# Watch spoken drama 'Rhinoceros in Love'

A ticket bought out of curiosity, prompted by a fleeting conversation last year with an acquaintance about wanting to see this play. I never made it. This time, I went and watched it to the end. It was worth it.

What does love look like? I believe everyone has their own answer. What is mine?
Plainness, joy, passion, happiness, quarrels, anger, compromise, submission, building together.

These are the words that shape my current imagination of love. I have never been in a relationship, so I have no first‑hand experience. These are simply the shades I suspect love might hold.

Watching Malu try so desperately to show himself to Mingming, only to be met with her utter indifference—a spontaneous sadness welled up from my heart. The saddest thing in the world, perhaps, is loving a woman who does not love you back.

When Malu poured out everything he had before Mingming, and she still refused, still loved another man, I felt a kind of dread: What if one day I meet a woman to whom I would willingly give all that I am, yet her heart belongs to someone else?

This is only a specter of the imagination. I hope I am lucky enough to meet someone whom I love, and who loves me in return.

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Songs that moved me during the performance

*Rhinoceros in Love*

> The birds have all flown south
>
> I am not a bird, I have no need for the south
>
> The leaves all turn to face the sun
>
> I am not a leaf, I have no need for sunlight
>
> How lonely I am, how brave I am
>
> I am a rhinoceros sick with longing
>
> How lonely I am, how brave I am
>
> I am a rhinoceros in love
>
> The train has pulled into the platform
>
> I am not a train, I need no terminus
>
> The rain has soaked through my clothes
>
> I am not the rain, I need not stay up in the sky
>
> I am a rhinoceros in love

To love without being loved in return, yet to call oneself "in love"—nothing but a brave face over a broken smile.

*Oxygen — Mingming's Song*

> Smile at me, smile
>
> As if we were meeting for the first time
>
> Speak to me, speak
>
> Even if the vows will change by tomorrow
>
> Enjoy me now
>
> Life drifts so weightlessly
>
> Remember me in the years to come
>
> In the year you grow old
>
> The years gone by will surely pass
>
> With you, my final love
>
> The years gone by will surely pass
>
> With you, beside me at last
>
> All the light rushes toward me
>
> All the oxygen is breathed in by me
>
> All objects lose their weight
>
> I have nearly reached the end of every road

When Mingming sang this song, a shiver ran through me.

*A Poem for You — Malu's Song*

> Everything white, when it meets you,
>
> Turns to black ink drained of light
>
> Every bird and beast despairs at being unable to speak your name
>
> Every intersection lights up green so you may pass freely
>
> Every compass needle points out your direction for me
>
> You are the wind that leaves no trace
>
> You are the wind that brushes gently past the body
>
> You are the wind that leaves no trail
>
> You are the wind that is everywhere and at all times
>
> My love, my love,
>
> My love, my love,
>
> My love, my love,
>
> You are my warm gloves,
>
> The ice‑cold beer,
>
> The shirt that carries the scent of sunlight,
>
> My day‑after‑day dream
>
> You are pure, innocent, glass‑like,
>
> You are pure, innocent, water‑like,
>
> You are pure, innocent, and nothing can change that
>
> Sunlight passes through you
>
> And alters its own course

On the way home, listening to this song, I wept in silence, letting the tears trace down my cheeks.

Ah, Mingming, Mingming. Beloved one, how can you be so merciless? How can you let a heart that loves you slowly grow cold?

Ah, Malu, Malu. Pitiable man, the taste of unrequited love—how it aches, how it aches.