Tenth Anniversary
Dear me, from childhood until now, ten years have passed. ZYX remains an important part of my life, and always will be. The reverse, of course, is not necessarily true. How many years can a life have? In a few dozen days, a letter written ten years ago, to the me of ten years later, will finally come due. Although I have accidentally read it many times over the years, after all, the time had not yet come back then.
Dear me, on a day like this, perhaps we shouldn’t write anything too sad, endlessly ruminating on pain. Once I put pen to paper, I’m afraid I’ll cry miserably; the me in reality has already suffered enough. Why not start from the deepest recesses of memory and recall the beauty of the past?
Dear me, you don’t remember if the umbilical cord was truly wrapped around your neck at birth like an ominous omen, you don’t remember your very first friend whom your family speaks of but of whom you now have no impression at all, you don’t remember if the water-soaked bamboo mat was truly cool on those scorching summer nights after a power outage, yet you vaguely remember that narrow cement road interwoven with cyan and blue that you walked down hand in hand, with a moss-covered sheer cliff on the left and emerald, still river water on the right; you vaguely remember that arch bridge in the middle of the river, but these few images are all that remain.
Dear me, you will always remember that fall that split your upper lip; licking it right now, you can still feel it. You remember insisting on not going to the hospital, and then the English teacher saying something about how she understood you loved studying and that’s why you didn’t want to go. In fact, you just didn’t dare to, perhaps because you cared too much about the gazes of others.
Dear me, you clearly remember walking with her in the rain that time. Back then, you could never have known that the next time you shared an umbrella with a girl of your own age would be nearly ten years later. And you and she have had no contact for nearly ten years now, even though you did homework together for four years, ate dinner together for four years, and walked down that winding, narrow little path together for four years—yet, it ended very suddenly. Time has stripped memory of all painful things, leaving only golden nostalgia. I can’t even clearly recall that teacher’s name anymore. Come to think of it, I was quite reluctant at the time; it was she who insisted on sharing the umbrella. Even now, the sound of her calling me by my nickname lingers in my mind. After all these years, that voice hasn’t faded at all. I really wonder how she’s doing after all these years. Though if I wanted to, I could get in touch with her.
Dear me, you also remember a very close playmate who often came over to Grandpa’s house to play. The time that left the deepest impression was during a winter, when the electric heater lit up my tiny room, making it bright and warm. Come to think of it, to this day I still don’t remember how we first met. Her house was clearly quite far from mine, so why did she often come over to play with me? She also used to ride in my grandpa’s car to school with those twins. I remember a rather ambiguous incident: on the way home, I told the three of them that I wanted to talk to her alone about something next, and then one of the other two even purposely chose a further drop-off point, just to reduce the time I’d have alone with her. Yet back then, I wasn’t thinking of anything special at all—what confession of love? It was merely about borrowing a book. As for her reaction, I remember at the very beginning it was quite awkward, and later it seemed like a sudden realization or something? I don’t remember anymore. However, while reminiscing just now, her face actually came back to my mind with crystal clarity. I feel like she wasn’t my type, right?
Back then, there was a desktop computer upstairs at Grandpa’s house. Over ten years ago it was still WinXP, and QQ video calls were a novel thing, the world at its very genesis… A joyful thing was, past seven in the evening…
Dear me, you know that the mulberry leaves in the dream did not feed the silkworms in the box to their fill, and the unreal forest behind the fence on the sandy ground in front of the door—growing in the distant past as if existing within a yellowed photograph—was in an instant replaced by the reality of steel and concrete. In which exact moment did the phantom of the Golden Age vanish without a trace?
Dear me, to this day you still remember the backs of those two young girls walking away on the grass under the morning sun: the sunlight gilded the entire scene in a dreamy gold, yet the ankle-deep green grass was dull in color.
Dear me, why has the protagonist still not made an appearance to this day…?
