P.S. For this chapter, I recommend the music "Hope" and "Lost in the Sea of Memories."
That year, I was seven, and he was nine.
On a stormy night, my parents' arguing voices pierced through the thin walls, like two rusty saws pulling back and forth. I huddled in the corner of the bed, covering my head with a blanket, my teeth chattering.
In the darkness, he fumbled his way over, his body carrying the warmth of the quilt, and pulled me into his arms.
"Yingying, don't be scared," he said.
His voice was muffled and very low, yet it felt like a heavy stone pressing down on my wildly beating heart. "Big Brother is here."
He smelled clean, like sun-dried bedsheets mixed with a hint of soap.
Outside the window, a pale flash of lightning split the darkness, illuminating his taut jawline and his astonishingly bright eyes.
He held me so tightly I could barely breathe, as if he wanted to embed me into his bones. The thunder was loud that night, and my parents' curses were even louder, but in his arms, the world was reduced to only his drum-like heartbeat, thudding against my ear.
Later, I fell asleep. In my dream, there was no thunder, only an endless golden wheat field. The wind blew, and the wheat swayed, rustling like his soft comforting words.
His name was Su Heng.
Grandpa gave him the name, saying it was a type of fragrant herb with tenacious vitality.
Grandma called him Fusheng, a nickname, hoping he would have abundant blessings.
He was indeed like a resilient plant, striving to grow towards the sun amidst the cold cracks of our parents' relationship. He excelled in academics, the kind of child who could get first place in his grade without our parents ever having to worry.
And I always followed behind him like a little shadow. He carried my backpack for me, fended off the kids who mocked me for being slow, and on the way home from school, he would use his saved pocket money to buy me the cheapest cream popsicle.
I licked the popsicle, the sweet taste melting on my tongue, watching his shadow lengthen in the setting sun, thinking to myself, it's so good to have a big brother.
In my third year of junior high, my math was a complete disaster.
The bright red crosses on the test paper looked like mocking faces.
My parents were busy arguing, busy smashing things; no one paid attention to me.
It was he who, every evening, would push open my bedroom door, carrying the scent of old books from the school library, and sit beside me. The halo of the desk lamp illuminated his focused profile, with tiny beads of sweat on the tip of his nose.
He explained problems slowly, his voice not loud, yet it was like a key, slowly turning the rusted lock in my mind. "Here, the auxiliary line should be drawn like this..." His slender fingers traced the geometric figures, his fingertips showing the clean knuckles characteristic of a young man.
I secretly watched his lowered eyelashes, like two small fans, casting faint shadows beneath his eyes.
My heart suddenly beat very fast.
After finishing the problem, he habitually ruffled my hair, smiling, and said, "Yingying is so smart, you get it right away."
His smile was as pure as fresh snow, but I inexplicably blushed, hastily lowering my head, pretending to look at the test paper.
The moonlight streamed in through the window, falling on the faded cuff of his school uniform, and also into my heart, stirring circles of indescribable ripples.
He finally got into the best high school in the city and became a boarder.
On the first day of school, I deliberately wore my newly bought dress and stood among the bustling crowd at the school gate, waiting for him. The sun was a bit dazzling, and I stood on tiptoe, peering around.
He walked from a distance, carrying his faded canvas backpack, his posture tall and straight, like a slender young poplar. Everything around me seemed to blur, leaving only his increasingly clear figure. He walked up to me, ruffled my hair, just like when I was little. "Yingying has grown taller," he said with a smile.
My heart was pounding, and my throat was dry.
The words I had rehearsed countless times in my heart, like uncontrollable vines, suddenly broke free: "Big Brother, I love you."
The sound was not loud, but it clearly landed between us.
The air seemed to solidify.
The smile on his face stiffened for a moment, then spread again, tinged with a hint of helplessness and doting, as if he were comforting a naive child.
"Silly girl," he patted my head, his voice light, "I love you too."
His tone was exactly the same as when he said, "Yingying is so smart."
The sunlight fell into his eyes, sparkling, but without the warmth I had hoped for.
A huge sense of loss, like a cold tide, instantly engulfed my heart. I lowered my head, looking at the hem of my new dress... After he moved into the dorm, it was just me and our parents at home.
Arguments were like an endless play, with slamming doors, screams, and the shattering of porcelain as a constant background. I locked myself in my room, headphones in my ears, volume turned up full blast, trying to block out the suffocating noise.
But his voice, the warmth of his palm when he ruffled my hair, his low tone when explaining problems, all circled in my mind like ghosts.
I started studying frantically, like grasping at a lifeline.
The notes he sent back were filled with dense annotations, his handwriting elegant and strong.
I read them over and over, as if his breath still lingered in the handwriting. Late at night, the halo of the desk lamp illuminated the pages, and I bit the pen, but what appeared before my eyes was his silhouette, outlined by the sun, standing at the school gate. A voice in my heart screamed: It's not like that! It's not brotherly-sisterly love!
