2013

Chen Tong’s life had never held the word “regret.”

Even though, at twenty-three, she made a choice that ran completely counter to the first twenty-three years of her life and changed the course of everything, she never truly regretted those first twenty-three years either.

A choice had already been made; there was no point regretting it afterward.

But.

That decision, made at the start of winter in 2013, the one she had then believed was the most correct decision of all, would go on to make her regret it countless times in the years that followed.

Not because she later went back on it and no longer thought it had been the best choice. It was because she regretted why, when making that most correct choice, she had been so utterly without hesitation.

In fact.

From the moment she boarded the bus to the airport, from behind the glass fogged by the winter air, looking back and seeing Chi Xiaoman left standing where she was, reduced to a tiny shadow in the bleak white winter, Chen Tong had already begun to wonder whether the choice she had made might one day bring about some unforeseeable result.

So after landing in Hong Kong, she made the first call to Chi Xiaoman as quickly as she could.

At that time, she still didn’t really feel that she and Chi Xiaoman had already parted ways.

Over the crackling signal, Chi Xiaoman asked as usual whether she was cold, but her voice sounded different from normal; uncertain, exhausted, small and blurred against the noisy background of a hospital, as if it might disappear at any moment.

That gave Chen Tong a strangely subtle feeling—

They seemed like two survivors who had been fleeing side by side for a long time in a collapsing building, arriving at a one-time emergency exit so narrow that only one person could squeeze through. Chi Xiaoman gave her the only water and the only chance to get out.

And Chen Tong firmly believed that going out first to seek help was the right choice, so she did not doubt it. But once she got out, she discovered there was no way to turn back and save Chi Xiaoman.

Things changed day by day.

At first, Chen Tong thought that once the screen test was over, she could soon go back to stay by Chi Xiaoman’s side; when filming began next year, maybe by then... perhaps things would already be better than they were now.

Later, she hadn’t expected to pass the screen test so quickly, and she hadn’t expected that after passing, the production team would ask her to stay for training. Because of that training fee, she stayed. And because only by staying for training could she fight for this chance, she stayed.

Later still, she hadn’t expected production to start early, so she knelt behind the door of her room for an entire night without eating or drinking, begging Chen Xiaoping to let her leave, and in the end she came down with a fever and fell seriously ill.

The next day, her cousin finally came back from Shanghai after deciding to treat her illness; she cried while holding her for a long time, scraped together money to pay back part of what she owed, and also helped win over Chen Xiaoping’s soft heart... and she went to Hong Kong.

From the day she left Beijing, the world seemed to have turned into blocks of building pieces, any one of which could be pulled out at any time and randomly fitted somewhere else...

So much so that one had to stay constantly taut, concentrating every shred of attention just to cope.

In that kind of situation,

Chi Xiaoman’s phone calls became only a tiny crack in the shifting blocks.

The crack was very small.

It could only hold the weather each day, meals, and Lang Lang’s daily condition.

In the earliest calls, Chi Xiaoman said, “I think Lang Lang might get better. She can still eat a lot every day, and she can still walk a lot too.”

Chen Tong sat outside the office where she was waiting for the screen test and let out a breath of relief. She said, “That’s good. Maybe it was a misdiagnosis.”

In later calls, Chi Xiaoman said, “Lang Lang was awake for a long time today, and the script is almost finished. She also asked how your filming is going.”

During breaks in training, Chen Tong briefly pulled herself out of that Shenzhen young woman’s body and said, “That’s good. My filming is going smoothly.”

In later and later calls, the very first thing Chi Xiaoman said at the start of each one would be, “Lang Lang is fine. I’m fine.”

Chen Tong would stay silent for a long time, standing between unfamiliar high-rises, letting the wind blow over her for ages, then exhaustedly say, “I’m fine today too.”

Then Chi Xiaoman would tell her about the day; mostly little bits and pieces, trivial things. She’d say she met a child who received a very cute piece of candy today, or that she met a kind Rainbow Sister today, so they didn’t need to worry about Lang Lang’s treatment costs anymore. She’d say it snowed in Beijing today and she really wanted to watch it with her, and that she was keeping Chen Tong company in the freezing Beijing wind, helping her practice her lines over and over, rehearse over and over...

Most of the time, Chen Tong didn’t talk much. She had never been a very talkative person to begin with, and the daily training process, along with preparing for the start of filming, made this her first time acting. She couldn’t think of a better way to get into character, so even in daily life she tried hard to move closer to the role.

