254: Chapter 254 Living is a form of heroism

The dusk in Sarajevo carried a stale smell of rust.

Lin Que dragged his suitcase out of the train station.

He was in no hurry to hail a taxi.

Standing in the station square, his gaze swept past the coal-dusted trams before him and toward the distance.

The city was a chaotic mess without any apparent order.

Low Ottoman-style shops and grand Austro-Hungarian buildings were interwoven haphazardly,

with large patches of plaster peeling away to reveal the dark red brickwork beneath.

Further off still.

Among the layers of red roofs spreading up the mountainside,

a vast expanse of jarring white tombstones covered half the slope, so dense it was startling.

Life and death had no boundaries here.

Opening a window meant facing the tombstones of neighbors or relatives,

and children played soccer among the stones engraved with names, the ball hitting the monuments with a dull thud.

"Really hard."

Lin Que tightened his backpack straps and sighed.

He avoided the luxury hotels in the city center meant for tourists,

his suitcase wheels rattling over the rugged cobblestone roads all the way.

Half an hour later.

He stopped in front of an old-fashioned apartment building with ivy crawling all over its exterior walls.

This wasn't a hotel, but a guesthouse with extremely polarized reviews on backpacker forums.

Some praised its excellent location and the view of the entire city.

The negative reviews uniformly complained that the landlady was a "strange old witch."

"Knock, knock, knock."

Lin Que knocked on the dark green wooden door.

The door opened quickly, as if someone had been standing behind it all along.

Appearing at the door was a silver-haired old lady.

She wasn't tall, wearing a faded but neatly ironed floral apron, her back as straight as a steel plate.

Her grayish-blue eyes scanned Lin Que sharply through thick lenses,

finally settling on his shoes, which were speckled with a bit of mud.

"An Oriental face?"

The old lady spoke in fluent English but with a heavy Slavic accent,

every rolled 'r' sounding like stones clashing together:

"I am Zola. If you came here looking for some romantic encounter, you're in the wrong place. Here, there are only rules."

Lin Que smiled and took off his sunglasses:

"I'm Lin. I have a reservation, Mrs. Zola."

"Come in." Zola stepped aside but didn't fully clear the way, instead pointing to a mat at the entrance:

"Rule number one: the mud on your soles must be wiped clean outside.

I don't want to see any filth from down the mountain on that Persian rug."

Lin Que did as told, wiping his shoes five or six times on the mat.

"That's enough, don't wear out the mat." Zola interrupted him with a frown, grabbing his heavy-looking suitcase with an agility unlike that of a seventy-year-old.

As he followed Zola upstairs, the old lady's mouth never stopped.

"No loud noises after ten at night, no dancing in the room. The floors are thin, and I don't want to hear footsteps like an elephant's."

"Keep shower time under fifteen minutes; the water bill here is more expensive than beer. If you want to soak, turn left out the door to the Miljacka River; that's free."

"Also, breakfast starts at seven-thirty. It won't wait for you. Don't expect me to bring milk to your bedside like your mother."

Listening to this rapid-fire nagging,

Lin Que didn't feel annoyed; instead, he felt a long-lost sense of daze.

In his previous life, back when he was staying up late and going bald for manuscript fees, his mother would nag him just like this over the phone.

But in this life, ever since he became a 'protected animal' of the school and even the whole country,

this kind of down-to-earth disdain and nagging had actually become a luxury.

Even his own mother spoke to him now with a bit of cautious 'reverence'.

"Did you hear me, young man?" Zola suddenly stopped and turned back to stare sternly at the distracted Lin Que.

"I heard you." Lin Que snapped out of it, his lips curling up unconsciously and his gaze softening:

"Breakfast at seven-thirty. I'll remember."

Zola paused.

She had hosted many young people, most of whom would show impatience or roll their eyes when they heard these rules. Someone like Lin Que, who smiled with a face full of 'enjoyment', was a first.

"Strange person," Zola muttered, pushing open the door to the room at the very end of the second floor.

The room wasn't large, but it was clean to an almost harsh degree.

The wooden floor was polished to a shine, white curtains fluttered gently in the wind,

and the bedsheets gave off that crisp smell that only comes from being dried under a blazing sun.

Lin Que put down his backpack, his gaze drawn to a row of photo frames on the dresser.

They were several black-and-white photos.

The photos were all of handsome young men, some in soccer jerseys,

others in ill-fitting old suits, smiling brightly and freely.

But it was strange.

In this home, other than Zola, there were no traces of any male presence.

No men's slippers, no razors, and no ashtrays.

Lin Que's gaze lingered on those photos for two seconds,

then glanced at the vast expanse of white tombstones outside the window.

He probably guessed something.

During that brutal siege in the 1990s, this city had run out of tears.

Some photo frames were destined to be frozen forever in black and white.

"Those were my students."

