svetikya Chapter 174 The Vanishing Light, the Enlightened Ash
Chapter 174 The Vanishing Light, the Enlightened Ash
That day, at night.
It was almost bedtime in the room at the Pokémon Center, but Ash was leaning against the window, looking wide awake – clearly he'd slept too much while unconscious.
"By the way, Ash, will you be able to sleep tonight? If you don't sleep tonight, you'll be sleepy again tomorrow morning, and your biological clock will be completely messed up."
Brock reminded Ash, who seemed to be lost in thought, and Ash simply waved his hand dismissively and said:
"No problem, no problem~ Even if you go to bed late tonight, as long as you persevere a little tomorrow and go to bed early, your biological clock will naturally return to normal."
Xiao Zhi made this judgment based on his many years of travel experience.
Later, when he traveled alone, especially during his time practicing asceticism at Mount Shirogane, his biological clock was never normal.
Although Mt. Silver has a distinction between day and night, it is still a very dangerous place. Ash is often attacked by wild Pokémon in the middle of the night, and then he and Pikachu and the others live a life of fighting all night long.
After all, he was definitely a thorn in the side of the wild Pokémon in Mt. Silver, but they couldn't beat him in a direct confrontation, so they could only sneak around and attack in the middle of the night.
That gives us a slight chance of winning.
However, the chance of victory they held in their hearts never materialized until the day Ash left.
"Pikachu~~"
On the bed behind, Pikachu is happily playing with Egg of Fortune.
However, while they say they're having fun, most of the time it's Pikachu trying to make Lucky Egg happy.
Pikachu, with its nanny-like nature, naturally enjoys and excels at taking care of newborn Pokémon. If it weren't for the fact that Bagon's growth rate was so astonishing, perhaps Ash's Bagon would also be being cared for by Pikachu.
"Speaking of which, I haven't seen Hikari since after dinner. Satoshi, do you know where she went? Didn't Hikari give you a wink before she left?"
A little while later, as the lights in each room on the second floor of the Pokémon Center went out one after another, Xiao Gang began to worry about Xiao Guang's situation.
After dinner, Xiao Guang said he had to leave for a while, but he hasn't come back yet.
Because Dawn glanced at Ash before leaving, Brock assumed Ash would know she was gone, but—
"Huh? I don't know... Come to think of it, I didn't even notice when Hikaru went out."
After regaining his senses, Xiao Zhi scratched his cheek and said somewhat embarrassedly.
Since his call with Cynthia ended, Ash has been trying to recreate the Aura he felt when he woke up, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't recreate the scene.
After this incident, it's impossible for him not to be anxious. This dangerous situation has made many people worry about their own safety, and Xiaozhi himself doesn't want such a thing to happen again.
So he began to concentrate all his efforts on trying to capture that feeling and recreate the power of the wave in his body.
If we could master the power of waveguides, such a scenario should no longer be possible.
Unfortunately—
"hiss....."
Suddenly, Ash seemed to have figured something out.
However, what he figured out wasn't the power of waveguides, but rather the situation on Xiaoguang's side.
"I'm going out for a bit too. Pikachu, you stay here and play with Egg of Fortune."
"Skin?"
With Pikachu looking slightly bewildered, Ash simply opened the door and left the room, leaving Pikachu and Brock staring at each other in silence.
......
Although the weather is still quite hot, even in the relatively remote town of Suiyi, you can feel the evening breeze carrying the scent of grass from the fields outside.
A gentle evening breeze caressed Xiaoguang's hair as she sat on a park bench, gazing at the starry night sky over the outskirts of the city, lost in thought. However, a fleeting hint of helplessness and weariness in her eyes betrayed her true feelings.
"So it really is here."
The dilapidated streetlights flickered dimly, ticking and flashing as the hands of a clock hanging somewhere in the park moved.
"too slow!"
Hearing Ash's voice coming from behind him, Hikari wasn't surprised. Instead, she stood up, put her hands on her hips, and complained with a hint of dissatisfaction.
"No... I didn't even notice you came out... If Xiaogang hadn't said you glanced at me before you left, I wouldn't have known what happened."
Ash shrugged and sat down next to Dawn, looking rather innocent.
A gentle night breeze swept by, carrying away a layer of dark clouds on the horizon and revealing the bright moon.
The cool moonlight spilled down from the horizon, enveloping half of the park and creating a contrasting effect of light and shadow.
"?! You didn't even notice? Really... Speaking of which, Ash, you seemed a bit distracted after you went downstairs today. Are you really okay?"
