The Weight of Indifference

Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote in *The Brothers Karamazov*: “Above all, avoid falsehood in all its forms, especially falsehood to yourself; neither despise others nor yourself.”

This statement was so incisive that whenever I recalled it, regardless of the situation, it always felt profoundly apt.

“Then that girl burst into tears,” Dorothy recounted. “All because I told her that instruments like the organ and harmonica have always been folk instruments in Germany, on par with the flute and suona she so disparaged. There’s nothing inherently ‘high-class’ about them.”

The bus was in motion, and we were seated in the very last row. I leaned against the left window, while she leaned against the right. Aside from the driver, we were the only two passengers, allowing us to hear each other clearly even from a slight distance.

“Even though I’ve lived here longer, my appearance and name make it obvious where I’m from, so people around us would naturally find my argument more convincing. Of course, I don’t know much about my own country’s culture, and I certainly have no deep feelings for the so-called land. I just found that girl’s self-aggrandizing manner, and her constant belittling of other instruments, utterly nauseating.”

“I simply wanted to challenge her a little, hah, and I didn’t expect to make her cry so easily.”

Some satisfactions are illusory, incapable of truly filling any void. Yet, we seek them to mask an inner emptiness, so even if they are false, as long as they bring comfort and ease, their authenticity becomes irrelevant. At least, that was my perspective.

Dorothy, however, thought differently. She loathed self-deception and anything that failed to live up to its name, determined to shatter the self-consolation of others.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, gazing out the window, whether at the passing scenery or her own reflection, I couldn’t tell. “Do you also think, like them, that I went too far?”

Truthfully, I knew little about the Western instruments the girl had praised, nor the Eastern ones she had ridiculed. Had there been a fan of Eastern instruments present, hearing such scorn would surely have been hurtful.

In that case, perhaps it wasn’t so wrong for her to experience a little pain herself.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Your thoughts. Your… insights.”

“In that case,” I replied, “it’s quite irrelevant, such matters.”

Dorothy let out a scoffing laugh, then fell silent. Seeing this, I slowly turned my head to watch the scenery outside.

I had no inclination to judge the right or wrong of that girl’s vanity or Dorothy’s disdain. Their affairs were for them to decide, and the consequences would be theirs to bear. Whether right or wrong, they would eventually find their own answers.

“Yi Chang,” Dorothy began slowly, “are you born this way, or is it a deliberate choice?”

“Referring to what?”

“This attitude of yours, this indifference to everything, as if you don’t belong to this world… this sort of ethereal quality? When did it begin?”

‘My current self, huh…’ The answer to ‘when did it begin?’ seemed too distant, making the question itself quite vague. Like any ordinary child, I was born weak and helpless, growing up healthy under my family’s care, capable of nothing but crying. In that, I was certainly no different from anyone else.

Later, I would join friends, running around, playing, laughing heartily. That, too, was once part of my life. So when did I stop smiling? When did everything in the world suddenly become so uninteresting, and everything, including my own appearance, become so trivial?

“It seems it was because…”

My tender hands, caked with dirt, used a plastic toy shovel to dig a small pit.

“There was a girl…”

She wore a pristine white dress, kneeling beside me. She watched me, and what I was doing: digging a deep grave for a dead summer cicada.

We remained silent until I had finished building its tiny tomb. As I cleaned myself at the public washbasin in the park, she asked me.

[Yi Chang, why do you…]

“What she asked me, I can’t quite recall,” I mused. “And then, slowly, I became like this, I suppose.”

“Is that all?” she said, a hint of disbelief in her voice. “Just one sentence from someone else changed your entire life?”

There must have been various other factors, each linked to the next, ultimately leading to my transformation. Yet, that particular sentence was indeed the catalyst. The more detailed specifics eluded my memory, with no way to corroborate them; only fragmented impressions remained.

Whether they were real was hard to say. Perhaps it was just a dream, and the events within it changed me, which is why everything felt so hazy upon waking. It was all so uncertain.

But in any case, there was that one sentence that stripped away my innocence and romanticism.