2026/9/24
Whenever I catch a chill, I fall into self-pity. Ginger soup and lying in bed being cared for and such—it seems I neither deserve them nor have I ever experienced them. I always feel that being cared for like this is also a sin, while excessive independence is perhaps a mental illness of its own. Because there seems to be an implication in it that I must give something in return, which then touches upon massive questions including free will and the like. I am already endlessly repeating my past behavioral patterns. And merely realizing this is completely insufficient to change myself, or rather, I cannot convince myself at all. It has been a long time since I ate at the cafeteria; the last time, was the last time back in freshman year? The impression from that time was just too awful. Communicating with humans is just too exhausting; communicating with machines is so much simpler. I haven’t even stepped foot once into the two cafeterias after changing campuses. Interacting with people is simply too complicated, whereas machines are logical and simple. Perhaps I already froze to death in that winter, froze to death inside that thin quilt, and the me of now is nothing more than a lingering wisp of a soul. Recently I saw a very interesting tweet: having no libido yet forcing oneself to masturbate is like raping oneself. It’s too tragic. Passions for the old days have receded, the rootless driftwood in the water has been pulled away, the only anchor has been uprooted, and past history has become like drifting duckweed. Perhaps in the eyes of the future me or anyone in the future—and inevitably so—everything I am going through right now is so insignificant that it can be laughed off, but to the present me, all of this is as real as real can be. It seems that happy people never ponder philosophy. Speaking of philosophy makes me think of Schopenhauer; he is just a fucking idiot. His theories, just like anyone else’s theories, are all nonsense; or rather, for this kind of metaphysical stuff, the only correct expression is that it cannot be accurately expressed. And this again touches upon a massive category of questions involving the early and late Wittgenstein. Woe unto the chronicler, yet boon unto the bard! In sickness, agony, and bitterest woe, hath a mortal ever forborne to cry out unto their parents? Yet in the very first few years of my memory, their figures seem entirely absent! Rather, my younger sister’s love for me has always felt much more real. Writing to this point, I couldn’t help bursting into tears. And every accusation against my parents—spoken or unspoken, intentional or unintentional—is bound to be treasonous and unfilial, yet I still cannot forgive. How is this not a forced attribution? Yet how is this very act of forced attribution not, in itself, a cause? Including myself, there is definitely more than one person who has had the following thought: committing suicide after eighteen is already too late. Why didn’t I die in high school? Why is that? Come to think of it, Naoko’s death was indeed a very shocking and sudden thing; it would have been better if I hadn’t been spoiled beforehand. I feel like Japanese people in novels are always dying suddenly and whatnot. I feel that Kokoro is truly a novel of extreme internal friction. It actually has such a massive length dedicated almost entirely to descriptions of Sensei’s psychological activities. Perhaps to outsiders, including myself, Sensei was quite happy—perhaps just as others view me—including him successfully tying the knot with the young lady and all that, but, was it truly so? Behind parental love, there is always a layer of shadow. A terrifying shadow, too terrifying. Too terrifying. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I crave so-called infinite, unconditional love. Such a thing cannot possibly exist in reality. Artificial intelligence is developing too fast, and something as bewildered as this text is, at a glance, not written by a noble, intelligent AI. They cannot do it; they are born perfect beings. Cold, ruthless paragons of perfection—and this again touches upon massive questions like whether rationality can simulate sensibility. Sigh, if I were Daiyu, I wouldn’t be so fortunate as to meet my own Baoyu. I don’t even want to do psychological counseling with artificial intelligence anymore, so how could I possibly want to do it with a human? Artificial intelligence is indeed very good at psychological companionship, but after a long time you realize they still seem to lack a soul. Many humans also lack a soul; you can feel that barrier beneath the meticulous, heartfelt performance that is almost not a performance. I haven’t communicated with my old friends for a very long time. Although that birthday gift I received back then still sits in my drawer at this very moment, the person who gave it to me seems to. Perhaps it’s more my problem? The battery inside died a long time ago, and I don’t know if she truly liked handicrafts or what? Come to think of it, last year I already treated the ai of the time as something with very high EQ—it seems it was still gemini 2.5 pro and kimi k2 back then. I can only say that after a year, this is perhaps the area that has developed the least. After all, this kind of thing is just too subjective, way too subjective, though I feel that Hakimi, with its extremely strong world knowledge, should be the strongest in this regard…
Even now, I still remember how dead silent my twentieth birthday was. There was no celebration of any kind; I can’t even remember what I ate that day. I just remember walking blankly down the road that day, with no one at all knowing that today was my birthday. Although a few years ago I still held onto the thought that as long as (), everything would get better—perhaps I didn’t even know myself that I actually thought that way back then. But it didn’t; nothing got better, and instead it got even worse. The only possible hope, was extinguished. Why am I writing this so cryptically. I feel that truly painful things cannot even be written down, because the process of writing them is in itself just too painful, let alone reading those words afterward.
Maybe there’s no way to commemorate anything anymore…? Writing this sentence here is truly treasonous and sacrilegious… Childhood is already a dream within the Garden of Eden.
2026/9/26