The Great Creator Chapter 12 - Humans are no different from ants
If you like this story, please support the author by purchasing the novel from JJWXC.
—
Trigger Warnings: Mental illness (BPD, depression, anorexia), suicidal themes, family trauma, emotional dependency, nihilistic thoughts. Reader discretion advised.
—
A month ago, spring was in full bloom.
Springtime is often a peak season for mental illness.
The sunlight, the rising temperatures, the chirping birds, and blooming flowers may seem beautiful, but they often stir uncontrollable emotions deep within—a restless beast caged in the soul, clawing to break free and roar into the world at any moment.
Duan Yao Guang rode his bike across half the city to attend his therapy session for borderline personality disorder. Today, the organization had arranged a picnic in the park with a few patients and a volunteer. It was an opportunity for everyone to share their struggles.
The group consisted of a painfully thin girl suffering from anorexia; a man who had gone bankrupt, owing three million yuan after his failed business, and was now battling depression; a younger boy who had dropped out of high school due to bullying; and a single mother living with bipolar disorder. They sat in a circle, exchanging experiences in their fight against their respective illnesses.
After hearing stories of self-destruction, bankruptcy, divorce, being forced to eat excrement at school, being deceived into becoming a mistress only to be ruthlessly abandoned, it was Duan Yaoguang's turn to speak. He racked his brain for a while before saying,
"Now that I think about it, I don't really have much to share."
Feeling a bit guilty, he added, "Compared to everyone else, my situation seems insignificant."
The volunteer offered him a kind prompt. "You can share your feelings instead. Anything is fine. No pressure."
"Exactly," the bankrupt man encouraged him. "It's all good."
After some serious thought, Duan Yao Guang began,
"I've had BPD since I was young. My mom is very controlling and domineering, which caused a lot of trauma in my childhood. I did well in school until high school, when things started falling apart. I couldn’t concentrate, and my relationship with my family became a mess. I ended up enrolling in a major I didn’t like in college, constantly escaping into video games and novels in my dorm. Only in those virtual worlds did I feel safe. In the end, I didn’t learn anything and dropped out last year."
"My family arranged a job for me—they don’t know I dropped out—but I don’t want to go back," he continued. "I have to escape my family, but I can’t find a stable job. I’ve been scraping by with odd jobs, often relying on friends for help. Right now, I’m living in a friend’s place and working a dead-end job. I want to try writing novels and publishing them online, to become self-sufficient first. As for my family, I’ve pretty much cut ties. I don’t want to go back."
Everyone nodded as he spoke. Duan Yao Guang smiled. "It's really not worth mentioning. I brought this on myself," he said lightly, turning to the high school boy. "If you can bear it, try to finish high school and get into college. It might help."
The boy nodded.
"You said your illness is BPD. What is that?" the single mother asked. "Is it like BD?"
"No," Duan Yao Guang explained. "It’s borderline personality disorder. I have a mix of dependency and hostility toward others. I easily idealize people I’m close to, and I’m overly reliant on friends. But when they let me down, I can’t help but hate them. I constantly swing between extreme intimacy and intense resentment."
The single mother said, "That sounds a bit like how we get during manic episodes."
"Yeah," Duan Yao Guang replied with a laugh. "I also feel empty and pessimistic a lot. When I couldn’t get my diploma after dropping out, I even attempted suicide. A friend saved me."
"Your friend must really care about you," the high school boy said enviously.
"The one who saved me and the one who gave me a place to stay aren’t the same person," Duan Yao Guang said. "But both became people I depended on for a while. I’m trying to work on that, so I don’t lose them."
"Have you ever been in a relationship?" the anorexic girl asked.
"No," Duan Yao Guang replied.
"Brother, you’re pretty good-looking," the high school boy said. "Hasn’t anyone confessed to you? Or do you think being in a relationship is too painful?"
After a pause, Duan Yao Guang said, "I’m gay."
"Oh..." Everyone nodded in understanding.
The picnic fell into silence.
The bankrupt man, who had been chain-smoking, finally broke it. "You know, thinking life is meaningless isn’t wrong. I feel the same. What’s the point of living?"
The volunteer interjected, "There’s so much beauty to experience! Living in the moment is reason enough. Look at the scenery and the warmth of spring—that’s why we’re alive."
The bankrupt man ignored him. "Life is exhausting from the moment you’re born. Everyone dies in the end. Even the Earth will eventually perish. All this civilization—it’s just a fleeting moment in time. Humans are no different from ants."
To emphasize his point, he pressed his cigarette butt against an ant on the grass, a cruel demonstration of higher-dimensional beings crushing lower ones. His nihilistic musings were out of place but irrefutable.
The volunteer worked hard to restore some hope to the atmosphere and took a group photo to wrap up the picnic. Despite the despair in their hearts, the patients left with bright smiles on their faces.
As Duan Yao Guang left the park, he felt not only unsatisfied but like his condition had worsened. He stopped by a noodle stall near his apartment for a quick meal, then returned to his dark, cramped room in an old building. It was a twelve-square-meter unit with a small bathroom, a bed, a desk, a chair, and a rice cooker on the floor.
After moving the clothes piled on the chair to his bed, he sat down and opened his laptop. He stared at the so-called “novel” he had been writing over the past few days, finding it unbearably dull. He sank into a long spiral of self-doubt and self-criticism. Every night, he would type out thousands of words, only to wake up the next day and think it was all trash. He would start a new document, write another story, and repeat the cycle endlessly. Now, his hard drive was cluttered with dozens of story beginnings, none exceeding 20,000 words, let alone ready for publication. The self-doubt was driving him insane.
