Shen Wenta had been sitting guard by the bed for who knew how long.
He sat in that hard, unforgiving chair, both hands clasped over his knees. His eyes were half-lowered, his lashes casting a small shadow beneath them, making his expression difficult to read.
When Shen Yi woke, he saw him first.
His hair was disheveled. Without the carefully restrained, lofty façade he usually wore, he looked exhausted—almost fragile—in a way she rarely ever saw.
He seemed like an entirely different person from the one he usually was.
When Shen Yi opened her eyes, she felt dazed, as though she no longer knew what day—or even what year—it was.
Images from that other space still lingered in her mind.
Lanterns, long streets, outlines both strange and familiar, and the endless cycle of day and night stretching on for so long that she had lost count.
She had passed through so many days and nights—so many that she had nearly believed she would never make it back in this lifetime.
But now that she had returned, her tangled memories overlapped with the room and its lights, blurring together until she could no longer tell where she was.
Shen Yi stared at the ceiling for a long while before slowly confirming it: she was back.
She raised a hand and touched her forehead. It was cool, probably from the damp towel someone had repeatedly replaced.
When she sat up, her movements were sluggish. In her daze, she covered her face with both hands, her fingertips pressing against her eyelids as she slowly adjusted to the light.
Peering at him through the gaps between her fingers, Shen Yi spoke softly. “You look like a wreck, Shen Wenta.”
Her voice was teasing, as though she were trying to pry open a corner of the heavy atmosphere with something lighthearted.
The moment Shen Wenta heard her voice, he was abruptly dragged back from a hazy dream.
He blinked. At first, he looked somewhat confused, almost pitiful.
Then he shot to his feet.
The next second, he wrapped his arms tightly around her.
After the two of them had grown up, they rarely hugged anymore. Most of the time, their embraces were restrained and kept at a polite distance, lasting no more than three seconds.
But this time was different.
He held her with all his strength.
Shen Yi could feel him trembling.
Every muscle in his body was quivering uncontrollably beneath the force of some overwhelming emotion. He had suppressed it for far too long, and now that it had finally found an outlet, it was spilling out with startling clarity.
“You’re awake,” he murmured. After holding her and confirming that Shen Yi truly existed, he waited several seconds before adding, “It’s good that you’re awake.”
Where had Shen Wenta gotten so much strength?
Shen Yi had always teased him for having less fighting power than a goose. Even running into a dog on the street would turn into a life-or-death battle for him.
Yet now he was squeezing her so tightly she could barely breathe.
She frowned and instinctively tried to yank him away, but then she turned her head and saw his profile at such close range.
There were red veins in his beautiful eyes, and a thin sheen of moisture clung to his lashes.
Shen Yi froze for a moment before slowly realizing that her sudden collapse had probably frightened him.
The hand she had intended to use to push him away softened. Instead, she patted his back in a gesture of reassurance.
“I’m fine.”
She had no idea what was happening now, nor did she remember what had happened before. The long stretch of time had left Shen Yi with a strange, amnesiac sense of disorientation.
She tried again and again to recall what had happened before she crossed over.
She seemed to have been on a ship—or perhaps she had not.
The images were like scenes viewed through frosted glass: hazy, fragmented, impossible to piece together.
Shen Wenta could see her confusion too.
He slowly straightened and took half a step back.
His emotions had finally calmed somewhat, but the tension beneath that calm remained impossible to hide. The pallor of someone who had suddenly let all his strength drain away returned to his face as he said quietly, “You’ve been asleep for two days.”
Shen Yi blinked. “Oh. Only two days?!”
“Only?” His voice was slightly hoarse, and the corner of his eye twitched faintly at the word.
Shen Yi immediately shut her mouth.
She really was surprised.
From her perspective, the days and nights in that other space had felt like countless seasons stretching endlessly into the distance.
She had lived through so many days and nights—so many that she had thought she would never return in this lifetime.
And now Shen Wenta was telling her that she had only been asleep for two days.
Two days.
Clearly, Shen Wenta had stayed by her side for both of them.
His shirt was wrinkled, his hair so messy it looked as if he had run his hands through it countless times, and his face was pale to the point of seeming almost translucent.
Shen Yi’s heart gave a faint, painful tug. “You haven’t slept for two days?”
The afternoon sunlight slowly shifted across the curtains.
Like a golden river, it flowed gradually over Shen Wenta’s pale features, illuminating his expression with unusual clarity. He was silent for a moment before speaking in a dark, brooding tone.
“No. I slept once.”
“And I had two dreams.”
Time moved differently in the dreams.
Years passed in a single dream.
He saw her board the ship twice for his sake.
In the dream, the flowers she handed him seemed to retain the warmth they had held in that moment. The memory of her running back and walking toward him remained vivid as well.
But the second dream was a chaotic, otherworldly montage.
The images were broken and disjointed, flashing frame by frame, never revealing the full picture.
Every fragment left a searing mark in his memory.
In his recollection, there had always been a ghost girl by his side when he was young. She liked to take his instruments and practice music on them over and over.
And the music she played was awful.
Her pitch wandered, her bowing was stiff, and she often broke off mid-phrase. She played each piece so badly that it came apart completely.
He remembered her clutching one of the expensive instruments from his music room, the bow resting against the strings as she played the same passage again and again. Each attempt was a little better than the last.
But overall, it remained a complete disaster.