But I bit my lip hard, forcing those surging, burning, forbidden emotions back into the dark corners.
I am his younger sister.
He is my older brother.
An invisible mountain-sea, named ethics, lay between us, bottomless... A year later, I barely scraped by the admission line, stumbling into his high school.
On the day of the orientation ceremony, I specifically went to his classroom to find him.
He was laughing and chatting with a few classmates, the sunlight streaming through the window, illuminating his bright smile.
Seeing me, his eyes lit up, and he walked over. "Yingying, you're amazing!"
He instinctively reached out to ruffle my hair, but his hand stopped halfway, then he awkwardly withdrew it and shoved it into his pocket.
Classmates around us looked over curiously.
My face flushed instantly, and that little secret joy in my heart deflated like a punctured balloon.
He was no longer the Big Brother who held me tightly on stormy nights. Between us, there was an invisible membrane, distant and polite.
In my third year of high school, he was a freshman in college, and the college entrance exam was approaching. The phone rang, exceptionally piercing in the quiet dorm room.
It was his number. I picked it up, almost trembling.
"Hello, Big Brother?" There was a few seconds of silence on the other end, only his slightly heavy breathing. Then, I heard him say, "Yingying, I love you."
His voice was low, carrying a kind of desperate weariness I had never heard before and... a sense of all-or-nothing.
My heart sank abruptly, as if plunging into an ice cave.
Connecting it to his recent abnormalities—he no longer went to school, shut himself in his room all day, and when he occasionally came out, his eyes were terrifyingly hollow, not even drinking a sip of the carefully brewed barley tea from Grandma—a huge fear seized me.
"Big Brother, what's wrong? Don't scare me!"
My voice trembled.
"Nothing," he chuckled softly, his laugh hollow and unsettling.
"It's just... I suddenly wanted to tell you. Keep up the good work, there are only a dozen days left."
After saying that, without waiting for my response, the call was disconnected.
The cold dial tone buzzed in my ear, like the lingering sound of a death knell. I held my phone, standing in the center of the dorm, feeling utterly cold.
That "I love you" was no longer the warmth between siblings, but like a poisoned dagger, plunging fiercely into my heart. The mountain-sea had not leveled, but the abyss had appeared.
Later, I got into Beijing Film Academy. He also came to Beijing, studying at a good university. I thought that by escaping that cold home, everything would get better.
Every day I messaged him, invited him to dinner, to watch movies, to go boating in Beihai. He always replied:
"Busy."
"Next time."
"Have fun with your classmates."
The cold screen was like a wall, isolating me from his world.
I even secretly went to his school to watch him from afar.
He sat alone in the shadows of a library corner, a book spread before him, but his eyes gazed hollowly out the window, his hand unconsciously stroking an old guitar pick—silver—a gift I had saved my pocket money for a long time to buy him for his fifteenth birthday.
The afterglow of the setting sun fell on him, but it couldn't penetrate the desolation in his eyes.
He had lost a lot of weight, his cheekbones protruding, like a plant deprived of water.
Finally, one time, I couldn't hold back anymore and called him.
The accumulated grievances, worries, and that repeatedly rejected, nowhere-to-be-placed love, erupted like a volcano.
"Su Heng! You jerk! How long are you going to hide from me? I'm your younger sister! What on earth is wrong with you? Tell me!"
I screamed into the phone, tears streaming down uncontrollably.
There was a long silence on the other end, only his suppressed, heavy breathing. Then, I heard a sob.
"Yingying..."
His voice was terribly hoarse, like sandpaper rubbing.
"I'm sorry... Big Brother is too stupid... Really... too stupid..." He cried like a lost child, helpless and desperate.
"I know... I know it all... But I can't... I really can't... I'm your Big Brother..."
His crying was like a blunt knife, repeatedly cutting at my heart.
Above us were the cold gazes of our parents, the heavy shackles of society, and that insurmountable chasm called "siblings" that lay between us, deep and bottomless.
I held the phone, listening to his suppressed sobs, my heart shattered. It turned out we both knew how deep that mountain-sea was, deep enough to drown all improper desires.
That April, our family completely collapsed.
Our parents finally ended twenty years of mutual torment, divorcing quickly as if shaking off something dirty. Just two months later, they each started new families and had new children.
Su Heng and I became two superfluous people, completely forgotten in the ruins of old times.
Father called, his tone as flat as if announcing something irrelevant to him: "You're both adults now, take care of yourselves from now on."
There was no inquiry, no guilt, only a kind of relieved indifference.
It turned out they had never loved each other; my brother's and my existence were merely proof of a mistake they made in their youth.