“That’s right,” I said. “That’s all there was to it.”

“Compared to the growth and transformation protagonists undergo in novels,” she remarked with an amused smile, “yours is somewhat too dull.”

“Life is perpetually boring.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“How so?”

“I’m finding our conversation quite interesting right now.”

It was like when relatives visited our home; my mother would always call me out to greet them. Then, the relatives would inevitably say, “Oh, Changchang has grown so tall again, and even more handsome! You must have many admirers at school, surely you’ve had several girlfriends already.”

Such compliments, cloaked in polite platitudes, I had heard countless times. They were like pre-arranged lines, repeated with different people and slight variations each time. I knew they thought nothing of what they said, and I knew I was not as exceptional as they claimed. I had long since grown indifferent to such insincere praise.

However, if I received genuine praise from others, I would find myself feeling bewildered instead.

“Why have you gone quiet?”

“I’m wondering what you mean by what you said.”

“Haha,” she chuckled, “You think I have a hidden meaning, an ulterior motive? In that regard, you’re quite like a normal person, aren’t you?”

Dorothy rested her arm on the window sill, propping her head in her hand, facing the direction the bus was moving. She watched me from the corner of her eye.

“I’m not lying to you,” she stated. “It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden home with someone, chatting, and baring my heart. With a boy, it’s the first time ever.” She turned to me. “You should feel honored, newcomer.”

“I will,” I replied, meeting her gaze and seeing her faint, dawn-like smile.

“A single sentence from a childhood playmate changing the trajectory of your entire life—that’s quite dramatic,” she said, still smiling. “If we were to take it a step further, the girl could still hold a dominant position in your heart, every action influenced by her past impact on you, unable to let go. Then, you meet someone new in your life, and through your interactions, you slowly change, becoming a new you, and finding happiness.”

“That would make for a decent script, wouldn’t it?” she added, “By the standards of a third-rate novel.”

“And how would a first-rate novel end?”

“It would write that you never let go, not for your entire life.”

“Then the third-rate novel sounds better.”

She closed her eyes and let out a soft laugh, maintaining her smile without a sound. When she opened her eyes again, those captivating orbs stared directly into mine, and I felt as though I was lost in eternity.

“I need to get off,” she announced, rising.

It turned out the intelligent stop reminder had already sounded. It was time for Dorothy to leave. Had today’s driver been going too fast? It felt like we had only just begun to speak.

Dorothy stood by the right-side door, waiting for the bus to reach its stop. The road was a bit bumpy, and she tried to grab the overhead handrail, but couldn’t reach it, so she steadied herself by holding the nearby pole. She shot me a glare, as if telling me to forget that moment.

As the bus halted, the door swung open, and Dorothy stepped off. There were no words of farewell, only the broad, date-red hair of her retreating back.

Suddenly, the surroundings grew incredibly quiet. Aside from the rumble of the bus engine, there was no other sound. Besides me, there were no other passengers on the bus.

I watched the scenery outside, waiting for the bus to reach my stop.

****

Upon returning home, I tossed my schoolbag and uniform jacket onto the sofa. My sister was at school, and my parents weren’t home, so the house was as quiet as ever.

As always, I turned on the television, randomly selecting a channel playing a boring romance drama, just to create some noise in the space.

I dropped the remote and walked towards the dining table. Gazing at the round table, large enough to seat seven or eight people, I suddenly remembered I had eaten lunch at school, and there was nothing stocked in the refrigerator. The faucet in the sink hadn’t been fully tightened, and every few seconds, a drop of water fell into the stainless steel basin, creating a dull metallic clang.

I realized I was hungry, something that hadn’t happened before. I always left school on time, arrived home on time, and ate on time. My stomach seemed to protest my abrupt disruption of its routine, beginning to ache faintly.

So, I turned off the television I had just turned on, and opened the door I had just closed.

I was heading out to eat.

Bored during the journey, I opened my phone to scroll through some videos and found several messages from different people. There was also a friend request, with a rather clear accompanying message.

[I’m Dorothy.]