1
For a long time after Cen Feng’s death, Xu Zhaixing kept having the same dream.
In the dream, the young man sat in a tightly sealed room, flipping through a book. Charcoal burned silently at his feet, devouring the last of the oxygen while Xu Zhaixing stood outside the door, pounding desperately against that intangible barrier.
But she was utterly powerless.
Cen Feng looked up and over at her, giving her a faint smile. Then he tossed the book into the brazier making the flames licked upward. Xu Zhaixing watched helplessly as he was consumed, only to wake up sobbing uncontrollably, her body trembling with pain.
Cen Feng had been gone for half a year now.
In half a year, in the entertainment industry where news was constantly breaking, Cen Feng’s name was rarely mentioned anymore. Even though his death had dominated headlines across all major portals for a full week, with the whole world seeming to cry out against the injustice of his fate.
Back then, all her friend who knew of her love for Cen Feng had come to comfort her.
They recounted everything Cen Feng had endured, feeling sympathy not only for him but also for his fans. In the end, they told Xu Zhaixing to move on, after all, he was just an idol, the kind where ‘you and I had no fate, it all relied on my spending.’
The Xu Zhaixing who once fought fiercely online for Cen Feng’s sake didn’t refute any of it.
People were forgetful. The netizens who had demanded justice for Cen Feng faded away under the interference of capital, and even his fans found new idols to love. Gradually, Xu Zhaixing also stopped mentioning him, as if she had never loved a boy with all her might.
Only sometimes, when her mind wandered blankly, she would come back to herself to find herself wet with tears.
Colleagues would ask her. “Zhaixing, what’s wrong?”
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t know either. She just felt a hollow, aching pain in her heart, as if a piece of it had been carved out with a knife.
…
A light rain began to fall in the evening. Auntie Zhu, the caregiver looking after Xu Zhaixing’s father called. “Zhaixing, are you coming home for dinner? I made chicken soup for your dad.”
Xu Zhaixing dragged her makeup case down the stairs. “I have a wedding makeup job tonight. The bride’s family is out in the suburbs, so I won’t be back. You and Dad go ahead and eat. Oh, and Auntie Zhu, there’s some honey in the parcel box downstairs that my classmate bought from overseas. Could you get it and mix a bowl for Dad? Give it to him before bed.”
Auntie Zhu agreed and hung up.
Xu Zhaixing’s father had been bedridden since suffering a sudden cerebral stroke seven years ago. In the earlier years, Xu Zhaixing had taken care of him personally. It was only in the last couple of years, as her career took up and she earned more money, that she could afford to hire a live-in caregiver.
The rain was light. She dragged her makeup case to the roadside to hail a cab.
While waiting at a crosswalk, a woman next to her held a child while talking on the phone. “I already submitted the Q2 financial report! How can we change the budget now? Manager Chen’s approval has already gone through!”
She was holding the child and an umbrella, struggling to keep the phone steady. She finally put down the little girl down. “Telling me this is useless! What were you doing earlier?”
The little girl was about three or four years old, clutching a yoyo in her hand. Perhaps her hand was slippery from the rain, the yoyo slipped out and rolled away, spinning straight ahead along the crosswalk.
Toddling unsteadily, the girl chased after the yoyo. A jeep not far away blared its horn as it sped forward. Her mother was still on the phone. Xu Zhaixing had just looked up from replying to a WeChat message, by the time her mind registered the danger, her body was already in motion.
She only remembered shoving the little girl to the side. Then, a violent searing pain exploded in her waist. It felt as if all her organs had been violently rearranged. A sweet, metallic tang surged up her throat, and then, darkness swallowed her consciousness.
They say that in the moment before death, the most important people and events of your life flash before your eyes. But in that split second between life and death, Xu Zhaixing didn’t have time to review her life. She was simply overwhelmed by the pain until everything went black.
The shrill screams of the crowd, the wailing cry of the child, the piercing screeches of tire, all of it swallowed up that rainy dusk.
