Second type of death

Chapter 31

For several days in a row, I didn't go to work. I thought, perhaps they hadn't received the signal in my mind yet, perhaps the forgetting mechanism hadn't been activated. As long as I never saw them again, they would never forget me. During these days, people called to inquire about my well-being. As I answered the phone, I thought sadly: perhaps from now on, I will only be able to interact with the world through phone calls and the internet. However, this is enough; it's better than being completely forgotten. I hid in my room like an ostrich, refusing to see anyone except Xu Xiaobing and Yu Fei. Ouyang came twice, knocking loudly on the door, but I didn't answer.

The person I least want to see, besides my parents, is him.

The closer you get, the faster you forget. When he knocked on the door, I trembled with fear—I didn't know if the distance between the outside and inside of the door could block brainwaves from passing through, so I not only closed my bedroom door but also covered my head with a blanket until the knocking stopped.

Yu Fei often came to see me. He would often sit beside me, watching me hug myself, controlled by an intense longing, trembling uncontrollably like someone suffering from drug addiction.

“You can’t go on like this,” he said.

I know this can't go on. Even if I can endure loneliness, I can't endure longing. I often feel longing seeping out of every pore like oil, with swarming tentacles—longing makes my whole body itch. In the worst moments, I scratch my body with my fingernails until they're covered in red marks, or I soak myself in cold water—but none of this helps. Longing is like weeds; the more you ignore it, the more it grows wildly.

“You can’t keep going,” Yu Fei said.

“You should encourage me,” I said.

Yu Fei did encourage me often; he stayed by my side all day. If it weren't for his encouragement, I probably would have rushed off to work long ago. Those who haven't experienced it won't know how tormenting longing can be. Looking at my face in the mirror, it no longer resembled mine. Besides being terribly thin, my entire expression was filled with weariness. Was this still me?

Xu Xiaobing noticed my change, and she became exceptionally gentle with me, as if she had become a different person. She never got angry with me again. The better she treated me, the more painful I felt, even resentful: Why wasn't she this kind to me sooner? Why did she only become so kind when I was about to be forgotten? The better she treated me, the more completely she would forget me later—Xu Xiaobing would definitely be the first person to forget me. I would rather she had remained angry with me forever, so I wouldn't have too many regrets.

This kind of seclusion lasted for about five or six days. One day, when Yu Fei was comforting me, he suddenly gasped.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

He shook his head, his face turning deathly pale. He stared at me without saying a word. I walked towards him, wanting to ask him what was wrong, but the closer I got, the more frightened he seemed. Finally, he screamed and ran out of my house.

His expression reminded me of myself in my dream, and I knew that he had finally reached the third stage.

For the next two days, I didn't see him again. I couldn't bear the longing in my heart by myself, so on the morning of the third day, I got dressed, grabbed my bag, and went downstairs to go to work. As I passed the door of room 202, I stopped, seeing the door open.

Is Yu Fei still here?

Even though I knew he must have left—people in the third stage can't live with others—I still pushed open the door, clinging to a sliver of hope.

Behind the door was an empty living room. An old TV cabinet stood against the wall, with a 21-inch television on it. A wooden chair sat in the center of the room—that was all the furniture. I stood in the doorway, hesitating, when an old man came out of the house. He was wearing floral pajamas and emerged from an inner room. He saw me, paused for a moment, and then quickly greeted me warmly, "You were looking for me?" His voice was full of expectation.

"No." I shook my head and ran out as if I were fleeing.

Yu Fei is definitely not there anymore. For some reason, room 202 gives me a feeling of a tomb. Time seems to stand still in there, and the frozen time completely blocks out everything outside, making it feel suffocating.

I staggered downstairs.

The pedestrians on the street seemed normal. As summer approached, the spring light matured, like the soft downy hairs on a young boy's lips gradually revealing a touch of ruggedness. This scene was almost exactly the same as what I had seen in my dream, so much so that for a while I dared not take a step, wondering if my dream had come true.

