I'll wait for you amidst the romance of nature.

Everyone feels lonely, especially after traveling all the way from Shanghai to this place where you have almost no friends. Because of this shared feeling and situation, this encounter became even more precious. So I stopped and bought two cans of "Wind, Flower, Moon and Snow" beer and a small dish of peanuts at the open-air bar next to me.

At that moment, most of the tourists passing by me were looking around with their cameras, but I walked towards where Ye Zhi was sitting without any distractions.

I was standing behind her, so she didn't notice me immediately. She was just holding a twig she'd picked up somewhere, wading around in the water, and then staring blankly at the ripples. She seemed even more lonely and isolated than I was.

"Hello!"

I called out, and Ye Zhi turned to look at me. In that instant, several startled seabirds flapped their wings and skimmed across the sea, flying away into the distance. Her clear figure on the water was shattered, but in our gaze, her face was clearer than ever before.

I smiled at her, sat down next to her, and handed her one of the cans of beer, saying, "This is for you."

"Thank you." She took it from my hand.

I smiled at her again to show that she was welcome, and then we fell into a silent understanding. It was less a silence and more a quiet one, because being in silence, with the sea breeze blowing on us, truly captured the atmosphere of this evening.

……

Another sea breeze blew by, causing her long hair to fall unintentionally onto my shoulder and brush intimately against my neck—soft, fragrant…

I looked at her awkwardly and finally said, "It seems we're sitting too close. Let me move over a bit."

She wasn't a petty woman; she smiled and replied, "It's nothing!"

After saying that, she took out something like a rubber band from her pocket and tied her hair up. This was the first time I had seen her with her hair in braids; although she looked less gentle, she looked more neat and efficient.

Or perhaps she was originally a very capable woman, but because she was so beautiful, it was difficult for people to notice her other personality traits.

……

A moment after the little incident, she finally spoke up and asked me, "Do you live around here?"

"Yeah, it's just across the street from Fujinin... You live around here too?"

"I live by the sea."

I vaguely remembered this hotel, so I went back to find it. I discovered it was located in the area closest to Erhai Lake, practically a beachfront hotel. Compared to "Hai Tu," my room, "Feng Ren Yuan," had a distinctly low-end feel. Our room didn't have a sea view, and it wasn't spacious, with only a tiny wooden window connecting us to the outside world. Hai Tu, on the other hand, had sea-view suites with large bathtubs on their balconies, where you could sit in a bath, sip wine, and enjoy the best scenery of Dali…

However, this gap is quite natural, because there is an insurmountable class difference between Ye Zhi and me, so I can't say I envy her much. I know that my heart has been numbed by long-term poverty, and I've become accustomed to this kind of life.

Facing the sea breeze, I took a sip of my chilled beer, feeling a sense of comfort. I then asked Ye Zhi, "Most of the inns and hotels around here have been closed. Is HaiTu still open for business?"

"HaiTu has also closed down, but I'm a friend of the owner, so I'm just entertaining one or two friends. It doesn't count as business."

I nodded and replied, "Oh, it seems there are loopholes in this policy after all."

This time, Ye Zhi didn't respond. She seemed completely uninterested in how I managed to check into "Fengrenyuan" when all the inns were closed. It was better she didn't ask, because my method was far less respectable than hers. The three of us—Instructor Ma, Tie Nan, and I—were forbidden from turning on the lights after 8 PM, living a clandestine life. How could that compare to hers?

After a moment of silence, I finally remembered how impolite it was not to ask for her contact information last time, so I took out my phone and said to her, "We live so close, we're practically neighbors. Let's add each other on WeChat, and we can go for walks or play mahjong together sometime."

"You mean if we don't live nearby, we don't need to exchange contact information?"

I was stunned for a moment before I realized that she was indeed bothered by the fact that she had given Yang Sisi her contact information, but I hadn't contacted her afterwards. Even after we ate together, I didn't proactively ask for her contact information.

So it seems she's quite petty in this regard. After giving me a sharp retort, she made no attempt to take out her phone to add me as a WeChat friend, leaving my hand holding the phone awkwardly hanging in front of her…

……

"If you don't want to add it, then don't. We'll see each other all the time anyway."

