Almighty painter

Chapter 791 The loneliness of two people
Anywhere in the world, a watch worth S$530,000 is a distant existence that most people cannot touch.

And wherever in the world, people's curiosity about new things is similar.

The Biennale has set up a special photo-taking and check-in area.

The watch of the Independent Watchmaking Company and its huge replica are located in the center of the check-in area. Next to it are dolls for tourists to take photos. Further away is a table surrounded by red silk ropes.

The table is laid with colored pencils, crayons, watercolor pens, oil pastels, and even traditional Chinese brushes and ink... This is a parent-child activity area set up on the first floor of CDX Gallery. Parents can bring their children to experience the joy of painting, draw some cartoons, check in as souvenirs, and if the drawings are good, they will receive small gifts.

There were quite a few people in each check-in activity area, but not as many as those gathered around the watch display cabinets.

Gu Weijing paced around and came back here. There were more people here.

He observed and discovered.

There were very few people stopping by the booth alone, but mostly couples.

The replica large dial model was adjusted by the watch company so that the action puppet mechanism would be activated once every five minutes.

Every five minutes, the man and woman walking in opposite directions on the embossed dial will pass through the crowd of silhouettes, meet and kiss. The electronic background board at the back of the booth will also emit pink bubbles at the right time, accompanied by a love poem written by Bob Dylan.

The men and women gathered around and waited next to the booth, holding hands, chatting, laughing, and waiting in line patiently, waiting for the next moment when the man and woman on the clock would go from separation to meeting, and then take photos and check in at this special "love moment".

now.

Standing next to the clock were the black-haired Latino couple who had stood in front of Gu Weijing when they had just entered the exhibition hall. At the moment the clock started, unlike the Asian couple, they boldly posed in the same kissing pose as in the background, causing a burst of laughter and boos all around.

Gu Weijing had previously speculated that they might be Spanish, but now it seems more likely that they are Italians.

Whether Spanish or Italian.

He looked at the couple from afar, smiling and kissing each other. Looking at their happy faces, Gu Weijing couldn't help but wonder: If the accident hadn't happened, would he and Sakai Katsuko be one of them now?
If he knew that the matter would be resolved by Chen Shenglin turning himself in, would he still send a breakup text message to Shengzi that night?

Could there be another way for life to unfold - at this moment, he and Koko are standing next to the huge clock, holding hands and smiling happily?

Will it?

Probably so.

They had just woken up from a hellish nightmare together, and Koko had always been a girl who could easily make people happy.

Every time, Gu Weijing seemed to be just one step away from this worldly, ordinary and peaceful happiness.

Happy love was just ahead, and the phantom of a boy and girl holding hands with sweet smiles was right there. However, when he was about to get close, he took the wrong path and accidentally turned into a thorny path.

but.

In the illusion of the hands holding each other that Gu Weijing seemed to see, were the smiles on their faces true happiness?

In this moment of "love" captured by the camera, do they possess each other wholeheartedly? When Gu Weijing was laughing, could he really forget Sakai Katsuko completely in his mind?
Or that he would not feel any guilt?

And Koko, smart Koko, doesn't she know everything in his mind?

She could always easily see what Gu Weijing was thinking.

On the last morning of June, Koko kissed him and asked him if he loved her.

Gu Weijing replied: love.

He couldn't give any other answer.

Koko looked at him for a moment, but told him - "Gu Weijing, you like Miss Sakai, and you are grateful to me." Then at the moment the plane took off, she left a notebook about love and turned away coolly.

When Miss Koko was smiling brightly, in the depths of her eyes as she looked into the camera, didn't she feel the pain that she felt for his pain?

For Koko, isn't it cruel and unfair to ask her to stay by his side and laugh happily?

and also.

What is the distance between liking and loving?
What is the distance between gratitude and love?
To depend on each other through life and death or to let each other have a brighter and more brilliant life - which one is the true and correct expression of love?

Can a hundred reasons to praise, a hundred phone calls waiting to be made, fill the gap between gratitude and love?
Even now.

Gu Weijing decided to do as Mr. Sloth taught him. You will hurt someone anyway, so just figure out what you want and then treat other things and other people as nothing.

If, Gu Weijing meant if, he could figure out what he wanted... no matter what he chose.

Whether he tore the notebook that Koko left for him into pieces, kicked her away, flushed her into the toilet, or rushed to Miss Sakai, pretending to ask for reconciliation.

Or he would no longer pay attention to Katsuko Sakai, who had always been innocent in this matter. Since he had hurt the other party, he might as well hurt her completely.

He stood up Katsuko Sakai and made 100 phone calls in the afternoon. As soon as the exhibition was over, he bought a plane ticket and rushed to Paris with roses.

well.

