“Zhou Mu:
Hello.
Before writing to you, I was writing a novel that didn’t actually exist.
I know it makes no sense.
As I type the first line on the keyboard, it’s clear that Xu Zhi is beyond help, in a state of delirium, and his absurd and bizarre condition is confirmed by the person himself.
But I still want to find a reasonable starting point for this event that has become routine for you but has caused me immeasurable pain.
I named this letter “The First Time Xu Zhi Became Brave.”
The name is not good, so don’t laugh at me secretly.
As for the name of the novel, after much deliberation, I decided to call it “A Certain Wednesday.”
Because I described it like this at the beginning of the novel, “On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in April, Xu Zhi met Zhou Mu.”
The reason for choosing April is because the temperature is moderate, the wind is not strong, and based on my long-term observation, Wednesday afternoons usually have the best weather.
So I chose to let Xu Zhi and Zhou Mu meet on this day.
According to my imagination, the novel unfolds like this—-
Xu Zhi joined the work force, and his specific identity was that he was a software worker who worked overtime day and night.
Zhou Mu has achieved some success in his career. He runs a business with great prospects and is very busy and successful.
Xu Zhi had a rare day off. When he went to take out the trash downstairs—he was taking out the trash because he wanted to overcome his bad habit of being lazy about housework—he met Zhou Mu, who was returning home from a business trip.
Zhou Mu is 24 years old, and Xu Zhi is 23 years old.
During his year-long stable job, Xu Zhi never fell in love, and neither did Zhou Mu, who graduated a year earlier than him.
When they went upstairs, they took the same elevator and confirmed each other’s identities as neighbors, and they visited more often in the future.
Xu Zhi still works overtime every day and talks on the phone with Zhou Mu, who travels frequently on business after work.
Then one day Zhou Mu came back from a business trip and brought a gift that Xu Zhi liked very much. He confessed his love, and Xu Zhi said yes.
Two people hug, kiss, make love, live together, and live an ordinary and trivial life.
The content is a bit boring, but I thought a lot about the details of life.
For example, Xu Zhi came home from getting off work and brought back a dirty stray cat. When Zhou Mu took the cat to take a bath, the back of his hand was scratched. Xu Zhi accompanied Zhou Mu to get vaccinated.
Another example is that Zhou Mu did not come home immediately after returning from a business trip. He stood downstairs and called Xu Zhi, asking him to watch a sci-fi movie that was about to be removed from the shelves.
It could also be that the two had a quarrel over who should do the dishes, with Xu Zhi complaining that Zhou Mu doesn’t let him and Zhou Mu accusing Xu Zhi of being lazy.
In short, I think a lot about daily life, both happy and unhappy.
Later, I found out that this was a lie, mixed with Xu Zhi’s bizarre, unrestrained, crazy, and hysterical delusions and Zhou Mu’s pure emotions.
I grew up to be in my twenties, which is not a young age, and I met neither too many nor too few people.
They knew that my father was successful in business and that my mother was from a well-known family, and they occasionally speculated that their son might be in a bad mental state.
They envy my smooth life path and my many choices. I envy their unchanging and predictable lives with no surprises.
So in the book, there is a not-so-perfect Zhou Mu and a fairly normal Xu Zhi.
They met by chance in a cliché way, got to know each other, fell in love, quarreled over trivial things, and reconciled with a single glance.
But in fact, in more than ten years of fighting against the illness, I have never won.
From the age of 16, or maybe earlier, I didn’t live much of a normal life.
I was running through all kinds of lives, cowering in the endless lies and the fear and anxiety of being exposed.
Today I am Xu Zhi, and tomorrow I will be a contracted author of a certain website.
Sometimes I also doubt the authenticity of this world and whether the mental patient Xu Zhi really exists.
If it weren’t for the sudden and unexpected onset of illness every time, I would even doubt that the present me is a carefully planned delusion by the past me.
In this delusion, the mental patient Xu Zhi has an impeccable lover.
But after waking up from the dream, I couldn’t help but feel sad.
Everything is easy to say in dreams, but reality is far crueler than dreams.
Because mentally ill people do have an impeccable lover, and for Zhou Mu, it has to be Xu Zhi.
When Xu Zhi was wandering in a clumsy and low-level delusion, Zhou Mu solemnly fixed all the loopholes and declared that he was a character in Xu Zhi’s story.
When Xu Zhi was not Xu Zhi, Zhou Mu had never been himself.
The same Zhou Mu plays different roles, and different roles love the same Xu Zhi.
In “A Certain Wednesday,” I wrote that Xu Zhi loves Zhou Mu deeply, without the exaggeration or embellishment typical of novel narratives.
To say he loves deeply is to say he loves deeply.
I don’t know how to describe it to you. When I love you, I feel nervous and apprehensive, wanting to hide it but also wanting the whole world to know.
I want to proclaim to everyone that Xu Zhi loves Zhou Mu to the point where he doesn’t want anything else, but then he realizes that, in reality, Xu Zhi actually has nothing.
Xu Zhi will always be the one left behind, waiting for someone to choose him.
Many times, I don’t want to be Xu Zhi.
I want to be anyone in an unconscious state, living a life with a mentally normal, ordinary, and inconspicuous role.
So I wrote “A Certain Wednesday”, but after writing it, I discovered that no matter what role I played, in the end I was Zhou Mu’s Xu Zhi.
I wrote this letter to express my love, but even so far, I haven’t been able to say anything new.
For Zhou Mu, who loves Xu Zhi, Xu Zhi, who has nothing, can only express his sincerity with clichés, tasteless plots, and clichéd words.
Xu Zhi in “A Certain Wednesday” said, “Zhou Mu, I love you very much.”
Xu Zhi also said, “Zhou Mu, I love you very much.”
Signature:
Xu Zhi writes different roles for Zhou Mu at any time.”
Attachment: “A certain Wednesday”
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in April, Xu Zhi met Zhou Mu.
The temperature is 25 degrees Celsius above zero, and there is wind, but it is not strong, and the temperature difference is not large.
When the Enter key is pressed, the code starts running. There are no errors in the main program, and no other factors affecting the operation of the program have been found.
The charm of logical language was brought into full play, and Xu Zhi ended his work.
There were 4 trash cans of different colors at the door of the unit. Xu Zhi irritably and lazily sorted the garbage into different places and put them in their respective places.
When the elevator door was about to close, Zhou Mu dragged a small suitcase and walked over from a short distance away.
The elevator doors reopened.
In the corridor, there were windows facing the courtyard. Observing the fine dust floating in the clustered beams of light, Xu Zhi stared in amazement at the briskly walking Zhou Mu. It took him 5 seconds to ponder whether this was called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
After the elevator door closed, Xu Zhi said hello: “Hello, I am Xu Zhi.”
Uniform and devoid of originality.
In April, on any ordinary Wednesday, it is inconspicuous and commonplace.
t/n: Done, done, and done!!! Thank you everyone for reading! This chapter seems like a letter from the author to the characters of the book, it’s very interesting. I hope the author is living a good life right now and you guys as well ^^