“Maybe I should just sleep for a while,” he thought.
Duan Yao Guang moved the clothes piled on the bed back to the chair and lay down for an afternoon nap. At four o'clock, he heard voices through his confused dreams, opened his eyes to a slit, and saw his good friend Liang Jue and his girlfriend Xiao Ya arriving uninvited - one sitting by the bed, expertly opening his computer, the other starting to tidy his room.
Duan Yao Guang: "..."
He rolled over, not knowing what to say, choosing to pretend to stay asleep.
"You should have listened to me and brought a dehumidifier," Xiao Ya said. "It's not even rainy season yet, but it'll get damp soon."
The room was dark. Liang Jue glanced at the computer, found no games, opened a few web pages randomly, and said, "The old one doesn't work anymore. Let's buy one online and have it delivered."
Xiao Ya opened the wardrobe, took out hangers, and began hanging up the clothes thrown on the chair one by one, smoothing them out before putting them back.
"What should we eat tonight?" Xiao Ya smiled. "How about that new barbeque place?"
Duan Yao Guang sighed under his blanket. Liang Jue had been his upper bunkmate in university, and from the day they met, he'd acted like a boyfriend—nurturing and attentive in every way. Tall and handsome, from a wealthy family, he treated Duan Yao Guang like a wife in every way except intimacy, which had once left the love-starved Duan Yao Guang both flattered and fantasizing. They were inseparable, so close that for a while, many thought they were a couple.
Would a man be unconditionally kind to another man? Yes, Liang Jue was the perfect example. Of course, during their four years in university, they had their share of conflicts. Duan Yao Guang, already troubled, acted like a difficult and irritable girlfriend in their relationship, like a mushroom in a dark corner emanating gloom. He would often use trivial excuses to manipulate Liang Jue - like not being invited to meals or Liang Jue just playing games after returning to the dorm. Their roommates watched their dynamic like a drama, analyzing their relationship.
Invariably, it was always Liang Jue who would comfort him. They went on road trips together, pulled all-nighters gaming, celebrated each other's birthdays.
Of course, after graduation, Liang Jue quickly arranged a marriage meeting through his family and met his current girlfriend, Xiao Ya. She was gentle, gracious, understanding—truly a perfect match for Liang Jue.
Thankfully I didn't lose my head and fall for him... Duan Yao Guang had witnessed the whole process. Their relationship had been ambiguous, somewhere between lovers and friends, and Liang Jue's arranged marriage meeting had seemed especially sudden. Duan Yao Guang had resolved to cut contact with Liang Jue, to act as if he were dead.
But months later, Liang Jue used all his social connections to find Duan Yao Guang, who had disappeared without a word. He came again and again, wanting to take in and support his good friend who had dropped out and couldn't find work, fulfilling his promise to "take care of you." Duan Yao Guang was devastated—his life circumstances combined with his friend's one-sided care made him want to die. He couldn't handle Liang Jue's love, which felt as heavy as a mountain, but he truly had nowhere else to go.
So, half-willingly, half-reluctantly, Duan Yao Guang was forced by Liang Jue into this old apartment. Afterward, this good friend would regularly visit with his girlfriend, invite him on their dates, take him out twice a week for good meals while imagining scenarios of Duan Yao Guang becoming a great writer, filling his hungry stomach while soothing his wounded soul.
Xiao Ya was very gentle. Not only did she not mind her fiancé's poor friend, but she genuinely cared for Duan Yao Guang as a sister-in-law would.
In this friendship, everyone was happy except Duan Yao Guang. To live up to Liang Jue's expectations, he found a job that barely let him support himself, working eight hours a day. At home, he deleted all the games from his computer and forced himself to write for eight hours daily, even if he couldn't produce a novel. Liang Jue always believed he would succeed one day, earning billions like some online writers.
This was truly heavy yet touching trust. Duan Yao Guang felt like a turtle crushed under a tombstone, carrying the weight of an old apartment plus Liang Jue and his girlfriend's bright sculptures of future prospects, crawling painfully along life's path. He'd think he'd moved a centimeter, but looking back, he hadn't moved at all.
"Awake?" Xiao Ya asked.
"Mm." Duan Yao Guang sat up with messy hair.
Liang Jue looked back at him and reached out to ruffle his hair.
Duan Yao Guang jumped off the bed and went to the bathroom to shower.
"Your hair needs cutting," Xiao Ya said. "Both of you have slightly long hair."
Just then, with a "ding," a pendant fell from Duan Yao Guang's computer desk.
Xiao Ya quickly picked it up - it was a hexagonal crystal that Duan Yao Guang would place aside while sleeping.
"It's fine." Liang Jue saw it wasn't damaged and put it back.
"That scared me to death." Xiao Ya was still nervous, afraid of breaking Duan Yao Guang's possession.
Liang Jue waved his hand, indicating it was alright.
Duan Yao Guang quickly showered, changed clothes, and came out. He put on the pendant and looked more energetic. He was still handsome—his appearance was exactly what girls liked, with a suitable height, milk-white skin from lack of sun exposure, and a slim figure from irregular meals. He had long limbs, delicate features, bright eyes, and an expression carrying hints of melancholy and gloom. Many girls who saw him this way wanted to comfort him.
Male friends found him non-threatening, often triggering their "big brother" protective instincts. Liang Jue was typical of this—he felt responsible for taking care of his helpless good friend.
As night fell, Duan Yao Guang closed his computer and followed behind the hand-holding Liang Jue and Xiao Ya, heading out for barbeque.
——
Comments
Post a Comment