Thirteen Sections

By Lin Jin

The story consists of "we" who are different in dislocated time and space, connected remotely by destiny and flowing back to the shape. In different simultaneity, each follows the voice in the void, traces the track of displacement, and plunges into the unadorned life. Seeing oneself in one's own light so

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janvi Tours Publishing
• Release date: Oct 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648389620

Book preview

Thirteen Sections

Copyright © 2021 金麟（Lin Jin）

ISBN: 978-0-6483896-2-0 

All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced distributed, or transmitted in any form or by means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinatorat [e-mail]

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously, Names, characters, and places are products of the author's imagination.

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First paperback edition August 2021

Janvi Tours Publishing

247 South Rd. Mile End

Adelaide, South Australia 5031

Australia

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1  0103  07:15

Section 1  20130214

Section 2  0320

Section 3  06242000

Chapter 2  003001  18:09

Section 1  191030

Section 2  02590911

Section 3  50801991

Section 4  161208

Chapter 3  0402  00:00

Section 1  20570105

Section 2  201221

Section 3  013701107

Chapter 4  002004  11:58

Section 1  18890504

Section 2  19050621

Section 3  071491

Epilogue

Prologue

He said, Everyone has a self they want to kill.

She said, Either you go after that self and kill them. Or you get killed.

And when they had said that, there came a storm. So, they chased them into the rain.

They lived in an old forest, using scavenged stones to build some a house without doors.

Entering through a skylight, she liked to sit barefoot on the beams of the attic and drink tea. Outside the window was a osmanthus tree that had travelled the world for many years, and the white or red flowers could be picked by opening the window. Two crows were nestled among the flowers, and when the leaves fell, one flew deep into the forest and the other disappeared behind it.

Usually he was a mute who only bowed to flowers and plants, and only spoke to thunder and lightning. Anyway, he knew she always held her head high and could always hear what he didn't say.

One day, she walked into a deep cave in the waterfall forest. It was only when the candle in her hand was about to burn out that she had to go

return. Before turning around, she made a pact

with the one she thought she would meet: I'll see you somewhere else.

Later, one night, the forest was on fire. She waited for him at the intersection, and he suddenly stopped when he was about to reach her.

His eyes said, I'm not leaving.

She gestured, I see. And turned to leave.

She said goodbye to the thousand hills in his eyes, and he remembered the flame that flowed backwards in her eyes.

Chapter 1  0103

07:15

Section 1  20130214

January 5th. On the way out of school, XIII was carrying a red backpack and pedalling a scooter through the Eastern Bazaar, where the Lantern Festival on Planet Q2b was approaching and the whole street was decorated in red. There was a dragon dance going on by the old city wall. There were three dragon dancers in total, each holding a long stick in their hands, holding up the dragon's head, body and tail. The dragon was very dragon, flashing its golden armor and roaring towards the east.

Planet Q2b was a rootless island surrounded by mountains on all sides, with a bottomless trench beneath it. The five boulders formed a mountain range connected by countless coiled vines, and the rocks and plants grew together by interdependence. But with the excessive consumption from the people, the vines had dried up and aged in the ecological imbalance, and the boulders gradually loosened and cracked. The sea was rising and the land was sinking.

Not long ago a major earthquake erupted in the South Sea, which was the central entry point of Q2b. The tsunami caused waves that lifted the roofs of residents and destroyed half of the buildings. As a result of the earthquake, the No. 1 nuclear power plant had been leaking radioactive materials into the air and ocean. With insufficient food reserves, people would prey on those closest to them in order to feed themselves for the moment. In order to survive, the meaning of survival had been lost.

In addition, there was a statement from the ‘Ministry of Foreign’ Affairs that a vessel carrying a crew of five Outside Exploration filmmakers lost their radio communication contact after the earthquake and were unaccounted for.

At present, with no forewarning in place, Planet Q2b does not have effective defences against earthquakes and tsunamis. However, from the news reports, everyone is always told that the disaster will not pose a threat to Planet Q2b.

In fact, XIII is well aware that the world sometimes has to do something bad first in order to prevent something worse from happening. He has a natural understanding of natural and man-made disasters, and he maintains the kind of self-conscious optimism that is expected from the news. Anyway, he has no extra expectations or beliefs about the world.

XIII then passed a grocery store selling firecrackers, fireworks, and masks with faces. In front of the store was a stack of calendars with a big colorful rooster painted on the bright red cover, which read Discover the New World. There was a person wearing a red costume with a phoenix crown next to it performing a face transformation, a white mask with a sad face, and with a shake of the head, it turned into a sad face on another mask.

Over the eaves of the house flew a skeleton kite wearing a tuxedo and a red bowler hat. The light of the setting sun bore into the kite's body and XIII saw the skeleton blinking at him and saying, Hello, I am the enemy.

The leaves the cleaners were sweeping up said, We've been in different guises so many times that the next one is already a long time apart .

The car with the bad grin on the face said, "Don't nagging. He's not that guy.

XIII could always saw things clearly in transparency.

He was used to having no friends, to silence. He liked to sit on the roadside and focus on doing nothing, wishing so badly that he could simply indulge himself with this idle time from morning to night. But he had to go home.

When he got home, his mother was not back yet, and XIII put the scooter into his meticulous bedroom. The desk was neatly arranged with various reference books, and a poster of his favorite comic, ‘The Flute and the Serpentine Ladder,’ was taped to the bed. A knight in a red cloak, holding the sword of the king in his hand, pointed forward. The symbols of the moon, Venus and Jupiter were engraved on the blade, and the tree of life was engraved in five concentric circles on the blade. Followed by a silvery gray wolf, galloping through the sky of white osmanthus. The knight's feathery black hair flowed with a golden glow, like penetrating through the shades, reflecting the red face of XIII, and his dream to fight a knight's holy war.

