The Healing Sunshine (一厘米的阳光)

Chapter 18.3 - Two Opposite Poles of the World (3)

After the May Day holiday, Jǐ Yi returned to her school and Jì Chengyang left China.

Prior to leaving, he told Jǐ Yi that in order to gain the opportunity to depart a little earlier, he had changed his status. He had already resigned from his job as a reporter at the television station and, along with his former university roommate, accepted the invitation to be a contracted correspondent for a newspaper agency. This had all been told to her in a brief explanation. For matters related to his work, he never did tell her much. The main reason for this was worry that the more she understood, the more psychological pressure she would feel.

The date he travelled to the war zone was once again close to his birthday.

In that period when he first arrived in Iraq, there was some stability to where he lived and ate. On the night of his birthday, he specially made a long-distance phone call to Jǐ Yi and talked with her for a long time. Jǐ Yi instructed him to absolutely not hang up the phone yet. Setting the phone on top of the piano, she then very smoothly played the song "Angel" for him.

It truly was done very smoothly. Actually, this was not a very difficult song to play, but in Jì Chengyang's memory, Jǐ Yi had never received any formal piano training.

Holding the telephone, he listened to her finish playing the song, and then he heard Jǐ Yi, on the other end, pick up the phone and ask him, "Did you like it?" When she spoke, her voice was somewhat breathless. It was evident that she was very nervous.

"You specially learned it?"

"Mm-hmm." She quietly replied, "I practiced it for an especially long time, because I was worried I wouldn't play it very well. The person who taught it to me even said it's really simple... But I've never learned piano, after all... Was it okay?"

"Pretty good." Jì Chengyang sat on the windowsill and gazed out at this foreign land, which was showered in moonlight.

He thought of how, if he had not persisted in this dream of his, by now, he likely would have been like Su Yan or Wang Haoran and in an orchestra somewhere as a young performing artist? He still remembered, on that day after he won the competition, after they had all taken the photograph together, someone had praised them, this young group of artists, saying that in the future, they undoubtedly would stand in the spotlight as the focal point of the attention of the masses and receive applause and honour.

But, the result seemed to be the exact opposite of that.

His occupation now was to fade into the background, behind the focal points, and be a pair of eyes that took in all those things.

"Do you still remember when you put this song on for me to listen to?" Jǐ Yi asked him.

"When?" He truly did not remember.

"It was... that first time I went to a nightclub. When you were taking me and Nuannuan home early that morning and then you locked us in the car, this was the song that we were listening to." That time was deeply impressed on Jǐ Yi's mind. She had even deliberately gone and watched the movie just for this song.

It could be heard in Jǐ Yi's voice that she was not reconciled with it yet.

Jì Chengyang abruptly clued in and, hence, could only pacifyingly answer, "Right, I remember now."

"Did you like this song because of its lyrics?" Jǐ Yi asked curiously.

"Lyrics?" Jì Chengyang ran them through once in his head.

He could roughly guess which lines she was referring to:

In the arms of an angel,
Fly away from here,
From this dark, cold hotel room and the endlessness that you fear.
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie,
You're in the arms of the angel,
May you find some comfort here.