Even if he cut the Gordian knot completely.

For one of the parties, haha, she is crazy to fall in love with him, and she asked for it by getting hurt. Why bother with him? She should reflect on herself.

But for the other party, is this fair? Is this still not a kind of harm?

Is this the reward they deserve for their efforts?
Gu Weijing didn't like his lover to be with him but thinking about someone else.

Girls definitely don’t like their lovers to be with them while thinking about someone else in their hearts.

Love is mutual.

Possession is mutual.

Responsibility is also mutual.

If you want to receive pure love, then you have to give pure love. It is natural and reasonable.

Only using responsibility to restrict others while doing whatever they want is not only a problem of irresponsibility, but often people cannot get what they want.

What they pay is power, and what they gain is desire.

Rather than "love".

People can exchange power for desires.

But love may only be exchanged through love. It is both the only commodity and the only bargaining chip.

And if love really exists, then in this proposition... perhaps even the hurt and pain are mutual.

"Picasso slept with countless beautiful women in his lifetime. He was bald and skinny, but he still slept with underage beautiful models. This is certainly something that would make the girls' parents come to his house with kitchen knives." Gu Weijing thought about it, "But did Picasso ever really get 'love' in his life, or was it just passion that made him think he was still young?"

"What do you mean by not feeling guilty? Will you not feel guilty if you don't have contact? It's impossible for a person not to feel guilty. For a man, would he feel guilty for having an affair with his lover behind his wife's back, or would he not feel guilty for having a long-distance relationship with someone else? This is too irresponsible. No matter what choice he makes, he will be in pain and conflicted, so... I say your nephew is finished now." Mr. Sloth had already admonished him when he was tapping on the blackboard and attending a small class on love education.

That really makes sense.

He was so stupid that he did not listen carefully to the advice of the sloth-headed military advisor and did not ponder the true meaning of the valuable advice, so he suffered a loss.

Too many unanswered questions.

There is too much pain to face. Too many confusing choices.

Some pains can tear a person apart in an instant, while some pains are mild. Every kiss in the past has turned into a faint bitterness and astringency. When his emotions are fluctuating violently, Gu Weijing would almost forget the existence of this feeling.

When he calmed down, like now, standing in the corner and staring at the intertwined clock faces and the intertwined men and women, the bitterness and astringency would uncontrollably surge onto his tongue and entangle Gu Weijing.

Some people in the world can only see smoke, but Gu Weijing can see fire.

The bright and sweet love in the world is burning just ahead, within reach - but it is something that does not exist in the material world.

If Gu Weijing, who lives in the material world, really reaches out to touch, he will not be able to feel any real warmth; he cannot use the love of others to warm himself among the happy couples.

Gu Weijing knew that he would pass by the flames and then be doubly lonely in return.

He turned around.

Step away from this booth filled with laughter.
-
Children always love to laugh, but an orphanage is not a place full of laughter, especially a poor orphanage in a poor slum in a poor city.

"But this welfare institution called Good Luck Orphanage, from the looks of it, has better facilities than she imagined."

A convoy stopped in front of the gate of Good Luck Orphanage.

This was Miss Elena's first thought when she saw the orphanage that another Miss Elena had visited 150 years ago, after she was helped down from a Toyota Prado in the middle of the convoy by Elliot, surrounded by her accompanying security team.

Anna wouldn't kid herself that she liked places like orphanages.

No.

She is sometimes dubbed a generous philanthropist by outsiders, and there has been a lot of flattery after she announced a donation of her family's $5 billion painting collection a few months ago.

However, Anna understood that her generosity was one thing and her dislike for such places was another.

Similar scenes always made her feel strongly depressed.

There was an indescribable gloom and despair floating in the air, and the whole place had a "disdained" temperament, as if covered with a layer of green rust.

Anna was no stranger to the orphanage environment.

The Elena family's charitable foundation is really not a family foundation that exists solely for tax avoidance operations and to transfer money from one hand to the other. Anna dare not say in a saintly tone that the family foundation was established without any intention of conducting some private fund operations, but Miss Elena dares to say that over the years, her family foundation has indeed done a lot of serious public welfare projects.

Even Anna's school - compared to the so-called European aristocratic schools run by educational groups that are listed companies and exist to generate revenue and make shareholders on the board happy with large dividends, Miss Elena's school can easily trace its history back hundreds of years, and the alumni list of several heads of state is a private school that is truly a top European aristocratic private school.

Fitz International School is already a very good middle school, but Gu Wei has been exposed to summer and winter vacation camp projects. At most, he went to the Louvre to see exhibitions, to Egypt to see the pyramids, and to St. Petersburg to see the palace built by Peter the Great. At most, he went to a place like the University of Melbourne for a one-month summer experience exchange, or went to NASA for an aviation experience summer camp.

