Bai Liu repeated softly, “Fifty years have passed since the war ended?”
Elena lowered her head and looked at Bai Liu with droopy, wrinkled eyelids: “Maybe it’s been longer, I’m so old that I can hardly rember these dates.”
“I just rember that a long ti ago, when Alex was still alive, he and the guy nad Guy wrote many, many letters to .” Elena took out a pile of old letters from her dirty skirt bib. “Every ti I visit their graves, I read the letters they sent in front of their graves, so as not to forget them all.”
Elena sighed tiredly: “You know, I am the only old woman who rembers these things now. If I forget them too, there will really be no trace of them.”
Bai Liu looked at the stack of letters and politely asked: “Can I see it?”
Elena looked at Bai Liu in surprise: “Are you interested? No young people want to hear these old stories anymore.”
Bai Liu smiled: “I am Alex and Guy’s comrade-in-arms, and I have an obligation to help rember them.”
Elena stared at Bai Liu quietly for a long ti, and she suddenly laughed: “Young man, even if you are a liar who tells lies, you did use your lies to make happy.”
She handed the pile of letters to Bai Liu kindly, with tears in her eyes: “You are welco to rember these two people with .”
Bai Liu held up the letter: “Perhaps you aren’t suggesting that I open it and read it in person?”
Elena laughed and waved her hands tremblingly: “Of course not, I can recite everything from the top of my head.”
Bai Liu lowered his head and arranged the letters in chronological order, and then opened them one by one. Elena was talking nonchalantly:
“…You know, young man, if a person has a bad life and is alone when they are very old, they will recall his past over and over again and wonder what they did wrong to end up like this…”
Elena’s old voice paused: “Do you know what is the most terrifying thing in this process?”
Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked at her: “What is it?”
Elena forced a smile, but tears flowed from the corners of her eyes: “If you did do a lot of things wrong.”
Bai Liu lowered his eyes and looked at the first letter in his hand. It was from Elena to Alex.
[Tribute to my dear fiancé:
Your dirty, shaless, despicable male lover wrote to two days ago, begging to forgive him for his despicable behavior with you, and shalessly asking to bless your love and marriage.
What a disgusting idea!
Is there any god in this world who would allow two n to unite in front of him?
I even suspected that enemy artillery shells would be raining down on the place where you were getting married as punishnt for your breach of ethics!
Alex, as a doctor who studies the chanism of human life, the greatest profession on earth, why would you allow yourself to hang out with such a ridiculous psychopath, wasting your ti when you could be saving people?
When you’re with him, don’t you feel like your future and ideals are tainted by shit?
At least when I got the letter from him, I felt like my dignity had been stained by shit.]
Bai Liu opened the next letter, and the sender was Alex.
[To Elena:
First, allow to viciously refute the way you have addressed . I have never t you, and I have never agreed to allow you to make your own decisions and beco my fiancée. The title you addressed at the beginning of your previous letter is completely wrong.
Second, there will only be one lover, wife, and person who will be with for life, and that is Guy, not you, who suddenly appeared after Guy and I fell in love.
I don’t know where your inexplicable affection for ca from, whether it was from my parents’ unrealistic expectations and descriptions of , or from the pursuit of the only young man in that narrow town who had achieved an advanced degree, or from the complacency and self-congratulation of your own beauty, the ridiculous notion that the prettiest girl in the town would be able to win over the nicest young man.
Allow to solemnly explain to you, Elena, I am not an object that you can use to win or flaunt, I am a person with feelings.
After I gave my love to Guy, it was absolutely impossible for to fall in love with anyone else unless I stopped loving him.
Elena, you are also an independent person. Your value does not need to be flaunted by getting . You can go on to more worthy things to prove that.
Guy and I have two qualifications to go to higher education institutions. Mine will be used by myself. Guy said that you are still a naive little girl and has more qualifications to enjoy the beauty and knowledge of the world than he, who does not know if he’ll co back alive.
If you have any thoughts of going to a higher education institution, Guy says he can give you his qualifications.
Although you said all kinds of things to Guy that I think are bullshit, Guy forgave you and nobly said that he would give you this opportunity to further your studies.
Although I strongly disagreed, Guy was adamant.
Guy said he could tell you were a girl with aspirations.
He said that you like because I am a doctor. You think I am great for treating diseases and saving people, so you cast a kind of girlish admiration on .
Guy asked to pass on sothing to you. If you like saving people, why not try it yourself?
I’m sorry for the blind assurances my parents made to you, but I will still scold you if you make any inappropriate remarks about Guy again.]
