaxing.

As if he were a blank person with no past and no future.

He didn’t need to think about any unnecessary people or things, so he had no worries.

Even the pain and sadness that happened to the Luo Zhi of yesterday had nothing to do with him.

…But if he completely forgot everything, it was still quite inconvenient.

Like the boss of the last shady inn.

Not knowing from which detail the boss discovered Luo Zhi couldn’t remember things, he got greedy and asked Luo Zhi for the room fee thirteen times in two days.

The boss completely failed to realize that Luo Zhi just had amnesia, not dementia. The transfer records were glaringly obvious in his phone, impossible to deny.

Luo Zhi transferred the money when asked. Once the amount reached the threshold for filing a police report, he turned around and threatened to report the man, demanded double compensation on the spot, and took the money to another inn.

…

Luo Zhi happened to tap on this video recording.

Holding his phone and curled up at the head of the bed, he watched his own heroic deed with great relish. Seeing the shady boss’s ashen face, he laughed almost uncontrollably.

Luo Zhi dragged the progress bar and watched it back and forth twice. When he finally laughed enough, he closed the video and chose to sort them by chronological order again.

The phone lagged for a few seconds until the back panel started to get slightly warm, and a bunch of video clips, each tens of minutes long, finally appeared on the screen.

Because the memo app was no longer effective, Luo Zhi had started using video recordings to document the things happening to him.

Yesterday was a happy day.

In the video, Luo Zhi was wearing a simple white shirt and jeans, carrying a drawing board on his back, looking like a student out sketching.

He sat by the road drawing and got completely drenched by a sudden downpour. The soaked painting unexpectedly blurred into a certain impressionistic artistic aura.

He simply handed the painting work over to the rain, threw away his brush, and enthusiastically went to splash in the puddles by the road.

There were quite a few people waiting for the bus by the road. As the video panned across, many looked at him with strange expressions. Some probably feared he was going crazy and subtly moved away.

Then a little girl laughed and clapped her hands. Completely ignoring her pretty new dress, she excitedly ran over to splash in the water with him.

Her parents were startled and ran over to stop, coax, and cajole her. Ultimately, no one knows how they were convinced, but it turned into the whole family playing and splashing in the rain together.

Then someone else couldn’t help but run into the rain from under the bus station’s shelter.

Doing this kind of thing alone is very strange, but when everyone starts being strange, no one seems strange anymore.

Some reached out to catch the cold raindrops; some opened their arms to let the wind catch their jackets. A boy who seemed like an older brother kept a stern face playing serious until his sister pulled him into the rain, and he immediately started laughing.

Two boys, clearly just out of school, fought with their umbrellas—you splash water in my face, I push you over—getting completely soaked and messy, sitting in the rain with water all over their faces, laughing breathlessly.

Luo Zhi found himself crowded out of puddles to splash in, so he dug out his guitar.

After the sounds around his ears disappeared, and as he gradually adapted to that extremely quiet world, the originally clear sounds in his memory also blurred day by day. He was no longer used to speaking, nor could he sing.

But what did that matter?

He couldn’t hear anyway.

Besides, at a time like this, what was needed wasn’t some proper, beautiful melody.

Luo Zhi sat on the planter, concentrating on strumming his strings. He used to play the guitar extremely well—tapping, harmonics, bending strings all came effortlessly to him. Back before he was inexplicably cursed by the whole internet wishing for his early death so he wouldn’t pollute the world, he could easily ignite an entire venue with just a guitar.

…But what did that matter?

The little squirrel in Luo Zhi’s brain was very diligent, eating up those vaguely surging memories cleanly in less than a second.

So he concentrated on strumming his strings.

The passionate, cheerful guitar sounds mingled into the raindrops, the pitter-patter of the rain, the rumbling thunder, and the crackle of bright white lightning across the gloomy sky.

Then, throw all the worries, all the pressure, and all the unhappiness into a brief, tacitly understood, intentionally indulged loss of control.

