A gust of wind blew between the scattered shipping containers, letting out a low, sobbing wail. It pushed the small wooden boats adorned with blue crystals near the shore slightly further out. But a moment later, the ocean waves brought them back toward the coast, crashing against the sandy beach and the embankment, churning up white foam.
The wind was a bit cold. Huo Ranyin rubbed his hands together. Ji Xun leaned closer, breathed a puff of warm air onto his palms, and then gave a very slight nod of his chin toward a certain direction.
Huo Ranyin understood implicitly. Glancing from the corner of his eye, he spotted a red shipping container.
It made sense. There was no one visible in the open clearing, which meant the person was likely hiding out of sight, and the containers made for excellent cover. In this abandoned port, there were plenty of various shipping containers; the person might be hiding behind one of them.
That was Huo Ranyin’s immediate thought.
No, wait, that wasn’t right.
Just as the thought settled, his gaze fixed onto the red container again.
This container was somewhat different.
Its color was much more vibrant, unlike the iron boxes that had gathered dust and been abandoned for so long they had rusted into a dull, ashen gray. Instead, it looked as if someone had wiped it down with a cloth and even touched up the paint. There was no large garbage visible near the container either; it seemed someone had cleaned the area.
“Let’s go over there to get out of the wind,” he casually found an excuse. With a tacit understanding, he and Ji Xun walked toward the container.
As they got closer and their field of vision widened, Huo Ranyin suddenly saw a large stone shaped like an inkstone placed behind the container. Neatly arranged on top of the stone was a pair of cotton-padded shoes.
It looked exactly like…
Ji Xun was much bolder than him. Noticing that the container was open from the top—meaning there was little danger of a sudden ambush—he confidently squatted down to carefully inspect the red shipping container.
His gaze freely roamed over the side of the container facing the sea.
He noticed two circular holes, roughly the size of a fifty-cent coin, that looked as if they had been eaten away by rust.
He should be able to see the inside of the container through the holes.
Ji Xun couldn’t help but lean in and peer through one.
Within the pitch-black field of vision, his eye met another eye.
A bloodshot eye, looking out from the inside, staring right at him.
The reaction of a trained person getting startled is quite different from that of an ordinary person. Ji Xun instantly sprang up—he didn’t run, but instead, swiftly yanked open the top of the container!
He threw the lid open and saw a person inside.
An old man.
However, what caught their attention in the very first moment perhaps wasn’t the old man squatting inside, but rather the entire setup of the container apart from him.
It was a fairly large shipping container.
It measured roughly 1.5 meters in length and width. The inner walls were covered in wallpaper—a silver-gray and blue cruise ship pattern that actually complemented the scenery outside perfectly. The floor was laid with a fuzzy carpet; it looked very thick and should be effective against the cold and sand.
With the seated old man as the center point, there were two small throw pillows at the back of the box. On the left side, a rechargeable wall lamp was magnetically attached to the wall, evidently for illumination. In front of the old man sat a tea set and a kettle, along with a glass jar holding sunflower seeds and snacks.
As for the right side, there was a smartphone, a camera, and a small trash can.
No matter how you looked at it, aside from being a bit cramped and situated in a bizarre location, this was a fairly comfortable and fully-equipped cozy resting spot… Even that stone outside for holding shoes was likely meant to be a shoe-changing stool.
Huo Ranyin scanned the interior of the container before finally looking at the old man.
The old man was also looking at him.
The person in the box sat squatting on the ground, his knees drawn up and his arms hugging his legs. A thick cotton quilt was draped over his shoulders. His bones could no longer hold up the skin of his face; yielding to gravity, the skin sagged loosely downward, forming fold after fold of wrinkles.
But his eyes were rolled upward—dark irises aiming up, the whites of his eyes showing below—maintaining the somewhat terrifying look Ji Xun had seen through the hole moments ago, as he stared fixedly at Huo Ranyin.
“Old gentleman,” Ji Xun looked down and asked the man in the container. “What are you doing hiding in here?”
“I’m not hiding in here,” the old man replied, his voice muffled and thick.
“Then why are you…”
“This is my house,” the old man said. “Young people these days are so impolite. The owner is still home, and you just break in without permission?”
“…”
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin fell silent for a moment.
They felt the old man was being completely unreasonable, but even so, looking at the well-equipped container, there was a sliver of logic in his unreasonableness.
“Sorry about that, Grandpa.” Ji Xun was adaptable and quickly changed his tone to coax information from the old man. “I didn’t expect a container could house people; that was rash of me. Grandpa, do you always live in this container?”
