T/W: mention of suicide
Song Yuchi walked out of the WHOI building, and the salty, damp sea breeze hit him. This renowned deep-sea research institute in northern America was not only an academic sanctuary, but also had seaside scenery.
He walked through the pine forest, stepping onto the small path leading to the beach, and the green vegetation gradually gave way to sand dunes. The sound of seagulls, the rustling of beach grass, and the waves crashing against the shore filled the air. Turning past an ochre-colored rock, the view in front of him suddenly opened up. The boats rose and fell with the sea, and the clouds hung so low they seemed within reach.
The sky was gloomy, the sea was gray, and the sea breeze was also gray, howling as it came in waves, as if signaling a coming storm. In this ominous weather, Song Yuchi saw the person on the beach.
It was a young man, looking about the same age as him, with a beautiful profile, standing out on the beach because his hair was blue. On this gray day, only this small area still had the color of the sea.
The young man was crouching on the sand, with a shallow pit at his feet and a small sand dune beside it. He carefully placed something into the pit, then gently scooped up some sand, covering it.
“What are you burying?” Song Yuchi asked.
The young man seemed to be fully absorbed in what he was doing and didn’t notice him approaching. When he heard the question, he was startled and knocked over the sand dune beside him.
“Are you a PhD student at the institute?” Song Yuchi asked again, “Which project are you working on?”
“Jellyfish,” the young man said.
Song Yuchi waited for more details. Logically, the research project would be more specific.
“I’m burying jellyfish.” The young man said, pointing to the beach.
Song Yuchi looked down and saw several jellyfish behind the young man, with transparent tentacles emerging from the sand beneath his feet. It was common to find jellyfish stranded and sun-dried on the beach, but it was the first time he’d seen someone burying them.
The young man said nothing more and continued with his work. Song Yuchi watched him carefully dig shallow pits and form small mounds of sand without any tombstones, mounds that could easily be flattened by the waves at any moment. He was so absorbed in this futile work that Song Yuchi suddenly had the strange feeling that he wasn’t burying jellyfish but burying himself.
“Are you a marine biologist?” Song Yuchi asked.
“Not anymore,” the young man replied.
“Why?”
“Not suited for it.”
“Ran into difficulties in your research?”
The young man glanced at him and replied with a soft ‘En’: “It’s been three years, and all my efforts have failed. The results are still the same as when I first started my PhD, with no progress whatsoever.”
“You’ve been able to persist for three years,” Song Yuchi said, “that’s already impressive.”
The young man didn’t smile at his compliment. “I overestimated myself,” he lowered his head again. “When I was in undergrad, I won a prize in a school competition and thought I was a research genius. Now that I think about it, it was just that my advisor gave me a good direction and I was lucky enough not to encounter any difficulties in the experiment. But when I actually started working in this field, I realized I’m nothing.”
Song Yuchi didn’t know what to say. Sometimes, when the sense of resonance was too strong, it led to a speechless state.
The young man vented a few more words and continued burying jellyfish. His long hair fluttered in the sea breeze, and his ears were slightly red from being rubbed by the wind for a long time, as if they were frozen.
“You can turn to the side for a while,” Song Yuchi said.
The young man looked up in confusion.
“Imagine a person as a uniform cylinder, with the wind blowing directly from the front,” Song Yuchi gestured with his hands. “From a fluid dynamics perspective, the wind speed will become zero along the central axis of the cylinder, and reach its maximum on both sides. So the ears are more likely to get frostbite than the nose in winter.”
The young man blinked slowly, as if he was thinking with that motion. “Then if I turn, wouldn’t it be my nose and the back of my head that hurt?”
“You can alternate between facing forward and sideways.”
The young man smiled. He had everything planned out—burying the jellyfish, saying goodbye to the past, and then jumping into the sea on the eve of the storm. With such bad weather, no one would come to the beach, and no one would stop him.
He wondered if anyone would notice his disappearance during the long voyage at sea, but he was sure his parents wouldn’t.
However, just before he could end his life, a stranger suddenly appeared on the beach and started talking about fluid dynamics.
“Are you an engineer?” the young man asked.
“My major is energy and power, and my research direction is spectral analysis, Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, or LIBS for short.” Song Yuchi’s voice was serious, as if to say, ‘Look, I’m going to show you how to introduce a research topic.’, then he suddenly lowered his voice and said, almost conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you a secret.”
Why tell him a secret?
“I actually,” Song Yuchi whispered, “don’t want to be an actor.”
The statement was so confusing that the young man frowned.
“I’m in my fifth year of PhD, I should be defending my thesis and looking for a job, but instead, I ended up here,” Song Yuchi said. “I’ll definitely have to delay graduation.”
The young man murmured an ‘oh’, still unsure why he was saying all this.
