On this day, you were busy on the terraced fields until it was getting late and your phone trembled. You knew that it was a female spy who sent you a message to you to go home for dinner. You looked up at the sky and then looked at the phone, wondering that the time for dinner today was much later than usual, and even more doubting about the news on your phone.

"Eat supper in front of the commune!"

In the middle of the village is a people's commune, which is a legacy building. There is a large open space there. It is probably the place where villagers went home for farming and leisure and entertainment. Perhaps the open space was held with a projection screen. You and the female spy rarely go there, and the commune has long become a warehouse for female spys to store miscellaneous items.

You can't figure out what the hell was thinking about her, and take the hoe and walk slowly into the village while it was getting late.

When you came to the commune, you opened your eyes wide.

You see a pile of huge bonfires. The red flames rise in the night sky, brightening the surrounding buildings. Mars splashes from time to time on the bonfires, making crisp explosions.

You were confused, and at this moment, a series of loud noises rang in your ears. You were frightened and turned your head to find that it was a string of lit firecrackers. The firecrackers were hung by fishing rods and hung down from the balcony of the roof of the residential building next to you. The female spy holding the fishing rod on the roof danced excitedly, laughing so hard that the branches were trembling.

The continuous sound of firecrackers were mixed with the shouts of female spies:

"Happy Chinese New Year! Comrade Zhang Sirui!"

You were stunned for a while before you realized that tonight was New Year's Eve.

It has been a whole year and a half since you survived alone in the world and then met female spys.

You couldn't help laughing a few times as you watched the female spy holding a fishing rod on the balcony.

After setting off the firecrackers, the female spy shortened and crawled behind the railing and disappeared. After a while, she walked out of the inner room with two plates of frozen dumplings that had already cooled.

"I have to eat dumplings during the Chinese New Year, right?"

"……right."

You are very satisfied with the dinner tonight. Although it is already cold, it is not a dumpling made by the female spy. You clasped your hands together and said I was moving. The female spy was very satisfied with your learning ability. But you didn't know that you were sincerely grateful for the vigorous development of modern society and brought delicious industrial food to mankind.

You two and three dogs moved a few chairs and sat in front of the campfire and simply ate supper.

"Zhang Sirui."

"Um?"

"The Spring Festival is a very important festival for you Chinese, just like the New Year?"

"Um."

"What else should I do during the Spring Festival besides setting off firecrackers and eating dumplings?"

“…Send a red envelope?”

"Red envelope?"

"It means that adults have to distribute pocket money to children."

"Oh, then give it to me."

"Who still has money these days!"

"What else do you do except red envelopes?"

"Uh, I think about it...watch the Spring Festival Gala?"

"Spring Festival Gala...Is the Spring Festival Gala? I seem to have heard of it. When I was a child, I would also watch Japanese red and white songs with my mother."

"It should be similar to that one."

"Then what did your Spring Festival Gala play?"

"Sing, I will sing "Unforgettable Tonight" at twelve o'clock."

"Then you sing it to me."

"Why are you so a man?"

"What does it mean?" The female spy Ping said with a bad tongue, imitating your Erhua sound with a very clumsy accent, and you were amused by her.

"It means you are very troublesome."

"Oh," the female spy pretended not to understand and continued to change the topic:

"What about the bonfire? Don't you dance around the bonfire during the Spring Festival?"

"You remember it wrongly, it was the Torch Festival of the ethnic minorities."

"Oh..." The female spy nodded seriously:

"Then you'd better sing tonight for me?"

You were silent. Sighed, recalling the melody in your mind, and sang in a low voice:

"Unforgettable, tonight, unforgettable gold~~~night, unforgettable, tonight, unforgettable gold~~~night..."

You only remembered those two sentences, and after singing, you asked, "How is it?"

The female spy was silent for a while:

“that’s…kind   of…weird.”

You pretend not to understand and bury your head to eat dumplings.

"What else do you have to do except sing?

"Why do you ask so much? We are the only two left on the earth. Let's live together."

