A goodbye
After her brother's accident, for many days, Yi Ting would have dreams with similar situations. Most of the time she's trying to save people, or her brother is saying goodbye to her. It was as if she had returned to that cruel winter night.
On December 6, 2021, at around two o'clock in the morning, Yi Ting received the last call from her younger brother Jingbo. Sister, Hunan is colder than Shanghai, Jingbo said. She thought that her brother had returned to Xiangtan's home, and asked him, why did you go home when you thought you ran out to relax? Jing Bo said no, I was in the place where you were standing back then, and I wanted to take the step you didn't take for you. She was shocked to realize that her younger brother was on the rooftop on the 9th floor of the community.
Yi Ting persuaded her younger brother to delay the call as much as possible while contacting her family.
On the phone, her brother began to argue with her about who her parents loved more. Jingbo said that her parents often praise her in front of outsiders, and they will compare it with themselves - you see how powerful her sister is, she makes money, and gives them a long face outside. And he accomplishes nothing, he is a burden that only spends money. Yi Ting said, you are not stupid, that is vanity among adults, not sincerity. Mom and Dad obviously love you more.
Jing Bo said that he was tired. I don't want to live on responsibility. Jing Bo said sorry again.
It was past 4 a.m. when I hung up the phone. At the end of the conversation, Yi Ting felt that her brother's emotions didn't seem to be as intense as at the beginning, and she thought that her brother would reconsider.
She then called her relatives who rushed to the rooftop. Relatives said that Jingbo was calling his mother and asking them to call 120. Yi Ting realized that things may be worse than she imagined: "It's not that he has calmed down, but he has no emotions at all, and he just wants to make a choice calmly." ”
When the call came again, it was the news of my brother's death.
Yi Ting later pieced together the trajectory of his actions that day through his brother's communications, ticket purchase records, and other people's relays: On the afternoon of December 5, 2021, Jing Bo avoided going to Shanghai to visit his father, went to the high-speed rail station alone, and bought a ticket back to Hunan. At around 10 o'clock that night, he arrived in Xiangtan, and then went straight to his home and walked up to the roof on the 9th floor. He called his ex-girlfriend, sister and mom and then jumped off. The mobile phone and headphones were left on the air conditioner.
Yi Ting was in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. It is close to the equator and is summer-like all year round. But after that, every time she recalled the night of her brother's accident, she always said that it was so cold that day.
Because of the new crown epidemic and policy changes, Yi Ting did not return to China until 8 months after her brother's death. And the first news she learned was that her parents were undergoing IVF surgery. They want to have another boy.
Yi Ting felt that everything was absurd. How can it be like raising livestock, one dies and another is raised?
"They haven't talked to me about what happened to my brother, what he's been through psychologically, and no one cares about our trauma. Even if the consequences were so serious, no one wondered why it happened. ”
At the beginning of 2024, after learning that her parents had failed in IVF many times and tried surrogacy, Yi Ting contacted the local police station. The police told her that if they could provide conclusive evidence, they could come to their homes to popularize the law and persuade her. If an embryo has already formed in the uterus of the surrogate, no agency has the right to demand that it be removed. You can only wait for the child to be born, and the parents will be fined according to the fact of surrogacy.
In March, Yi Ting sent a message and decided to make the matter public. She said she had been troubled for the past few years, and that she and her brother had suffered from depression at a young age because of a failed homeschooling and a suffocating atmosphere. He was lucky enough to escape, while his younger brother remained forever at the age of 18. She learned from her mother that there are many families who do surrogacy and IVF, all of which commit suicide because of their children.
"If this life were to come to this world, he might follow the same path as me, and I hope this pain can be avoided." Yi Ting wants to stop her parents' crazy thoughts of childbirth through public telling. It is also used to commemorate his younger brother and let more people care about depression and the inner world of teenagers.
● Jing Bo's posthumous photo, on his 19th birthday, Yi Ting bought flowers for him.
The world of "Doraemon".
For a long time, Yi Ting didn't understand, why did her brother suddenly become like this?
In her impression, her younger brother is very sunny, naughty and clever, and he lived up to expectations and was admitted to a university in Shanghai. Before his brother's 18th birthday, they also went to IKEA together, bought a lot of furniture, and bought a "coming-of-age ceremony" for his younger brother.
She knew that her brother had bad moods and insomnia in high school, but she thought it was just the confusion of adolescence, that her brother was precocious and thought about the meaning of life too early. That's how she came, she thought her brother could "escape" too.
On November 18, 2021, half a month before the accident, Yi Ting received a private message from her friend Chuan'er from Jingbo High School in the background of Station B, and she learned that her brother was in a bad condition and had begun to self-harm.
Yi Ting tried various ways to keep him - please Chuan'er to visit her brother in Shanghai; Find your brother's ex-girlfriend and ask her to tolerate his brother's bad moods; Persuade my brother to see a doctor. In early December, Yi Ting found that her brother was missing online, so she had to call her father and ask him to go to Shanghai to "rescue" her brother - at least to be by his side and watch over him. But by mistake, all paths failed to reach Jingbo's inner world. When she heard that her brother had fled in Shanghai alone, she prayed that he was just going to relax. As a result, the worst news was awaited.
