Flying-Bird Hourglass

1.

“Name?”

“Yu Yingwen.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes, Doctor Yu, three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Please sit over there, Doctor Yu will come right away.”

I was sitting on a bench by the wall. Since I came out of Taolin Road Hospital, as long as I took medicine on time, I rarely visited a doctor for psychological counseling.

“Mr. Yu?” Doctor Yu walked over and looked at me carefully. I could feel the surprise in his eyes, “Why are you here?”

“I…” I looked around, lowered my voice, “It’s not convenient here.” What I wanted to tell him was bizarre. Or not bizarre, it was something I often talked about at Taolin Road Hospital, but after all, it was a mental hospital, it was quite different from this ordinary psychology clinic.

“Okay, let’s go to my office and talk.” Doctor Yu pushed the door, stepped aside and let me in.

I bowed my head and followed him in shortly. I was sixty-five this year and my physical condition was not good. My biggest problem was mental illness. My friend said that I wouldn’t live to be 70 years old. I thought it was already a miracle that I could live to retirement.



2.

I had a severe delusions schizophrenia with paranoia symptoms.

Usually this illness was triggered after an extreme nervous breakdown, but it wasn’t the case for me. In an ordinary warm afternoon, I woke up and it broke out.

Memories accumulating thick dust, piled in the corner of my mind, as long as I didn’t deliberately search, I was an ordinary happy old man.

Unfortunately, this was an extremely sensitive illness. I couldn’t overload my emotions nor release them at will. My brain was a fragile porcelain. If I didn’t pay attention to it, I’d be in a state of disorder.

So I came to see Dr. Yu. After I was discharged from the hospital, I was assigned to him. He was responsible for my mental condition.



3.

“How are you doing?” Doctor Yu tried to enliven the atmosphere with a relaxed and happy tone.

“I attended a funeral.” I said, wondering how to describe the incident less paradoxically. “I attended his funeral.”

“You mean…” Doctor Yu’s expression suddenly became serious. He looked through the medical records and turned over the files, “Rong Qianshan’s funeral?”

“Yes.” I nodded, “Rong Qianshan, 68 years old, lived in No. 304 Building 13, Linnan Mingyuan, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou. He died of a heart attack.”

“Why did you, no, how did you get there?” Doctor Yu asked.

“I received the invitation.” I said, I took out a letter, “Here.” A rectangular letter, the envelope was printed with lacquer in the shape of an hourglass, and the letter was dotted with simple strokes of flying birds.

Doctor Yu took the letter and opened it half-heartedly. The yellowed letterhead looked like it was some years old.

I remembered clearly what was written in the letter.

[Dear Yingwen…]



4.

Dear Yingwen,

How are you?

I hope you eat on time, exercise well, and also

May 6th, my funeral.

Come here in a suit, I like your seagull tie.

Rong Qianshan.



5.

“Seagull tie?” Doctor Yu asked.

I nodded: “The tie I wore on the day I graduated from high school.” I didn’t know why I kept that tie for so long. For more than 50 years, it was at bottom of my closet. I had a hard time pulling it out.

“He knows you.” Doctor Yu said.

Yes, he knew me, no doubt. Why else would he write to me and invite me to his funeral?

I knew him too, not in reality, but in my hallucinations.

“But.” Doctor Yu frowned. “On May 6, there was a magnitude 6 earthquake in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou. How could anyone hold a funeral?”

“Earthquake?” I was surprised, “What earthquake?”



6.

The weather was very fine on May 6th, with blue sky, white clouds, and a blowing breeze. I dressed up specially, wearing a Shanghai gull tie and a neat suit. As if back in the time of youth, embarking on the train for interviews excitedly.

I lived in Dalian, because I liked warm air and the sea. It happened to be a city that fitted all of them. Although I lived in Dalian, I didn’t have many opportunities to visit the city, because most of the time, I was receiving treatment at Taolin Road Hospital.

The hospital garden grew a large area of peach trees. The flowering period of the peach trees wasn’t long, but it was enough for me to appreciate and praise, and share with Rong Qianshan in my sleep.

I brought a CD-ROM, his favorite “Doctor Who” cast interviews. He was a university professor and taught physics. It just so happened that I was also a university teacher, teaching philosophy.

I was obsessed with existentialism for a period of time before the onset of this illness. The debate between Kafka and Camus was wonderful.

I fell into a deep sleep holding “The Stranger”, a book full of absurd judgments, “He didn’t cry on the day his mother was buried”, Meursault should have cried, wailed, howled, to emphasize the importance of his mother to him.

Then I opened my eyes again, I saw Rong Qianshan, standing under a peach tree smiling at me: “Professor Yu.”



7.

Professor Yu ruined most of my life.

Wearing a black suit with a white rose pinned in my left breast pocket, I stepped into the funeral.