"How can that be done?" The female spy stood up and said righteously: "When you are a human being, you must have a sense of ritual!" When she talked about the three words "a sense of ritual", she even opened her hands and drew a very big circle.

"When I was the only one before, I would celebrate various festivals on time. Festivals are very important things. I think humans need a sense of ritual and need to remind themselves to love during a cycle, remind themselves to pay attention to environmental protection, remind themselves to be grateful to their families, and remind themselves to remember their ancestors..."

You interrupted her:

"But you should know that time is continuous. The so-called dates and years are just nodes, dates, festivals imagined by humans based on the cycle of planet rotation. These things have no meaning..."

The female spy looked at you, blinked her eyes, and suddenly asked:

“What is in the world that really makes sense?”

What is really meaningful in the world?

When all humans disappear, when the human individual named Zhang Sirui loses its connection with society, you can think about this issue more clearly.

Why do human beings exist? For success and fame? If only you are left in the world, who will remember your heroic deeds? In order to reproduce and continue civilization? Suppose human beings can continue to reproduce and have endless descendants. By then you have already turned into a piece of loess. What does this have to do with you?

You are silent.

"Have you seen the stars?"

The female spy's mindless problem pulled you back from your long thoughts, and you subconsciously looked at her.

"No, what's wrong?"

"Then you come and see. Oh——"

The female spy suddenly pulled the chair closer to you, raised her hands to the sky, made a photo frame gesture, framed a corner of the sky, her body was almost buried in your arms, and you could even smell the smell of shampoo on her hair.

"Looking from here. This is the north, do you see anything?"

You leaned over and looked along the way where her fingers were framed.

"I saw nothing."

"It's right to see nothing." The female spy put down her hand, turned her head, looked at you seriously, and said word by word:

"There should be a North Star in that place."

You were stunned for a moment, not able to understand what she meant. After a while, a thunder exploded in your heart.

“We have been stuck in a blind spot in thinking.”

The female spy's voice was very stable, but it had a breathtaking power:

"We always thought that the moon disappeared suddenly like humans."

"—Is it possible that it is not the moon that suddenly disappears... but the earth?"

You felt creepy and hurriedly said:

"No! What about the sun? We can see the sun every day!"

"Does the sun have to be the one that can illuminate the earth?"

You can't speak, but this light sentence fell into your ears, but it was like thunder.

"The four seasons and day and night changes of the earth come from the rotation of the earth and its revolution with the sun." The female spy said: "This is a very complicated calculation process, but I have been calculating the yellow-red intersection angle and sunshine time of the earth at the astronomical observatory for the past six months. What can be confirmed is that the earth is now different from before. It rotates around every day not 24 hours, but 24.3 hours. The time of each day is 18 minutes longer than before. In summary, every 60 days is about 61 days."

"Of course, this is no longer important. I alone cannot perform complex and huge operations. We have long been unable to predict the changes in the four seasons, right?" The female spy took a deep breath:

"What I want to say is that we can't know anything."

"We don't know the reason why humans disappear, nor do we know the principle of the countdown in heaven. We don't know where the earth is at this moment, nor do we know what will happen in the future. You and me alone... No, even if we gather all the wisdom of human beings in this era, with the technology of our era, there may be no chance to get the answer. If we give humans another hundred years, or two hundred years, there may be a chance... The key is that at this moment, there may be only me and you in the world. Even if I have reason to believe that humans have not disappeared, I will not know the answer until the last moment... We can't do anything."

You heard these words as if you were in your throat. You pursed your lips and finally just responded dryly:

"Yes...we can't do anything."

"Precisely because we can't do anything, we have to do everything." The female spy's tone swept away the decadence before, "We have to live, eat, sleep, sing, dance, love, love the flowers and plants in the world, love the small animals in the world, and live a meaningless but wonderful life."

You shook your head: "But there is still nothing..."

"Nothing makes sense." The female spy took over your words. Not only that, she suddenly grabbed your hand and pressed it on her chest. You wanted to retract your hand as if you were electrocuted, but found that she grabbed it very hard and you couldn't pull it back for a while.
To be continued...