"Every night when I close my eyes, I am deducing, how can I save him? What's wrong? Why is it wrong at that point? She repeatedly searched for some traces.
For example, he shouldn't have let his father go to Shanghai, he actually regarded that trip to Shanghai as a tour, and did not notice his brother's emotional changes. For example, shouldn't he have told Jing Bo about his attempt to commit suicide on the rooftop in the first place, otherwise maybe he wouldn't have known that there was such a place?
In recent years, Yi Ting has been living overseas all year round. She runs a gemstone business and often travels around Africa, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and other regions. Her younger brother is 8 years younger than her, and his middle school is a boarding school, so he can't use his mobile phone freely, and rarely takes the initiative to contact her. In a sense, she was far away from her brother.
After Jing Bo entered college, he once wanted her to help buy some snacks. Yi Ting used to buy him things frequently, but now that he is in college, he should be independent. She told her brother not to be lazy and to work part-time to earn some money. The younger brother did not reply. She later learned that her mother only gave her brother 1,000 yuan a month for living expenses. On campus in Shanghai, this barely lasts for three basic meals.
Jingbo has always refused to go to the hospital and is unwilling to find a psychiatrist, so he has never been diagnosed with a specific condition. She even wondered if her brother would be sick at all? Is he threatening others with his life, and is he using a very despicable way to save the relationship with his ex-girlfriend?
After Jing Bo's death, Yi Ting learned more information and realized that her younger brother was acting more like bipolar disorder at that time. Bipolar is more difficult to detect than depression, which loses enthusiasm and motivation during the onset of the disease. Under the seemingly normal appearance, the patient's mood is often "on a roller coaster".
●A photo of Jing Bo before his death
Not only Yi Ting, but Jingbo's classmates and children were all shocked when they learned the news of his suicide. Jing Bo has never shown a gloomy, depressing side in front of them.
Cao Qing said that Jingbo is the kind of warm man with "central air conditioning". She remembers that when she was in high school, she casually mentioned that she liked a watch, and Jing Bo carefully wrote it down and really gave it to her on her birthday. Jing Bo is delicate, cares about the feelings of others, and is a person who is willing to give the other party a step down in the conflict.
Chuan'er said that Jing Bo was always joking, and he seemed to be the least likely person to be depressed. So not long after the start of her freshman year, she often received multiple QQ messages like Jing Bo's emotional catharsis in the middle of the night, and she didn't think about anything worse, thinking that he was just in a bad mood. Everyone knows that he broke up with the girl he liked before and after the start of his freshman year, which hit him hard, and it is normal for him to have mood swings. Jing Bo has told many people that that girl is a ray of light in his life.
It wasn't until Jingbo sent her photos of self-mutilation that Chuan'er realized the seriousness of the matter. She remembered that her sister, whom Jing Bo often mentioned, had her own account on station B. After leaving a message, Yi Ting asked her to visit Jingbo in Shanghai. When Chuan'er rushed over from Changsha and saw him again, he was almost unrecognizable-
Jing Bo's mood was good and bad, sometimes he spoke normally, suddenly became impetuous, and suddenly shed tears. During the three days in Shanghai, Chuan'er listened to him talk a lot, and she realized that she knew very little about the inner world of her best friend.
Jingbo said that his parents often quarreled, and when his sister was depressed, his parents hid his sister's medicine and locked her in the house like an animal, which made him feel very painful. The family has been arguing, he has communicated with his parents countless times, but to no avail, he is very disappointed in his parents and the family.
He was not originally a big spender, but he deliberately spent money, all to get revenge on his parents. His revenge began very early, and when he took the high school entrance examination, he could have been admitted to a better school, but he deliberately left a lot of empty space and did not write.
He didn't like Shanghai. In Shanghai, he felt that people were different from others, and he seemed to be inferior. After breaking up with his girlfriend, he used to ride his bicycle on the streets of Shanghai with his eyes closed, but unfortunately nothing happened.
He repeatedly stressed that he was hopeless, deep in the whirlpool, and he did not believe that there was still any possibility of getting better.
Yi Ting didn't know these pains clearly, and her brother never mentioned them to her.
After Jingbo died, Yi Ting got the mobile phone left by her younger brother. By rummaging through chat logs, search records left on various apps, and even browsing traces on short video platforms, she re-glued the fragmented and fragmented puzzle pieces together, and she saw her brother more clearly. Seeing her run away from the family, her brother's situation:
Jing Bo once tried a hunger strike, but eventually fainted from hunger at school, and was sent to the infirmary by his college classmates for treatment.
He had taken a whole bottle of melatonin, but it was only a health supplement, not enough to be lethal.
