It hurts too much.

Six years ago.

The cold and silent He House.

No laughter, no companionship.

Although the servants in the house prepared a cake for He Yu according to He Jiwei and Lv Zhishu's instructions, He Yu did not go to eat it. On his birthday, his parents were away, both with his brother in Yanzhou, and they said they had an important client to talk to today, so they could only see if they had time to catch a plane back after the talk.

He didn't have many friends, and most of his classmates were polite and distant, so inviting them to his birthday party would be too tight.

On that day, Xie Qingcheng was not in Shanghai either, he had a meeting, and was indeed on a business trip, as Xie Xue had asked in his text message.

Even the sky was not kind, it was pouring rain and blowing wind outside, He Yu stood in the living room, the big European windows became a weird and unpredictable ink painting, framing the pouring rain outside.

Dang-- dang-- dang--

The large clock in the villa chimed every hour, each time striking the time on the face with unerring accuracy.

From afternoon, to dusk, to nightfall.

"Young master ...... don't wait, Mr. He and Mr. Lu said that they can't come back today ......" Guan Jia couldn't bear to do so, carefully went up, put a piece of clothing on He Yu, and said. "Sleep early."

"It's okay, actually today can't be considered an official day." He Yu turned back, actually still smiling, "You go ahead and get busy, I'll rest in a while. I'll watch the rain for a little while longer."

Guan Jia sighed softly and went down.

Is it really okay, doesn't matter?

Not at all. He's just waiting for--

He felt that there should always be someone in the world, someone who could come to him in the storm, think of him, remember him, and be there for him in the darkness.

He wasn't that bad of a person, he didn't have to be punished like that, alone to this point, did he?

He waited.

Waiting for ......

"He Yu! He Yu!!!"

I don't know how long it was, it seemed, just as the clock was about to strike midnight, when he heard a knock at the door outside, and the girl's faint voice seemed muffled in the storm, like a hallucination.

His eyes widened slightly as he hurried over and opened the door.

Standing outside was a panting Xie Xue -- the only one, of the opposite sex, with whom he was acquainted. The only one, a playmate who had been by his side for many years.

Xie Xue was wearing a raincoat, her face and forehead were covered with water, cold and without much warmth, but when she looked up at him, it was warm.

She sniffled and laughed as she pulled off her raincoat, revealing the birthday cake carefully guarded underneath.

"Finally caught up aren't we?"

"What brings you to ...... ......"

"I didn't want you to spend your birthday alone, how sad that would be." Xie Xue wiped the water that was still trickling down her hair, "Made you your favorite chocolate flavored cake, oh my god I'm going to get soaked to death, it's raining so hard, live and let live ......"

He Yu In that moment, all the resentment in his heart seemed to be dispersed, and all the gaps were filled.

He clutched Xie Xue's cold hand and pulled her in, and he felt himself speaking with a slight rasp in his voice. He said, "I guess I shouldn't be alone either ......"

"How can it be. How can you be alone? You still have me, I'll always be by your side."

"......"

"Happy thirteenth birthday, He Yu," the girl smiled brightly, becoming the brightest ray of light in the dimly lit villa.

He Yu doesn't remember much of what happened after that, because it was a long time ago.

All he remembered was that he went back to the fridge later to look for the uneaten chocolate cake and it was gone.

Gone, of course, along with that cake, were the treats that Nanny had baked for him that he hadn't touched a bite of.

Seeing his face gloomy, the nanny did not wait for him to be angry, and was busy explaining, "Those things are not fresh anymore, they have to be eaten to spoil the body, so that's why they were poured ...... If you still want to eat, we'll do it again tonight."

But it won't be the same cake that Xie Xue brought on a rainy night.

He Yu said, "It's okay, forget it."

......

He Yu looked at the projection in front of him, like falling into an ice cave, he clearly remembered that day, Xie Xue was here ah.

He that day ...... was ...... was accompanied by someone who thought of him ......

