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有些时候 你怀念从前日子
Some days, you long for past times
Theo sighs, twirling his pair of tinted sunglasses aimlessly in one hand. “I just,” he says, slowly, “I just don’t know how to help you.”
Parrot doesn’t say anything, just stares at the steam spiralling up from the cooling tea, cold hands slowly warming as he cups the white mug. Coffee for Theo; tea for Parrot. Theo made it for him, knowing he’s never felt good when winter bites at him underneath his blankets and frost gathers under the windowsills. Another thing to add to the lists of things that he’ll never be able to thank Theo for. “It’s enough,” he says carefully, awkwardly, “it’s enough to, like, just… be here. Be you, y’know?” He meant to say more, but the words got stuck somewhere in the ribbons of lies and mesh of the past. He’s never been very good at talking since obsidian walls surrounded him.
可天真离开时 你却没说一个字
But you didn’t say a word as your innocence left
Wifies tosses the potion of invisibility from hand to hand. Left, right, left, right. The milky, translucent liquid sloshes inside. It’s the sort of thing that, as a young child, he could’ve been fascinated by. A younger, more innocent, more foolish child.
“So, Director,” Ashswagg says, eyes focused on Wifies’ currently-invisible face, “you want me to fishing-rod you?”
“Yes,” he says, certain, no ounce of doubt left. He’s done all his worrying and fretting earlier, and all that’s left is a cold resolve. His voice comes out warped and distorted and grating
你只是挥一挥手 像扔掉废纸
You only waved your hand, like throwing away paper
He shakes his head, a tiny movement. He hears Ash’s voice from above him.
“Did you - did you just shake your head?” Ash asks, his voice rising slightly in fake fury.
“He did!” Parrot crows triumphantly. “He-”
And then the sharp hook of a fishing rod nestles itself into the flesh of his shoulder and a tiny trickle of warm, invisible red winds its way down his arm.
说是人生必经的事
Saying it’s inevitable
As he’s teleported to a bunker and pushes a whining dog down a void hole, he thinks, it’s all for the better.
“I’m making a place for us,” he tells the air. “Parrot’ll be safe there.”
Oh, he imagines the deepslate walls replying, that’s good.
酒喝到七分 却又感觉怅然若失
Drank only a little wine, but feel like you’ve lost something
“How do you not see how wrong this is?” Parrot asks, no, demands of that hollow space in Wifies where morality, humanity used to reside but is now gone. Unfortunately, it’s gone for good and there’s no pulling it back with simple words.
He feels that empty space ache all day long, and he grows around it like flesh would grow around a lodged fishing hook.
Still, it aches.
镜子里面 像看到人生终点
Seeing the end of your life in the mirror
Some days, he looks in the mirror. It still feels awful and wrong to see nothing, air, the back of his helmet where his head should be. Where Wifies should be. The Wifies that Parrot loved is gone and dead, disappeared somewhere when he splashed his first pot of invis and donned flow-trimmed armor.
In his place, there’s this awful monster called the Director, talking in a mechanical voice and still wearing his own skin, but never has he felt more out of place.
It’s all for the better, he reminds himself, and thinks of the star-filled skies above end islands, a purple tower jutting abnormally towards the sky, winged players chasing Parrot. He imagines his best friend crashing towards the void with a broken wing or clipped flight-feathers or simply no wings at all, and he remembers why he’s doing this.
或许再过上几年 你也有张虚伪的脸
Maybe after a few years, you’ll have a mask of lies too
Parrot circles a spot on the map, labels it Pearl Cannon. He adds a few hundred thousand blocks to the coordinates on the Z axis, then marks down those coordinates too. Far enough to make sure that Wemmbu will be trapped; not far enough to send him to the Farlands.
“Parrot, you gotta take a break,” Theo reminds him gently, his footsteps moving closer. “You’ve been at it for 3 hours.”
“I’m fine,” he repeats, the same lie he’s told for years and years, to hide how rotten he truly is underneath. How much like Wifies he is.
难道我们 是为了这样 才来到这世上
Did we come into this world just for this?
Some days, Parrot’s not sure why he’s been called into this world. What greater deity brought him here? What greater purpose is he a part of?
Is he just an ant, toiling endlessly at something so great he can’t even begin to see the outlines of it?
Is he just an ant, utterly insignificant and doomed to spend the rest of his days in Paragon?
Is he neither? Is he both?
这问题来不及想 每一天一年 总是匆匆忙忙
No time to think about it, every day is busy
But on those days, he busies his hands, chopping down cherry trees or stripping the wood for their soon-to-be house, drowning his thoughts in the rhythm of artificial life. Or it’s mind games and minigames and parkour and meaningless, buzzing words.