On September 25, 2021, on his 18th birthday, Jing Bo sent dozens of pages of chat records to his mother. The content is probably that I want my parents to understand my sister, and it is they who make her unable to go back to her home, and try to solve family conflicts from all angles. In addition, he made a request to buy a computer.
In Yi Ting's opinion, this is almost the last time her brother asks for help. He wrote his last words like a suicide note. But his mother didn't respond a word, just transferred him 10,000 yuan.
In a eulogy to her younger brother, Yi Ting wrote-
"I regret not realizing sooner that he had been trying to fight against this family...... I'm sorry, my sister only learned how to save herself, but forgot to save you. ”
● Yi Ting stood on the rooftop and reviewed her brother's final trajectory according to the clues.
I'm luckier than my brother
Standing on the same 9th floor rooftop, Yi Ting was 16 years old. The conflict between my mother and my grandfather, the conflict between my uncle and my grandfather, and the divorced parents, everything is terrible. After another quarrel broke out in the family, she thought about killing herself.
"I really want to die, thinking of my own worthlessness, thinking of my mother scolding me for being a beast when I was persuaded to fight, thinking of being locked out of the dark door by my grandfather, my father's silence, so desperate." She felt like a transparent person, and she was wasting her family's money, and death was the best way to solve it.
But when she thought of her brother, she didn't take that step: "How are you going to tell an 8-year-old that his sister committed suicide?" ”
In this family, she and her younger brother used to be "dependent on each other". Their parents were self-made businessmen in the countryside, working hard and settling in the city, and they were relatively well-known people in the village. But the mother was notoriously thrifty, and she always taught them verbal violence and repression at home. And Dad is used to avoiding when faced with conflict, only the desire to express, not the willingness to listen.
Only her brother made her feel the closeness of her family: they went to pick mulberry leaves and raise silkworms, went to the pond to catch frogs and tadpoles, and used the week's pocket money to buy snacks. When her mother scolded her, her younger brother was slapped hard by her mother in order to protect her and defend herself.
● Yi Ting and Jing Bo
In her sophomore year, Yi Ting was diagnosed with depression and took a leave of absence. Her parents locked her in the house and continued to work on her business. Her parents' indifference and neglect made her miserable, and Yi Ting said that she almost relied on "hate" to force herself to cheer herself up, complete her university studies, and get her graduation certificate.
After having a certain degree of independence, Yi Ting tried to change the family. When her mother scolded her younger brother, she would directly reprimand her mother and point out what kind of harm it would cause. But nothing has changed in Mom. When her parents commented in the accident department, she invited some relatives to participate in the "trial". My daughter has been diagnosed with depression, can't I take a good look at what's wrong with this family? Still nothing has changed.
She had no choice but to flee. "I'm going to go outside the province, I'm going to go to Tiannanhaibei, to the place where they can't find me." The psychiatrist also advised her to have as little contact with her parents as possible.
Yi Ting remembered that Jing Bo once said that she felt that she was luckier than herself. She didn't understand at first that she was the "dispensable" in the family, the rebellious daughter who was characterized and uncontrollable, and her younger brother was the "lifeline" in her mother's mouth, where was the luck?
After her brother's death, she recalled the situation and choices of the two people, and she realized another meaning of "lucky".
In the past few years, Yi Ting has spent most of her time in the gemstone business abroad, even if it is an epidemic, except for wearing a mask, she has not been subject to too many behavioral restrictions. And the younger brother, whether in the spiritual world or in real life, has been in a suffocating environment for a long time.
When Jingbo was a sophomore in high school, because of the epidemic, the school switched to online classes, and the city was frequently closed and controlled. He was forced to stay in the same space with his parents and grandfather for a long time. The low pressure that was originally shared by the sisters and brothers became Jing Bo alone. "I don't know how much of a fight they're going to have, and there's nowhere to vent that emotion."
Yi Ting remembers that once her parents jokingly talked about the conflict at that time, Jing Bo locked himself in the bedroom, used a table and stool against the door of the house, and finally they picked all the locks.
Yi Ting left home very early and was estranged from her parents. She can give many examples to demonstrate the lack of love, but she doesn't know how to answer the specific love she wants from her parents—she has never had it, so much so that she lacks imagination. "Maybe there is a big problem with the love I give my brother."
Cao Qing, a high school classmate, remembers that Jing Bo was angry at his sister for contacting his ex-girlfriend and felt that his sister was threatening him. On the afternoon of December 5, 2021, before Jing Bo lost contact with Shanghai, he sent a message to his father, to the effect that everyone was going to drive him crazy, and coming to Shanghai was to persecute him.
Yi Ting was in a high-pressure state for several days in a row, in a panic of "losing her brother at any time", she was a little emotional, she sent a message to her brother very angrily, "I said, why are you such a white-eyed wolf, which of us is going to harm you?" ”
Yi Ting later felt that this was a kind of harm to her younger brother, "It may have pushed him even more, (I think) that even my favorite sister doesn't understand me." She had strongly blamed herself, feeling that she was the one who was fueling the trouble.