As I spoke, I withdrew my hand and then sipped the last drop of beer from the can. Just when I thought we'd stubbornly continue this silence until dark, Ye Zhi suddenly turned to me and said, "Staying here tonight is pretty boring. Why don't you contact Sisi and ask her to come over and play mahjong?"

I met her gaze, finding it hard to believe she was such a proactive person. She probably already knew something, and my intuition told me that her connection with Yang Sisi was quite close. After all, they were both from Shanghai, from high society, and neither had many friends here, so they were likely to get along well.

Furthermore, putting aside Yang Sisi's willfulness, she is indeed a friend worth making.

I subconsciously touched my waist; the marionette Yang Sisi had given me yesterday was still hanging there. A pang of sadness struck me, so I frowned and lit a cigarette. After taking a drag, I asked her, "How much do you really know about the background of Yang Sisi's trip to Dali?"

"I don't quite understand what you're saying?"

"I think there was a probing element in your words... and I sense that you two have a lot of contact privately, so you must already know about what happened today."

Ye Zhi smiled, which was rare for her, and replied, "I can tell you're a very sensitive man."

"It's not sensitivity, it's acute awareness... I'm really concerned about this right now, so when you suddenly mentioned Yang Sisi to me and asked me to contact her, I couldn't help but make a lot of connections." After I finished speaking, I looked at Ye Zhi with concern. If she had contacted Yang Sisi, then she would definitely know from her what choices Yang Sisi made after this incident. And I was indeed concerned, but I didn't want to take the initiative to contact Yang Sisi, after all, we had already made such a mess of things at noon.

After a brief silence, Ye Zhi replied, "I know about what happened today. I contacted Sisi this afternoon."

"How is she?"

"Let's put aside what happened to her for now and talk about what you did."

I took a deep drag on my cigarette, then squinted and stared at the opposite shore for a long time...

Although I haven't been to the other side yet, I know that's Xiaguan. Cheng Ge and Li Jie told me that Xiaguan has the strongest and most famous winds, so I instinctively felt that the lights there were also turbulent, turning into beams of light that reflected in Erhai Lake, creating an unreal feeling. And in this unreality, the rights and wrongs we encountered seemed to be of little importance.

Perhaps, living is a particularly false proposition. Like Wang Lei, she did so many good deeds during her life, yet even after her death, many still gossip about her being a hostess. What difference does right or wrong, good or evil make? We simply live forever in the mouths of others, while very few truly try to understand us.

I finally met Ye Zhi's gaze and replied, "I don't think there's anything wrong with what I did. Although Dali is a good place, it's not suitable for Yang Sisi to stay here at this stage... If one day she can stand at your level and come back as an investor, I think no one will oppose her then... So before that, studying abroad is a pretty good option."

"You care about her a lot, but you also deceived her."

"So what?"

"If she didn't care about you, she definitely wouldn't have done anything... But she cares about you quite a bit, which is why she feels that your deception of her is an insult... I think she at least considers you a friend, and you shouldn't have treated her like that."

I looked at her again and realized that her beauty wasn't entirely without merit; she seemed to have a deep understanding of human nature. However, because I still harbored a sliver of anger towards Yang Sisi's willfulness, I stubbornly replied, "With her active personality, she can become friends with anyone."

Ye Zhi looked at me with some disappointment, and after flicking off my cigarette ash, I lowered my head. What I could see was no longer Erhai Lake and "Majiuyi" shrouded in night; all I could see were my white sneakers and Ye Zhi's purple sandals. They formed a world of opposites in my senses.

Ye Zhi stood up, preparing to leave...

My heart tightened, and I called out to her retreating figure, "Did Yang Sisi stay in Dali, or did she go back to Shanghai?"

"If you can still contact her, don't ask me this kind of question."

After Ye Zhi finished speaking, she didn't linger. Her slender figure disappeared into the crowd quickly, bypassing the stalls set up by the vendors. After I could no longer see her, I lit another cigarette for myself.

At this moment, my heart is filled with a lonely sense of being unwelcome. I ask myself: Have I truly become numb to reality, which is why I've become somewhat heartless? Right now, it seems I'm only weighing right and wrong from a cost-benefit perspective...

When I looked up again, it was as if I saw a hideous version of myself reflected in the mirror-like surface of the water.