36: Poisonous trees form a forest

The electronic version of the latest issue of the "New Tide" magazine,

was released on the official app one day ahead of the physical print edition.

After the "Xiao Duo" incident last time,

this time, the most anticipated part,

turned out to be the recurring column "Grandpa Namiya's reply letter".

Countless readers poured into the app the moment midnight passed.

They skipped the preface,

skipped the essays by famous writers,

and headed straight for that warm corner.

Soon, a reply section titled "To a Confused Gardener",

along with a brand-new story "The Musician of the Fresh Fish Shop",

ignited everyone's emotions.

...

The original text of the letter was quoted at the beginning,

and the reply follows below:

[Grandpa Namiya's reply letter: To a Confused Gardener]

[Hello.]

[I have received your letter. You said that you are watching a sapling absorb what you see as "poison", and you are very anxious, not knowing what to do.]

[This is a question even harder to answer than "how to defeat a bad guy".]

[Therefore, I want to tell you a story first.]

...

The story is not long; Lin Que told of a young man named Matsuoka Kurou,

who deeply loved music and dreamed of becoming a professional musician,

but had to face the predicament of reality.

— Inheriting the fresh fish shop named "Uomatsu" at home.

His father fell ill, and the ancestral family business had no successor.

One side was burning dreams, the other side was heavy responsibility.

Kurou fell into the same confusion as that "gardener" teacher.

Should he cut off his own "music" branches for the sake of reality,

or should he desperately let the tree of dreams grow wildly?

He wrote a letter to Namiya General Store for help.

And the reply letter from the future gave him an unexpected answer.

[Please be sure to persist in your dream.]

[Go to Tokyo, and give it your all for your music.

Even if you end up battered and bruised, even if it eventually proves that you have no talent, that is still your own, unique life.]

[Your life map is a blank sheet of paper.

Your only responsibility is to paint it into the appearance you want with your own hands.]

[Please believe that your struggle and efforts today will definitely be rewarded in some form on a certain day in the future.

The cause you plant will surely bear unexpected fruit.]

...

The night was deep and quiet.

In Shen Qingqiu's apartment, only a desk lamp was lit.

She did not look at the app, but instead looked at the fax copy obtained from the editorial department of "New Tide",

that fax reply from Teacher Jian Shen.

She looked at the phrase "To a Confused Gardener",

and her heart skipped a beat uncontrollably.

He saw it.

He was really answering her question.

Her fingertips stroked the warm words on the fax paper, reading them line by line.

When she read Kurou's story, her breathing stagnated.

That young man who played the guitar amidst the smell of fish and dreamed of going to Tokyo,

and that teenager who was drowsy in class but could summon despair from his pen,

their figures gradually overlapped before her eyes.

Lin Que.

This story was talking about Lin Que.

Teacher Jian Shen unexpectedly used such a gentle story

to respond to her question about the devil and the poison tree.

She continued reading downward.

When she saw that reply letter from the "future",

and saw the phrase "Please be sure to persist in your dream",

her brows unconsciously furrowed.

This ran counter to her thoughts.

Indulgence? Encouragement? Could she just watch him slide into the abyss?

What kind of answer was this?

The confusion in her heart was not resolved at all; instead, it grew deeper.

Until she read the end of the story.

Kurou went to Tokyo, and he failed.

His musical talent did not win him a foothold in that huge city.

In the end, he returned to his hometown, preparing to inherit the fresh fish shop he had fled from.

Seeing this, Shen Qingqiu's heart sank.

What was this? A futile struggle? A painful compromise with reality?

Was this what Teacher Jian Shen wanted to tell her?

Let Lin Que hit a wall, experience failure, and then suddenly wake up?

But on the night Kurou was ready to completely give up music, he received an invitation to perform for a children's welfare institution.

In that small, dilapidated auditorium, he played his guitar and sang a song he wrote himself for the last time for those children.

[...What he sang was a song called "Rebirth".]

[The children offstage listened quietly.]

[Many of them, just like Kurou, were people once abandoned by their families and society.]

[They couldn't understand those complex chords, but they could understand the power in the singing—the struggle, the confusion, and the lingering desire for rebirth.]

[As the song ended, thunderous applause broke out.]

[That very night, an accidental fire broke out at the welfare institution.]

[In order to save a child trapped in the sea of fire, Kurou never came out again.]

[His life ended in the year his dream shattered.]

[Yet the song "Rebirth" that he wrote was remembered by the child he saved.]

[Many years later, that child became a famous female singer,

and she sang this song to the entire world at her grandest concert.]

[She said: This song gave me the courage to live on when I was at my most desperate.]

[Its author is my savior, and his name is Matsuoka Kurou.]

[At that moment, under the spotlight, ten thousand people sang in chorus.]

[A fish from the fresh fish shop finally swam into the vast ocean.]

The story ends here.

Shen Qingqiu remained sitting in place, not moving for a long time.

The night wind from outside blew in, and she only then realized that her cheeks were cold at some unknown time.

That was not crying.

It was an unspeakable shock after being struck by a huge force.

She finally understood.

What Teacher Jian Shen wanted to say was neither indulgence nor compromise.

He was saying that

the value of talent does not lie in whether it conforms to worldly standards of success,

but in whether it has been thoroughly and vividly burned.

Kurou's music did not make him a star,

but it planted a seed of hope in a child's life.

Then, what about Lin Que?

Was that darkness and destructiveness in her eyes simply because

she failed to find the correct perspective to view it?

Was the despair of the firefly also warning the world not to blindly believe in false light?

Was the terror of the human world is like a prison also exploring the desire to survive and the struggle deep within human nature in an extreme way?

She remembered what Lin Que said to her in the office.

"Teacher, you don't understand hope."

Perhaps, he was right.

The hope she understood

was too narrow, too standard,

and too much like the standard answer in a textbook.

While the hope understood by Teacher Jian Shen was a flower blooming anew upon the ruins.

Shen Qingqiu let out a long, long breath.

It was as if a heavy boulder had been lifted from her heart.

She picked up her phone and slowly typed a line of text in her memo.

[Perhaps, I shouldn't be that gardener who trims branches.]

[What I should do is ensure that while this tree grows wildly, its roots remain in this land.]

She felt that she had finally found a way to get along with that "monstrous" student.

Just as her emotions were surging, the phone screen lit up, and a new message popped up.

It was sent by Wu Di in the class chat group.

[Brothers! Big news! Hongguo Novel Website just made an official announcement!]

[[Link] ByteDance Group enters the film and television industry! The S+-level project the human world is like a prison has been launched, aiming to create China's first "horror universe"!]

[Moreover, it's confirmed! Hell Dream Weaver will personally step down to serve as the chief screenwriter!]

Shen Qingqiu looked at that message, her pupils suddenly shrinking.

The brief peace she had just gained was instantly blown to smithereens by this thunder-like message.

She had only just persuaded herself to understand that "poison tree".

Yet in the blink of an eye, this tree

seemed to be growing into a forest that could blot out the sky.

...