"I feel like I'm a wreck, I can't create anything." After Jingbo's death, for a long time, she fell into an emotional quagmire and could not work. So when she learned that her parents were doing IVF and were angry for her younger brother, her first reaction was that she was abandoned - her parents would rather have another child than care about their daughter who is still alive.
She had to make it stop and stop the new life from going through similar pain again.
A father's "renovation plan"
In late March, I met Yi Jianqiang in Xiangtan. He wears a black leather jacket and jeans, his expression is a little serious, and his "Mediterranean" hairstyle is much more conspicuous than that of a person about 1.7 meters. For most of the conversation, he propped up the table with his arms, clenched his fists, and pressed his thumb firmly against the knuckle of his index finger, as if trying to control his emotions. But every time he mentioned Jingbo, he had to shed tears.
Perhaps he has recalled many times that before Jingbo's accident, the experience of the father and son in Shanghai for three days was almost nailed to Yi Jianqiang's head. He doesn't need to ask questions, he will go on himself-
He first received a call from his daughter, Jing Bo was missing, and asked him to hurry to Shanghai to rescue his son. He first took a bus to Changsha and then flew to Shanghai. Jing Bo looked like everything was fine.
After dinner, he and his relatives went to the school to find Jingbo's teacher. When he returned to the hotel in the evening, only father and son were left, Jing Bo began to lose his temper. Are you trying to make things bigger? Who asked you to come? Then he burst into tears. He had never seen his son like this. But Jing Bo only cried for a few minutes before he was very calm.
It would have been nice if it hadn't been Friday, he always thought. Are the doctors in the psychiatric hospital not working on weekends? On Monday, my cousin drove and we were here for two days. Jing Bo said that there was no rush anyway.
On Saturday, they boarded the Oriental Pearl and took a group photo at the gate of Fudan University. Jing Bo didn't laugh.
On Sunday, Jing Bo slept until just over one o'clock in the afternoon before waking up. They had lunch in an alley near Wujiaochang. Jing Bo only ate a hamburger and told him that he had a call to go out and answer. That was the last time he saw Jing Bo. The last WeChat message was to tell him to leave him alone and not to go to him.
He immediately contacted his relatives and daughter, but they all thought that Jing Bo was just in a bad mood to relax, and even if he called the police, it would be 24 hours later. He replied to Jing Bo, as long as you don't do stupid things, I'll wait for you at the hotel.
● The last photo of Jingbo and his father
Yi Jianqiang repeatedly emphasized that he was "unconscious". After Jing Bo's death, he always blamed himself. He was bitter that he had missed the opportunity to save his son more than once.
The first time I found out that my son might have problems was in April 2021, when Jing Bo was in the second semester of his sophomore year of high school. Once he was singing outside when he suddenly received a call from his son, "He said he wanted to die". Jingbo's high school is a boarding school, about an hour's drive from downtown Xiangtan. The next day, Yi Jianqiang rushed to school and took his son to the hospital for a check-up, but the doctor did not detect anything. In order to ensure safety, Yi Jianqiang wanted to take his son to find a psychology teacher, but Jingbo refused to go.
He said that now that he thinks about it, maybe it was the delay in treatment. "There are two sides to his illness, on the one hand he is a cheerful person, and on the other hand he is very pessimistic. We see only one side and the other side we can't see. ”
At that time, the collapse of his son made Yi Jianqiang realize that the family really needed to change. He went to counselling a few times. Wanwan is a psychology teacher at a primary school in Xiangtan, and Yi Jianqiang found her through a relative's introduction. Wanwan remembered that at that time, he mainly consulted about family relations and did not mention Jingbo. "He doesn't get along well with his wife, but he is grateful for his wife's dedication to the family." Yi Jianqiang hopes that Wanwan can talk to his wife Chen Ying. Wanwan remembered that Chen Ying had only come once later, but her posture was obviously resistant.
Yi Jianqiang repeatedly thought about the reason for his son's suicide. He felt that the oppressive family environment hurt the two children deeply, which was the root cause of Jingbo's accident, and his son's failed love affair was just a fuse. Over the years, he and his wife's frequent quarrels have put a lot of pressure on the children. And he always chooses to be silent, in Tingting's words, "cold violence". The father admits that it was his fault.
Our conversation lasted more than three hours, and it was almost early in the morning when it ended. Mr. Yi said he could never remember sitting down quietly with anyone for so long. This is even more outside of his family experience.
He has not been able to fully accept the fact that his son died until now. Jing Bo was naturally smart, he said, and when he was two and a half years old, he played chess against the old men. When he was in elementary school, Jing Bo studied Go for several years and won the third place in the city. He has been busy opening a mooncake shop all these years, and once wanted to make the business bigger, and the children suddenly grew up. He doesn't remember any intimate scenes of father and son. By junior high school and high school, Jingbo was in boarding school, and he saw him even less.
