It looks like an old friend.

Xie Qingcheng stayed at the nursing home in New York as arranged by the Wei family.

Wei Dongheng seemed to be afraid that he would suddenly run away, and instead of 24-hour supervision, he had people keeping an eye on him to make sure that he would be alive and well.

In fact, Wei Dongheng should not be so nervous, since Xie Qingcheng had promised Xie Xue that he would cooperate in the cure, he would not go back on his word. Although this body is no longer useful to him, as long as there is still a need for a candle in the long dark night, he can continue to burn his body until it turns to ashes.

The treatment continued day after day, and the pills were swallowed by the handful.

However, the effect of the treatment was not very satisfactory, and Xie Qingcheng's spirit had already collapsed. A person's body is like a container. When the container is broken and cannot be mended, then no amount of medicine will help.

The only thing that brought back some of Xie Qingcheng's vitality was organizing information for Qin Ciyan.

It seemed to be the last thing he had in the way of mental support.

When a person is abroad, things at home are like the dust of the past, and the difference is not only in distance, but also in time. Xie Qingcheng's days became extremely boring, tedious, and even depressing. He got up at six every morning, carefully organized and repaired Qin Ciyan's notes, and then went to treatment, and came back from treatment with a drip, and continued to face a table full of data. ......

The therapist told him not to use his eyes excessively, so he set himself a lot of timers, resting his eyes every half an hour, and when he rested he would go to the window and look out at the large, green meadows and artificial lakes. Outside his window there was an unknown tree, blooming pale pink flowers, the wind blew the flowers fell, floating on his desk, the desk in addition to books and pens, there is only the broken small fire dragon.

"I didn't realize you liked such cute things." One of the nurses tried to chat him up, "Can I pick it up and look at it?"

Xie Qingcheng closed the book and looked at her quietly, "I'm sorry, this please don't touch."

He was so uninteresting and reticent, his blinded and unblinded eyes sinking into the silent snow of rejection.

He hadn't smiled even once in the months since he came to America.

Admittedly, none of the news he had received in the meantime had been too good either.

Hiro City's military and police attack on Mandela Island failed with heavy casualties, and Duan Wen has weapons over there that are beyond the normal level of technology, both thermobaric and chemical weapons are very advanced.

Those who survived described Mandela Island as having been transformed into a fortress full of traps, like a monster floating on the surface of the sea with its foul-smelling maw ready to devour any human being who dared to come near it.

Not long after, news came back from the Huzhou Detention Center that Wei Rong, due to insanity during the interrogation, had wantonly disclosed important information related to the organization, triggering the confidentiality chip implanted in her body, which instantly injected a toxin into her body, Wei Rong convulsed and frothed at the mouth, and lost consciousness in just more than ten seconds, and died without saving her life.

She died a painful and ugly death, but she got off cheap, after all, she died before she could publicly thank the community and the people she killed.

Such news made the coldness in Xie Qingcheng's eyes grow deeper and deeper.

He frowned slightly almost all the time, even when he fell asleep.

Come to the United States for three months, the walking corpse, only the body alone live, the soul has no idea with whom to go, and more worried about the blow, blind ...... clearly on earth, but with the hell no different.

As for He Yu, I don't know if he hated him too much, but after that initial dream of saying goodbye under the Ferris wheel, Xie Qingcheng never dreamed of him again.

.

At Christmas, the nursing home finally agreed to let Xie Qingcheng go for a walk.

Of course, there must be someone following in the dark, they didn't dare to let anything happen to the person the Wei family had accounted for.

Xie Qingcheng put on his black tweed coat, which seemed thicker than his person. He walked through the downtown neighborhoods, with a light snowfall in the sky, Christmas trees lit up with colored lights, and groups of people on the road-couples, couples, parents and children, families ...... who were busy with their pre-holiday purchases, walking through the streets with large bags, their faces beaming with a very distant smile for Xie Qingcheng is a very distant smile on their faces.

He's the only one alone.

He arrives in Brooklyn, which is even busier - he's finally here, where Qin Ciyan used to study as a young man.

Old Qin once described a flower store to him, saying that apart from going to the Oceanarium, his favorite place was that flower store. Old Qin smiled when he said this, with the mischief of an old man. He said that when he was a student, he admired the girl in the florist store the most, with her bright red hair in two twisted braids, a little bit of cute freckles on her face, and always wore a set of blue dresses, with a flaxen white apron embroidered with the florist store's logo, and she would always greet him with a loud voice when she saw him passing by, asking him to come and buy a bouquet of lilies. The girl was busy outside the shop, painted peacock green, and would always greet him in a loud voice when she saw him passing by, asking him to come and buy a bouquet of lilies.

