My greatest achievement of going abroad in the past few years was learning to smoke.

  I learned to smoke only because in times of anxiety or desperation, I needed something to fill in the gaps.

  In those days, my smoking addiction was extremely bad. It was a form of spiritual food for me. Whether it was to numb myself or to indulge myself, at least it filled the gap in my heart.

  The sound of the lighter being lit seemed exceptionally loud and clear in the silence of the night.

  I took a deep drag, and then a wisp of smoke escaped from the tip of my nose. From the corner of my eye, I inadvertently saw a shadow that was cast diagonally on the ground. I followed the shadow and looked up. Then I met with a pair of steel cold eyes that were as deep as the abyss, I instantly froze on the spot, stunned and at a loss.

  Dongyu stood motionless under the streetlamp. His tall figure became the focal point of my vision, and his handsome face was made even paler under the light.

  In my memory, he always had a gentle and refined temperament, only now it had developed an icy edge. His cold and dark eyes were focused on me as he stood there in silence. His gaze studied me from head to toe till it finally landed on the glowing cigarette butt between my fingers.

  His sudden appearance caught me off guard. I hadn’t even thought about how I was going to finally confront him.

  I nervously tossed away the cigarette butt in my hand and tried to act like nothing had happened. It felt exactly like it did whenever I was caught red-handed doing something I shouldn’t have, in my younger days.

  He only looked at me silently, as though in this quiet window of time he was observing the eight years that had passed.

  I felt like he was a stranger now. I didn’t recognize him anymore. If it weren’t for those eyes that were still exactly the way they were in my memory, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to recognize him at the first glance, that this man was Dongyu, whom I had been yearning for.

  Dongyu, the name that evoked joy and sorrow, the man I must not love.

  He was the subject I’d been deliberating for the last eight years, and still it remained a code I could not crack.

  But…


  Life is unfair.

  I knew it was impossible between us.

  I came to this world all alone, I was given hope and tenderness, then the bloody reality cut me into pieces like the blade of a sharp knife.

  It just happened that Dongyu was my only pillar of support in the whole wide world.

  He had occupied almost all of my childhood memories.

  Apart from him, who else could I rely on and who else could I cling on to.

  If he hadn’t occupied such a significant part of my life, I wouldn’t have fallen into this doomed fate.

  I stood there uneasily, trembling, my hands behind my back, staring down at my toes.

  I bit my lip out of habit. This way, it wouldn’t look like my lips were trembling.

  I couldn’t bring myself to face him as casually as I had faced Su Qi. I’d even thought of running away from here, and going back to my rental apartment in Los Angeles, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell.

  However, Dongyu’s gaze never left my face. It was as though he was frozen or time had frozen. He just looked at me silently, as if he was committing every detail that was me, to his memory, carving them into his bones.

  After a long while, he finally spoke in that familiar tone, “Xiachun.”


  How many times in my dreams had I heard him call my name this way?