After Jing Bo died, the family became deserted, and Yi Jianqiang and his wife couldn't even quarrel. He said he didn't have the energy to do anything right now. In his free time, he likes to go dancing, singing, and running in the morning. Now all enthusiasm is lost. Except for the mooncake shop, he prefers to stay at home. He hasn't been to other people's homes for a long time, and he rarely speaks in the circle of friends and WeChat groups, "Maybe people hurt their confidence." ”
Not every friend knows about Jing Bo's death, and when an unknown acquaintance asks, he simply doesn't answer, and finds something to fool around. Or just laugh and laugh, "sometimes crying at once, sometimes avoiding them".
He felt lonely—not just spiritually helpless, but also fading relatives. Over the years, his close relatives have become fewer and fewer. My brother and sister are gone, and my father passed away last year.
Yi Jianqiang said that at first, he didn't think about having another child, whether the neighbor next door or acquaintance was the first to mention it, or it was better to have another child.
Once this thought was planted, it became stronger and stronger. When he went to someone else's house for wedding wine, he would suddenly think that if Jing Bo was here, he would be 21 years old this year, and it would be time to get married in another year or two; Someone else moves in the house, someone else thrives in the house, and his own side is getting smaller and smaller. Suddenly, he has a kind of "contrast", and his heart will be restless. "As long as you live in this world, it will attack your heart."
"There are people who have the world," he said, so that there is a movement in the house and something to do.
Not long after Jingbo's death, Yi Jianqiang and his wife went to see palmistry, and the fortune teller said that he had two sons in his life. With this conclusion as a support, he began to urge his wife Chen Ying to do IVF.
I did it for more than a year and didn't succeed, so the surrogacy will work. In short, he wants to train another person in his lifetime, from 0 to 18 years old, to train him to grow up. He stressed that he is 54 years old this year, and there is some sense that time is not waiting.
Tingting reacted violently, but he couldn't control it so much. He said that this should also be a good thing for Tingting. "20 or 30 years later, we are gone, and Tingting still has a relative. It was only then that she realized that her parents were right, and we were right back then. Right? ”
If he succeeds, the father plans to make the business smaller, hire a helper to come to the store, and take care of the children for a longer period of time. As long as the money is enough, why work so hard, just barely get by. The family atmosphere must not be the same as before, he said, and the husband and wife will avoid children even if they quarrel.
He's going to prove himself again. "At least there is a changed father," Mr. Yi said.
● The new house built by the Yi family, the construction of which was temporarily stopped after Jingbo's accident.
I'm more like myself at the table
In order to avoid her increasingly paranoid husband, Chen Ying ran back to the countryside in late March. In fact, she hasn't decided whether to have another child yet.
In the nearly two years before that, she had gone through a painful and lengthy IVF attempt. Chen Yingnian is over 50 years old, his hormone level is not good, and he has undergone many egg retrieval surgeries. Hysteroscopy was done three or four times, and cold instruments entered her body. She transferred embryos twice, the first time failed to implant, and the second implantation more than 20 days later, but she also failed to keep it.
Now, she is caught between the conflict between her husband and daughter. is not only afraid of hurting Yi Ting, but also worried about what will happen to her husband.
My husband once said, if you don't let me go to surrogate (surrogate) that child, I will kill myself. A few times, my husband was supposed to guard the store, but he suddenly walked out, "I didn't bring my mobile phone, I didn't bring my keys, I didn't ride the car, I was really confused." She was terrified that the news of terror would come again. Only when she came home and opened the door and saw her husband at home for the first time could she settle down. She agreed to see me because of her husband.
That afternoon, Chen Ying and Yi Jianqiang drove me up the mountain to see their new house. After Jingbo's accident, the construction of new houses stopped. "It's very tasteless," Chen Ying said. They originally wanted to build a magnificent two-story mansion, but now the first floor is abandoned there before it is finished. The crevices are overgrown with weeds.
● Chen Ying walked on the edge of the ridge.
Chen Ying squatted down by the discarded timber, and the wind from the mountains blew through the nearby bamboo forest. "My personality is a cheerful type, and I generally don't care if I have any grievances," she said to herself, as if she were defending herself against some kind of accusation. "If I have a temper, I will be angry, if my business makes sense, if you want me to bow my head, then you can't."
Chen Ying spoke quickly, sentence after sentence, without gaps. When it comes to excitement, she will unconsciously cross her waist and gesture.
She still doesn't believe it, and she doesn't understand that her son chose to commit suicide. She always thought that Jing Bo's personality was like her, honed out of pressure, "when you are strong, you are strong". Jing Bo is obviously very lively in school, has a good relationship with teachers and classmates, performs well, attracts people, and is a "leader". She still firmly believes that the girl who broke up with Jingbo is the culprit.
fell with her son, as well as the logic of life that she is accustomed to. The two children were a real part of her life, they existed, and then they grew up, and she was responsible for making money and using the money to buy more and bigger houses. Life goes by like this, naturally, and there is no problem. Tingting said that she had brought a lot of harm to her two children, and she couldn't accept it.