Just as he opened his school bag, his dream was swallowed up by his homework. The only time he could take out his Xbox to catch his breath and play ‘Dust Wars’ was in between periods when his life was being controlled. His mother's agreement with him was that he could only play games after he finished his homework, but not after 10pm because it was time for bed. XIII always finished his homework after ten o'clock, so he did not have the right to play games.

At that time hearing the sound of his mother coming back, XIII hurriedly put down the Xbox in his hands. He opened his Language workbook and immediately got into the state of study. There was a fill-in-the-blank essay question, The world would not mistreat _________ people, and he did not hesitate to write the word sincere.

However, XIII was a bit disturbed by the writing of the essay, he thought he did not have the ability to understand the world and express himself. The question for the last exam was: write an essay using the opposite of black.

XIII wrote: not dark, and got zero marks while other students wrote daytime, pure white. He could not figure out why the opposite of black could only be white.

Because of the failure of the essay, XIII's grade got last place. His mother was asked by the teacher to have a separate meeting at school, and from then on, his homework was closely supervised. As expected, the first thing his mother did when she came home was to check his homework.

XIII's mother, Madam Lin, worked in a botanical research institute, mainly responsible for the cultivation and development of rare plants. She had a strict and obsessive sense of rules, never bringing work home with her, and never noticing the rare attributes that XIII possessed, the distance between them was separated by the air

of the whole world.

Madam Lin caught a glimpse of the essay XIII was writing. Wrong again!

She said. The world would not mistreat hardworking people. And 'motivated', 'qualified', all these words would be more accurate.

He did not know what to say. He silently crossed out the word sincere on the fill-in-the-blank question and replaced it with hardworking.

The word hardworking made him feel guilty for not being able to pull out the desired outcome despite having tried his very best. Nevertheless, there were things that must be worked on before knowing that the efforts were useless.

One evening, it was raining heavily outside. XIII heard his mother shout, The toilet is leaking! He immediately ran over to see. Maybe the downspout is aging. We need a toolbox. Madam Lin said, Go to the attic and find it, the key is in the first drawer of the seventh cupboard. He took the key and heard his mother say again, Bring down the old lantern, too, along with it.

XIII's family lived on the No.23 Mani street, fourth floor of an old house with blue and yellow tiles, attached to an attic with a red roof. It was the house left by his grandmother. As a child he had heard from her that there was a neighbor who was a storyteller, but he had never seen any of them before. The attic was where the miscellaneous things were stored, and Grandma called it the ‘space dump’. Like his grandmother, he was good at renaming things he loved, symbolizing that you are mine from now on.

A pair of faded spring scrolls hung on the door of the attic. It used to be that grandma went to the market to choose lanterns and buy fireworks for the Lantern Festival and would definitely write the Spring Festival couplets by hand. XIII followed his grandmother's lead and learned how to handwriting at that time.

At that time, he wrote the banner of May everything go well for you and completed his first Spring Festival couplet with his grandmother. Later, no matter what Grandma wrote, he would always write May everything go well for you.

Later, his grandmother passed away on a Thursday, the eighth day of the lunar month. XIII wrote a piece: The willow will be shaped by the bank and the plum will be given by the post and hung it on the attic door until now. The difference to the past was that he wrote May everything go well for you in his heart.

XIII came to the attic. No one had been there for a long time, and there was dust everywhere. He lifted a few white cloth covers and choked and coughed from the noxious cloud that rose. Suddenly, a large bat flew out of nowhere and startled him. When it flew in front of him, it looked bigger especially seeing the open black wings, and it kept whirling around in the attic.

XIII opened the window, grabbed a broom and waved it toward the bat, but the bat did not want to leave.

He calmed down, as if he knew he had to say something to the bat. Can you be my friend? ...... You say you wouldn't want to be anyone's friend, it's more tiring than being an enemy. XIII mumbled to himself, Yes. I did it ...... As he finished this, the bat arced through the air and flew out the window into the downpour.

He was in the process of finding the toolbox, and saw the pieces of toys once again. For example, there were castle blocks, pirate soldiers, glass beads, chess pieces and so on. There were also grandmother's beloved silver candlesticks, then he also found the old lantern in the middle of a pile of shells, and then found the toolbox in the ball of wool underneath grandmother's pedal sewing machine.

When he saw a ball of wool in the basket, he recalled that his grandmother had once knitted a black wool hat, and said that when the day came to know this crown of golden wool, it would come to the time of unimpeded access.

Before preparing to close the door, XIII saw an old radio lying on the miscellaneous shelf and took it away.

It was after 8:00 p.m. He could not resist but put down the pencil with which he was writing and began to study the radio. The radio was so old that it was almost unusable. XIII turned the pointer of the FM band, and static came out of it. Suddenly, he stopped and seemed to hear a playful sound mixed in with the noise, a sound that was intermittent.

First, he heard a boy's giggle, and after a while the boy said, If one day I can't speak, are you willing to help me dub?

Then a girl said, Of course not.

Then the boy giggled again.

XIII listened with fascination, his black eyes dead set on the radio, and when he was excited, his eyes would be even darker than black.

On the second night, XIII continued to turn the radios FM dial, and after a zipping sound, the voice popped up: Cleaning up trash has become the hottest topic today. A secret organization is allegedly providing more effective implementation plans for the environmental enhancement of the living space. However, this rumor has not been confirmed by any official ......

The useless news of current events was followed by laughter, and the boys' laughter was followed by a girl singing:

He lives in the white house at Number 23.

She lives in the red house at Number 32

They've come a long way

Trying their best to keep each other down"

Then the radio reverted to a zippy noise. XIII kept turning the FM knob, and the playful sounds never came back. He spent the whole night fighting with the radio and gave it