I felt uneasy the whole way. Noticing my presence in other people's eyes brought me a little peace. On the bus, I looked out the window at the crowd, trying to figure out where Yu Fei was—he certainly wouldn't be in such a dense crowd. Right now, he must be filled with fear of humans, yet also yearning for their presence. I know that feeling; it's a pain that feels like it's tearing you apart. I should have been by his side, but I let him disappear again. From beginning to end, I hadn't done anything for him.

Perhaps I will never see him again. Thinking back on the stories he told me, I feel that I have grown old and frail.

When I arrived at the company, my colleagues surrounded me, asking all sorts of questions. I smiled and responded to their concern, my eyes welling up with tears, which I quickly suppressed. I watched their every move with immense care; every smile, every word, I pondered in my heart, determined to remember them forever, so they would become memories for the long, lonely years to come.

After the people dispersed, Ouyang came over.

“You seem like a different person,” he said. “Did something happen?”

I shook my head.

Yes, I have indeed become a different person. I am no longer the Jiang Ling I used to be—and I will never be the Jiang Ling I used to be.

All morning, Ouyang looked at me with a puzzled expression. At noon, he suggested we go out for lunch together, but I declined. Seeing his confused look, I pretended to be engrossed in the computer screen, acting as if I was very busy.

"Jiang Ling, why don't you go with him? Go!" Aunt Xu pushed me with her elbow.

I smiled and pretended to be even busier.

Not just with Ouyang, but with everyone, I had a strange feeling. Although they were still around me, I felt they no longer belonged to me, as if we existed in different times. They belonged to the past and remained there forever, while I walked alone on the path of time flowing towards the future. This feeling made all their care seem illusory, especially towards Ouyang. His concern even gave me a chill, as if something in the dark was deliberately toying with me, making me accept this care, and then completely lose them.

"What's wrong with you? You've been acting strangely lately!" Ouyang said in a low voice, sounding annoyed. I noticed he was tearing something up in his hand, and my heart skipped a beat. Ignoring what he was saying, I snatched the thing from his hand—it was a document that belonged to me, with my signature at the bottom.

Has it already started? Has he already started destroying my data? It felt as if a gaping hole had suddenly opened in my heart, and a cold wind kept pouring in, making my internal organs tremble with cold.

"Why did you tear it up?" I shouted at Ouyang in a fit of grief and anger.

Ouyang stared at me in shock, and after a long pause, said, "This one's invalid. Didn't you make a new one? Look!" He took a complete document from his desk and handed it to me. I glanced at it and then remembered that I had indeed typed up a draft for him that morning. The draft had to be destroyed once the official document was released. It seems I was overthinking things; things hadn't even started yet. I sighed, slumped into my chair, and wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes.

For several days in a row, I lived each day with unusual care, and because I was so careful, everyone could sense my unease, and I was helpless. At work, I often felt an inexplicable urge to go home, and my longing for my parents and other relatives grew wildly. I could only hide in the bathroom and pinch my thighs until they were bruised and battered—I really didn't know how much longer I could endure it.

I often searched for Gu Quan's whereabouts, but he seemed to have completely disappeared and never appeared again.

A few days later, one day after get off work, as usual, I refused Ouyang's offer to drive me home and took a bus alone. As the bus passed the road leading to Wangyue Elementary School, I glanced in that direction—I had visited Wangyue Elementary School before; that old building had been completely demolished, and the children who lived there were now nowhere to be found. This world is always full of such wandering, vanished or not vanished souls, drifting like lost ghosts. Yu Fei once told me that every old building becomes a dwelling place for those who have disappeared in the third stage. People see shadowy figures moving in those old buildings from afar, leading to rumors of hauntings. According to him, the haunted abandoned house I saw opposite my old company dormitory wasn't inhabited by ghosts, but by some unseen vanishers—first others, then him, and after he left, others again—always forgotten people living in forgotten places. Now, looking in the direction of Wangyue Elementary School, thinking of that old building, and then thinking of Yu Fei—in which abandoned house does Yu Fei live now?