Then, return to reality and their own lives, completely satisfied.

The little girl was tag-teamed by her young parents, wiped clean after playing in the water. Covered in her dad’s warm jacket, she poked her head out from her mom’s arms: “Where’s the big brother?”

The people had finished letting off steam and returned under the rain shelter. They were drenched and disheveled, yet everyone still wore a relaxed smile on their faces.

The sister pulled out a few tissues, standing on her tiptoes to wipe the water off her brother’s head, sticking her tongue out defiantly while being scolded.

A couple cuddled together; the guy opened his jacket and wrapped the girl tightly inside.

The two boys ended their duel, stopped waiting for the bus, hoisted their umbrellas, and each scanned a rental bike, riding in the rain with water splashing and their clothes flying.

A young man who looked like a salesman yanked off his tie, stretched vigorously, took a deep breath, and let it out, telling himself: “I’ll go resign tomorrow. Start a new life.”

The mother rubbed her daughter’s hair with a gentle expression: “The big brother went home.”

The little girl blinked, looking around.

The big brother was gone, the guitar and drawing board were gone, and the phone propped up on a tripod was also gone.

…

Luo Zhi carefully watched all the videos.

He couldn’t hear sound, so he repeatedly dragged the progress bar, carefully discerning what everyone was saying over and over again based on their lip movements.

At the end of the video, it stopped abruptly on faces that appeared excessively close to the lens.

It was two girls he didn’t know, looking at him with complex expressions. That kind of look was enough to pull a person back to reality in a second.

He stopped playing his guitar.

“Luo Zhi?” His name was called out. “You’re that Luo Zhi, right?”

…

Luo Zhi opened a video editing app, carefully dragged the timeline, and deleted this last segment.

He bent his fingers, lightly knocked on his temple, and coaxed the squirrel out, asking it to eat the memory.

When summoned subjectively like this, the squirrel’s appetite usually wasn’t very good. The eaten content still retained a vague outline, requiring a period of deliberate avoidance to completely forget.

So Luo Zhi could still remember what happened at the time.

This kind of thing actually happened quite often.

Huaisheng Entertainment had issued a statement. Due to the exceptionally egregious nature of the incident involving Mr. Li Weiming, the board of directors had relieved Luo Zhi of his duties as general manager.

This outcome could not be called anything but severe, leaving Li Weiming’s fans barely satisfied, and they accepted Li Weiming’s decision to let bygones be bygones and resume cooperating with Huaisheng Entertainment.

Huaisheng Entertainment returned the favor, throwing a massive amount of traffic and resources at Li Weiming.

So Li Weiming was incredibly popular lately—so popular that his advertising standees were on every street corner, and so popular that a group of young girls would stay up all night just to like his new album.

It was also so popular that even if Luo Zhi was just walking down the street, he would easily be recognized as the “bastard former general manager who humiliated and suppressed Li Weiming.”

Whether intentional or by coincidence, Li Weiming’s newly released show was a workplace drama. In the show, there was also a general manager who relied on his background and power to do all sorts of evil, humiliating and making things difficult for Li Weiming’s character in every way.

The drama was very well-shot and immersive. After only three episodes aired, it strongly pulled fans in, making them grind their teeth in hatred.

And so this hatred was naturally poured out onto Luo Zhi.

The two girls stood in front of Luo Zhi.

They were well-bred. They didn’t engage in extreme behavior like some of Li Weiming’s fans Luo Zhi had occasionally encountered before. They just hesitated to speak and finally lowered their gaze with disdain.

Probably because Luo Zhi was soaked through and terribly pale and thin, there was also some pity mixed in their gaze, as if looking at a dying stray dog collapsed by the road.

“You look quite pitiful.”

One of them said, “If you had known this would happen, why did you do those things in the first place?”

