That night, Wanqing, far away in the capital, also had a dream.
She dreamed of returning to the age of fourteen.
Uncle Fu took her away from the orphanage. The moment she stepped out the door, a tall boy rushed out from behind and shouted at her retreating figure:
“Brother will definitely come to the capital to find you in the future, wait for me!”
She stopped, turned around with tears streaming down her face, facing his direction.
Step by step, she walked faster and faster. Finally, she broke into a run and threw herself into his arms.
“Brother Yan!”
The young boy was tall and thin, but his hands caught her steadily, just like every time he had protected her before.
He stroked her dry, brittle hair and gently advised her.
“You have a restrained and stubborn personality, always keeping everything bottled up inside. You’ll inevitably suffer when you go out into the world. You need to change.”
She clutched the hem of her skirt tightly, nodding through her tears.
“I’ll change~”
This very, very expensive pink Miu Miu puffball skirt was a parting gift Brother Yan bought for her with his scholarship money.
It was the first new dress she had worn in the five years she had spent at the orphanage.
“Pink suits you. When you grow up, Brother will buy you many more beautiful dresses.”
She cried uncontrollably, shaking her head repeatedly. “Brother Yan, I don’t want to leave. I can’t bear to part with you…”
He placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her body around to face the direction of the gate.
“Go, go embrace your new life. You deserve a bright, shining future. Don’t be afraid, don’t look back. Brother will always be watching over you from behind.”
…
Three in the morning.
“Brother Yan!”
Wanqing jolted awake from her dream.
Something cold slid from her face onto the pillow. She raised her hand and brushed her fingertips across the corner of her eye.
Her hand came away wet with tears.
All sleepiness vanished.
She got out of bed, found a coat to drape over her shoulders, and walked to the balcony to smoke a cigarette.
How many years had it been since she last dreamed of him?
The smoke she exhaled was immediately scattered by the cool night wind.
Gazing at the bare branches outside, painful memories flooded back one after another.
Autumn in Hong Kong was just like this—withered leaves covering the ground, the entire city bleak and lifeless.
For a child like her, who came from an orphanage, beauty was not a blessing but an original sin, destined only to bring her disaster.
During her junior high school years in Hong Kong, classmates teased her, mocked her, isolated her, smeared glue on her chair, put small insects in her water cup…
That day, also in late autumn, they tricked her into going to the abandoned warehouse behind the school.
Several of them surrounded her, sealing her mouth with tape.
“Trash! You’re an unwanted orphan, who are you trying to act all high and mighty for?”
“Our Jiaxin is the school belle. You’re just unwanted trash, a slut!”
“Disgusting! That orphanage is filthy, a dumping ground for all kinds of retards, idiots, and sick people. No one there is normal. Who knows what diseases she’s already caught? It’s revolting!”
“Hey, what are you talking about? Senior Xu Yan from the high school division is perfectly fine, isn’t he? Tall, handsome, top of his class, even got into Harvard on early admission!”
“Exactly! Do we hate the orphanage? No, we hate her!”
The girl leading them grabbed her hair and slapped her face several times, “smack!” “smack!”
“Fox spirit!”
“Slut!”
“School beauty? Honestly, she’s just average-looking, only fooling those country bumpkins who just started studying in the provincial capital. Anyone with a bit of experience would never like your type—plain-faced, pretending to be innocent. I hate white lotus flowers like you who act pitiful the most.”
A girl pulled her back and said, “Xin-jie, don’t hit her face. If the principal sees, we’ll have to write self-criticisms again.”
“Then where should I hit?”
The one called Xin-jie was their leader, Huang Jiaxin. She came from a wealthy family, was beautiful herself, and couldn’t stand anyone prettier than her.
Especially an orphan with no parents—what right did she have to be compared to her? Just sharing the same classroom felt like it polluted her air!
“I think… how about…”
“Hehehehe, that’s a great idea.”
“Oh my god, you’re so evil…”
“Hurry up, take out your phones, film her in high definition without any censorship, and post it on the school forum. Let’s see who’ll still like her after that, hahahaha…”
When a group of people can bully a weakling without restraint, their destructive desires are completely unleashed.
The more beautiful something is, the more they want to destroy it, tearing it to shreds in the cruelest way possible.
All moral boundaries are thrown aside.
She was pinned down, unable to resist, only able to let out muffled sobs.
