My name is Song Sijun. My mother gave me this name. “Whether walking or sitting, I think of you.”
The line before that poem is, “At dawn I watch the sky; at dusk I watch the clouds.”
Muyun—that was my sister’s name.
I had never seen her. To me, she was nothing more than a symbol, a name, an empty definition.
But Mother was always talking about her. I had only just begun to remember things back then, so I didn’t have much of an impression of her. I only knew that Mother would always become sad because of her existence. When I was little, I would even feel jealous because of it.
Later, Father brought home a girl named Song Yee.
That day, my parents had a terrible argument.
From behind the wall, I heard Mother’s shrill voice cutting through the air. I didn’t understand what they were fighting about. All I could do was press a pillow over my ears, but the voices still seeped through, circling in my head and refusing to fade all night.
Under Mother’s fierce opposition, Father had no choice but to send the girl he had brought home away for a while.
From that day on, the atmosphere in our home changed.
Mother began to cry often. She would hold me on the sofa while tears fell one by one, warm and damp against my skin.
Whenever there was even the slightest clue about my sister, whom we had never met, Mother would pay extraordinary attention.
Whenever the phone rang, she would rush over to answer it, asking whether there was news of my sister.
It was as if Mother’s life had been split in two. One half consisted of the days she spent with me; the other hung suspended in the air, tied to someone who could never return.
I remember how gently Mother would stroke my cheek with her fingertips. She would look straight into my eyes and tell me—
In this world, only my sister and I are the closest to each other.
No one else matters.
Not Father. Not Mother.
Only her.
Only her.
I didn’t understand back then. I had no idea how much weight those words carried. But the almost-obsessive tone in Mother’s voice made me remember them completely, even at that young age.
…
The day Mother died, I hid in her room and refused to come out.
The door was locked from the inside. Father pounded on it from outside, his voice frantic.
I curled up inside the wardrobe, clutching the coat she wore most often. I buried my face in the fabric and desperately breathed in the traces of her scent that were already beginning to disappear.
The light inside the wardrobe was dim. Only a thin strip of brightness filtered through the crack in the door.
I held her clothes close and felt as though Mother were still there, merely gone out for a little while.
Before Mother died, she had left behind so many words.
Several diaries filled from cover to cover with writing, as well as recordings.
Father burned all of them afterward.
He said that the belongings of the dead had to be burned along with them so they wouldn’t leave anything behind to miss, and so they could reincarnate in peace.
All I felt was as though a piece of my heart had been dug out, leaving behind a hollow emptiness.
If even the things Mother had left behind disappeared, what would I have left?
After Mother’s death, Father brought the girl named Song Yee back home.
She had round eyes, and when she smiled, the corners of her mouth curved high. There were two dimples in her cheeks.
She would spread all her toys across the floor, pick them up one by one to show me, then tug me outside by the hand. She took me to stomp on the reflections in puddles and gather ginkgo leaves to press between the pages of books as bookmarks.
Song Yee was like a little sun—warm and bright, lighting up every place she went.
I thought that if my sister were here too, the two of them would probably be very much alike.
Until I was eight years old, when I finally met her.
That day, Father called me into the living room and told me that my sister was coming home.
I stood there, twisting the hem of my clothes between my fingers. My heart was beating so fast it felt as though it might leap straight out of my throat.
The door opened.
A girl walked in. She stood in the entryway, her gaze sweeping across the living room. There was a timidness about her. As someone entering such a large house for the first time, she could not hide the curiosity in her eyes—or the trace of wariness.
My heart slammed violently against my rib cage.
It was beating too fast. I had to open my mouth to breathe, just to ease the pressure.
A voice screamed inside my mind, nearly drowning out all reason.
Get closer to her. Get closer to her. Get closer to her.
My feet even moved forward half a step without me realizing it.
In that moment, I suddenly understood.
She was different from Song Yee.
At least, I had never reacted that way around Song Yee. Even my breathing became cautious, as though I were afraid she might reject me.
That day, I stood to Father’s left, while Song Yee stood to his right.
My sister seemed to notice our positions. Her eyes moved back and forth between us.
Then she asked who we were.
Song Yee stepped forward and greeted her cheerfully. Her voice was bright and clear, accompanied by a huge smile.
But my sister took a step back. A faint layer of wariness rose between her brows.
My heart clenched at once. My fingers, already twisted into the fabric of my clothes, curled even tighter, my nails digging into my palms.
I didn’t dare move forward. If I reached out as recklessly as Song Yee had, I was afraid my sister would shut me out with that same look.
From the day we first met, my sister decided that Song Yee and I were in league with each other.
So she hated me. She hated everything in this place.
I could only learn to stop seeking out Song Yee and instead begin thinking of every possible way to get closer to my sister.
