There are many characters in the game “Mingchao”. I can’t remember most of them, but there is only one person named “Zanni” that I can never forget. It’s not because she is strong or beautiful, but because of her temperament that is very similar to some people in our real life – silent, accurate, rigid, stubborn, like a silent machine, but in the matter of human taste, she is richer than many people who talk big.
She works in a bank. I don’t know if there is a more boring place in the world than a bank. A group of people face computers, forms, processes and customers every day, smiling as accurately as a switch button, repeating yesterday’s yesterday every second. But in such a position, Zanni lives like a battle. Not against others, but against herself. Every skill and every line of her seems to be questioning the meaning of life.
Her general attack is called “silent negotiation”. When I saw these four words, I almost laughed out loud. She has written too many such scenes: two people do not speak, but fight to the death all night. In reality, many negotiations are actually without words at all – only eyes, movements, and increasingly silent anger. Zanni’s attack is like this, no nonsense, a set of formulaic output. She is like a worker who has lived in an office building for too long, even her anger is compressed into a template, accurate, concise, and not dragging.
Her skill is called “Sleepless Watch”. It sounds like a poem, like Haizi, and also like a word used by a person who did not sleep well at night to comfort himself. But in the game, it is a counterattack skill – it can only be activated after being beaten. I think this setting is wonderful, because too many people around us live passively like this. It’s not that they don’t want to take the initiative, but they are too tired. Only when the pain reaches a certain level, they will “take action”. Not to win, but to “fight back”.
When I was a child, there was a blacksmith in the village who had a very good temper and never cursed. But one winter, his son was beaten and his teeth fell out. He went to the family and said, “It’s okay, just kid, just playing.” Two days later, he beat the man into the hospital. Without early warning or warning, he just ignited the anger that he had hidden for half his life. That was the “burning flame form” of his life.
Zanni also has a “burning flame form”. She became stronger, but this strength did not grow suddenly, but exploded after enduring for too long. Just like those people in her novels who were repeatedly crushed by life and eventually became cruel, not because they were born cruel, but because they lived too clearly: gentleness cannot be exchanged for respect, and tolerance cannot be exchanged for respite.
Her “Moment of Final Judgment” skill sounds like a final judgment. She seems to be saying to the world: “I don’t care how you define me, I just want to give you an answer.” This skill has a sense of fate: you can persist, but in the end you can only end like this. Just like Fugui in “To Live”, after walking so much, he still has to sit alone on the ridge of the field, staring at the sun in a daze.
Zanni is always precise in battle and calculates to the millimeter. She is like a piece-rate worker in a factory. She omits emotions in every action, leaving only efficiency. But the more such people are, the easier it is to make people feel distressed. Because they are not without emotions, but they have long learned how to hide emotions and not let them become a burden. Her skill “Quick Response” sounds like a plus point, but I think it is more of a result of “being trained”. In reality, many people are forced to grow into fast-response machines instead of relying on talents.
The skill name “Future Beacon” reminds me of Liu Zhendong, the man who never cries in “Brothers”. He also has a beacon in his heart, but he just doesn’t say it. When everyone is shouting about their dreams, he just walks silently, walks out of the wound, and walks out of hope. Zani may also be such a person. She doesn’t talk about the future, but she is walking in a certain direction in every battle.
What moved me most was her line: “The top priority? Get off work!” This sentence sounds like a joke, but you have to know how hard a person has to live to regard “getting off work” as a “top priority”. In our era, being able to get off work normally has become a luxury. Every person who shouts “get off work” is not lazy, but “I still want to live like a human being”.
She wrote in “To Live”: “People live for the sake of living itself.” But what is living itself? For Zanni, it may be to maintain a basic order, protect an inviolable silence, and stand up and say “no” when necessary. Her attack is not the most painful, her output is not the highest, but her attitude is the most important.
She is not a hero, but she is a person. An ordinary, tired, stubborn, but always unwilling to lie down completely. In this world where everything is about efficiency, speed and results, Zanni is like a grain of sand, insignificant, but it hurts people’s hearts.
So I remember her. Just like I remember the blacksmith, the man who doesn’t cry, and myself who said “I just want to get off work”.