Locally.

This is already very different from the life of an ordinary family, at least very different from the life of Gu Weijing's family.

But the various projects that Anna's middle school can access are truly floating in the clouds.

What about meeting the President of the United States as a youth representative, writing a letter to Mandela, and a youth orchestra performing a symphony at Lincoln Center? A teacher assigned students a classroom work about the Beatles' creative inspiration and hippie culture, but when grading homework after the holiday, the teacher found out that one of Anna's classmates had gone to interview... Sir Paul McCartney (note).

(Note: British national treasure musician, one of the four founders of the Beatles.)
Coming from such a school, even if you never listened carefully in high school and your academic performance was a mess, you can still knock on the door of a prestigious school just by relying on your perfect extracurricular resume.

The standard is that when the campus interviewer opens the cover of your resume, he will immediately let out a sharp cry, realizing that you are the outstanding young student they are looking for who has "the power to influence society", or realizing that this young person has outstanding parents who have "the power to influence society".

Anyway, no matter which one it is, it can have a great impact on society, so we should recruit them as soon as possible.

Anna was quite lonely during her student days.

exactly.

Miss Elena has always been a lonely person.

People who are used to being alone and cold-hearted will also yearn for companionship and hope to have some power that can make them feel happy.

She once saw the event flyer on the campus bulletin board.

Miss Elena's high school has a church background. The content of the promotional leaflet is to cooperate with the local Catholic Church in an African country to care for the large number of orphans who have been created in the past twenty years due to war, the spread of AIDS and other reasons.

At the end of the poster, there is a motto from the book of Romans: You will rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

It was these words that touched a part of Anna's heart.

People who appear cold on the outside may also long for companionship in their hearts. She silently memorized the information on the promotional leaflet, and when the project leader came to the school to give a presentation, Anna went to the activity classroom.

There were not many people sitting in the classroom, but the person in charge made a very, very beautiful PPT.

The first half talks about the schedule after arriving in Africa. Because the situation is unstable, there will be armored vehicles accompanying them and government troops escorting them throughout the journey. The second half talks about what previous students have gained from this social activity project.

That PPT is very long.

Many years later, Miss Elena can no longer remember the main content, but what impressed her most was a video.

The project leader showed a YouTube video of an event made by outstanding students from previous years.

That was a personal Vlog made by one of Anna’s senior students two years ago using a handheld DV. The content was very professional and the video had a few rhythms, but those were not the main points.

The key point is that the senior student in the video is distributing a large basket of books and ballpoint pens to the African children around her.

The person in charge said that in the poorest and most troubled areas in Africa, even the most common ballpoint pens are in short supply and rare.

He also took out a BIC brand crystal ballpoint pen and distributed it to every student present.

He said that such a pen only costs 50 cents, which is less than the price of a bottle of water you drink every day, but with such a pen - "7% of the ink in the pen tube can copy a volume of "The Little Prince", 13% of the ink can copy a volume of "The Count of Monte Cristo", 45% of the ink can copy all seven volumes of "Harry Potter", and the remaining 35% of the ink... is just right, it can copy the entire "Bible". 7% plus 13% plus 35% plus 45% is %. Think about it, children's fairy tales, classical masterpieces, fantasy works plus God's guidance... Just such a pen, perhaps it can let children write their different lives..."

These words are well written, indeed very well written.

But Miss Elena just wouldn't listen.

She knows this is not good.

But the incessant preaching voice of the person in charge, like a salesman selling encyclopedias door to door, became increasingly blurred in the girl's ears, and she just stared at the senior student on the multimedia screen.

The senior girl, who was wearing a long dress from an aristocratic school, stretched out her arms high and held the basket in the air.

Pairs of tiny black arms were struggling desperately for ballpoint pens, pencils, leather bags...it seemed like whatever they could get was what they got.

The senior student did not try to stop them and whispered, "Don't fight, don't fight," but she just had a faint, elegant smile on her face as she watched the fight happening in front of her.

She didn't seem to want to stop this scene from happening, but rather wanted to use this elegance to highlight the chaos.

Her posture, her expression, the playful and arrogant smile on her face, the way she lifted the basket high -

At that moment, Anna thought of feeding chickens.

Miss Elena couldn't help but wonder, did she sit on a plane for dozens of hours, with a medical team following her and a military escort, just to shoot a video that would have hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube?
She has no right to blame others. How can people sitting in the classroom have the right to blame those who are truly willing to spend time doing good things?

But this feeling made Anna uncomfortable.

This "God's gospel" still makes her feel lonely.

(End of this chapter)