The store is a small family kept store that has been open for over sixty years.

Xie Qingcheng found the store easily, and the owner was busy with the Christmas bouquets that customers had ordered-she looked like a fairytale character from a story told by Old Qin in the midst of all the flowers, still with her two thick twisted braids, her blue dress, her freckles, and her sparkling eyes.

It's just gotten old.

The little girl back then is now a granny with wrinkles on her face, only the light in her eyes hasn't gone, still full of vigor and fragrance.

Xie Qingcheng suddenly envied her at that moment.

"Buying flowers, sir?"

"Yes." Xie Qingcheng walked into the cozyly arranged flower room, looked around, and finally said, "Ask for a bouquet of lilies."

Granny wrapped the flowers carefully in gold and red paper and handed them to Xie Qingcheng. He took the flowers and got back into the taxi, reporting an address on his cell phone.

An hour later he arrived at a small white house on the outskirts of town, looked at the nameplate on the newspaper box, crossed the garden surrounded by a small hedge in front of the house, and knocked on the door.

The door opened, and there stood a beautiful little mixed-race girl looking up at him with big blue eyes. Then Qin Rongbei's husband came out of the house-he and his daughter had seen Xie Qingcheng at the nursing home and recognized him-he went up to Xie Qingcheng and embraced her, receiving the bouquet of pale pink and white lilies. He went up and hugged Xie Qingcheng, receiving the bouquet of pale pink and white lilies.

"She hasn't been in too much pain all these years." Inside the warm living room with its fireplace, Qin Rongbei's husband brought tea and snacks, and as he surveyed Xie Qingcheng's increasingly thin face, he said, "But her pain seems to have been put on you. Xie Sheng, come and have some ginger cookies, will you? We baked them ourselves."

Xie Qingcheng thanked him and took a piece from the cookie box with the bear on it and ate it slowly.

"When she was alive, she made much better cookies than I do." The man's expression was very gentle when he mentioned his wife, "In fact, she was excellent at everything she did. Although there were many people who hated her in the past, when she was doing scientific research, there were people who laughed at her saying that laboratories were not a place for women to enter, and that girls should marry earlier. When she exposed the shady practices of a charitable foundation in our area, some people said that she had ulterior motives and ulterior motives. She gave speeches on behalf of women and children, and some people questioned her showmanship - even when she and I married out of love and came here, there were lunatics who said she was forgetting her ancestors, how she had learned and accomplished things and ended up marrying a foreigner like me. But I am her family, I understand what she has done in her life, and no matter what others say, she has stuck to what she wanted to do right. So Xie Sheng--"

The man refilled his teacup with hot tea.

"She was kidnapped in the first place, but she still chose to protect your secret, I think she must have thought it through. If she's still conscious enough to talk to you back there, she's bound to tell you that she has no regrets. She hasn't regretted any of her decisions."

"If I had known that you were experimenting on her like that, that those drugs came from you torturing your own body ......," the man shook his head, "we wouldn't have agreed to it."

"Mom says she's a scientist, she doesn't fear death, she fears mistakes." Qin Rongbei's daughter, who was decorating a Christmas tree, suddenly turned around and said this to Xie Qingcheng.

The man smiled gently, "You heard me, we all did."

"......"

"Xie Sheng, we didn't do anything to make ourselves regret, so you don't have to blame yourself. You need to heal well, and then, for your father-in-law, organize all of his notes from his life down the line."

Xie Qingcheng Before leaving, father and daughter gave him a Christmas present.

When he opened it, it was a picture framed in an oak frame, the very same "My Family" that Qin Rongbei had painted before his death, and which was in the album. Only the blank face in the picture, which belonged to Xie Qingcheng himself, has now been filled in.

"I drew it." Qin Rongbei's daughter said, "Mom hasn't seen you while she's sober, she can't draw your face, but I can."

Xie Qingcheng carefully put the gift away, said goodbye to the two men and got into the taxi.

He looked at the framed sketch along the way until he returned to the street near the sanitarium.

"Just get off here." Xie Qingcheng said, "There's still a little way to go, and I want to walk back by myself."

So check out and get out.

