You can't die anymore!

For some reason, I suddenly put down the book I was reading and picked up Teacher Chen Xue's new work "You Can't Die Again" from the desk.

The story tells that Zhou Jiajun, a high school student, and Ding Xiaoquan, a good friend of Song Dongnian, were killed suddenly. The naked corpses were found in Zhou Jiajun's peach blossom forest, and there were many stab wounds on their bodies. The police found a man with a murder weapon near the incident. He was Zhou Jiajun's father. In this way, the court ruled that Zhou Jiajun's father was the murderer, even though there are still many doubts that have not been resolved. The life of the victim's two friends, Zhou Jiajun and Song Dongnian, was immediately turned upside down by the murder.

Fourteen years after Ding Xiaoquan's murder, the same murder happened again in the same town, and there were more than one: the deceased was about the same age as Ding Xiaoquan when he died, and even the posture of the corpse was similar, as strictly imitating the case. And Zhou Jiajun (renamed Li Haiyan) and Song Dongnian are involved again because of this murder case, not only to find the murderer, but also to deal with the sad memories of the past.

How did it end? Again no comment. I remember one night I attended the online lecture of Teacher Chen Xue's new book launch. Whether it was Mr. Chen Xue's talker or the mysterious guest, they didn't mention the ending a word, and they kept talking in obscure ways. Teacher Chen Xue even ordered that those who attend the next lecture must read the books before they can attend. Since the teacher insists on this, I can only do this: No spoilers!

This is the second time I have read Mr. Chen Xue's works. The last one was "The Devil's Daughter," which was published 20 years ago, about how a daughter who was sexually abused by her father was reconciled to herself with the help of a therapist. This "You Can't Die Again" is like a mystery novel, to find the murderer. The only constant is her careful writing of human nature, especially how growth experiences/trauma affect people's life.

The small town in Taiwan may be too small, and people are very close, so when any case happens, it will always bring disaster to the family. After one night, the fate of Zhou Jiajun and Song Dongnian completely changed. Although Zhou Jiajun is a good friend of Ding Xiaoquan, she is also the daughter of a murderer. After his father was arrested on suspicion of murder, the residents of the town had been sentenced without trial and made various insults to Zhou Jiajun. And she, not only has to face the murder of her good sister, but also the news of her father's death in prison. Zhou Jiajun was traumatized, and even if he left the sad place, even if he sought help from a therapist, he could not improve. As a result, the method of her rebirth was to change her face, change her name to Li Haiyan, and turn herself into a person who has no past—in fact, it is not that she has no past, but that it is locked in the deepest place; and Zhou Jiajun's life ends here. However, when she returned to her place of origin as a feature reporter, all the painful memories came back. Especially when she met Song Dongnian again, the good times of the three-person trip were also unsealed. On the one hand, she knew that the more one person knew about her past, the more dangerous she would be; she knew better that once the lock of memory was unlocked, it was like Pandora's box. , Nightmarish memories, can no longer be covered, have to face.

So is Song Dongnian. Because of his lover Ding Xiaoquan, after the murder, the residents of the town pointed and pointed at him. Although he did not kill the person, he had a part in killing Ding Xiaoquan. At this point, he began to suffer from insomnia, could not sleep peacefully all night, and became separated from others. This haze haunted him all the time. The only way to make him forget the pain in his heart is to do strict exercise—constantly going to the gym to do equipment, the physical pain covers up the pain in his heart. Later, he became a police officer, so that he could not calm down in the case to recall Ding Xiaoquan's incident. When he was about to take over the case of imitating Ding Xiaoquan's murder, he had to look squarely at Ding Xiaoquan's archives and photos. At that moment, Song Dongnian:

He cried silently, his whole body was in pain, and he called out Koizumi's name in his head, like this was the real goodbye, and the tears of more than ten years seemed to be drained all at once. After a long time, he gradually woke up. He told himself that no matter how painful it was, he had been avoiding it for more than ten years, and he should endure the pain. He had to stare at these photos and not turn around and escape. (page 55)

When encountering difficulties, people's consciousness will first choose to escape, because this is the most direct and "life-saving method". Like trauma, it always chooses to lock up. The pressure to be willing to face head-on is not something outsiders can speak. They kept thinking about those traumas in their minds over and over again, longing for them to disappear one day. They tried to swim out of the water, but the memory was like seaweed tied to their heels, unable to break free, and sank back into the sea again. Zhou Jiajun and Song Dongnian, as the author wrote:

The dead are detached from the world, but the living are hard to let go, and no one can give them redemption. (page 52)

In addition to understanding how Zhou Jiajun and Song Dongnian's trauma affected them, readers will also read about the murderer. From the perspective of modern psychology, growth experiences can affect/change a person's character. No one is born insane. The reason why a person's character changes, even distorts, is due to the surrounding environment, it can be parents, brothers, or it can be a huge change overnight. The murderer saw the dawn for a moment, however, because of one thing, he returned to that dark world and distorted his character, and even spread to the whole person. This reminds me of watching a set of Netflix's Korean drama "Juvenile Court" before. When Shen Enxi tried Xu Youli's domestic violence case, he asked Xu Youli's father why he could confidently say that it was teaching rather than domestic violence. It turned out that he was treated the same way when he was a teenager, and now he has changed from a victim to a perpetrator.

If you ask me which part of the book I like, it must be the part where Teacher Chen Xue describes human nature. The plot of the case is actually very general, and it is not the kind of novel in which you need to "wrack your brains" to find the murderer. After all, you know who the murderer is in the middle section; but why the murderer killed in the past, and committed the murder again 14 years later, is an important part. The author describes it as:

...It turns out that love and hate go hand in hand, and it turns out that forgetting and memory coexist from time to time... (page 283)

The title of the work is "You Can't Die Again". How can a dead person die again? This is left to the reader to read and explore. When I read a certain passage, I understand what the author is saying.

Maybe we're lucky (for now) not to face these things. But when you meet such a person, can you, with the greatest compassion, try to understand him/her and the story behind him/her, so as to refract yourself and understand yourself a little more?

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"You Can't Die Again" (from the blog) —
https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010925506