It’s only far later, when stars rise and the midnight sky blends in with the obsidian walls around him, when he stares at their newly-made roof of cherry wood, memorizing each groove and ridge with sleepless eyes, that he has time to ponder the question.
And even then, he avoids it, afraid of the answer he might find.
你我来自 湖北 四川 广西 宁夏 河南 山东 贵州 云南 的小镇乡村
We came from villages in Hubei, Sichuan, Guangxi, Ningxia, Henan, Shandong, Guizhou, Yunnan
They were so, so good together once. Like the yellow petals and dark seeds of a sunflower, like the two stars in the sky, like the sun and the moon. Like Wifies’ yin-and-yang and Parrot’s spyglass.
So where did they go wrong?
曾经发誓 要做了不起的人
Once vowed to become someone important
Where did they go wrong? Was it in the grandiose buildings of the Farlands? Was it in the sunless days of the End? Was it surrounded by walls in Proton? Was it right at the beginning, when Parrot and Wifies landed facing each other on pressure plates? Was it nowhere at all? Was it everywhere?
They were once best friends. Parrot once had dreams and goals and hopes, ones that he was chasing like a better server for everyone. Wifies once had dreams and goals and hopes, ones that he was chasing like a safe place to live.
So where, please tell me Wifies, where did we go wrong?
却在北京 上海 广州 深圳 某天夜半忽然醒来 站在寂寞的阳台
But one night in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen I stood on a lonely balcony.
All alone. All alone. He’s so, so cold. So, so alone. An endless gaping hungry crater beneath him, eager to take more than it already has from him. He stands there, stock-still like a statue, on the lip of the obsidian tower, looking down on Paragon. It seems so small, so delicate, so playful. So innocent, compared to what it really was.
Is Wifies somewhere better now? Somewhere up in the sky where the sun never sets, where he can’t hurt anyone anymore? Where he can be happy and safe?
Parrot hopes so. Oh god, he hopes so.
只想从这无边的寂寞中逃出来
Only wanting to escape from this endless loneliness
All alone. The journey to the End portal is quiet. No, silent. There’s no birds. There’s no animals. There’s no best friend by his side.
许多年前 你有一双清澈的双眼
Years ago, you had a pair of clear eyes
“What’re you reading?” Parrot asks Wifies, one drowsy summer day, when they’re hanging from a swing. The afternoon light slants through the leaves of the oak tree above them, making a speckled pattern on their faces and striping the long grass with golden shadows. Wifies is reading a dull yellow book. His best friend doesn’t reply, just shows the spine to Parrot, keeping his index finger firmly in the pages as a makeshift bookmark.
The Unstable SMP: A History
“Oh,” Parrot says, “is it accurate?”
“Yeah,” Wifies says quietly, preoccupied by the book. “Mostly.” His still-clear purple eyes scan rapidly over the page.
Back then, they were so, so good together.
奔跑起来 像是一道春天的闪电
Running like a bolt of spring lightning
Parrot’s warm fingers interlacing with Wifies’. Wifies has always had cold fingers, bad circulation, he called it. They feel good together, right together, their hands in a finger-sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly.
“Come on,” Parrot says and his eyes are wide and laughing and clear. And he leads them to a grove of cherry trees where birds flit from tree to tree and pink petals tangle in their hair and crunch underfoot and they lie down together on the green, green grass.
想看遍这世界 去最遥远的远方
Want to see this world, travel to the farthest lands
And they’re together for a long, long eternity. A happy blurry time, traveling and mysteries and hunting and the Zam empire, all golden towers and pristine rooftops, and the Mafia, dead city holding its own kind of grace and corrupted beauty.
感觉有双翅膀 能飞越高山和海洋
Feels like I have a pair of wings, flying over mountains and oceans
“C’mon,” Parrot says, “lemme clip on the elytra.”
“Fine,” Wifies says, stepping a little closer. Parrot lifts a thin gray cloth - so light, so delicate - over the pad on his neck. “Thanks.” A gentle ripple of purple shimmers over the cloth - an enchantment.
“No problem!” Parrot calls, wings already unfolding and sending him soaring into the noon sky. A moment later, the whiz of rockets chases him as Wifies catches up.
许多年前 你曾是个朴素的少年
Years ago, you were a plain youth
Oh, yes. It was beautiful, those years and days. It was so impossibly perfect. Wearing simple clothes - one-color, not many patterns - but it seemed the sun painted it with gold. Better than even the clothes Parrot wears now, as a king.
It was an innocent time - a time before Parrot had learned to always look over his shoulder, a time before he realized he was the problem. When he was better, when he was kinder, when words didn’t catch in his throat and mess up like blood trapped behind teeth. When leadership came easy, like gemstone hummingbirds of the Farlands weaving through tangles of willow branches.
An easy time, when the worst thing he’d known were faceless people chasing him.