He went to a jewelry store in this neighborhood and bought some sticky tape that would secure the frame to the wall, and back inside the hospital he secured the frame to the wall next to the bed.

"My Family

My family, by my side.

My family, after tonight, after night after night, is finally with me always.

We met across life and death, only he was missing.

For he has done nothing wrong but love me.

For I have not failed everyone but him.

.

The moon's shadow was bright outside the window.

Snow melted, flowers bloomed, and in the blink of an eye, the earth has reached a gentle spring.

Xie Qingcheng's condition has been back and forth, not too much better, just did not deteriorate, he has been so sickly to live, there has never been any waves between the eyebrows.

The days just repeat themselves one day at a time.

It was a drizzly evening when Xie Qingcheng bought a bouquet of lilies from the flower store in Brooklyn and was about to take a taxi when she suddenly received a phone call.

The call was from Wei Dongheng, and when it was connected, Wei Dongheng's voice couldn't hold back his excitement as it came over the loudspeaker, "Brother, it's a little early ...... totally unprepared ...... Born this morning ......"

Xie Qingcheng Suddenly stood still.

Because Xie Xue suddenly went into labor, much earlier than her due date, Xie Qingcheng did not anticipate at all that it would be now, that it would be on this seemingly uneventful night.

In the distance, someone in the garden restaurant happened to be having a birthday, and birthday songs drifted in from the drizzly haze.

The lights on the side of the road were reflected in his pupils, and for the first time in months, Xie Qingcheng's eyes finally had some brightness.

There seemed to be a lot of people celebrating and cheering on the other end of the line, and in the midst of the noise, the cell phone was handed to one person. Xie Xue's gentle but weak voice traveled across the ocean and reached Xie Qingcheng's ears.

"Brother, it's a little girl ...... you're an uncle."

......

A phone call ended somehow, and it was the best news he'd heard in all these times. He almost tried to smile lightly, but the corners of his mouth felt like rust, and he couldn't pull at them.

The rain hit the surface of his umbrella, ticking and knocking.

The wind blew, and suddenly the veil that decorated the bouquet covering him was blown away, and the veil lifted up in the air and landed across the street, where it was picked up by a boy wearing rain shoes and holding a small transparent umbrella.

The boy was about seven or eight years old, looking left and right as he crossed the street, striding his short legs to Xie Qingcheng's side.

He tilted his head, holding the piece of gossamer, and looked at him under the boy's umbrella, and then he said to him, as He Yu had done when we first met, "Monsieur, you have dropped your things."

It was this moment.

Xie Qingcheng held the phone, in the birth of a new life, and the reflection of the old man, it seemed that his body was suddenly and roughly stuffed with the emotions of the living, which had not existed for a long time.

The corners of his lips, his eyebrows, his face that had not shown much expression for nearly a whole year, suddenly surfaced a great mourning - obviously something that should be happy, but he looked at the terrified and helpless little one in front of him, and for some reason could not hold back any longer, and in the drizzling spring twilight, he bent down, and finally lost his voice in mourning. ......

"Sir, sir? What's wrong with you?" The boy saw this and stepped forward to take his hand, "Are you ...... in some kind of trouble, can I help you?"

Xie Qingcheng had not broken down and cried like this since she could remember.

And on the streets of New York, in a place where not many people would recognize him, and ultimately not many people would remember him, after he had been lost for a full year, he finally couldn't take it anymore, and couldn't stop the tears from trickling down his face. The hot, burning tears were like the blood that flowed from his heart.

He looked at the child before him with the eyes that could not see and the eyes that could still see.

The child's figure blurred, and he seemed to see his little ghost standing in front of him again, saying to him, "Xie Qingcheng, look ah, new life will come, and I, gone already a year ......"

It's been a year, Xie Qingcheng.

The dead are ashes.

New life has finally come around.

It's time to let go ......

It's time for anyone to get to the point of letting go.

But Xie Qingcheng knew he couldn't do it.

He raised a hand to cover his soaked eyelashes, his heart aching like a sore throat.

Xie Qingcheng choked back a sob, knowing that he would never be able to put this all behind him again. He could rejoice in the coming of new life, but he was doomed to live among the dead forever.

He won't let anything make him forget about He Yu's past.

Like right now, he took the soaking wet gossamer and said thank you - but still to the memory of the one, the brat who would never come back.

The boy who first called out to him on the lawn over a decade ago.