The gentle trap, it catches people off guard, and they fall into it without noticing...
Professor An was accustomed to waiting for Xiao Ba.
Xiao Ba had grown used to Professor An's returns.
They were like the most synchronized pair, always understanding each other's intentions at the very first moment.
If anything were less than perfect, it probably was that Xiao Ba never showed any interest in fetching a ball.
Other people's dogs would fetch the ball tossed by their owners.
It was a way of playing and interacting.
But Xiao Ba wasn't fond of ball-fetching. Instead, it would rather frolic with Professor An, showing no interest in a rolling ball.
At some point, Professor An began to wear glasses, and his hair turned gray. He could no longer play with Xiao Ba as freely as before.
Yet Xiao Ba was still full of energy.
It still sent Professor An to his car every day and waited for him at the corner of the station, as if they had an unspoken pact.
As usual, Professor An was heading to the station for work. Unexpectedly, he found that Xiao Ba was carrying the ball it never used to play with and was following him.
Professor An was taken aback. He test-threw the ball to a nearby spot, and indeed, Xiao Ba fetched it back.
It felt as if Professor An had become a few years younger. He picked up the ball again, threw it farther, and Xiao Ba, without hesitation, fetched it back as before.
Professor An was extraordinarily joyful.
The ball-adverse Xiao Ba suddenly wanted to play fetch with him. For the first time, Professor An missed the first bus due to his immersion in the unexpected joy.
The scene brought smiles to the faces of those at the station.
Professor An and Xiao Ba played for a long time before he finally set off for work, reluctantly.
Throughout his commute, he tightly held the small yellow ball in his hand.
With this, the gentle trap finally unveiled its long-prepared, shocking snare!
Not everyone was oblivious.
Among the representatives of the cinema chains present, some were furrowing their brows, musing over the implications of this scene, sensing a slight discomfort.
Yang An quietly clenched his fists; an inexplicable agitation stirred in his heart. Why had there been such a twist? Was there a special reason why Xiao Ba wanted to play ball?
At this moment, Yang An noticed that Ye Hongyu, whose leg had been bounced all this while, had lowered it.
His unease was rapidly magnifying!
Professor An, a music teacher by profession, began to lecture his students on his understanding of music after playing a piano piece.
Time had aged him, but it had also made his temperament more reserved. This man seemed even more attractive now, but he was somewhat mischievous.
While teaching a piano lesson, he held in his hand the yellow ball with which he had played with Xiao Ba before work.
He occasionally squeezed the ball, making it emit a cute sound.
Professor An glanced at the ball, smiled, and was about to speak when his face changed abruptly. He clutched his chest, reaching out for support, touching the piano.
His hand had unintentionally hit the black and white keys, producing a disjointed sound from the piano, which attracted all the students. Amid their startled gaze, Professor An collapsed suddenly.
The students jumped up in confusion...
In the slow-motion shot with just the focus, the yellow ball was still tightly gripped in the professor's hand, but it was no longer squeezed to make a sound, as if the fallen Professor An on the classroom floor would never wake up...
Professor An was dead.
It was like a sinister plot crafted by the scriptwriter, yet it felt like a sudden accident.
The glow of the big screen illuminated all the faces in the audience.
Countless pupils were dilating.
The faces of the audience shifted from disbelieving shock to immediate panic, then overwhelming sorrow, until finally, they were completely covered by enormous grief.
A small gap in the depths of the soul, slowly enlarging and spreading, until it collapsed.
At this moment, everyone's mind was a blank!
Just like a piece of deadwood that couldn't think.
By the time people realized what had happened, some of the audience were already enveloped by the rapidly rising despair!
All of a sudden, the big screen, like the audience's mood, dimmed.
In the darkness, there was nothing, and nothing could be seen.
Thump thump thump thump...
There was no contrived sentimental music, only the sound of a heartbeat drumming in the darkness, growing slower and slower, until it disappeared completely.
It was the faint sound of the ball.
The big screen lit up in an instant, but the expressions of the audience were strikingly different from those a few seconds before the darkness, as if it were a movie edit.
Those were teary faces...
The shot cruelly switched to the old train station, where Xiao Ba was still squatting by the pool on the opposite side. The camera slowly panned upwards, in the long shot only the helpless silhouette of Xiao Ba was left.
As though frozen in time.
In the back row, tears flowed like a broken dam from Yang An's eyes, unable to be held back.
Perhaps Ye Hongyu was the only one holding back, seemingly unfazed as though it was her creed, but her lips had turned white from biting down too hard, and she still did not loosen her grip despite the pain.
Yang An couldn't see this.
His ears were filled with the sound of the entire cinema sobbing. As the gentle trap began to close in, few were left untouched.