“What’s the point of saying this to him?” The other girl scolded softly. “When people like him are riding high, they act recklessly and do all sorts of disgusting things. They only know regret when they’re down and out, kicked to the curb… Ignore him, let’s go.”

The first girl sighed, but still handed her umbrella to her companion, took out some money, and handed it to him: “Go buy something to eat. Don’t do bad things anymore. Karma is real.”

Luo Zhi slowly deciphered what they were saying, turned off his phone’s recording function, and typed in the memo app.

He couldn’t use text very smoothly anymore. He revised a sentence back and forth for a long time before it finally flowed: [I have never done bad things.]

The girl who handed him the money frowned.

The other girl completely lost her patience and started firing off: “Wow, so you’re still stubborn even now! Just stay delusional then… What kind of person is this?! So infuriating, let’s go, what terrible luck…”

As she spoke, she pulled her companion away.

This time, the companion’s gaze also turned cold. She probably felt her misplaced kindness was simply laughable. She put the money away and turned to leave without looking back.

Luo Zhi also lowered his gaze, packed up his things, and slowly stood up, slowly walking away.

He was just explaining on behalf of yesterday’s Luo Zhi. Until he completely collapsed and this body was emptied out, he would make an explanation on every occasion he was misunderstood.

It didn’t matter if no one believed him; he just couldn’t do nothing.

With his guitar and drawing board on his back and clutching his wet phone, Luo Zhi wiped his face and walked into the curtain of rain connecting heaven and earth.

…

And then?

Luo Zhi pondered, lightly tapping his forehead twice.

His memory stopped there, which meant he hadn’t walked very far before falling back into that state of hitting his funny bone against a cabinet.

When this situation happened outside, it was very troublesome. He had to get back to the inn as soon as possible before completely losing consciousness, or find an empty alley to pass out in. Otherwise, frightened passersby would call the police or an ambulance.

Although he didn’t know why, the Luo family had also started looking for him recently.

There were a few times Luo Zhi was almost discovered, relying only on instinct from his memory to escape in time. If the police or a hospital was contacted, the news would definitely be relayed to his family.

Therefore, Luo Zhi often carried a bottle of strong, cheap liquor with him. When he realized he couldn’t hold on much longer, he would pour the liquor all over himself so that people smelling the alcohol would assume he was just a drunk passed out by the road and leave him alone.

…Did he accidentally drink the liquor this time?

Drowning his sorrows?

Luo Zhi was amused by his own hypothesis. He really couldn’t find any reference clues from the video, so he had to put away his phone and inch himself off the bed bit by bit.

Bare feet stepping on the solid, soft carpet, Luo Zhi realized this wasn’t the inn he had booked.

To avoid having his identity checked, Luo Zhi always chose shady inns in less strict alleys. They barely met living needs, but the conditions were far from comfortable.

Yet the room he was in now, even if it was just a standard king room, was of a very high standard—at least four and a half to five stars, with the remaining half-star usually determined by whether there was a gym, outdoor pool, and buffet.

Luo Zhi used to be accustomed to staying in such hotels.

It was just that he didn’t use the Luo family’s money; he had never used the Luo family’s money.

Luo Zhi had drawn comics for submission, worked as a game booster, written songs for people, and helped record backing vocals and accompaniments in recording studios… Anyway, he could make a little money doing anything.

Luo Zhi didn’t save the money he earned. He spent whatever he made, and all the extra money went to buying gifts for Auntie Ren, his little sister, his family, and Brother Chenbai.

Auntie Ren was very happy to receive the gifts, hugging him and praising him endlessly, but in the end, a hint of worry would show on her face as she gently poked his head: “Little Spark, aren’t you going to save some money?”

Luo Zhi thought about it seriously: “I’ll save if the things I want to buy are too expensive.”

Auntie Ren was left speechless: “That’s not what I mean… What will you do in the future?”

At the time she asked this question, Auntie Ren had already been diagnosed with the kind of disease that meant her life wouldn’t last much longer.