As I got off the bus, I was still thinking about Yu Fei. I was so engrossed that when he actually appeared in front of me, I didn't realize he was right there; I thought it was just a figment of my imagination. A few seconds later, I snapped out of my reverie and saw the figure slowly fading into the distance. I couldn't help but shout, "Yu Fei!"

He jolted, then slowly turned around. He had lost a lot of weight in the few days since I last saw him, and his skin seemed darker. He stared at me blankly for a long time, struggling to think before he hesitantly asking, "You are... Jiang Ling?"

I stared at him in disbelief: "You don't remember me?"

How could this be? I've been the one who forgot Yu Fei all along, how could he have forgotten me? I felt a strong sense of panic.

He looked at me hesitantly for a long time before finally giving a bitter smile: "I almost forgot about you," he emphasized, "just a little bit."

"What's going on?" I tried to walk towards him, but he stopped me. He gestured to me, and we walked forward one after the other, always keeping a few meters apart. Whenever someone passed by him, he would quickly move aside.

We walked to a secluded spot, he stopped, turned around, and looked at me: "Now I can finally tell you."

"What?" My heart was pounding.

“You once asked me if the third stage was the final stage,” he said. “I didn’t tell you the truth then because I thought I should leave you with some hope. But now that I’ve entered the final stage myself, I can’t keep it from you—you have the right to know.”

"What?" My eyes started to hurt, and some kind of enormous pressure in my head made them bulge outwards.

“After the third stage, there is another stage.” He said in a low voice, his fingers digging into the wall, and his fingernails were soon filled with dark green moss. “This is probably the last stage. In this stage, the person who disappeared will gradually forget everything he remembers, and eventually he won’t even remember who he is.”

"Everything?" I looked at him in disbelief.

"Hmm." He forcefully broke off a large piece of moss, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it.

I feel my heart filled with anger—how far do they want to torment us? The whole world has forgotten us, that's not enough; the whole world is turning a blind eye to us, that's not enough; some unseen force wants us to forget ourselves too—does it have to be this utter?

"Why did this happen?" I cried out in anger, glaring at Yu Fei as if he were the mastermind behind it all. "Why do we have to go through all this?"

He smiled bitterly: "There's another version of the story about this."

What do you mean?

"Didn't I tell you? Research on this phenomenon has several directions. Medical explanations are just one of them. Some sociologists are also involved in the research, and their explanation comes from another perspective. They say that humans are born with both natural and social aspects. Natural aspect refers to humanity in the biological sense, while social aspect refers to humanity in the social sense. Usually, death means the disappearance of natural life, but the disappearance of natural life does not mean that a person's social life also disappears, because their social relationships still exist, and they still maintain their so-called social status in society—those researchers believe that human sociality is actually another kind of life for humanity. This life exists in the form of symbols, such as a person's ID card, diploma, relationships with others, etc., all of which represent a person." The components of social life—if all of these disappear, then human social life also disappears. This is, in effect, another form of human death. People usually only notice the passing of natural life, neglecting the loss of social life. In fact, since the dawn of human society, social life has always disappeared along with natural life. How many people have existed throughout history, but how many do we remember today? The social lives of most people slowly fade away with time. Even for some prominent figures whose stories have survived to this day, what we remember are merely records of their social lives—their social lives depended on their era and others connected to them. With the disappearance of that era and those connected to them, their social lives also vanish.

“You mean,” I thought, my mind going numb at the first time I heard this argument, “that we can die twice in our lives, once as a natural death and once as a social death? And what we are experiencing now is the second type of death, the social death?”

“Yes.” He stared intently at me from a few meters away. “Which kind of death do you find more terrifying?”

"I don't know," I murmured. "The ones who suffer in natural death are the living, but in the second kind of death, perhaps the ones who suffer the most are us, the dead?" It was the first time I'd used the term "dead" to refer to myself, and I shuddered—what a terrifying term. Yet, it was also such an apt term. Without any connection to society, what difference is there between this and death? Even natural death couldn't erase a person so completely, could it?