Immersing herself in the sensations of the set and the training process was like a drop of water flowing into a river, making it hard for Chen Tong to tell many times whether she was still the Chen Tong who had been eating noodles at Felicity Noodle Shop in Beijing a month ago, or that confused, dazed Shenzhen young woman in Hong Kong...

“Chen Tong-jiejie.”

Chi Xiaoman always called her that over the phone.

So in those daily calls, though they could not last very long, Chen Tong would catch a brief breath of respite and truly feel that she was still Chen Tong.

She longed to hear Chi Xiaoman’s calls. She longed to still be in Beijing, listening to Chi Xiaoman chatter beside her. She longed that if she reached out, she could touch Chi Xiaoman’s face, and wipe away the food residue lingering at the corner of her mouth from eating too fast...

Yet because she was dazed and distracted, she could give no more response.

Even so, even as she became more and more silent on the phone, Chi Xiaoman never seemed defeated by it. She still called every day, still chirped about everything every day, still called her Chen Tong-jiejie every day... Only occasionally, as if she had been chilled outside, she would sniff and ask, “Chen Tong-jiejie, are you very tired?”

“No.” Chen Tong shook her head. In a soft voice, she called to her, “Xiaoman.”

“Hm?” Chi Xiaoman was probably out buying food for Lang Lang. Her voice trembled a little from the cold, but she still told her, “I’m here.”

“I’m fine.” Chen Tong lowered her voice. “I just want to hear your voice more.”

“Okay.” Chi Xiaoman exhaled in a hurry. “Then I’ll tell you more—”

“Today we had winter melon rib soup. The ribs were stewed a little too long; not as tasty as when I make it. Chen Tong-jiejie, when you come back I’ll stew it for you, okay? Stew it for you and Lang Lang together...”

It sounded like she was climbing stairs, thump-thump-thump, very fast, her breathing a little short.

“Oh right, yesterday Lang Lang asked me to help dye her hair. I’m planning to dye it with her in one of this year’s trendy colors. I won’t tell you what color yet; by the time you come back you should be able to see it..."

“And also, Lang Lang’s script seems almost finished. She said she still hasn’t figured out the ending, doesn’t know whether it should be good or bad, and I told her, life is already so bitter, so can you write something good and warm for once? She didn’t say anything then; maybe she was still hesitating..."

“Actually, don’t let her fool you just because she’s always smiling. She’s very demanding about her own writing, and very stubborn too; she never listens to what other people say. That person is just too principled..."

Maybe Chi Xiaoman’s voice was too vivid, too alive. Even separated by the distant signal, it still seemed to let one feel it—

the winter melon in the winter melon rib soup she ate today was a bit old, the hair color she was going to dye would be very pretty, every word in Lang Lang’s script was written with care...

And because of that, in the emptiness and the repeated switches between roles, Chen Tong felt as if life would go on like this forever—

Chi Xiaoman would chatter on like this until the end, and after the New Year, when Lang Lang was discharged from the hospital and Chen Tong finished filming and returned to Beijing, they would go back to Felicity Noodle Shop Road and eat Chi Xiaoman’s delicious winter melon rib soup together.

Chen Tong longed for things to develop that way.

Until she received that call. The background noise on the line was extremely chaotic. After a long while, an unfamiliar female voice came closer to the receiver and asked her,

“Your friend seems to have fainted. Can you get to the XXX police station right now?”

Actually, hearing the prefix “police station,” Chen Tong should have realized something. But at that moment, her mind plunged into a long blankness, and her body unconsciously asked for her, “What friend?”

So the female voice moved away, asked someone nearby, “What was that girl’s name again?”

The person nearby probably looked through something; after a few seconds, they said, “Chi Xiaoman.”

The female voice then came back to the receiver and repeated to her in an expressionless tone,

“Chi Xiaoman, do you know her?”

-

[Chi Xiaoman, I’m sorry.

How should I put it? Although it’s cliché, I still have to say it the same way many scripts say cliché things—when you figure out the password and open this folder, I should already be beyond saving.

I don’t know what to say to you.

Because I’ve always felt that I’m actually pretty decent, you know? I’ve been diligent and hardworking all my life, I love my work, I’m especially kind and dependable, and I’ve never, and would never, owe anyone anything.