Shen Wenta lay in bed, burning with fever and drifting in and out of consciousness. Without opening his eyes, he would occasionally frown and mumble complaints that she had no musical talent.
So awful.
And every time they met again, Shen Wenta would forget that she existed.
Before forgetting Shen Yi each time, Shen Wenta would also ask her again and again what had happened to her.
He might be able to help.
Shen Yi would always smile at him and shake her head.
In the dream, the girl stood beside the window. An expensive instrument rested nearby, while her eyes were drenched in moonlight against the darkness.
An air of loneliness seemed ready to spill from her entire being.
Later—
Shen Wenta looked at her. “I dreamed about what happened with Hejing in my previous life.”
Shen Yi froze slightly.
His choice of words—previous life—sent a chill through her.
“You…”
Shen Wenta cut her off. “It isn’t hard to guess.”
Hejing.
Shen Wenta had once attended the same school where Shen Yi was currently studying.
“I first learned your name in Hejing,” he said.
In the dream—
or perhaps in those fragments of his previous life—
Shen Wenta had remembered certain things.
From the day it was founded, Hejing had always been rife with competition and the kind of bullying that could be found everywhere.
To survive there, one either had to be so inconspicuous that no one noticed them, or come from a wealthy enough family.
Shen Wenta belonged to the latter group. He rarely came to school, so he had never paid attention to what went on there.
Until that day.
He was in the classroom when several familiar-looking classmates gathered together, seemingly discussing something.
The moment Shen Wenta entered, they all fell silent. As one, they stood and greeted him with smiles.
“Wenta, what brings you to school? We were practically starting to think you weren’t coming back this semester.”
His tone was somewhat over-the-top, and he wore a beaming smile, his desire to curry favor plain for all to see.
Shen Wenta pulled out a chair and sat down, his posture relaxed and languid. His gaze swept impassively over the smiling faces gathered before him.
He ignored them.
The group racked their brains for something to talk about, moving from dull current affairs to the latest school gossip in an attempt to pique his interest.
Shen Wenta looked bored throughout. He leaned back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, offering only the occasional “Mm.”
Eventually, someone brought up the Song family.
“Doesn’t the Song family have two daughters? You’ve all met Song Yee, right? Their other daughter is pretty interesting too.”
“Whenever I see her, I can’t help wanting to bully her. And every time I’m done, I can’t help feeling happy.”
There was a sick, twisted delight in the speaker’s voice.
He had no real grudge against the girl. He simply thought it was fun to bully her.
“The other daughter? Song Yee?” Shen Wenta leaned back in his chair, tilting his chin slightly. “I don’t remember her.”
That was a name his so-called friends often mentioned, yet it had never once existed in Shen Wenta’s mind.
He had noticed, however, that the people around him brought up the girl named Song Yee with unusual frequency.
Shen Wenta had also realized that those plastic friends of his seemed particularly fond of her.
“Haha, you don’t come to school very often. Once you see her, you’ll like her too.”
Shen Wenta replied vaguely and casually, “Is that so?”
The others’ eyes lit up at once.
They mistakenly assumed that Shen Wenta was interested.
Immediately, like a group of people presenting treasured offerings, they eagerly placed all their gossip and malice before him.
“The Song family has two daughters. One was taken in from an orphanage after being lost when she was little. Xiaoyi seems to be the one who was raised by the family from birth.”
“Song Yi especially likes snatching things from Song Yee, and she loves framing her, too. Xiaoyi gets bullied to tears all the time.”
Song Yi had always been intensely hostile toward Song Yee, which had made the people around Song Yee especially resentful.
“We have to think of a way to teach her a lesson.”
A group of teenagers, mischievous at that reckless age, huddled together and whispered about what tricks they could use the next time they saw Song Yi.
Threats, mockery, smearing cake all over her, pulling her hair, taking humiliating pictures of her and spreading them everywhere—
Shen Wenta listened to their dull plans, giving them a brief, indifferent thought.
Then he said nothing.
The story should have ended there, after he heard it all.
He had merely been passing by. He had neither a reason nor any interest in getting involved.
But a few days later, Shen Wenta came to school again.
He had barely sat down when that group of plastic friends gathered around him. They still remembered what they had talked about with Shen Wenta before and could not wait to share what they had done in the meantime.
“Wenta, look. Isn’t this fun?”
Shen Wenta glanced at it.
It appeared to have taken place at a party, or perhaps some banquet, where the decorations were very simple.
A group of people whose faces could not be made out had smeared cake all over a girl. Cream covered her from head to toe, matting her hair, staining her face and clothes, and turning the entire dress into a chaotic mess.
If it had been a prank between friends, it could at most have been called a joke.
But clearly—
This was nothing more than a simple act of bullying.
“You can’t even see her face,” Shen Wenta said with his usual indifference, smiling faintly. “Does bullying her really make you that happy?”
“Haha, yeah. Do you want to see her clearly?”
“We have clear pictures too.”
They loved taking pictures of Song Yi, using them to ridicule her.
One image after another slid across the phone screen.
The girl was cornered against a wall, doused with water, her hair tie pulled away so that her disheveled hair fell across half her face as she sat with her head bowed in a corner—
Shen Wenta’s gaze paused for a moment on one of the pictures.
In it, the girl’s eyes were lowered, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks, her lips pressed tightly together.
She sat on the steps, curled into a small ball.
She overlapped with the shadow of someone in his memories.