"But why does this happen?" I wondered. "Natural death is caused by illness or injury, but what causes social death?"

“I don’t know,” he said with a wry smile. “Even the researchers don’t understand. Some say it’s because the indifference between people leads to the death of relationships, ultimately causing the death of society; others say it’s because society needs too many symbols to exist, making the symbol system increasingly fragile and people increasingly dependent on it, thus increasing social death year by year… There are many different explanations, but the most widespread one is that our society itself is a living organism—it meets all the characteristics of life, with processes of birth, development, and extinction, metabolism, and so on. They believe that the social relationships that make up society are like cells in the human body. Just as the human body needs metabolism, so does society. The result of metabolism is that some cells die and new cells grow; the metabolism of society is the extinction of some social relationships, thus constantly generating new social relationships—in all social relationships, humans are like the cell nucleus, becoming the core of the relationships. So…” Before he could finish, I interrupted him: “I understand. You mean that you and I are both cell nuclei eliminated by the metabolism of this huge life of ‘society’?”

"Yes, that's it." He smiled helplessly, and perhaps seeing my indignant expression, he added, "Since ancient times, hasn't society itself been constantly undergoing metabolism? The Yangtze River's back waves push the front waves, isn't that what it means? The evolution of nature is accumulated through the death and rebirth of life, and the evolution of society is also accumulated through the death and rebirth of human social life, that's it."

That's it, that's right. My social life is about to die. Yu Fei and I are already dead in a social sense. We've both been eliminated by the society we created. Society no longer needs us! The more I thought about it, the angrier and sadder I felt, yet I didn't know where to vent these emotions. Yu Fei, on the other hand, seemed much calmer than me. I wondered if that functional area had affected his brain; his expression seemed somewhat blank.

"Is there any other explanation?" I asked him.

“Of course, and also…” He was about to say something more when I abruptly interrupted him: “Shut up!”

That's ridiculous.

I initially thought his explanation of the functional areas was the only correct one, but who knew there were so many versions of the principle behind this? Which one should I believe? Perhaps no explanation is correct, and perhaps no one knows the real reason.

The reason is not important; what matters is the result we get.

“Are you sure you’re really in the final stage right now?” I asked him almost aggressively.

“Uncertain,” he shrugged. “This is only the last known stage; there might be changes that we can’t even see…”

It's even more ridiculous. I sneered: In the end, nothing can be confirmed.

"Alright, forget about explanations, and whether this is the final stage or not doesn't matter. Just tell me, is there any way to get us back to normal?" I asked impatiently—I was getting increasingly impatient. How did things turn out like this? I really didn't understand.

Yu Fei shook his head: "Unless you die. After you die, the functional areas stop working. Although you can't restore the memories in other people's minds, at least you can let others see your corpse."

Unless I'm dead? But what would I want others to see my corpse? I thought of the woman's body in Liufang Lake. When she was alive, she cried for help, but no one heard her. After she died, people searched everywhere for her identity, but what did that mean to her? A corpse has no feelings; it doesn't need any social identity. If I can only be recognized after death, what meaning does that recognition have for me? I suddenly felt intensely envious of those whose lives ended naturally. They died just like that, while people were still remembering them. What a waste of their social lives! If only excess social life could be transferred!

I imagine a pathetic version of myself walking around in a graveyard, reaching out to the ghosts of the dead, begging: "Give me some social connections, please!" The thought sends a chill down my spine—how could I tell my mother? She will never see or remember her living daughter. But, Mom, don't be sad, at least you can see your daughter's corpse—is there anything more absurd than this?

I was so engrossed in my anger that I completely forgot about Yu Fei's presence. He waited a moment, then slowly turned and walked away. His dragging footsteps caught my attention, and I quickly looked up and called out to him, "Wait!"

"What?" He turned around, looking at me with fear and wariness. "How did I get here?"