That night, I sent Big Brother a WeChat message, with only one sentence:
"Yingying, nothing can stop us now. What we love is separated by mountains and seas, but the mountains and seas have leveled."
But my heart was still very uneasy.
Had the mountain-sea really leveled?
Our parents' mountain had fallen, but the abyss in our hearts, built by blood, ethics, and over a decade of sibling affection, still lay across us, bottomless.
I didn't know then that when Big Brother saw that message, there was no joy in his heart, only endless sorrow and fear.
I was like a drowning person grasping at the last straw in despair, and he was that straw. But I couldn't save him, he couldn't even save himself.
He started to numb himself with alcohol.
I went to his rented small room to find him, and when I pushed open the door, a strong smell of alcohol assaulted me. Empty wine bottles were scattered on the floor, and he was curled up in the corner of the sofa, unshaven, his eyes unfocused.
The sunlight streamed through the dirty window, falling on his pale face like a layer of cold frost.
I walked over, trying to snatch the wine bottle from his hand. He suddenly waved his hand and pushed me away with surprising force.
"Leave me alone!"
He growled, his eyes fierce, like a wounded trapped beast. But the next second, that fierceness faded, leaving only deep, bottomless weariness and confusion.
"Yingying... I can't find my way..." he murmured, like a lost child, "This world... is too big... there's no place for me... Yeats loved Maud Gonne... Ella loved Sid... What about me? Who do I love? Who can I love?"
He looked up at me, his eyes terrifyingly empty,
"Yingying, I'm your Big Brother..."
These words, like a curse, and like shackles, nailed him firmly in place, unable to move.
I watched his suffering, my heart twisted. I knew he yearned for a pure, fervent love that could break through all obstacles, but the reality was that he was even deprived of the right to love.
He could only repeatedly use the identity of "Big Brother" to remind himself, and to remind me, of the unbridgeable chasm between us.
On New Year's Day, he acted unusually "normal."
He initiative asked me out, taking me to the amusement park.
He bought me giant cotton candy, rode the carousel with me, and in the haunted house, though his face was pale with fear, he still bravely stood in front of me.
When we got home that night, he dug out his dusty guitar, sat by my bed, and gently strummed the strings. In the dim yellow light, he lowered his eyes, his long eyelashes casting faint shadows beneath them, humming an unknown tune, his voice low and gentle.
At that moment, time seemed to flow backward, returning to those nights without arguments, only the sound of the wind in the wheat field.
He pushed me the WeChat of his best friend, a sunny and cheerful boy, and said with a smile.
"This kid is nice, Yingying, chat with him more."
Then he took out a thick envelope and handed it to me, "Take this, I saved it up, buy some nice clothes."
Everything was too beautiful, so beautiful... like a carefully woven lie. My heart pounded, and a strong sense of unease seized me.
The more relaxed and happy he seemed, the more scared I became.
The lingering weariness and emptiness deep in his eyes were like cold needles.
He walked me back to my school dorm building, ruffled my hair like he used to when I was little, and said, "Happy New Year, Yingying. I'm really tired today, I'm going back to shower and sleep."
His smile was still clean, but behind that smile, I saw a kind of... desperation.
His retreating figure, stretched long and lonely under the streetlights.
I stood rooted to the spot, my heart pounding as if it would leap out of my throat.
Something's wrong! This is too wrong! This isn't him! How could my Big Brother, tormented by depression and emaciated, suddenly become so "sunny" overnight?
I suddenly turned and ran back to his rented room like a madwoman.
I knocked on the door, no answer.
I called his name, dead silence.
A huge fear, like a cold tide, engulfed me.
With trembling hands, I used the spare key he had once given me to unlock the door, and forcefully pushed open the bathroom door—time seemed to freeze at that moment.
He lay in the bathtub filled with water, the water a dazzling red.
His eyes were closed, his face as pale as paper, his left hand hanging limply over the edge of the tub, the deep, bone-visible wound on his wrist like a gaping, mocking mouth.
The air was filled with the heavy smell of blood and despair.
My mind went blank, all sounds disappeared, and the world was left with only that pervasive red and his lifeless face. There were no screams, no tears; a terrible, cold calm dominated me.
I rushed over, pulled down a towel, and pressed it firmly against the hideous wound on his wrist. Blood instantly stained the towel, and my hands. I fumbled for my phone, my fingers stiff as I dialed 120, clearly stating the address.
Then, I frantically searched for alcohol and gauze, using all my strength to drag his heavy body out of the water, tightly wrapping his wound with everything I could find.
Blood was still seeping out, warm, viscous, carrying the temperature of his life.
I knelt on the cold, damp tiles, holding him tightly, pressing the towel firmly against his wound, feeling his faint pulse beating weakly beneath my palm.
The piercing wail of the ambulance siren grew from distant to near, and medical personnel rushed in, lifting him onto a stretcher.