I asked you to write a light novel, but you wrote about living?

This is not a terminal illness at all.

This is burying someone alive!

[They were buried alive deep underground, for decades!]

The brief silence was shattered completely at that moment.

Countless suppressed emotions flooded the comments section at the same time.

Good heavens... I was just wondering why she stared at a flower for so long, and why she loved the wind so much.

Because there are no flowers around her, and there will never be wind again!

She was surrounded only by liquid metal at temperatures of several thousand degrees!

[You old scoundrel Yu! You call this a short story? You've shoved a nuclear bomb into our hearts!]

I was just as confidently saying she would come back!

She's gone forever, she'll never come back!

Ten square meters! Decades! No sound, no one else, not even death will come immediately!

[I'd go crazy if I were locked in a dark room for ten minutes in a holographic game, but she gets to live in one for decades!]

Death, at least, is instantaneous, but she must be consciously aware every day that she will never see the ground again.

Now I finally understand why she was afraid of forgetting what flowers look like.

Because that trip was the last time she would ever see the grasslands in her life.

Horrifying.

Trembling.

The ultimate romance and the ultimate cruelty intertwine at this moment.

For the first time, readers accustomed to death, cybernetic modifications, and carnage in the lower city experienced a slower, more suffocating despair.

The girl did not die.

Not yet, at least not yet.

Because being alive meant that she would spend the rest of her life consciously in that grave from which she could never leave.

Many longtime readers who have followed "To Live" all the way through also thought of Fugui at this moment.

In "To Live", death comes again and again.

One by one, the people around Fugui left, until he was left alone, enduring the loss of everything.

However, in "Take Her Eyes," there is no continuous death.

That girl could even live for decades to come.

But it is precisely because of this that it feels even more suffocating.

What Fugui had to endure was the constant departure of the living.

The girl in Sunset No. 6 had to endure the fact that she was still alive, but the whole world had already left her forever.

I suddenly thought of Fugui.

The most heartbreaking thing about "To Live" is that people die one after another, but Fugui still has to keep living.

But she was different. No one around her would continue to die, because she had been the only one left there from the beginning.

I used to think that death was the cruelest ending.

I'm only now realizing that sometimes, living is harder to bear than dying.

At least Fugui could still see the sky, stand on the ground, and lead the old ox forward.

She could only perceive a blade of grass, a flower, or a gust of wind through the eyes of others.

"To Live" depicts too much death.

But in the end, what truly remains is the word "living".

"Take Her Eyes" does not seem to mention death.

But the girl's life, which would last for decades, was far longer and more cruel than death itself.

The emotions in the comments section completely collapsed.

I really can't take it anymore.

When she looked at the flowers through the protagonist's eyes, I thought she was exaggerating a bit.

Right now, I just want the protagonist to walk a little slower.

Slow down a bit.

Let her watch it a little longer.

Even just seeing one more flower would be worthwhile.

Some people also recalled the comments that had just called the story a "cliché" and a "sob story."

Where are those people who just said this was a tactic used by sickly girls?

You haven't even finished reading the story, yet you've already condemned it.

Does writing about someone's suffering equate to exploiting that suffering?

If all sorrow cannot be written down, should those trapped in darkness remain forever unseen?

This novel made me uncomfortable, not because the author kept talking about how miserable she was.

On the contrary, he kept writing about flowers, wind, and grasslands; it was only after we learned the truth that we finally understood what those things meant to her.

Someone reopened the story.

Let's start from the beginning.

Read through every word the girl said again.

She loves the wind.

A deep longing for the grasslands.

Amazed by the stream and the flowers.

The first time I read it, those were just the lovely and sensitive reactions of a young girl.

But after learning the truth, every word felt like it carried an unbearable weight.

Just when countless readers were on the verge of collapse, a bold, highlighted comment suddenly appeared before everyone.

I think I know why Yu Huashi chose to post this story today of all days.

There was a brief pause in the large number of comments.

Soon, someone realized what was happening.

[That girl, not even ten years old.]

They are actually very similar.

One is trapped in a sick body, the other is trapped in a spaceship deep within the Earth.

They all knew they could never return to a normal life.

But when they faced the living, they left behind not resentment.

The girl left her hope of survival to her mother.

The navigator of "Sunset No. 6" left the grasslands he could no longer see in the eyes of another.

[A story about Yu Huashi that she hopes her mother will continue to tell for her.]

One person lets another continue to see the world for her.

More and more people are coming to understand.

But Yu Huashi offered no explanation.

It didn't even say that there was any connection between the two things.

But at this moment, everyone felt that this book was Yu Wenhua's way of responding to that letter in his own way.

Even if a person can no longer see the future, what she has seen, the people she has loved, and the kindness she left for the world can still continue to exist through another person.

At this moment, it seemed that no one thought this was just a science fiction short story anymore.

Some say this is a story about loneliness.

Some say this is a story about life.

Some say it tells the story of how one person sees things they had long overlooked through another's eyes.

From now on, whenever I step on the ground, I'll probably think of that girl.

I used to think that flowers were just flowers, and wind was just wind.

Only now do I realize that for some people, everything we consider ordinary is a world they can never touch again.

[Yu Huashi used such a short space to make me realize for the first time how heavy the ground beneath my feet truly is.]

The girl didn't come back, but from now on, someone will continue to watch over things for her.

[Old Yu, I'm impressed. In less than ten thousand words, you captured the deepest loneliness of the interstellar era, and also the most invincible kindness.]

Miners on the West Coast sat in their break room, looking down at their oil-stained boots.

Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows hundreds of meters high, the senior executives in the central district did not look at the distant neon lights for the first time, but instead looked down at their feet.

Workers in the downtown area are crammed into a speeding underground train.

The train continued its journey through the dark tunnel.

They suddenly felt that, in a deeper, deeper place, there was a girl, quietly watching the world from across 6,000 kilometers of rock strata.

On this night.

This short story, titled "Take Her Eyes With You," is like a glimmer of light that pierces through six thousand kilometers of earth, illuminating not only the hearts of countless readers but also the path that mother walked.

Countless people revisited the story.

Let's revisit the girl's initial surprise upon first seeing the grassland.

Let's revisit her fondness for a flower, a gust of wind, and a drop of rain.

After learning the truth, those originally gentle and calm words all became heavy.

Only now do many people truly understand.

The phrase "taking her eyes with you" doesn't just mean traveling with a pair of sensor glasses.

Instead, from that day on, someone will continue to watch over this world for her.

See the grassland.

Look at the flowers.

Watch the sunlight fall on the earth.

To go to places she could never reach in person.

As the story concludes:

No matter where I go, I will never be far from her.

And under this sentence, countless readers unanimously thought of another girl.

She didn't live to see Yu Wen's later works.

But from now on, someone will continue to watch for her.

……

……

P.S.: The author of "Take Her Eyes" is Mr. Liu Cixin. The original text is over 8,000 words, while the textbook abridged version (personally shortened by Mr. Liu Cixin) is approximately 2,500 words.

P.S.: This story wasn't in my textbook when I was in school. I only read it after seeing someone mention it in the comments... You guys are really giving me heartbreak! Waaaaah...