Zola's voice suddenly came from the doorway, becoming somewhat low:

"They used to be very noisy, much noisier than you. Back then, I always complained about them bringing mud into the classroom."

She paused, reaching out to smooth a slight wrinkle on the bedsheet, her tone returning to its previous stiffness:

"Alright, the keys are on the table. Remember to turn off the lights; electricity is also expensive."

With that, she turned and closed the door, her footsteps disappearing down the hallway with a certain heaviness.

Lin Que stood in place, silent for a while.

"Buzz— buzz—"

The phone in his pocket suddenly began to vibrate frantically.

Having just connected to the guesthouse's WiFi, the messages that had been blocked along the way instantly exploded.

They were all from Wang De'an.

【Wang De'an】: [Image][Image][Image]

【Wang De'an】: Master Jian Shen! It's exploded! Completely exploded!

【Wang De'an】: Data just received—our sales in the Amazon Western Region have hit number one!

【Wang De'an】: The BBC and The Times are all reporting on it, with headlines like "Mysterious Power from the East"! Now those arrogant European booksellers are all asking who "Jian Shen" really is; someone even offered a million-euro copyright advance to sign your next book!

The red-lettered battle report on the screen was jarring and glorious.

Those numbers represented fame and fortune, the glory of standing among the clouds.

Lin Que shifted his gaze out the window.

The sun was setting, the afterglow staining Sarajevo's red roofs like blood.

Downstairs, the faint sound of Mrs. Zola chopping vegetables could be heard—a life of careful calculation just to save a few coins on the water bill.

In the distance, an old man with only one leg was leaning on a crutch,

struggling up the long slope toward the cemetery, carrying a bunch of cheap wildflowers in his hand.

On one side was the clamor of a million euros; on the other, the haggling over a few coins for water.

On one side was an ethereal Eastern myth; on the other, the heavy, coarse reality of "living".

The massive sense of contrast struck his chest.

Lin Que suddenly felt that those so-called states of divinity seemed light and flimsy at this moment, even somewhat ridiculous.

His fingers tapped on the screen, replying briefly and calmly.

【Jian Shen】: Understood. I'll be in seclusion for writing later; I'll have to trouble Editor-in-Chief Wang to handle things.

After sending it, he tossed the phone directly onto the bed.

Lin Que walked to the balcony, his hands gripping the railing.

The evening breeze, carrying the smell of coal smoke, blew against his face; it was a bit choking, yet incredibly real.

He looked at this city that had crawled out of the ruins and was still breathing tenaciously.

He watched the children playing soccer by the tombstones and the elderly like Mrs. Zola who kept their backs straight.

A strong impulse to speak out rampaged through his chest.

The next book didn't need the kind of high-flying romance and redemption found in "the ferryman".

This land, and that equally heavy yellow earth of Huaxia, needed something coarser, more primitive, and more powerful.

Images in his mind began to overlap frantically.

In a daze, Sarajevo's red roofs disappeared, replaced by that yellow plateau crisscrossed with gullies.

He seemed to see that thin young boy in the cold early spring wind, wearing thin old clothes, hiding in a corner to drink vegetable soup just to save two cents on black flour buns.

He saw another figure even more clearly.

It was the original author, Mr. Lu.

The man who, in a simple room of a coal mine guesthouse, in a time and space that didn't exist in this world, burned his fingers and even his life into ashes.

Lin Que's fingers tightly gripped the railing.

He suddenly understood why that gentleman had used his life to write the story of a group of "country bumpkins".

Because true greatness is never about standing in the clouds and looking down on all living beings.

It's like Mrs. Zola, guarding a house full of departed souls yet still polishing the floor to a shine.

It's like that one-legged old man, climbing the long slope with a crutch just to bring a bunch of wildflowers to a loved one.

In this world of highly developed technology but increasingly desertified emotions,

"the ferryman" might be a soothing medicine for pain.

But people also need something else.

They need something coarse, smelling of soil, a power that takes root in the earth like sorghum roots.

The kind of power that tells you: even if life is riddled with holes like this bullet-scarred wall, you can still be like that ivy, stubbornly crawling over the entire summer.

Suffering itself has no meaning and doesn't need to be glorified.

What is worth glorifying

is that heart which, under the crushing weight of suffering, still wants to read, still wants to love, and still wants to stand tall as a human being.

That is the true original intention of that book.

It's not a hymn for the successful;

it's a battle song for every ordinary person struggling in the mud.

In this shitty world,

living on with your chest held high is, in itself, a form of heroism.

"Knock, knock!"

The door was knocked on again.

Mrs. Zola's loud voice came through the door panel, full of vigor, not sounding at all like a lonely old person who had lived alone for years.

"Oriental boy! Come down to eat!

If you dare to be a minute late, your mashed potatoes belong to Berger!"

Berger was the cat she kept.

Lin Que turned back, looking at the closed door, his face breaking into the brightest smile since he had arrived in this city.

"Coming!"

...