"I'm fine, isn't it you who's in trouble?"
Xiao Zhi countered with this question.
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(No further text, just a little rant, a few honest words, for my grandfather)
(The main text will be there. I won't be sleeping tonight; I can only numb myself by writing.)
I started writing at 8 PM, and around 8:30 PM I got to this point when I received a call from my mom saying that my grandfather had passed away. At first, I couldn't process what had happened; I just stood there, staring at the screen. It wasn't until I heard the crying and screaming on the other end of the phone getting louder and louder that I finally came to my senses.
I cried for a long time, and I'm still crying now.
I finished my teacher qualification exam interview today. My grandfather has been in the hospital for a week, but no one called to tell me. He said he was worried about interfering with my exam. I never imagined that such a ridiculous thing would happen to me. In the end, who is really being held back? Who is feeling guilty? I can't believe that none of them can understand this. There were countless opportunities in between, but they were all so easily missed.
A week ago, I heard that my grandmother had contracted COVID-19. She said she was fine, just had a cough for two days. But I knew my grandfather had been smoking for decades and his lungs were already weak, so I called him that day. He said he was fine and sounded normal. I reminded him many times to be careful, not to go out, and not to have contact with my grandmother and my mother for the time being.
To everyone's surprise, he ended up in the hospital the very next day.
It's ridiculous, it's pathetic.
What's even more tragic is that these past few days, he's been afraid of delaying my teacher qualification exam preparation, so he hasn't wanted to call me, or even send a text message. And after knowing he was fine, I've been focusing all my energy on preparing for the exam and haven't called him again. I know he's always wanted me to study hard, and I want to do my best in the teacher qualification interview and pass it on the first try, as a gift to him.
Even more tragically, in the afternoon's teacher qualification interview, the teaching demonstration topic I drew was a composition lesson on the theme of family affection. During the demonstration, I simulated students raising their hands to share their experiences with family affection, only sharing scenes of their family caring for them when they were sick. In the demonstration, I said this was too one-sided; the scope of family affection isn't so limited. Besides illness and separation, everyday interactions with family can also be used as material for compositions. I used myself as an example, mentioning my maternal grandfather and some everyday anecdotes from my childhood with him.
Because I've always felt that expressing or writing about family affection only during times of life-or-death separation or illness is too perfunctory.
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He had a terrible temper and was very rigid. He had a high retirement pension, but he wouldn't eat anything good for himself. A few years ago, when he was still healthy, he would go downstairs every day to collect bottles and other unwanted items. He would argue with my grandmother about this every few days, and I was always the one who had to mediate.
Later, my health deteriorated, and I couldn't pick things up anymore. So I didn't have much energy to keep arguing with my grandmother, but we would still quarrel occasionally over trivial matters. Since I was in college, the job of mediating the arguments naturally fell to my mother, but in the end, my mother would also get scolded.
He was always called stingy, stingy with his grandmother, stingy with his son and daughter, but he was the only one who wasn't stingy with me.
He usually buys his own groceries and meals, and even if he has money, he won't buy meat, just some simple vegetables. He won't buy snacks for himself unless my mom buys them for him. But he's never stingy with me. He always thinks of giving me whatever good food he has. Every time I visit him and my grandma, he always asks me to take some snacks and food home before I leave, even though those are all bought for him by my mom.
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When I was in elementary and middle school, I lived there because it was close to the school. When I lived there, my grandfather would go to buy groceries every day, and I would never be short of meat.
When I was in elementary school, he didn't have the habit of picking up trash everywhere. He would just pick up water bottles that had fallen on the ground. Maybe it was because he was responsible for picking me up at noon and after school every day? But at that time, I didn't like him picking me up because he would pick up bottles, which was a very shameful thing to do in the eyes of elementary school students.
Junior high school was a period of significant personality change for him. During that time, his temper worsened, and he started picking up more and more things, which became increasingly atrocious. I lived there, and my grandparents argued every few days. I tried to mediate their fights every day, but even in my first year of junior high, I still didn't like my grandfather. Perhaps it was because of his habit of picking up things, or perhaps it was because my grandparents and mother spoke ill of him behind his back? Because my grandfather wasn't kind to them.
But this feeling I had about my grandfather lasted until the second semester of my second year of junior high school. No one said anything, and no one emphasized anything, but it was as if I suddenly understood. I stopped being angry with him. I listened carefully to every word he said and answered him seriously. I would teach him things he didn't know, over and over again, in great detail, even if he forgot them the day after I taught him.