Chen Ying couldn't understand how her life had come to this point. She talks about her marriage. She and her husband are in the same village, and there are two teams in a brigade, at opposite ends of the mountain village reservoir. Here they grow up and get married. Over the years, the two of them can be regarded as self-made, they went to Guangdong together when they were young, earned their first money, returned to their hometown to open a moon cake shop, and the business became more and more prosperous. They took this small mountain village as a starting point, crossed the township, and went to Xiangtan City to settle down. With Tingting and Jingbo.
If they had to find a cause for the rift in their marriage, it would almost always come from their families. Because of family trivialities, she and her father-in-law quarreled frequently, and she also "slapped" in front of Tingting. She said that maybe Tingting was frightened at that time.
"It's been too long, it's too tiring", she thought about getting a divorce, but in the end she didn't get out. In her concept, if she gets her own money, she should provide a good life for her children and let them go to the best school, without them having to think about family affairs. If the kids don't feel good about working outside, they can come home. But Tingting went farther and farther, and she watched her daughter do business all over the world in the past few years, sometimes not calling back for a whole month. She said that she was even a little afraid of her daughter, "I can't talk about her."
In the second semester of Jingbo's third year of high school, she went to school to accompany her, and at first she just felt that there was a problem with her cervical spine and her neck hurt, so she went to the hospital for an examination and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. A few days after the operation, Tingting happened to return to China and stayed at home for a short day, never going into her bedroom to see or greet her. "Like an enemy", she was a little sad.
After the operation, some sequelae are still there, and after riding for a long time, the body will feel tired, and the spirit is not as good as before. On that Jingbo's birthday, she and her sister came back from buying an IKEA single bed, and she couldn't control the fire, why didn't she buy a bigger double bed? You can also use it when you get married in the future. Tingting quarreled with her more and more fiercely, and she told all about her cancer at once. Jing Bo began to hug her and cry.
When she filled in the volunteers, she strongly asked Jingbo to go to Changsha to study, wanting to be closer to her son. But the son quietly changed his will, adjusted the alternative Shanghai university to the first priority, and finally went to Shanghai, thousands of kilometers away from his hometown.
She gave Jing Bo very little money for college living, only 1,000 yuan a month. Chen Ying has his own reasons, "I just want him to call me more, because you are too far away, and to be honest, I want to hear your voice." ”
Over the years, she has not been very close to her two children. Chen Ying said that she did not know how to communicate with them, so she simply focused on business. Usually she only asks if she has done her homework well? Go to bed when you're done. As for more interactions, spiritual exchanges such as heart-to-heart talks, she can't do it, and she doesn't have the ability.
Rather than circling around her children at home, she prefers to play with her friends and get together to play cards and mahjong. "I don't have anything to talk to them at home, and I feel bored."
After the IVF failed, her husband began to ponder surrogacy, but Chen Ying was still hesitating. She thinks Tingting's words are not unreasonable, if the child is really born, there is a difference of more than 50 years between them, will the child really not be ridiculed and discriminated against at school? By the time children are 18 years old, they are already very old.
But she was afraid that her husband wouldn't be able to think about it, so she didn't dare to refuse him directly, she was just procrastinating.
She squatted on the edge of the ridge, talking and constantly stirring the weeds with her hands. The sky gradually darkened, her face became blurred, and in the interval between the sound of insects, she said that she hoped that Tingting could have a child, so as to solve the problem of "inheritance".
"My purpose is to have a person below, just to fight for this breath," Chen Ying said, after her son's death, she couldn't stand the scrutiny and sympathy from those outside perspectives - no matter how much money you earn, if you don't have offspring, it's useless. "If Tingting gives birth to a child, I will at least have such a descendant, no matter how hard I work, I am willing."
Chen Ying sometimes dreams of Jing Bo. She tried her best not to think about him, not to think about the events of that night.
She felt like it was fate. On the day of Jingbo's accident, Chen Ying somehow slept deeply and did not receive a call from her husband from Shanghai. She didn't know what was going on until her brother and sister-in-law took the keys from elsewhere and opened the door to wake her up.
Jing Bo was already sitting on the railing of the rooftop on the 9th floor. They hurriedly discussed their separate actions. The younger brother and sister-in-law took off their shoes and climbed onto the rooftop, and she waited for news from all parties below.
The phone rang, it was Jing Bo. Mom I'm back, I'm on the roof, Jing Bo said. Don't be stupid, have something to tell your mother. Hurry down, Mom and Dad love you very much, Chen Ying said. Jing Bo didn't respond, and finally just said, I don't blame you, you go and call an ambulance, and then hung up the phone.
Chen Ying hurriedly ran upstairs, trying to drag her son down. After a few steps up, she said she heard a "bang" and knew she was hopeless.
● On the rooftop where Jingbo had an accident, neighbors are still drying sheets and clothes on it.
A perfect revenge
In order to dispel her sadness and let her younger brother be remembered by more people, Yi Ting released several commemorative videos on station B. To her surprise, a large number of messages from "sick children" gathered in the comment area, and she realized that people like her and her younger brother who fell into depression because of the scars of their original family were a secret and huge group.