Most of the time, she would allow me to approach her.
She wouldn’t chase me away, but neither would she take the initiative to speak to me.
I didn’t understand. If she loved me too, why wouldn’t she talk to me?
We were the relatives bound together by blood. Why did she reject me?
For a long time after she came home, our relationship remained distant.
That feeling of being separated by a thin veil left me restless and confused.
Until that banquet, when my sister deliberately made me stumble upon something.
The banquet hall was filled with clinking glasses and crisscrossing figures. The lights were dazzling, and the crystal chandelier illuminated the entire room as brightly as daylight. Every smile was coated in an exaggerated sheen.
I moved through the crowd, searching for her.
Then I pushed open a door and saw several figures overlapping as they surrounded her.
She stood in the middle with her head lowered. Several girls held up their phones to take pictures while the others laughed together.
In that instant, it felt as though icy water had been poured over me from head to toe. Every hair on my body stood on end.
I shouted her name. My voice cracked, coming out sharp and hoarse. I charged over and frantically ordered someone to throw them out.
Then I held her tightly, my arms wrapped firmly around her and her entire body enclosed against me. I could feel her back trembling.
I had never known what she had been going through behind my back.
And in that moment, I suddenly understood.
I understood why she had deliberately made me see this.
She was forcing me to choose.
Her—or Song Yee.
Her whole body was disheveled, yet there were no tears in her eyes. She only stared at me quietly.
I had never imagined that she would be treated like this. I cried so hard that my entire body trembled, raising the back of my hand to wipe away my tears in a frenzy, but the more I wiped, the more they fell. I drew breath after breath, my voice breaking as I apologized to her over and over, begging her to forgive me.
“I choose you.”
I told her.
“No matter who it is, I’ll choose you over them. Don’t push me away. Please.”
“We’re the ones bound together by blood. We’re accomplices.”
She seemed to have finally confirmed what was in my heart. After hesitating for two seconds, she raised her arms and, trembling, gently pulled me into her embrace.
It was only that day
that I truly came to possess my sister’s love.
……
I still remember the day she brought home a doll. The afternoon sunlight was warm and bright. She sat on the floor, holding the doll up as its two thin cloth arms dangled and swayed in her hands.
She smiled until her eyes curved into crescents and said, “This is our baby. We have to take good care of it.”
I froze for a moment, then nodded hard and answered, “I’ll protect our baby.”
My tone was so solemn, it sounded like a vow.
I truly meant it.
From that moment on, I drew a line in my heart.
I would be the one who stood in front.
So I learned to keep her safely behind me. She was a little taller than I was, but whenever a stranger approached, I would instinctively take half a step forward, hiding her shoulders behind my shadow.
Whenever those malicious looks came our way, I could feel her fingers tightening around the hem of my clothes. I would straighten my back even more and pretend I wasn’t afraid of anything.
The memories of home were always bitter, but having her there made them a little easier to bear.
More than once, I had gotten into furious arguments with Song Guanyan over the malice we suffered and the way he treated us.
Every time, the ending was the same.
I would stand in front of him with my face flushed, pouring out all our misfortunes in one breath.
My voice would grow hoarse, my fists clenched, my entire body trembling. Yet after listening to me, he would only look at me coldly, without even shifting his gaze.
He really was something.
He would simply sit there on the sofa, the expression on his face as calm as a frozen lake. Unmoved. Always watching me with that same composure.
As if we were the ones who had gone mad.
I thought—
Perhaps that was how he had looked at Mom back then, too.
I remembered the voices that had drifted through the walls. I remembered the warm touch of Mom’s tears landing on the back of my hand as she held me on the sofa.
Back then, she had also stood alone in front of him, pouring out all her emotions, only for him to stare back at her with that same icy indifference.
Song Guanyan was a cold man.
He couldn’t understand Mom’s desperation, nor could he understand our tears.
To him, they were nothing more than irrational, inappropriate displays of emotion.
Song Guanyan didn’t truly love Song Yee all that much.
He simply couldn’t understand the circumstances we were in.
He had the servants who liked to stir up trouble and gossip warned, punished, or dismissed. He simply couldn’t imagine why such unreasonable people existed around us. The idea that someone might target another person for no reason at all made no sense to him. Faced with such an illogical reality, he could only assume that we were making a mountain out of a molehill and throwing tantrums for no reason.
But Song Yee was genuinely useful to him.
Whenever Song Guanyan attended banquets or events, bringing this girl along always made things twice as easy.
It was almost as if she possessed some kind of mysterious magic.
Song Guanyan took her everywhere, as though she were a convenient tool—one that made everything especially effortless.
I hated him.
I hated that detached calm of his, the way he always remained an outsider to everything.