Bai Liu continued to flip through it, and the next letter was from Elena again, but this ti it was not addressed to Alex, but to Guy.
[Tribute to Guy:
I apologize for the inappropriate and emotionally charged insults.
I put all the money I had saved from working in the past three years from the age of eleven to now in this envelope as compensation for my personal exportation of inappropriate words.
I won’t take the academic qualification you gave . I still think you are wasting Alex’s ti. He could have more. He invented a potion that can delay the death of mankind. How many military n who died in the war could have been saved?
Everyone in town says Alex could be the next war hero!
But after he t you, all he can think about now is falling in love!
I still hope you stay away from him, maybe you can find another true male lover, but that person shouldn’t be Alex.]
The next letter was from Guy to Elena.
[To the lovely little girl Elena:
Hey little girl, guess what? I think what you said is right.
Alex will indeed have a rather bright future, he was a very talented fellow. The experintal process of the potion is moving forward quickly, and his superiors have given him permission to experint on wounded soldiers with remarkable results.
I’m not worthy of him. Alex is very good, so I still want to selfishly possess him for a while and have the best mories with him.
Elena, I have seen your photos. You are very beautiful, but you are too young, only fourteen years old. You still can’t tell the difference between love and longing.
I have to admit that Alex is a good young man, but by the ti you and he can talk about love, it will have to be at least four years later – believe , with your beauty, determination and perseverance, you will probably have t soone else by then. A nice young man who makes your heart beat more.
Of course, it may also be a nice girl, I am not wedded to that. [1]
After the war, enjoying a romantic and slow-paced love in a peaceful era is what you and Alex deserve, instead of sacrificing your youth and marrying a war hero they imagined under the enthusiasm of war-mongering town residents and Alex’ parents.
This isn’t fair, not to both you and to Alex.
I hope you are happy, because you deserve happiness, and I hope I can be happy too.
But unfortunately, the happiness I want is not sothing God is willing to bless.
Hey, Alex told you were a great wedding dress maker, could you make one for ? It just so happens that I want to dress up and marry Alex]
The last letter that Elena wrote to Guy was very ssy, with many tears on it, as if the fourteen-year-old Elena was crying while writing the letter.
But her tone in the letter was completely different and cold:
[To Guy:
I don’t know where you got those rumors that I was forced to marry Alex. There was no such thing. I did it of my own free will.
I won’t make a wedding dress. I won’t allow anyone to marry Alex before . Just give up!]
Bai Liu looked at the wedding dress Elena placed on Guy’s tombstone, raised her eyebrows and asked, “Can I know why you made a wedding dress for Guy in the end?”
Elena smiled with nostalgia, but her smile seed to contain a lot of unspeakable sadness hidden in her happiness, and the corners of her mouth couldn’t stop turning down.
“…I was too young at that ti and didn’t understand anything. The town said that a beautiful girl would be chosen to marry a war hero in the town. The winner would get a sum of money from Alex’s parents and my parents let go.”
“I was the most beautiful of all the girls.” Elena’s eyes beca more distant. “I was chosen easily. I was still very young at that ti and the law did not allow to get married, so Alex’s parents told to wait for Alex’s return, and I was not allowed to have any contact or love with anyone until Alex ca back.”
“At that ti, my whole life was devoted to marrying the hero Alex. When soone else took him away, I panicked. I hated Guy so much.” Elena’s eyes were red and her tone was hateful, “Guy was a very glib guy, and he also likes to write letters to tease . I simply didn’t understand how a man who was fighting in a war could be so carefree and still smile every day.”
“Guy is different from all the n I have t. He respected , encouraged , and said that sooner or later I will achieve results that are not inferior to Alex’s. He even helped get admission, so I could go straight to school when the ti ca.”
Elena’s tears overflowed from her wrinkles: “On the night when I was crying and writing this letter to Guy, I secretly made a wedding dress overnight and rushed to the post office to send it to him.”
As she spoke, she turned to look at Bai Liu in a daze: “But when I got to the post office, they notified that a new letter had arrived and asked to pick it up. I opened it, and it was still a letter from Guy.”
Elena burst into tears: “——It’s Guy’s obituary and a suicide note.”
“Guy was shot dead on the spot after rebelling during a sneak attack in the early morning. He knew this would happen a long ti ago and left a suicide note for in advance, asking to take good care of myself and help him take care of Alex.”
“I wanted to give him a wedding dress, an apology, and a thank you…” Elena choked, her lips trembling as she said, “He didn’t have ti to hear all of it.”
——————————————
[1] In case anyone is confused, Guy is saying that he doesn’t mind if Elena marries a good woman instead of a good man.
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