But you.

Sigh.

The person I feel most sorry for is you.

You’re only twenty.

Actually, every time I think of this, I get a fright.

Twenty.

Just a kid. You haven’t even finished your thesis or your short film, and you’re already running all over the place for me every day, even borrowing money everywhere... you even borrowed from your grandma. Just thinking about it makes my face burn, like it’s about to catch fire.

Besides, we weren’t that close anyway. We weren’t related by blood or anything; at most we were just two strangers who happened to meet in Beijing. Tell me, what were you doing all this for?

I’ve seen you collapse asleep beside me like a rubber man more than once, and I wanted to shake you awake and ask you that. But later I felt there was no need to ask. Because you would definitely say I was crazy.

So in the end I never asked.

But I’m guessing you’re definitely in tears right now, and really want to ask me—why did I take such a hopeless turn?

Then I’ll have to tell you carefully.

Making this decision wasn’t a moment of impulsive despair.

I thought it over for a long time, overturned it many times, and in the end still made up my mind like this.

There are some things you don’t know. Because I’ve lived my whole life in too much pain.

From the moment I learned I had this illness, I started desperately making money. When I was young, roughly your age, I wanted to use it to treat myself. But later I realized that maybe even if I lived two more lifetimes, I still wouldn’t make enough money to cure myself. So I thought—then I’ll use this money to make the film I’ve always wanted to make.

So that’s why I set my sights on you and your Chen Tong-jiejie.

It’s just that now the treatment is halfway done, the money is gone, and the movie can’t be made either.

Sigh.

Forget it.

A person doesn’t have to realize their own ideals.

I guess I’m just an ordinary person after all.

At the end of the day, I’ll be thirty next year, so I should recognize this truth. But this is strange; I actually don’t want to.

I don’t want to turn thirty, and I don’t want to recognize this truth. I don’t want to admit that even if I really do live to thirty, I’ll still accomplish nothing and still won’t be able to make a film.

So this ending is pretty good too. At least you and Chen Tong will still remember that I was the greatest screenwriter in the world.

Isn’t it said that once someone dies, their work becomes more valuable? Then I’ll hand my script over to you completely.

If someone takes an interest in it later, hurry up and sell it. Sell it for as much as you can. Don’t be foolish. Don’t cling stubbornly to those feelings between you and me or whatever. Feelings aren’t worth anything, and they’re useless too, got it?

Maybe you can’t take this in right now. But I’m guessing once you reach my age you’ll understand that feelings, dreams, principles... none of them amount to much.

All in all, my ending counts as a grand one too.

So don’t think too much. This was a decision I made before I even knew you; it’s just that your appearance delayed it for a little while.

I never thought I’d meet you in Beijing.

I never thought that night when I suddenly jumped onto the back of your bicycle would later make you stand in front of me without hesitation, like a savior, holding a stick.

I never thought that the night you treated me to a meal, I’d meet Chen Tong, and later my film would have two greatest female leads.

I never thought you two would be so stupid. One of you stayed in Beijing to care for a terminally ill patient and threw your own future behind you; the other had already fought with her family before, and now ran back home for me to borrow money... fine, I admit it, while you weren’t looking I flipped through that little account book of yours. Honestly. What are you going to do in the future with so much debt at such a young age?

I feel sorry for both of you.

So I was still thinking that if I could hold on, I’d try to hold on as long as possible.

And after knowing you, these past few years have been pretty happy too.

I originally wanted to see what you’d be like when you grew up, and I also wanted to see whether, once you were living a good life, you’d be so heartless as to forget me.

But now there’s no need to look. Because I’ve already seen it.

A long time ago I felt that you probably hadn’t gone through much of society’s grinding, which was why you were always so carefree, why you habitually treated everyone as a good person, and spent more time thinking for others than for yourself.

But during this period, with me being this sick and so often not clear-headed, and with no adult around you who could take care of you, you were still so chirpy and reliable. That was when I realized that, in fact, you’d always been an adult.

So.

Very mature, and very dependable adult Chi Xiaoman, please, after you see this file, no matter how angry you still are with me, or no matter how sad you are, do three more things for me one last time.

The first thing is to find the passbook I hid in the cabinet. I already told you the password; I won’t write it in the file. I’m afraid if the computer gets stolen at the end, someone else might see it.