But--

The information on the projection was deciphered by He Yu himself, backed up by cloud storage traces, never fake.

"Brother, Auntie Lai is sick, I'm hanging water with her, when are you coming back from your trip? The hospital procedures are so messy, my head is getting big, it would be great if you were here. ......"

What's going on?

How!

He flipped out his computer, his fingers flying, his expression almost distorted, his eyes close to madness, as if he wanted to dig up the graveyard of information, to open the coffin and expose the corpse, to find the truth that had been buried for a long time.

He retrieved the information from those days extremely quickly.

Xie Xue, Xie Qingcheng, He Jiwei, Lv Zhishu.

The truth was like an incorruptible corpse in a cloud of information banks, showing him a cruel and mocking sneer.

False ......

False ......

Fake!!!

Because it was so long ago, a lot of the chat logs couldn't be captured anymore, but the information that was successfully restored was enough to prove that Xie Xue, on that night, on the night that he needed her the most, she--

It didn't come at all.

He Yu even saw the message she sent to Xie Qingcheng on the second day, "Brother, He Yu asked me if I'm going to play at his house for his birthday, but Auntie Lai was so sick yesterday, I was so busy and dizzy that I forgot to reply to him, I'm so sorry, can you apologize to him for me... ...I don't dare to explain to him ......"

Xie Qingcheng : "You don't need to be that close to him."

......

Retrieve further.

The timeline moves forward a little more ......

It's even more shocking.

He flipped to a particular record.

It is a conversation between Xie Qingcheng and He Jiwei.

"He Yu seems to have some kind of imagination when he is helpless. The object of his imagination is that little sister of yours." He Jiwei said, "What I've inadvertently discovered recently is that some of the things he's been talking to me about never actually happened at all, Dr. Hsieh, in this case ......"

"It's normal for him." Xie Qingcheng replied, "I've always known about this behavior of his."

"How did this happen ......"

"He Yu lacks a friend around his age, but his heart refuses to really open up to anyone his own age. His mind is special and precocious, and most of the people around his age don't understand him very well. The long period of closure causes him to need an outlet for his feelings, and at this time the closest peers can easily become a reflection of himself."

"A reflection of yourself?"

"Yes, a portion of children with autism, or other psychological problems, will grow up imagining a friend in the presence of whom they can hand over their hearts without reservation. That friend may not exist at all, or it may exist partially. They are imagined by the patient in the sense of fulfilling a strong desire within the patient."

Xie Qingcheng explains to He Jiwei: "Not only children with mental illnesses, but also normal children will have unrealistic fantasies when they are alone, for example, if they are ostracized in class and have no friends, they will sometimes imagine a friend for themselves, believing that they are the only ones who can see and communicate with that friend, which is a self-protective instinct. Only they can communicate, this is a kind of self-psychological protection instinct of children."

"It's just that people who don't have the disease, they can tell that it's their imagination, it's a hallucination, it's not reality, and they know very well that it's a sense of comfort that they crave. But a child like He Yu. It's actually very difficult for him to recognize that - especially since it's still part of his imagination that he's engaging in."

He Jiwei : "Partially Imagined means ......?"

"Xie Xue does exist, it's my sister, the one who was the closest to him out of the friends who were around him, and was really nice to him." Xie Qingcheng said, "But my sister I know well, she treats people with warmth all the time. He Yu is one of her close friends, but not to the point of being a close friend, there are some things she won't go that far."

"For He Yu, however, his spirit needs to be bolstered, and the things that Xie Xue doesn't do, but that he wishes she would do, are left to his own complementary imagination. He only has this one friend, and he doesn't want to be disappointed in this friend, and his subconscious will repeatedly convince himself that those things are what happened, what Xie Xue actually did."

"But it's so metaphysical that I find it hard to believe-"

"This is not at all mysterious, the human brain is a very complex and precise instrument, and a person's memory that is biased and has been emphasized over and over and over again will appear as such."