Why had things come to this? Why did the more she endured, the more her bullies pushed their luck?
When she regained consciousness, she found herself lying naked on the floor, bloodstains between her thighs, her clothes taken away.
The door was locked from the outside, and she couldn’t get out.
It was pitch dark all around; the light had long been broken. Waves of coldness washed over her, mixed with the musty, rusty smell of the old warehouse.
From above, the cawing of crows echoed from time to time, frightening her into curling up in a corner and crying.
But no matter how heart-wrenchingly she wept, no one could hear her.
At that moment, she was utterly despondent and even thought of ending her life.
Her parents were gone, and even her relatives were trying every means to drive her away. If that was the case, why should she cling to life and suffer in this world?
After all, she was once a beloved little princess, cherished by everyone.
Late into the night.
The door was kicked open with a loud “bang.”
A tall, slender figure walked in with a flashlight, his voice filled with urgency: “Xiao Wan, are you here?”
Seeing that familiar figure, her nose stung with emotion.
But the thought of her current shameful, naked state overwhelmed her with pain and humiliation. For a moment, she didn’t know where to cover, so she hid her face.
Xu Yan saw her curled up in the corner and froze for a moment.
He immediately turned off the flashlight, took off his jacket, and covered her entire body.
The jacket could only barely cover half of her, so he simply took off his shirt as well.
In a flurry of panic, he helped her put on the clothes and picked her up.
His bloodshot eyes were filled with pity and guilt: “I’m sorry, I came too late.”
She clung to him like a lifeline, pressing herself tightly against him, thinking that if there were no gaps between them, she wouldn’t be exposed. Only when she was pressed as close as possible did she finally let go.
Under the faint moonlight, she stared blankly at the old, worn-out lightbulb on the ceiling.
Her gaze was unfocused, her spirit broken.
“They can insult me, bully me, I can endure all that… But why did they have to do something so vile? I’m only thirteen, how will I ever get married now…”
Her eyes stung as she murmured this.
She simply couldn’t accept it—how could her ** just be gone like that?
How could it be destroyed in such a place, by such people, in such a cruel, prank-like manner?
A dull ache throbbed in her lower abdomen, and a warm flow surged from below. She could no longer hold back, bursting into tears right in front of him.
Tears poured out like a breached dam, flooding from her eyes.
“How could they do this to me…”
“Brother Yan, I, I…”
It hurt.
She couldn’t bring herself to say it, but she knew he had noticed the bloodstain on her leg and must have guessed what had happened.
“Every time I’m at my most miserable and humiliated, you always show up. Thank you.”
Xu Yan listened, growing more and more puzzled.
At seventeen, he felt a bit embarrassed. He reached out and flicked her forehead, then wrapped her more snugly in his jacket.
“What’s that little head of yours imagining? Did you sleep through all your biology classes?”
“Don’t worry, Xiao Wan is still the same Xiao Wan. You’re just growing up—didn’t you know your period had started?”
A bicycle stood parked outside.
The night was too dark for her to make out his expression clearly. She only remembered how he held her with one arm while struggling to steady the handlebars with his other hand.
“Hold on tight. We’re going back now.”
Since he had given her all his upper clothing, his chest was now bare. His warm chest was right there, close enough to touch, and her face flushed bright red in an instant.
She buried her head against him, wrapping her arms tightly around his back, clinging to him like an octopus. The wind whistled past her ears, and as she cried, she began to laugh through her tears.
“Brother Yan, are you cold?”
“Stop squirming. Hold on tight and don’t let go, or you’ll fall.”
It was relief.
And it was also the only flutter of her young heart.
Ten years had passed, yet she still remembered every word he said that night.
Meeting him in her youth was the awakening of first love, but also a regret.
For a child from the orphanage, being adopted was already a tremendous stroke of luck.
The Brother Yan who had once vowed to come find her never did.
And she, in turn, began casually calling other men “brother”—that title was no longer his alone.
Neither of them kept their promise.
As for her past, it was all erased from the day Uncle Fu took her away at fourteen.
She remembered their shared history, every word he had spoken, yet she could no longer clearly recall his face.
Her Brother Yan had a tall, straight nose, deep-set eyes and brows, and well-defined lips—but now, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t piece his face together again.
She hadn’t hit her head, nor had she lost her memory.