More than once, I had lowered my head and tightened my grip around the knife in my hand.
I had tried all kinds of ways to kill the source of it all.
Yet fate played its cruel games, and every attempt failed for one reason or another.
Either I was too late, or some unexpected event interrupted me.
Whenever I was just about to reach him, something would lightly push me back, returning me to where I had started.
That helplessness drove me to despair.
……
I often felt sad because my sister was sad. Whenever she cried, my chest would fill with water, until my entire body was submerged in it and I could no longer breathe.
Pain coiled around me.
Endless. Relentless.
From the moment she pulled me into her arms that day, from the moment our lives became bound together, my life had held no other meaning.
I wanted nothing else.
Not the future.
Not anything at all.
All the wild, fanciful images that had once circled through my childhood mind had turned to ash.
I wanted her to be happy.
But I knew better than anyone that there was only so much a child in their teens could do. This world seemed to be controlled by an unseen hand. Every story connected to Song Yee became strange and unpredictable, slipping beyond anyone’s control.
And Song Guanyan could never understand the circumstances we were in.
He was too calm. Until he had suffered a pain deep enough to carve itself into his bones, he would never turn back, nor would he admit that he had been wrong.
That was a common failing among those in power.
He stood high above everything, looking down at all the emotions surging beneath his feet as though they were nothing more than mist.
I wondered—
Would my death finally make him see clearly?
The thought lingered in my mind for a long time, like a black bird perched on my windowsill every day.
It asked me: If you turned yourself to ash, could you pave a smoother road for her future?
I didn’t know.
But it was worth a try.
……
The day before I died, I met the sister who was said to have come from the future.
By the time she appeared before me, the sky outside the window had already darkened.
She stood in that faint, fading light. Her features were blurred by the memories I held of her, gentle as a breeze in late spring.
My eyes burned with tears, yet I still couldn’t believe it.
She said she had come from the future.
Then—I asked her urgently, “Are you happy in the future?”
She answered that she was living very well.
I threw myself at her in a panic and hugged her tightly, wrapping my arms around her back and burying my face in the hollow of her neck. I wished I could remain there forever.
But her existence was always like a fantasy from a fairy tale.
When the midnight bells rang, my memories would be erased along with them.
All that remained around my neck was a small black box. I stood there in confusion, unable to remember what I had been doing moments ago.
Soon, the door opened.
My sister walked in.
She eagerly began talking to me about the future and what lay ahead, about boundless dreams and all the things she hoped for.
She even asked me what I wanted to do in the future, and what I wanted for myself.
I stared at her in a daze, watching the curve of her lips as she smiled. I swallowed back all my tears, then couldn’t stop myself from laughing as I answered her softly:
“I think all I’ve ever wanted was you.”
She immediately said, “That’s so cheesy.”
I embraced her in silence.
I wanted to say, It’s not cheesy at all.
What about you, Sis?
I thought,
I would live and die for you.
……
After my death, my consciousness drifted and sank, with nowhere to go. I floated through the endless void for a very, very long time.
Then a voice rose from the depths of the chaos, sending out ripples of clear, ringing sound.
【If you were given one chance to choose, would you go to the orphanage and bring her home?】
The thought of “yes” lit up briefly in my consciousness, only to be extinguished by me.
My answer was: No.
I thought that if there were a second chance, she should be free to go wherever she wanted. Whether the family she went to was rich or poor, she should be free.
She could live well anywhere. She didn’t have to be trapped in the Song family.
And so the world’s consciousness erased my earliest memories, making me miss the chance to find her at the orphanage right away.
I didn’t want to disturb her.
Neither I nor Song Guanyan had the right to.
But if one day we met again, I thought I still wouldn’t be able to stop my tears.
My thoughts spiraled out of control as I wondered what Shen Xun’s family would be like. Would her new parents treat her well? Would she still be used to sitting alone in a corner, keeping the words “It doesn’t matter” constantly on her lips?
Until I truly met them.
Wen Ya was entirely different from my mother. The only thing they had in common was that they both spoke with the gentle softness of spring rain.
Shen Sixing, however, shared certain qualities with Song Guanyan:
an emotional detachment and an extreme calmness.
But I think
they were different after all.
That birthday was the first time I stayed at Shen Xun’s home and celebrated an entire birthday there.
Wen Ya took pictures of us with her camera.
In that moment when my sister and I looked at each other,
she saw me in her eyes.
And I saw her as she truly was—completely wrapped in love.
The dancing birthday candles flickered in my eyes, wavering between light and shadow.
At last, she could have a better tomorrow and a brighter future, surrounded by blessings and laughter on every birthday, no longer forced to live so cautiously in someone else’s shadow.
My sister had found a place to belong.
And I should go home alone now.