"You've forgotten me so quickly?" I looked at him in disbelief, and he stared at me blankly—it seemed he really didn't remember who I was.

"Do you still remember who you are?" All the anger disappeared. Facing Yu Fei, I felt that the world was shrouded in immense sorrow. The surroundings seemed to turn gray for a moment, and Yu Fei was the most innocent and transparent one in this grayness.

"Who am I?" he murmured twice, then clutched his head in terror and spun around in circles, his eyes scanning the walls, the ground, and the sky, as if trying to find his own identity in this omnipresent world. "Who am I? Who am I?" he shouted in all directions, and people in the distance turned to look at him.

"You're Yu Fei!" I could no longer control my emotions and rushed forward to hug him—I couldn't believe it. Just minutes ago, he had so perfectly recited the principles others had mentioned, and now he couldn't even remember who he was? Were those principles truly developed by those people, or were they just his own imagination, like Chen Jing's imagination of her sailor husband? Uncertainty, everything was uncertain. The only certainty was his trembling body, shaking with fear. This fear didn't stem from his self-forgetfulness, but from my embrace. He quickly pushed me away forcefully, shaking his head and backing away: "My social life is completely dead—who am I? Jiang Ling, tell me, who am I?" Before I could react, he took off running. I chased after him with all my might, but I could no longer see him. I could only shout at his retreating figure: "You're Yu Fei! Remember, you're Yu Fei!"

I never saw him again. The marks he left on the wall were still fresh, but the man was gone.

I finally collapsed to the ground, utterly exhausted. Yu Fei had forgotten himself, but he hadn't forgotten who I was. He remembered me until his very last moment, and I felt obligated to remember him. Even if I didn't remember his past, I should at least remember his name. Until I forget myself, I cannot forget him. I want to be the last to forget him—this is what I should do for him. People should always remember certain things. Even if Yu Fei completely disappears as a member of society, I will still remember him. Even Meng Ling has a bookstore owner who remembers her. My Yu Fei—the first time I realized he belonged to me—my Yu Fei should also be remembered by someone.

What he still couldn't forget, besides me, was his social life. This fact pained me deeply—his social life held him so dearly, and the extent of the damage this had caused him was obvious. Who could bear such a loss? Humans are inherently solitary creatures, yet they fear loneliness most of all. Such prolonged solitude must have already pierced Yu Fei's heart.

I sat on the ground for a long time, people passing by, looking at me strangely. In the past, I would have felt incredibly ashamed, but now it didn't matter anymore, because they would soon forget me, and even the memory of me sitting on the ground crying so shamefully. To be seen as a monster, in my opinion, is a blessing, a blessing that we social dead don't have.

34

Have you received your salary yet?

"It's been sent."

"Is this enough? Should I transfer some money to you?"

"That's enough," I said, forcing back a mouthful of tears.

"Eat more, you don't have a cold, do you?"

"Um."

………

My mother calls me every day without fail; it's a habit formed over many years. Whether I'm studying or working, as long as I'm not by her side, there will be a phone call every day. Since Yu Fei disappeared, it's my mother's daily calls that have sustained me, allowing me to barely withstand this addictive longing. I try my best to stay in Nancheng—the farther I am from my hometown, the closer I am to my mother.

This effort was incredibly arduous; I'd lost a significant amount of weight, and my clothes were becoming too loose. Mr. Ouyang suspected I had some kind of illness and offered to take me to the hospital several times, but I refused. I waited in fear for them to destroy everything that made me alive, but that day never came, and I was tormented by fear until I was emaciated. This feeling is probably only something those terminally ill patients sentenced to death can understand—no, perhaps it should be said that only those with highly contagious terminal illnesses can understand—we all know we're about to die, we all yearn to be close to our loved ones and friends, yet we can only stay away… I felt as if a Smolensk's sword was hanging over my head, teetering on the brink, ready to fall at any moment and shatter me and my life into pieces, leaving not even a trace.