At the same time, he communicated with Huo Ranyin through his eyes: Is this a lonely, homeless old man?
Doesn’t look like it, Huo Ranyin replied with a look. He’s dressed neatly.
“Not always,” the old man indeed said. “This is my small home; I also have a big home. Sometimes I live in my small home, sometimes in the big home.”
“What do you stay in the small home for? To watch the sea?” Ji Xun asked patiently. Young people needed to have some patience with the elderly.
“Not to watch the sea.” The old man gave a mysterious smile and said in a show-off tone, “I’m watching the ‘Blue Tears’. Do you know what Blue Tears are?”
Ji Xun actually did know.
As someone who wrote novels, he always made a point to collect obscure and bizarre trivia. “Blue Tears” just so happened to be in Ji Xun’s knowledge bank.
Simply put, it was a visual phenomenon formed by the gathering of microorganisms in the ocean—glowing blue specks of light sparkling in the sea, exactly as if the sky and water had inverted, reflecting a galaxy along the coastline.
Wait…
Thinking of this, Ji Xun paused and looked back at the surface of the sea.
Embellished by the countless small wooden boats adorned with blue crystals, the ocean had indeed become beautiful.
By now, the sunlight was almost entirely gone. The moon and stars began to adorn the canopy of the sky. The seawater sank, becoming dark and murky, while the small wooden boats bobbed on the surface, floating and glowing.
Gazing far out from the shore, it looked as if the stars in the sky had shaken off their stardust. Every broken speck was a sparkling blue sprite, their light flickering in tandem with their breaths, holding hands and singing along the edge of the sea.
The old man revealed a cunning smile at this time and, alongside Ji Xun, gazed out at the sea: “Doesn’t it look very similar? How much it resembles those blue tears, sparkling in the seawater, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling… Ah, it’s gone. Its life has reached its end. It’s disappeared,” the old man murmured.
The microorganisms dubbed “Blue Tears”—once washed away from the seawater, their remaining time was counted in seconds.
100 seconds—their maximum lifespan.
After 100 seconds, the fluorescence would extinguish, and their life would vanish.
They died.
The wind whipped up. Now, the small wooden boats on the sea were capsized by the waves, and massive patches of the glowing blue light dimmed, exactly like the fleeting disappearance of beautiful lives.
“In another two or three months, the southeastern coast will have real Blue Tears,” Huo Ranyin suddenly spoke up. “Going to the southeastern coast to see the Blue Tears then should be much more convenient than now, right?”
“Young man, you’re still young. You have no idea what old age is like,” the old man said. “Every old person worries during the winter of each year, not knowing if they’ll be able to see the following spring. Three months, 90 days. You actually want me to wait 90 days before going to see the Blue Tears my heart yearns for?”
His tone seemed to say: You actually want to wait until I’m dead to let me go traveling?
“However…” He spoke again, still staring at Huo Ranyin. “Looking closely, you are really good-looking…”
The old man stood up from inside the container.
It hadn’t been obvious when he was sitting, but once he stood, Ji Xun immediately realized that this was a rather tall and robust old man. The clothes hidden beneath the quilt were also quite different from what Ji Xun had previously imagined.
They were neither sloppy nor ordinary.
On the contrary, he was wearing a long black woolen trench coat. Pinned to the collar of the coat was a flower brooch that looked extremely expensive. The five petals of the flower were fully encrusted with diamonds, and at the center was a sapphire the size of a thumb pad. Even in this dim lighting, it continued to sparkle brilliantly. Beneath the coat, he wore a white turtleneck sweater and a pair of jeans. Paired with his thick, salt-and-pepper hair parted neatly in a 30/70 style, he looked exceptionally fashionable.
All in all, even though his method of making an appearance was rather bizarre, this was still a dignified and extraordinarily distinguished-looking old man.
“I’ll give this to you.”
The old man made a move that left both Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin staring in sheer astonishment.
He actually raised his hand, unpinned the sapphire brooch from his chest, and offered it to Huo Ranyin.
This resplendent gem brooch—so radiant it could almost illuminate a palm in the dark of night, roughly the size of a baby’s fist, something any woman would be unable to put down—was casually and lightly held out in front of Huo Ranyin by the old man.
Delivered so effortlessly, as if it weren’t an item worth hundreds of thousands or millions, but rather a cheap toy bought for a few dollars by the roadside.
The dazzling brilliance left Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin momentarily speechless.