“They all think I’m delaying graduation because I’m distracted, my mind full of acting,” Song Yuchi continued. “In my junior year, I delayed my application because of drama club rehearsals, so I didn’t go abroad.”
The young man became more confused. “But you just said you didn’t want to be an actor.”
“Yeah,” Song Yuchi said, “it was just an excuse.”
After a pause, he went on: “I’m extending my studies because I can’t write a decent thesis; it’s so bad that even I know I can’t graduate with it. It was the same in my junior year. I knew I couldn’t apply to a good school, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the workload. I spread the idea that I liked acting just to comfort myself and my parents. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it; it was just that I hadn’t tried hard enough.”
Since he was a child, his parents had always thought he was ‘gifted’ and ‘smart’. The certificates on the wall and the math Olympiad trophies in the cabinet seemed to prove this.
People around him called him a child prodigy, and every time they saw him, they would praise him. His parents would place a hand on his shoulder, revealing a proud smile.
They all said that this child must have a bright future.
However, as he grew older and reached a higher level, that childhood cleverness was no longer enough. He had become, in the end, just another ‘child prodigy whose later years don’t live up to expectations’, like Fang Zhongyong.[footnote]According to Baidu, Fang Zhoyong is the protagonist of Wang Anshi’s work ‘Shang Zhongyong’. Basically, he was gifted in his childhood, but because his father was ignorant, he became an ordinary person when he grew up. [/footnote] The compliments and awe from the past were never coming back.
His parents couldn’t accept this reality.
So, he found an excuse to prove the lie that everyone had believed — ‘He’s always been smart, he just didn’t work hard enough.’
In some corner of his heart, he knew he secretly wished it were true.
The foamy sea water crawled to their feet, erasing the footprints they had left behind.
Then Song Yuchi said, “Why don’t you advise me?”
“Advise you on what?”
“Advise me to have a good talk with my parents and clarify everything.”
The young man shook his head, lowering his hand, letting the seawater carry away the sand from his palm. “I know that some parents in the world are difficult to communicate with. Even if you try your best, they might not believe you, thinking you’re just being lazy when they aren’t looking.” He paused, then added, “But you’re a little better off than me; at least your parents still have expectations for you.”
The waves rose higher and higher, now covering their calves. For a moment, the young man felt a little dazed. He wasn’t sure if this person wanted to pull him out or walk with him into the sea.
Then Song Yuchi said, “Then let’s make a deal.”
The young man had a confused expression.
“You be the person who has no expectations of me,” Song Yuchi said, “and I’ll be the person who always pays attention to you.”
The young man looked up at him, his gaze meeting the sincerity and earnestness in Song Yuchi’s eyes, as if he were serious. “How are you going to pay attention to me?”
Song Yuchi took out his phone. “Let’s add each other on WeChat. From now on, I’ll ask you one question every day.”
“What kind of question?”
“How are you feeling today?”
Song Yuchi looked at the young man with sharp eyes, making the other party feel as if he was seen through.
“And what about me?” the young man asked. “What do I need to do?”
“Pick one of these stickers and reply to me,” Song Yuchi handed him his phone. “Look.”
It was a set of cute Siamese cat stickers, each one expressing a different emotion—drowsy, terrified, melancholic, ecstatic…
It was a simple request, but for a young man planning to end his life, it felt a bit too late.
“We can try for two days,” Song Yuchi said. “The storm’s coming, it’ll be hard to go outside for the next few days. We’ll be stuck at home anyway, so why not give it a try?”
The young man hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he couldn’t resist Song Yuchi’s gaze. He took out his phone and scanned the QR code.[footnote]We Chat QR code[/footnote]
Let’s see how long he can last, the young man thought.
“Let’s go,” Song Yuchi extended his hand. “The wind’s getting stronger and stronger, be careful not to catch a cold.”
Song Yuchi’s gaze stayed on him. With someone watching him, today’s plan to end his life seemed difficult to carry out. He took Song Yuchi’s hand and stood up, brushing the sand off his clothes.
They walked back along the coastal path together. He looked down at his phone and saw the friend request had already come through. As he added a note, he asked, “What’s your name?”
Song Yuchi told him and added, “You can call me by my English name, too.”
“English name?”
“Yeah,” Song Yuchi said, “I’m Thomas.”
The author has something to say:
Life is a beautiful coincidence.
Taking the day off tomorrow, no update~
T/N: Thomas is real you all!!! Anyway I really love them both too, I wish there was a separate book for them!
Title is from The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1. The literal translation for the title ‘你在我身边，黑夜也变成了清晨’ would be ‘When you are by my side, even the night turns into morning.’
OMG!😭😭😭
Thomas is real🥹🥹
I am happy