"Just like there are people who sometimes confuse reality with dreams, another example is the so-called Mandela effect."

"Mandela effect?"

"This is not a rigorous academic concept, but it is suitable for interpretation. He can always be interpreted as a mass memory error event, go to the Internet and search to see many cases. For example, did ...... Mickey Mouse wear back pants?"

This time He Jiwei took a while to reply to the message, seemingly confused by Xie Qingcheng suddenly asking such a cute question in such a serious conversation.

"Wear it."

"Didn't wear it. But a large part of the population believes that it was just wearing a pair of strappy pants all along. That's the Mandela effect. It's an inherent impression created when a false memory is deepened over and over by the human brain."

"He Yu can think of it this way, Mickey Mouse equals my sister, which does exist, but she doesn't actually have any strappy pants at all. And He Yu relies on his imagination to make up the two non-existent straps and firmly believes that this is the way things are in the truest sense of the word."

He Jiwei : "...... So, is this delusional?"

"It can't be defined that way. For He Yu, it's just his self-protection, self-relief, and self-redemption." After Xie Qingcheng posted this message, it took a long time before the latter-

"Mr. He, with all due respect, you and Mr. Lu have been far too little company for him, and even a healthy child at heart can seldom tolerate such neglect, not to mention the fact that he is a patient himself."

"He was unloved, but strong, or perhaps not so strong, but he knew that it was no use crying, no use pleading, no way to get the response he needed, so he had become accustomed to internal conflict, to self-defense. The Xie Xue he projected was always a reflection of himself, his inner self consoling him, the Xie Xue whose mouth he was using to tell himself the words he wanted to hear."

"......"

He Yu looked at these dusty messages and thought about those longings in his heart ......

For example, I'll always be there for you.

Like, the one he couldn't wait for, a face-to-face, happy birthday to you.

Aren't these words that he deeply wishes someone would resort to?

But he never got to wait ......

Xie Qingcheng's message: "Because no one said to him, and he is a person with high self-esteem, it is impossible to say to himself, his brain can only rely on part of the imagination, both to satisfy his desire, but also to maintain his dignity. It's a kind of psychological protective mechanism that a man has for himself, and you needn't worry too much about it."

He Jiwei's message: "You knew all this?"

"Probably observed it for a while. It was something I couldn't tell him, it hit him too hard."

Xie Qingcheng says, "But I've always kept Xie Xue away from him. Xie Xue isn't the one he should be emotionally attached to either. Neither she nor I are, Mr. He. Sooner or later we're going to have to leave."

"I'm a doctor, I'm not He Yu's relative. I can't spend my whole life on one case, and Xie Xue even more so. I can only give him detachment, and the kind of love he's missing and wants, I can't give him. The same goes for my sister."

"......"

He Yu did not read the latter message, and it was no longer of any importance.

It was enough that he knew this.

That's enough.

Xie Qingcheng had been lying to him all along, and Xie Xue was also a fake. The two of them, one of them used to give him the strongest creed of encouragement, making him believe that he could return to normal society one day, and the other one gave him the gentlest companionship, and at every time when he was desperate and helpless, she would come to his side in time.

Like that night in the pouring rain when she knocked on his door, shouted his name through the storm, took off her raincoat and held out the piece of chocolate cake he wanted.

It never occurred to him that maybe the cake, the Xie Xue ...... cake, didn t even exist.

And his poor, weak self-congratulation, but also all fell into the eyes of Xie Qingcheng, by that man overlooking, mastery.

No one ever loved him.

He was the one who acted like a fool! He was too stupid, too foolish, too eager to walk into the warmth of the crowd, to be normal, to put away his ugly green face and fangs, and to create that tiny bit of light from within his blood-soaked skull.

Xie Qingcheng saw it, but he said--

"I can't spend my whole life on one case, and Xie Xue even more so. I can only give him detachment, and the kind of love he's missing and wants, I can't give him. The same goes for my sister."