Anyway, after you find the passbook, use it to pay back all the money you borrowed during this period. If there’s any left after that, transfer all of it into the account in the other file in the folder...

The second thing: there’s also a disclaimer I signed in the folder. Please show it to the hospital and the police, and make clear that this matter has nothing to do with any person or any organization.

The third thing: please don’t be so responsible. Don’t treat this as your own responsibility, and don’t treat me as your own responsibility either. I left the script to the two of you so you could see my great work, not so that you had to inherit my dying wish. I’m not your mom.

Of course, come to think of it, even if I were your biological mother, you still wouldn’t need to go this far. So if, much later on one day, you really do find your mom, don’t pay too much attention to what she says to you. Be angry at her, understand? You, of all people, are fine in every way except that you’re not very good at getting angry, and you don’t know how to be fierce with people.

Oh.

I remember.

There may be a fourth thing too.

Sigh.

Chi Xiaoman.

I originally wanted you not to forget me even after you had money in the future.

But now, I’m afraid you probably won’t be able to forget me either way.

Then.

Please keep growing up while chattering away like that.

Sigh, honestly.

I don’t want to act in a melodrama.

I want to act in a wuxia film.

Bye-bye.]

-

At the beginning of 2014, on the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, Beijing was seeing heavy snow, and Chi Xiaoman still hadn’t gotten Lang Lang’s computer, and still hadn’t seen that file.

Because that night was very long.

She fell down in the soft, cold snow of the hospital, like a corpse from which the soul had been pulled out, passed by many people in sharp, frightened haste.

After a very long time, her phone, which had been flung away, was picked up by someone. With its cracked screen and the photo inside, it was placed into a transparent evidence bag, and then, together with her, it was carried away in someone’s hand by a police car to assist with the investigation.

Then.

Chi Xiaoman and her phone were separated.

She was locked in a very large, very cold room, both hands placed neatly on her knees, wearing the hair she had just dyed, looking like a grain of red rice stuck to a bench.

Someone sat down in front of her, poured her a cup of hot water, and spoke to her kindly. “Drink some hot water first.”

Chi Xiaoman looked up in confusion and realized she could not see the person across from her clearly. She didn’t know what she could say, and she didn’t know what she should do. So she reached to take the cup.

The water surface wobbled a little.

It spilled onto her hand.

The person opposite was startled and hurriedly pulled out a few tissues to wipe her off, rubbing hastily a few times. Seeing that she made no movement at all, they asked strangely, “Doesn’t it burn?”

Chi Xiaoman shook her head. She didn’t think it was hot. She took a sip and felt the temperature was normal, but she still felt very cold, so she parted her lips and wanted to speak.

The person opposite waved a hand. “Just answer whatever I ask.”

Chi Xiaoman nodded numbly.

The person opened the file, lowered their head, and asked her,

“What’s your name?”

Chi Xiaoman separated her trembling teeth and tried hard to get the words out. “Chi... Chi Xiaoman.”

“Age.”

“Twenty. I’m twenty this year.”

The person across from her lifted their face and looked at her.

Chi Xiaoman also stared blankly back at him.

The person lowered his eyes and continued, “What is your relationship with the deceased?”

Chi Xiaoman froze.

She held that cup of water that seemed to have no temperature, took a sip of water that also seemed to have no temperature, and after a very long time still felt unable to understand the question, so she asked,

“The deceased?”

The person across from her looked at her for a while. “What is your relationship with Wang Enqing?”

Wang Enqing.

During this period.

This name appeared very often. On the hospital payment slips, in the medical record book, every time the doctor came into the ward for rounds and checked names, every time the nurse came in to change her medication...

But Chi Xiaoman still felt unfamiliar with it.

Only after a while did she slowly part her cold, stiff lips and speak with difficulty,

“I... she’s my friend.”

“Friend?” The person opposite paused.

His tone was flat.

“She has no family? So a friend like you is the one caring for her before she went into critical condition?”

“I... I was, I was basically her family.” Chi Xiaoman tried her best to explain, “Actually, actually it’s about the same.”

The person opposite nodded and did not continue questioning. After a pause, he asked her, “Then do you know why she suddenly jumped from a building?”

The room was very cold. Chi Xiaoman might have been too cold. She could not hear the police officer clearly, and it also felt as if her chest had been opened up and then crudely stuffed full of cold, hard grains of snow. She could not speak.

So the person opposite also fell silent.