It was in this accident that Liu Hao had a connection with this broken family.
He was born in 2004, one year younger than Jing Bo, but he has a similar body shape: thin and dexterous. When I met him in Xiangtan, he had been working in a bubble tea shop for more than half a month, and most of his life trajectory was between the bubble tea shop, Yi Ting's house, and the mooncake shop. He carried a black backpack and a pair of silver-rimmed glasses, wrapped himself in a wide white shirt, and looked like a middle school student.
In the summer of 2022, Liu Haohao was 18 years old and had been working in an electronics factory in Jiangsu for two years, assembling parts or doing manual corrections. At that time, his depression was already very serious, and in the early morning after a night shift, he realized that something was wrong with him, his face was stiff, he couldn't smile, and he turned his head and forgot what he was doing. He offered to resign.
At that time, he would swipe videos on depression-related topics on station B. One day, a video recorded by Yi Ting appeared in his stream, a memorial speech written for Jing Bo. He felt that his experience was very similar to that of the teenager in it, so he left a message in the comment area, to the effect that he might not want to go on either. Unexpectedly, I received Yi Ting's reply that night.
After another big quarrel with his father, Liu Hao felt that his life was rotten and would never be good again. He ran to the river and wanted to kill himself. Yi Ting called him and invited him to come to Hunan to attend his wedding. Liu Hao said that he thought at the time, then come and don't delay anything. "She didn't make it to her brother's funeral, if I really have something similar to her brother, I can meet her and leave after the wedding."
At the end of September 2022, he came to Xiangtan from his hometown in Henan and lived in Yi Jingbo's room. At that time, it had been more than half a year since Jing Bo's death, and most of the items in the room had been organized, leaving only a bookshelf and a pair of paintings.
Looking back, Liu Hao felt a little incredible: because of a sentence on the Internet and a random message, two strangers can really meet in reality, like sisters and brothers. Yi Ting's hair told him that he felt like he was sent by Jingbo. He became the new child of the family, observing the "whirlpool" of Jingbo's former family from a distance not far away.
He empathized with Jingbo's experience. They also grew up in a repressive education, and they also did not receive real trust from their parents.
He also self-harmed. It was the feeling of a fire, Liu Hao said, and he found photos and videos of self-harm in Jing Bo's mobile phone later, which were taken by Jing Bo himself, and the environment looked like it should be in the dormitory. Jing Bo covered his head, and the bed curtains surrounded him. He took the scalpel he had bought and swiped it neatly. Bloodstains on one hand. He was a little surprised by Jing Bo's cruelty to himself.
In Xiangtan, when he was in a bad mood, he went up to the rooftop on the ninth floor alone, and when he sat on the edge of the rooftop, he would feel that jumping down was inexplicably attractive to people.
Liu Hao now works in a bubble tea shop in Xiangtan, and only goes home when he is resting. Most of the time I couldn't meet my uncle and aunt, and when they came back from closing the shop, he was already in his bedroom.
He said that now his biggest role in this small family is to transmit information, Yi Ting has already blocked the contact information of her parents, and her uncle and aunt have learned about Yi Ting's movements through him.
He felt that Yi Ting really regarded him as a younger brother, no matter what happened, he would not deliberately avoid him, and would take him to meet her friends. Even in the new house he bought, he was given a place to live temporarily. "Sister Tingting told me that she made more phone calls with me than she made with her brother."
In this strange sister, he felt a family affection that he had never felt before, and he clumsily wanted to give something back. He rummaged through Jing Bo's room, wanting to leave some memories of his younger brother for Yi Ting. But there was nothing, Jing Bo didn't write much, and he didn't have a diary. He only found traces of water dripping on it in a book about psychology, which should be spilled tears. Even though Yi Ting repeatedly asked, her parents still burned Jing Bo's clothes. Liu Hao secretly found some in the underground garage that had not been burned and kept them.
Other than that, Jing Bo left no trace in this home. Liu Hao guessed that death was Yi Jingbo's long-planned plan, a perfect revenge. "What do you mean by that? When you die, everyone starts to love you. ”
● Liu Hao is in Jingbo's room, and most of the items in the room have been replaced.
Yi Jianqiang never felt that the boy was similar to his son. Whether it is character or ability, it is the son who is better. However, he thanked the young man for showing up at his home. Yi Jianqiang said that every time he came home from the mooncake shop, it would be more than 10 o'clock in the evening, and when he opened the door, he could often see their sister and brother talking and laughing together. Play games, or chat. He thinks that as long as there is such an atmosphere in the house, as long as Tingting is happy, it is good.
He had seen the boy come to the house in the first place. At that time, Liu Haohao's depression was serious, and Yi Jianqiang often saw him standing alone in front of the balcony window. He had seen the young man's arm, the marks of self-mutilation with a knife, densely covered with more folds than the folds of his leather coat.