But if a person possesses love in himself, why should he lie even to himself?

What kind of liar deceives the world and ends up deceiving himself the most.

Only the poorest, poorest liars do.

He had so little, and had shed so many tears, that he had to imagine to get even a happy birthday. If he didn't lie to himself, what else could he live on with such a smile?

So even in front of himself, he wore a mask of a smile, fastened on with a death grip, refusing to take it off. He swindled even himself.

Xie Qingcheng is right, he is dignified.

He didn't want to be seen as a sick man, he didn't want to be seen as a madman, he knew that with the position of the He family, he didn't know how many people were waiting for him to fall down and see his ugliness and see his corpse reveling in his blood, and for that reason he became more and more good-natured, and he didn't want to show his sores at all to any one to gain pity.

He Yu stood in the empty living room for a long time.

So long that time seemed to have become a bit of a blur, his gaze was thin and sharp, skimming over and over again over this icy tidal wave of information in front of him, and in the end the sharpness seemed to have been eroded by the tidal wave, becoming branched out and in a trance.

He slowly closed his eyes.

A mask, symbiotic with flesh and blood, was now brutally torn off by Xie Qingcheng, who raised his hand and wordlessly touched his own face.

Ouch.

It hurts ......

It hurt so much that it made his heart, his whole being, tremble.

It's like he just had nothing left in the night.

Xie Qingcheng's creed is false, Xie Xue's intimacy is false, the comfort he gives himself is false, and finally even his self-respect, even the hard shell he uses to protect himself, that mask, is also broken. Until now, he realized that his own ridiculous clown-like face has been exposed in front of Xie Qingcheng for so many years.

So what the hell is he holding out for?

And why would he be so stupid! Risking his life to accompany that person, perhaps just for a word of recognition, in order to repay the ray of hope that Xie Qingcheng had given him in the past.......

He didn't even want his life to go and curry favor with a liar and a big lie!

He Yu laughed softly, bowing, leaning against the wall, the laughter is getting bigger and bigger, more and more crazy, like the grave ghosts swindling back to life, the inner demons cloaked in a cloak in the dark night wandering out, he added his hand to his forehead, laughter is nearly crazy, like anger like hate, like sadness like madness, tears can not help but dripping down from the face of ......

That really hurt.

He saw Xie Qingcheng opening his hand to him in front of him, but in the center of his palm lay a cold scalpel.

That's the truth.

He saw Xie Xue smiling and handing him chocolates before blinking again she just looked away from him.

This is the truth ......

He saw again ......

He saw him again standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, a raging storm outside, the antique desk clock inside the old mansion striking twelve, the night deep and surrounded by an infinite dimness.

But no one knocked on the door.

There was never a knock on the door.

And so he waited, from darkness, until dawn, when the storm had stopped and the long night was centralized, and he couldn't wait for a heartfelt Happy Birthday.

This, then, is the truth.

He saw him again lying on the restraint bed, needles jabbed down, mouth and nose masked, and he was struggling and crying out like a dying beast, but he couldn't call out any of his names.

He's an island.

There's no bridge.

That's the fucking truth! The truth!!!

An unloved child who lied to heaven and earth and to himself for years in order to fight the disease inside him and to try to survive ......

The moment.

He Yu leaned against the wall, the bandage on his shoulder had been ripped off with a vengeance, and he let his wounds crumble and bleed, only blood could make him feel happy and real and feel that he was indeed alive! He had a skin, the blood that came out was warm, he was alive, he was alive ...... he was alive ......

He grabbed his hair, his fingers turned white, his veins stood out, he was like a blind dragon with broken claws, he lost the treasure that he treated so gently and the cave where he hid, he was forced to be exposed under the sun, every ugly scar on his body could be examined and laughed at by people at will.

The dream, finally, is awake.

He's been struggling for almost two decades and he's still crazy.

No one ever loved him, no one ever cared about him.

He has nothing but a poorly constructed lie.

It's amazing that he never got anything.