After losing their voices for a good while, Ji Xun started making eye contact with Huo Ranyin again.
Not right in the head? Ji Xun.
His logic seems clear enough, and his conversation is coherent. But… Huo Ranyin looked at the expensive brooch held out to him and replied with a headache-inducing glance: Let’s just ask for his family’s phone number.
You ask? Ji Xun.
You ask. Huo Ranyin.
“Grandpa…” Ji Xun coughed softly. “Although I also think the guy next to me is quite pretty…”
Huo Ranyin shot Ji Xun a glare.
“But valuable items need to be put away properly. How can you just casually give them to people?” Ji Xun added.
“It’s not casual. It’s because he’s good-looking,” the old man replied.
Great, we’re talking in circles now. Ji Xun stared at the old man, just trying to figure out how to steer the topic to the man’s family and coax out a phone number, when the old man glanced at him and spoke up on his own:
“Thinking I’m crazy?”
“…”
“I’m not crazy.”
“…” Crazy people usually love claiming they aren’t crazy.
“For an old man, is money really important?” The old man grinned, revealing relatively straight teeth that were instantly recognizable as dentures. “For a dead man, having a coffin lined with banknotes must feel wonderful, don’t you think?”
An old man isn’t scary; what’s scary is an old man equipped with twisted logic.
Ji Xun stopped exchanging glances with Huo Ranyin now. He looked back and saw that the sea’s waves had basically capsized the wooden boats on the water, so he cordially invited the old grandpa out of the container, had him put on his shoes, and alongside Huo Ranyin, escorted the man from both sides toward the nearby police booth.
“Wait!”
“What are you doing! Illegally imprisoning an old man?!”
“Let go of me! The quilt, mats, and everything are already set up! This old man is spending the night by the sea!”
“Bastards! Don’t think that just because I’m old, I can’t throw a punch! If you’ve got the guts, let go, and I’ll show you what I’m made of!”
Over this short journey of a kilometer or two, the old man was full of energy, struggling wildly. If it weren’t for the fact that the abandoned port was completely deserted at night, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin probably would have been stopped by the police before they even made it to the booth.
But fortunately, the distance truly wasn’t far. After expending some effort, they managed to bring the old man to the police booth in one piece. A police officer also made an appearance. Ji Xun stayed outside with the old man, while Huo Ranyin went in and described what had just happened in a few short sentences.
While waiting idly, Ji Xun noticed that the old man beside him had become much quieter and more obedient after seeing the police officer. He stopped saying strange things or acting weirdly, simply keeping his head down and standing properly. Perhaps when people get very old, they become like children—afraid of both their family members and the police.
Soon, Huo Ranyin came out with the police officer on duty. The officer took the situation very seriously, bringing the old man into the booth to chat first—chatting about his name, his family.
Ji Xun listened in from the side. The old man honestly stated his surname was Hu, but as for his given name, he didn’t say.
Seeing that things were proceeding smoothly, he stopped paying close attention. Together with Huo Ranyin, he walked a bit further ahead, stopping about a dozen steps away from the booth.
“Actually, that piece of jewelry from earlier really was beautiful.”
“Mm.”
If it weren’t genuinely beautiful, they wouldn’t have realized its immense value the moment they laid eyes on it.
“But I feel that sapphire doesn’t quite suit you. It’s too dignified and gentlemanly. A deep, translucent ruby, red as a drop of blood, or a radiant, spirited, and alluring cat’s-eye stone—those are the gems that suit you best,” Ji Xun analyzed carefully.
“I don’t have any particular interest in gems,” Huo Ranyin said. “Are you interested?”
Of course—
A matter-of-fact reply almost slipped from his tongue.
Even a random old man by the roadside gets beguiled by you. Being with you every single day, how could I possibly remain impassive and entirely unmoved? Ji Xun thought to himself.
“Of course I’m interested.” Looking at Huo Ranyin, Ji Xun chuckled softly. “Wearing gems on you, letting the light of the jewels reflect against your skin… that would definitely look incredible, right?”
“You two—”
The police officer’s voice suddenly came from the booth behind them.
Both Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin jumped in fright at the same time. Snapping to attention, they turned in unison to look at the police officer behind them, their expressions incredibly stern.
“I’ve contacted the old man’s family. They said they’re coming over to pick him up right away. You guys…”
The police officer paused. Feeling the two severe gazes directed at him, as if coming from strict superiors, he felt a bit unnerved:
“There’s no need to be that serious, right?”