He talked about Liu Hao's situation, but it sounded more like a response to Jing Bo. Our family is free and stress-free. We won't say that you did something wrong here, something wrong there, he has no psychological pressure. It was only when he came to us that he really relaxed, so his illness got better very quickly.
Speaking of this, he suddenly mentioned that after Jing Bo died, Yi Ting was trapped abroad and couldn't come back, so he asked him to go to the funeral home to see the body - is there any trace of self-harm on Jing Bo's body? I looked for it carefully, but Jing Bo didn't, he said.
"Jingbo hasn't met a good person like us", Yi Jianqiang was silent for a while, as if whispering, "He didn't give us too many opportunities" "You said you don't like Shanghai, where do you want to go?" Daddy will go with you. ”
● Jing Bo was in the aquarium before his death.
Star balloons by the Xiangjiang River
After Jing Bo died, according to custom, Yi Jianqiang brought his ashes back to his hometown for burial. About a week later, they held a memorial service for Jingbo on the edge of the Xiangjiang River.
This was the idea he had on the way back to Hunan from Shanghai, and he wanted to say goodbye to Jingbo. Tingting planned and handled everything remotely.
Many people came that day. Chuan'er, Cao Qing and some of their high school classmates rushed back to Xiangtan from nearby cities.
Yi Jianqiang wore a Doraemon doll costume, which was Jing Bo's favorite anime character. He didn't know it, only that it was a cat. He put himself in a thick shell, and if there were classmates who wanted to hug Jingbo, they came over to hug him.
The day was overcast and the river breeze was cold. After the end, Yi Jianqiang's mood couldn't calm down for a long time. "If I could replace it, I'd rather die and he live." He said that if Jing Bo had participated in such activities before the accident, he would have been able to pay more attention to bipolar disorder and depression.
They released several star balloons. Yi Ting wrote in her eulogy: "Let's all release the stars and let him return to the night sky, he can't go back to that small planet with such a heavy body, right?" He will continue to watch over us in heaven. ”
It has been more than two years since Jing Bo's accident, and Chuan'er and Cao Qing have repeatedly thought about whether they missed Jing Bo's "distress signal"? In the early morning of the day Jingbo jumped off the building, Cao Qing also received a message from him. Jing Bo said that he was "almost there", Cao Qing didn't understand what it meant, she was in the dormitory at the time, it was too late, she was sleepy and fell asleep.
After the departure of her peers, she became more concerned about the emotional problems of those around her than ever. Recently, she met a sensitive, inferior-self-conscious girl who was suffering from the misfortune of her family of origin, and she was struggling with how to help her. She didn't want to miss another chance to stop the tragedy from happening.
Chuan'er remembered that when she was in high school, Jingbo slept all day in class, bought a lot of melatonin tablets, and couldn't sleep at night. At that time, they thought that he was under too much pressure for the college entrance examination, and some emotions fought back. But perhaps as early as then, something was wrong with Jing Bo.
Li Rui's sadness lasted for a long time, even in the third year of high school, where the pace of study was the most intense, he always thought of Jing Bo, and then cried uncontrollably. He is Jingbo's hair young, and the two grew up together. The news of Jingbo's accident was initially concealed by his family. Until he came back from vacation, he logged on to Jingbo's game account as usual and helped him score points. Someone in the background sent him a message and asked if it was me? He said no, what's wrong? The other party told him that Jingbo was gone.
He went to the rooftop where Jingbo had an accident alone. The building is really high, Li Rui has a fear of heights, but he still moved to the railing a little bit, he glanced down and immediately shrank back. "He must have had a lot of courage to go on like this."
He had an explosive head, had a slight social phobia, and didn't have any real friends in college. Once, he asked Yi Ting in an innocent tone: Sister, did you come out? Yi Ting told him that everyone could get out of this matter, but she couldn't.
● The plush puppy was a gift that Jing Bo bought for himself, and it had left blood stains on it.
After Jing Bo left, Yi Ting desperately wanted to get to the shore and married her boyfriend at the time. Soon, the cracks in the marriage were hard to ignore. The husband filed for divorce.
In the past few days in Xiangtan, Yi Ting took me to the rooftop. She took the washed sheets and went up to dry, where everything was normal and was still used by the neighbors to dry their clothes. Winter in Hunan has passed, and the wind of early spring has a damp, sweet smell, and the sky is as translucent as glass candy paper. Yi Ting stood on the air conditioner and looked down, the wind blowing her hair. Below is the vegetable garden and fence of the old community, which few people pass by. Yi Ting said that according to her younger brother's character, she did not find it strange to choose this direction and position.
Soon after, she moved to her new house and moved what her brother had left behind. Liu Hao also moved out of Jing Bo's room. Only the parents still live there. Her father came to her new home several times, all for the same thing. Yi Ting told him that if she still wanted to convince her to accept having another brother, she could not use it.
The plush puppy that was brought back from the Jingbo University dormitory was also brought out by Yi Ting. My mother washed it once, and the self-mutilated blood stains on the surface disappeared, and she looked brand new.
(Chen Ying is a pseudonym in the article.) ）