When I enrolled in high school, the school no longer had dormitories, so I rented a small room in a nearby apartment complex. My grandfather had a long-standing tradition: every Wednesday, he would bring home-cooked meals, take a half-hour bus ride, and then walk another half-hour to my room, packing up the weekly feast of meat and fish for me. I knew he was lonely because he didn't get along with my grandmother, and no one paid attention to him at home. For him, visiting me once a week, chatting, talking about his grades, and catching up on school was probably the happiest time.
In the second semester of my junior year of high school, my parents bought a house near the school, and I was no longer living alone. My maternal grandfather also stopped bringing me meals.
My maternal grandfather paid 20 yuan for that room.
When the college entrance exam results came out, I did quite well, and my grandfather was very happy. He had a smile on his face every day for those days. When school started, he insisted on taking me to school and helping me set up my dorm. However, he only stayed for one night, helped me set up, saw his old friend again the next day, and then went home.
My maternal grandfather paid for all my university expenses.
I couldn't bear to see him living such a miserable life every day, but even though I told him more than once to treat himself better and buy himself more food and things, he would always say that he couldn't enjoy it and to save more money... to save more money for me.
After starting university, he would always call to ask how I was doing at school and when I could have a break. During breaks, he would call every week to ask if I wanted to come over for dinner. To make communication easier and also to pass the time, he finally started learning how to use a smartphone, but he was never very good at it.
He only learned how to make phone calls from his contacts and browse news videos on some apps, which he does every day.
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My parents' relationship has never been harmonious, and the situation with my maternal grandparents has been even worse since I was a child.
Unlike the other three, my parents and maternal grandmother all had friends in the neighborhood, friends with whom they could go out to play and eat, but my maternal grandfather did not.
He was always rude to everyone except me. When I was in elementary school, I had friends I could play mahjong with, but they were all quite young, and on a good afternoon, they'd only earn about 5 or 6 yuan. But then mahjong parlors were banned, and his life became monotonous. Perhaps his decision to pick up trash was inextricably linked to the loss of his few hobbies.
Many times, even I would unconsciously wonder if my grandfather's lifestyle was really tiring.
Even now, I don't know if he was just trying to find joy in his suffering.
But I think it should be, right?
My mom and grandma always say he's a miser and doesn't spend a penny, but he always asks me if I have enough money. If not, I have to tell him.
He was always said to have a bad temper and get angry easily, but he was different with me. To be precise, it was after high school, when I gradually matured, that he never scolded me, even when my grades were particularly bad in the first two years and I couldn't meet his expectations for me to study hard. He would just say, "Do better next time."
I also understand a principle.
Even if my grandfather really wronged everyone else, he would never wrong me.
Even if everyone is saying bad things about my grandfather, I have absolutely no right to say a word against him.
Ever since elementary school, he has always liked to say when he's drunk that he's going to die, that he's going to die. He's terrified of death. What will the world be like after death? He doesn't know.
Every time, I would jokingly say, "You've always said that, and everything's been fine, hasn't it?"
Until today, when he truly passed away, I did not get to see him one last time.
I was the one who should have been the best to him, the one who cared about him the most, and the one he worried about the most. When he was lying in the hospital in his most desperate and helpless state, I didn't see him one last time, I didn't even hear his last words, and I didn't know his last news.
Tonight, I called my grandmother. When the call connected, I didn't say a word.
It wasn't until she spoke up, saying that she and her grandfather just wanted to buy some more time so that I could go back and they didn't want to disturb my exam, that I understood.
I only said one sentence.
"There isn't that much time, and time isn't always so gentle and obedient."
At that time, my tone was dead, but I knew I had no right to blame anyone, because since December 12.27th, my preparation for the teacher qualification exam and my decision not to call them again were not what my grandfather had hoped for.
They are consistent.
My mistake was in what I said at the end.
I once thought there was still a long time ahead of me, that I could go home for the Chinese New Year and show off my newly learned cooking skills; that I could pass my teacher qualification exam and find a job to start working; that I could settle down and start a family in the future and take my family back to visit.
This is the first time I have lost a close relative, the person who has been the best to me since I was a child.
I changed my train ticket to tomorrow's high-speed train, at 6:20 AM.
I haven't slept more than 5 hours a night for the past three days, and I still can't fall asleep tonight.
I cried for so long tonight and released so much emotion. I hope I can cry less when I get to the event tomorrow.
He doesn't like me crying.