He turned around, said a few words to the people behind him, then came back and asked her one question after another:

“Do you think she was the kind of person who would suddenly commit suicide? Do you know anything about her family situation?”

“What was she usually doing at this time? Was there anything different from usual?”

“Did she say anything today that made you feel she wouldn’t normally say such things, or do anything you felt she wouldn’t normally do?”

“Before you went downstairs, what did she say to you? Did she say anything that seemed like a farewell, or instructions for what to do after her death? Any gestures like that?”

“And what about the few days before that? Did you notice anything wrong with her? Or think she might have had suicidal thoughts?”

...

The tone was patient. Not hurried.

But Chi Xiaoman could not answer a single one.

She looked at the person across the table and felt that the lines on his face were like many black rivers. She stared at the river; the river stared back at her.

Her eyes hurt.

She rubbed them.

“Like this, please wait a moment,” this black river said to her.

Chi Xiaoman had no choice but to stop.

Then the river surged over, flooding her mouth and nose, flooding between her heart and lungs, soaking her heart, her organs, all of her in a pungent, rotten liquid.

Bang—

The door opened.

Chi Xiaoman forced herself to look.

It was a woman.

Not Chen Tong.

Not Lang Lang.

The woman was in police uniform. She told the person in front of Chi Xiaoman to step aside, then sat down herself, looked at Chi Xiaoman for a while, and patted her cold hand before slowly saying,

“Sorry, our colleague’s questioning just now wasn’t very appropriate. But it’s all right; you don’t need to answer these questions for the time being.”

She smiled at Chi Xiaoman. “If you’re uncomfortable, you can rest for a couple of days and come back to give your statement later.”

Chi Xiaoman shook her head. “I’m not uncomfortable.”

The police officer said nothing. She looked at her.

Maybe the light was too harsh, white as snow.

After looking back for a while, Chi Xiaoman could no longer bear it. She lifted her hand, only wanting to rub her eyes a little.

And then.

She fainted.

When she woke again,

she saw herself lying in a white room, saw a blank white expanse before her, and did not know where she was, nor how much time had passed.

She struggled to sit up.

And discovered that a very thin IV line was attached to her hand, much like the one attached to Lang Lang’s hand these past few days.

Chi Xiaoman stared blankly at the fluid in the IV line.

After a while,

a person in white clothes walked over and kindly told her,

“You’re awake?”

“What happened?” Chi Xiaoman looked at the person in front of her in confusion. People in white coats were angels. When she was very young, Chi Xiaoman came to recognize this, and from then on she believed it without doubt. Could the angel tell her what she should do now?

“You fainted at the police station,” the angel reminded her, “but it’s nothing serious. You just used up too much emotional energy, so we gave you some glucose. If you’re feeling a bit better, you can pay the bill and leave.”

Chi Xiaoman nodded.

“Oh right,” the angel continued, his tone somewhat hesitant, “your friend..."

"My friend?" Chi Xiaoman looked up in confusion.

“Is Wang Enqing your friend?” the angel said.

“Yes.” Chi Xiaoman nodded woodenly.

“She’s been confirmed dead.” The angel handed her the phone with the shattered screen and said, “The police have confirmed it was suicide. They may still contact you later to give a statement.”

“But before that, you’d better contact her family to come handle the death certificate and have the body taken away in time.”

So after a person died, there were still so many things to do.

An unnatural death required going to the police station for questioning, required proof that it was suicide and not murder.

After death was confirmed, a death certificate had to be issued, and someone had to be contacted to transport the body...

Only after that would there be a funeral?

Chi Xiaoman held her black-screened phone and sat in the hospital room in a daze.

Lang Lang...

Was she really dead?

Gone?

Would there never again be a Lang Lang in this world from this point on?

Chi Xiaoman still didn’t have much sense of it.

She also didn’t know what expression she should make, what response she should give.

Chi Xiaoman walked out of the ward and used the last of the money on her to pay the bill.

She didn’t follow the doctor’s instructions to get a death certificate for Lang Lang, and she didn’t go to see the body.

She had been about to go up.

But when she reached the entrance to Lang Lang’s ward, she stared for a long time at the white, silent wall and could not understand how all of this had happened from last night until now, could not understand why she had not noticed anything strange about Lang Lang.

So she did not go in either.

Chi Xiaoman went downstairs.

She left the inpatient building.

She left the hospital.