But she didn’t take it seriously at all, even telling little Luo Zhi that she believed the most important thing in a person’s life was to live happily, not just struggle to live a long time. If one day there was only pain and suffering left, it would be better to be reborn as a hero twenty years later.

Auntie Ren wasn’t worried about her illness, but she seemed to know certain things about the Luo family and was always very worried about Luo Zhi.

Later, Luo Zhi seemed to have found some random topic to divert that conversation.

Although his memory had begun to blur and confuse, he leaned against the edge of the bed and thought slowly. It seemed he had never answered any of Auntie Ren’s questions about the “future.”

…

Since when did he stop wanting to think about the future?

Luo Zhi thought about this for a moment in a brief moment of clarity, and then he forgot what he was thinking about. But at least he still remembered he had appeared in a strange four-and-a-half to five-star hotel, so he still spent a little time making himself stand up slowly.

There were no traces of anyone else in the room.

His guitar and drawing board were placed properly on the sofa, and his clothes and shoes were on the other side, seemingly already washed, dried, and neatly folded. Next to them was a painting.

Seeing that painting, a small fragment of Luo Zhi’s blurred memory jumped out again.

…Strictly speaking, that painting could no longer be called a painting.

Being stopped by those two suddenly appearing girls happened to delay the painting when it looked its best.

Because of the delay, the colors on the canvas were completely washed away by the rain, leaving only pale traces. Later, even those traces completely melted away, slowly blending into the scattered watermarks, disappearing without a trace.

In the end, only some very faint watermarks remained on the canvas.

It was like a person silently drowning in the water, completely disappearing, leaving only that tiny ripple.

Luo Zhi recognized his own handwriting amidst the ripples.

[I have never done bad things.]

He actually couldn’t write very well anymore. It was sometime when his consciousness was blurring and he fell to the ground that he unconsciously took out a brush and traced the shapes of the characters on his phone’s memo app, stroke by stroke.

He sat in the almost pouring rain that submerged everything, tracing stroke by stroke, so focused that he even immersively felt like a great artist.

After finishing the last stroke, Luo Zhi put the finishing touch, satisfyingly drawing a very round period.

He realized he had an audience.

An unrecognizable figure holding an umbrella stood in the rain looking at him, seemingly having stood there for a while.

Luo Zhi hadn’t spoken for a long time, but he had just poured a lot of liquor on himself. The alcohol was diluted by the rain, yet it felt like it seeped into his skin, making him a little dizzy.

Luo Zhi tilted his head up and skillfully curved his eyes into a smile: “Are you here to scold me?”

The voice from a throat unused for so long sounded hoarse and strange, like the pad of a finger rubbing across the roughest rust under a scorching sun, leaving behind a trace of burning heat and the scent of blood.

The person opposite him seemed to freeze for a moment, then shook his head.

Luo Zhi was a bit surprised. He tilted his head and thought for a while: “Here to catch me?”

This time, the person opposite him half-squatted down. Luo Zhi didn’t know if it was his illusion, but through the curtain of rain, the person seemed to frown.

…It seemed it was neither.

Then.

“Then.”

Luo Zhi lifted the drawing board and handed him that line of crooked words in the ripples: “Sir, would you like to buy a painting?”

He smiled so obediently, so beautifully. Luo Zhi, of course, knew how to smile to look his best; he was an experienced little liar.

He successfully lied to Auntie Ren, making her believe he would definitely grow up well, live to be eighty, and have many incredibly beautiful futures.

He had never done bad things.

Luo Zhi looked at the line of words about to be ruined by the rain again. He protected them very dearly, protecting that finishing touch of a period.

“The price is very high. You just have to say ‘hmm’, which means you believe it.”

Luo Zhi tilted his head up, curving his eyes in the overwhelming rain.

He very generously took off his guitar and pushed all his belongings forward: “Just say ‘hmm’, and then they are all yours.”