Chapter 43: with translation of chapter title

When I was very young, I grew up at the foot of Kunlun Mountain; my mother taught me to speak. My mother was a very gentle woman, she was also strict. She said, "Rice dumpling, mother will give you the best; when you grow up and become outstanding enough, mother will no longer look after you."

In my memory, her appearance was absolutely beautiful, gentle and dignified.

She was a very capable mother; my design was taught by her, but when I was three, she left me forever.

She had said she would stop looking after me when I grew up, but she went back on her word.

On the day she left, my uncle said the azure birds of Kunlun Mountain had flown away; although I don't remember clearly, I distinctly remember.

Father carried her down from the plane; mother looked as if she were asleep, wearing a beautiful wedding dress. Father knelt outside the door for a long time, begging the uncle to save mother, but the uncle did not save her. At the time I didn't understand; I only saw father kneeling, mother lying in his arms, and I thought she was just tired and asleep.

I grew up and returned to Xuan Garden with my father.

Sometimes I saw my father clutching a photo album in the middle of the night, sobbing like a child in the secret room of the study.

Everything in the secret room had been used by mother, including the wedding dress she had worn; father never allowed the servants to touch mother's belongings.

Grandma often brought medicine to father; I actually didn't know father was ill.

Once I saw him finish his medicine, he murmured to the air outside the window, "Ruanruan, you've come back?"

Later I learned that he had actually been taking LSD, using this harmful method to see mother; perhaps he truly loved her deeply.

The year he died was exactly the fifteenth year after mother's death.

He had long been taking LSD hallucinogens, his body already worn down; on the day he left, he secretly ate scopolamine without my knowledge.

"Ayan, your mother has come back." He still, just like when I was a child, took my hand, pointed at the empty air before us, and spoke gently.

I saw nothing, but I saw his pupils dilated and unfocused.

"Ayan."

"Hmm?"

"When you meet someone you love, love her well, while you are young, while she is still alive…"

"I understand."

"Ayan."

"Hmm?"

"Why haven't the roses beside your mother bloomed?" he asked, furrowing his brow slightly.

"The roses aren't in season yet."

"Ruanruan and I have missed the blooming season."

On the day he left, he whispered in my ear, "Although the roses no longer bloom, the rose in my memory still blooms forever, never withering."

Only later, after I had my wife, did my uncle tell me that father had actually known all along that mother would leave.

I also understood the words in father's microblog.

—The cosmos of Tuscany are beautiful, but they cannot compare to my wife.

In his eyes, aside from his Ruanruan, everything else was merely a backdrop.

—The cherry blossoms at the foot of Mount Fuji fall for Ruanruan.

Actually, his heart is no different from those cherry blossoms at the foot of Mount Fuji; together with his Ruanruan, they have fallen silent.

—No more willow catkins stirred by the wind; only the sunflower leans toward the sun. The wife likes sunflowers; with me, I like the wife, with the sunflower.

At that time I was young and didn't understand this line; I only thought it meant, "The wife likes me and the sunflower, I like the wife and the sunflower."

But I overlooked that line "No more willow catkins stirred by the wind; only the sunflower leans toward the sun." The sunflower grows toward the sunlight; he is that sunflower, forever loving the brilliant sun, and she is the sun.

I and my wife both like sunflowers, but I like my wife more, and together with the sunflower, we both like the wife……

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