…
Xu Zhaixing dreamed.
She dreamed of many years ago, when her mother was still alive, before she succumbed to esophageal cancer; when her father hadn’t yet gone bankrupt or suffered his stroke. She lived an enviably affluent life, free to pursue her dreams without a care.
She dreamed of her room full of limited-edition Barbie dolls, the beautiful clothes she meticulously crafted for them by hand, and that Gold Award from the Teenage Fashion Design Competition sitting proudly on her desk.
She dreamed of her senior year of high school, receiving the acceptance letter from the Royal College of Art. Just as she was happily preparing to go abroad for university, her mother was diagnosed with late-stage esophageal cancer.
Her father’s venture capital investments had failed spectacularly, losses amounting to tens of millions. In the end, he couldn’t even scrape together the money for her mother’s treatment. And all those relatives who had once been so warm and ingratiating now shut their doors, including her Second Uncle Xu, who had tricked her father into the failed investments in the first place.
Her father sold off company assets to pay for treatment. She herself gave up studying abroad, took the national college entrance exam, and was admitted to an art and design university in City B.
But her mother’s illness was too far advanced; no amount of money could save her. Her mother passed away while Her father, bankrupt and his hair turned white overnight, suffered a sudden cerebral stroke and was left paralyzed in bed.
That year, Xu Zhaixing had just turned eighteen.
And she was already forced to shoulder the entire burden of her family.
She saw herself trudging through the mire. While her peers were occupied with romance, good food, travel, and chasing stars, she faced debt collectors, bank loans, and her father’s staggering medical bills.
Unwilling to abandon her design dreams, she juggled studies with part-time jobs. Every single day, even breathing felt exhausting.
That winter during her freshman year, she came home an hour late because she had to finish a design project. Her paralyzed father, trying to get water, struggled and knocked over a thermos of boiling water.
By the time Xu Zhaixing got home, her father had already passed out from the pain. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital, where the doctor told her he had suffered severe scalds.
Xu Zhaixing remembered it snowed that night.
She crouched in the hospital corridor, clutching a stack of prohibitively expensive medical bills, and buried her face in her hands, crying silently.
She couldn’t go on anymore.
She felt so incredibly weary.
She took a small fruit knife from the auntie in the neighboring hospital bed, intending to find a secluded place to end it all.
It snowed heavily that night, bitterly cold. She sat on the icy stone steps, crying, the knife poised over her heart.
Across the street stood a tall building, its facade dominated by a massive LED screen.
Just as the blade was about to pierce her skin, the screen lit up.
In that flood of brilliant white light, Xu Zhaixing lifted her head and saw the boy on the LED screen.
He wore a white sweater, his fingers dancing across piano keys. His dark hair was soft and slightly tousled, making him look like a noble yet gentle prince. He was smiling, seemingly right in her direction.
That dazzling smile was like a ray of sunlight piercing the pitch-black, freezing night, warming her cold, despairing heart.
Humans were truly remarkable creatures. In that instant, her courage to commit suicide vanished. As if startled, she frantically threw the knife aside and stared up, mesmerized, at the boy playing the piano.
The clip on the LED screen lasted only about ten seconds. No one knew what kind of power those ten seconds gave her on that cold, hopeless winter night.
The person playing the piano in that clip was called Cen Feng, a newly debuted star, a gentle, smiling young man.
During those unbearable days, Cen Feng became the sole beam of light in her entire life.
No matter how difficult things got, thinking of him gave her the strength to endure.
Clutching that light, she made it through the toughest years. Even though debts weren’t fully paid off and her father wasn’t fully recovered, everything was getting better. Everything was filled with hope.
Liking Cen Feng brought color back to her pale, powerless existence.
She hoped that one day, she could stand before him with her own designs and say proudly, “Look, I did it.”