The funeral was in the auditorium of a hotel, guests came and went back and forth, and I shuttled between them, like a ship without a trace, until I saw him——

In the black and white photo in the middle, Rong Qianshan, I read his name:

“Rong Qianshan.”



8.

I had never attended a funeral. I didn’t attend the funeral of my parents.

It wasn’t that I was cold-blooded, but I couldn’t attend. I was treated at Taolin Road Hospital. My relatives naturally forgot me, as if I were a bag of disgusting rubbish. I understood their feelings, whoever had a mentally ill relative wouldn’t be willing to admit it.

I had a younger sister who came to the hospital to tell the news of my parents’ death. I had just taken medicine at that time, and my whole body was limp, like stepping on a cloud. She blamed me for my bad attitude, she got angry at me, then hugged me and wept bitterly.

I told her that I fell in love with someone.

A person who did not exist.

I fell in love with Rong Qianshan.



9.

Rong Qianshan and I were two sides of the same glass. The two of us could never really embrace each other. He smiled at me through the glass.

Like the peach blossoms in April, like a sprinkled spring.

I didn’t hesitate to praise him with all the praises, but it was still less than a cent of him.

For more than 20 years of hospital life, medicine destroyed part of my memory. I only remembered that I loved Rong Qianshan, but I didn’t remember why I loved him.

The relationship between us was a dream, I dreamed of him, I loved him.

Whether he loved me or not, I didn’t know.

I was a flightless bird, living on a piece of driftwood.



10.

“Hello, sir.”

I looked back, and a young man stood behind me: “What’s the matter?”

“Excuse me, you are Mr. Rong’s…?” he asked.

Who was I to Rong Qianshan? Why did he send me an invitation? We never met in reality. At the craziest time, I asked my friends in the public security system to find information about Rong Qianshan, but there was nothing.

There was no such person as Rong Qianshan in the world.

But now, I was at the funeral of Rong Qianshan.

Who was he?

I said: “I am Yu Yingwen.”

The young man’s eyebrows soothed out, he took out a wooden box and handed it to me: “I am Professor Rong’s assistant. Before he died, Professor Rong told me to give you this box.”

I took the wooden box, it wasn’t big, about the length of two palms, heavy, and I said, “Thank you.”



11.

“He gave you a box.” Doctor Yu said.

I nodded, “Yes.”

“Did anyone else know you at the funeral?” Doctor Yu asked.

I shook my head: “No, I don’t know them, and they don’t know me either.”

“So, you went to the earthquake center to attend a funeral that was full of strangers.” Dr. Yu said, “Are you sure this happened? Did you see it in an overly real dream?”

Dr. Yu’s summary confirmed my sense of absurdity, and I swallowed: “I don’t know, but,” I took out the wooden box, “This is true.”

Doctor Yu took the wooden box and opened it with a strange expression: “There’s an hourglass in it.”

“I know.” I said, “Why did he give me an hourglass?”

“I am a psychiatrist, Professor Yu, not a detective.” Doctor Yu said, he closed the wooden box and reached out to me, “How are you sleeping lately?”

“Not bad.” I put the wooden box into the paper bag.

“Do you still dream of Rong Qianshan?” he asked.

I shook my head: “Since the funeral, I haven’t dreamed of him.”

Dr. Yu guessed: “Is that funeral a sign that your brain is healing?”

I didn’t dare to answer, I fell in love with a phantom and spent most of my life exploring it, but why did the phantom say goodbye to me at this time? Thousands of questions were hidden in my heart. I stood up and said to Dr. Yu, “Thank you, I’ll be leaving now.”

“Okay, call me if you need anything.” Dr. Yu said, “Congratulations, Professor Yu.”



12.

I was not happy, not at all.

I was sitting on the balcony, holding a small watering can to water the flowers. I lived in a one-bedroom teacher’s apartment, it was just right for me to live alone.

My sister would bring things and see me from time to time, and my nephew as well, but I still felt lonely because there was no Rong Qianshan in my dreams.

This bad guy. I put down the watering can, picked up the hourglass and looked at it again and again, plain wooden hourglass, gray sand, nothing special. I deflected the hourglass, facing the sun, there was a thin crack at the bottom of the hourglass.

What was this? Along the gap, I pushed in two fingers forcefully, revealing a red button. I sat on the recliner, thinking about this little toy curiously, and pressed the red button. The sand in the glass suddenly lost weight, and the sand that got stuck to the bottom due to gravity started to flow upwards, passing through the thin bottleneck and topping the upper wooden board.

The scene in my eyes suddenly distorted and changed, and after a loud noise, I couldn’t feel anything.

Notes:

Yu Yingwen thought he had a mental illness, but he actually didn’t“He came across thousands of mountains and rivers to find me” from the summary means “He came to find me from far away with great difficulties”Rong Qianshan’s name, 千山 qiān shān, means thousand mountainsIt didn’t really do anything to the story, but the author said MC is semeUh.. yeah, better prepare some tissues |･ω･｀)