Stepping on the soft, fresh snow.

For a long time.

She felt like she was just walking aimlessly, just wanting a little quiet, just wanting to escape a little. Before she fainted, she had been urged to painfully relive the previous night again and again; after waking up, she found she seemed to have forgotten every detail.

Why did it have to be winter?

She didn’t like this white world at all.

Why did winter have to be so long? How much longer until summer came?

Without realizing it.

A sharp car horn rang out beside her—

A car sped past her, kicking up the already frozen clumps of snow on the ground.

The cold snow struck her calves, biting with icy pain.

In a daze, Chi Xiaoman looked up.

Only then did she realize she had nearly walked to Felicity Road.

Felicity Noodle Shop was closed, and a cheerful red notice had also been posted, saying the shop would remain shut until after the Lantern Festival, wishing its old customers and new customers a Happy New Year and good fortune in the Year of the Horse.

Chi Xiaoman stood in front of the rolled-down shutter door, dazed in the freezing air for a long time before she suddenly remembered that it was almost the New Year.

Only two days left?

Standing on that familiar road, though she hadn’t eaten anything at all, she suddenly felt like vomiting.

So she placed her stiff palm against the equally freezing telephone pole, bent over with great difficulty, and painfully retched out one white breath after another. Not even a drop of liquid.

She vomited up everything inside her body that had been soaked through by the black river.

For a very long time.

She forced herself upright, feeling like a clumsy compass that had been brutally bent to one hundred and eighty degrees.

“Chi Xiaoman.”

A voice was calling her, muffled and indistinct.

In her dazed state, Chi Xiaoman looked around. Her vision was blurred; it felt as if the black river had not yet completely drained from inside her, and was even making a long, mournful sound within her body.

Her gaze stopped in one direction—

The streetlights were bright before the New Year, the streets were noisy, and everyone was waiting amid the bustle for the New Year to arrive.

The air was thick with dry, cold snow. A woman ran toward her from more than ten meters away, getting closer and closer, her hair blown messy by the wind, her face pale, her lips also pale, almost without blood.

Chi Xiaoman could not see her face very clearly.

But instinctively.

She walked toward her.

At first, slowly.

Then later, staggering.

Then she ran, clumsily, like a baby just learning to walk.

The woman ran toward her.

And she, too, stumbled forward.

In the deep night, Felicity Road was filled with the fragrance of food.

They were like two tiny droplets of water, carried together by the current into each other.

Chi Xiaoman didn’t know whether this was her hallucination.

She rushed forward and hugged the woman who ran up to her.

She hid herself in the woman’s arms, turning into a silkworm chrysalis wrapped in a cocoon, no longer wanting to emerge and face the world.

The woman’s body was cold, and her clothes were cold too. She was like a snowman conjured out of thin air. But she hugged her very hard, held her very tightly, and with a trembling breath, called her,

“Xiaoman.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’ll always be by your side.”

Chi Xiaoman then felt a great deal of relief, like when she had stood at the school gate as a child until every classmate had gone home for dinner, only to finally be hurriedly picked up by Wang Aimei, who had come rushing over while working in the fields.

She clung to Chen Tong, desperately shrinking herself, wanting to disappear from this world forever, yet she also missed the warmth of Chen Tong’s chest, and because of that, selfishly and in panic...

She arbitrarily ignored how long it had been since she and Chen Tong had seen each other, the unfamiliar scent on Chen Tong, her unfamiliar clothes, the unfamiliar length of her hair, the no-longer-familiar warmth, everything unfamiliar...

“Okay.” Buried against Chen Tong’s shoulder, Chi Xiaoman cried for a very long time.

Maybe that night had been too painful; later, whenever Chi Xiaoman recalled it, her memory became blurred.

In the large swathes of memory drowned by the black river, the only sufficiently clear fact was that at that moment, she was probably terrified, panicked, and uneasy to the extreme, so much so that she could not sensitively anticipate some fact that would come in the future—

Perhaps fate really was a river capable of holding many droplets. They were just the most ordinary drop among them, unable to decide which direction they would flow.

It wasn’t only Lang Lang who would suddenly leave. Perhaps not long after, Chen Tong might also flow toward a higher, farther place.

Or perhaps.

She simply wanted to pretend she didn’t know.

[Author’s Note]

On time for Little Neon’s fifty-seventh-day update [sunglasses][sunglasses][sunglasses]