She wanted to tell him, thank you for appearing, thank you for playing the piano for me, thank you for making me not give up on myself, thank you for helping me become who I am.
But it turned out, this young man who gave her so much hope had long been teetering on the brink of death’s abyss.
How absurd.
Day after day, shouting and vowing to protect him, to protect their treasure, yet she hadn’t even known he was suffering from depression.
She hadn’t even detected the pain hidden beneath his forced smiles.
Selfishly, she had continued drawing strength from his smiles, clinging to an illusion.
Even more absurd was that after the illusion shattered, apart from crying and grieving, she could do nothing for him.
She would never see Cen Feng again.
That young man she had loved with all her life.
……
…
“Zhaixing? Zhaixing! Wake up! Oh my god, did you drool? My novel! Ahhh, my Ying Qi! It’s all soaked with your drool! Get off! Get off!”
A buzzing filled her ears. Xu Zhaixing felt a heavy weight on her head, followed by a fleshy hand slapping her face.
“Xu Zhaixing! Get up! This is the new edition! Do you know how long I waited in line to buy this?”
That noisy voice in her ear sounded exactly like her high school deskmate, Cheng You.
Xu Zhaixing struggled to open her eyes.
For a moment, the warm glow of dusk poured through the classroom window and into her eyes.
Classmates in school uniforms chased and joked, messy desks piled high with books, aisles winding haphazardly—it all felt both alien and familiar, a memory belonging to many years ago.
Xu Zhaixing squeezed her eyes shut tightly, then opened them again, looking incredulously at her hands, patting her waist.
Beside her, Cheng You was still mourning her newly bought edition of The Temptation of the Wolf—the one she’d queued for hours to get—carefully dabbing the damp page with a scented tissue before turning a disgusted look her way.
Xu Zhaixing was still dazed, tear tracks evident at the corners of her eyes.
Cheng You brightened instantly. “It wasn’t drool?! Ahhh, thank goodness! Wait, no—Zhaixing, what’s wrong? How did you cry in your sleep?”
Xu Zhaixing uttered her name with difficulty. “…Cheng You?”
They hadn’t been in touch since graduating high school. She hadn’t spoken this name in many years and wasn’t even sure if she remembered it right.
Cheng You leaned in, puzzled, poking her cheek. “What’s up with you? Why do you look so silly?”
The class bell rang sharply in their ears.
Cheng You hurriedly stuffed the novel into her desk and pulled out the textbook for this period. Xu Zhaixing saw the bold characters on the cover: Senior High School Mathematics, Year 1.
First year of high school?
Ten years ago?
Was this a dream?
Their high school math teacher, Cao Jumei, strode into the classroom right on time, looking exactly as she remembered—permed with the trendy small curls of that era, her voice thin and sharp, carrying the rigid sternness of a math teacher.
“Everyone, settle down! Day after day, your minds are never on your studies! Liu Qingshan! I’m talking about you, and you’re still smiling! Get your foot off the desk! What do you think this classroom is? Are you putting your feet up? Should I brew you a cup of tea too?”
The classroom erupted in laughter.
Cao Jumei slammed the textbook heavily on the lectern, sending a cloud of chalk dust into the air. “Settle down! Now, let’s begin the lesson. Open your books to chapter 2.2. Today, we’re learning about logarithmic functions.”
The rustling sound of pages turning filled the room around her.
Cheng You had her book open and nudged Xu Zhaixing’s arm with her pen tip, whispering, “What are you spacing out for? Want Teacher Cao to call on you?”
Xu Zhaixing slowly began to emerge from her bewilderment.
Her fingers, somewhat stiff, turned the pages. Staring at the long-forgotten function formulas as her heartbeat began to quicken.
This wasn’t a dream. It was real.
She had gone back ten years.
Her mother wasn’t sick yet, her father wasn’t paralyzed yet, their family wasn’t bankrupt yet.
Cen Feng… was still alive.
The people she loved were all still alive.
There was still time for everything.
**