During Miao Jing’s first year of university, the school organized a Christmas party and talent show. She received many apples and small gifts.

December 24th, Christmas Eve, was Chen Yi’s twentieth birthday.

That was her last attempt to contact him. The number had long since been disconnected. In Teng City, everything was quiet. Everyone she could reach said Yi-ge had gone out to make his fortune, pursuing his big ambitions. Even Officer Zhou explained it this way, telling her not to worry and to focus on her studies.

Miao Jing calmly accepted this reality.

The signs of their diverging paths had been clear. If two people lose their connection in life, they’re destined to become strangers without common ground. Besides, after what was said that day, he had given her eighty thousand yuan at once—enough for her entire four years of university without needing to trouble him again.

Speaking of his good points, he was honorable; speaking of his bad points, he was just heartless toward her. In the end, they had no more attachments, each happily forgetting the other in this vast world, living their own unencumbered lives.

Miao Jing devoted herself to her own life. The ivory tower of a big city was truly a utopia—anyone could find soil suitable for their growth. At university, she remained outstanding: beautiful in appearance, diligent in her studies, cool and low-key yet independent. During winter and summer breaks, she either stayed at school to study or found company internships. She was a very practical and thoughtful girl. She had decent relationships at school, handled both life and studies with ease, and being at a technical school with its high ratio of male to female students, her brilliance couldn’t be hidden. She had no shortage of pursuers.

Of course, university was a time for romance. Among Miao Jing’s pursuers, many approached her or tried to win her favor. There were quite a few eye-catching male students, but Miao Jing remained unmoved. There was one from the Sports Academy—tall, handsome, masculine, and wild, with well-defined muscles and a beautiful physique, overflowing with testosterone, backed by a group of brothers. Her dormmates all approved of him, but Miao Jing wasn’t interested in this type, finding him merely ordinary.

There was, however, a bright and cheerful boy in her department who, due to sharing the same major and club activities with Miao Jing, had subtly shown his interest several times. Even after being rejected by Miao Jing, he remained gentlemanly and continued being friends with her naturally, proving himself to be a refreshingly straightforward person.

Chen Yi was like a stone sunk into the ocean, hidden in the vast depths of the sea. Miao Jing’s connection to Teng City grew increasingly faint. Contact with high school classmates gradually diminished, and news from Teng City became increasingly scarce until it completely stopped. Unless she deliberately tried to remember, Miao Jing felt she was gradually forgetting those memories, forgetting the hot small city and her past life.

Chen Yi spent those two years on the Yunnan border.

After Miao Jing left, he indeed felt unprecedented freedom and ease. No burdens, no baggage, no need to worry about someone at home, no one to distract him or cause him trouble, no arguments or cold wars. He even smiled more often in front of Bo Zi’s group of brothers—everyone could see his contentment.

He worked for Zhang Shi and Zhai Fengmao while secretly serving as Officer Zhou’s informant. It was an operation codenamed “708”—the police wanted to use Zhai Fengmao as a spearhead to clean up Teng City’s criminal forces. Using a demolition plot in Teng City’s city center as a pretext, various large and small matters ultimately sparked conflicts between different gang forces. Chen Yi stirred up plenty of trouble in the midst of it all. It was during this time that Bo Zi’s leg met with an accident while following Chen Yi.

After this uprising, many criminal forces collapsed, including the nightclub and Zhang Shi. Zhai Fengmao received a warning and escaped to his stronghold in the Golden Triangle, where he had his old gang and subordinates who had committed crimes and risked their lives for him in earlier years, managing his weapons and drug factories.

With the kingpin fleeing at the first sign of trouble, the operation was a partial failure. Half of Teng City’s guns and drugs came from Zhai Fengmao. Chen Yi had a deep conversation with Zhou Kang’an, and under the pretense of escaping capture, he fled to the Golden Triangle to seek refuge with Zhai Fengmao.

Life wasn’t easy, of course. The cunning Zhai Fengmao wouldn’t trust Chen Yi, attempting to kill him several times both openly and in secret. During that period, Chen Yi lived in darkness and destitution, surviving several life-and-death situations, making a living through underground gambling, selling blood, and other unsavory means. He struggled like this for over a year before Zhai Fengmao finally took him back under his wing, having him watch the main gate and run errands in exchange for meals.

Chen Yi stayed under Zhai Fengmao for a year, maintaining intermittent contact with Zhou Kang’an. In a joint police operation between Teng City and several other jurisdictions, they raided Zhai Fengmao’s stronghold. There was gunfire, and many of Zhai Fengmao’s men died. He hastily fled to Southeast Asia with two close followers, while Chen Yi quietly withdrew back to China.

By her junior year, Miao Jing had adapted to her new life.

Her delicate face had gradually shed its adolescent innocence, completely transforming into that of a young, beautiful city girl. Her thinking also matured day by day. She balanced classes and internships and still found time for self-improvement, shopping, leisure, studying in the library, or exercising and traveling. It was a sunny, carefree university life. Naturally, she and that boy from her department grew closer, becoming more than just friends.

The ginkgo leaves at school carpeted the ground, creating a rich golden scene like an oil painting. Combined with the dazzling sunshine, whether walking or cycling past, there was a dreamlike, beautiful, deep, and lasting beauty. Every face at school radiated vibrant beauty.

In such wonderful times and sunshine, Miao Jing went to the sports field to play tennis with her companions. Her body was soft and slender, wearing a white sports dress. Even in the simplest outfit, she looked youthful and charming.

Chen Yi visited her school once.

It was late autumn, and he was dressed lightly as if coming from the hot south. He wore all black, dirty and cheap—a T-shirt and jeans. His eyes carried a somewhat fierce wildness, and he wore a dusty baseball cap. In his hand, he carried a tattered jacket. From his tall, straight figure and agile gait, one could tell he was a very handsome young man.

He walked around the school, distantly watching the crowded sports field. He spotted her figure among the crowd at a glance. In such brilliant sunshine, those youthful, energetic figures, and carefree laughter—he didn’t need to get closer to sense the pure beauty of this life.

He sat in a secluded spot watching for a while, feeling very calm, also enjoying this sightseeing visit. He leisurely smoked a cigarette, and when it was finished, he stood up. His handsome brows slightly furrowed as he threw the cigarette butt on the ground and ground it heavily with his foot. Looking up at the distance again, he exhaled a spicy breath of smoke and calmly bid farewell: “Miao Jing, I’m leaving.”

No one knew that during those two-plus years of darkness, it was thoughts of her that had helped him survive.

Now, finally… neither of them needed the other anymore.

After taking several large strides toward the exit, he turned back, picked up the cigarette butt, and casually threw it into a nearby trash can. Walking to a quiet corner of the school, he stretched out his long arms, climbed over the wall, and left the school grounds.

Chen Yi returned to Teng City and began building his new life.

When snow fell in winter, Miao Jing got her first boyfriend.

Though called her first, she could never bring herself to call it her first love—her earliest, most innocent affection had already been given to another person.

Her boyfriend was the most perfect among her pursuers: gentle and gentlemanly, remembering her period dates, birthday, and various anniversaries, occasionally surprising her, both romantic and interesting. He took good care of everything about her, was considerate and attentive to her feelings in bed, and they did a hundred heart-fluttering little things that couples do—a model relationship.

Her boyfriend taught Miao Jing what love was, how to love, and how to care for and consider the other person. She also really liked being surrounded by love, truly feeling the atmosphere of another person’s feelings. She seemed to have fallen deeply in love, experiencing a kind of enlightening yet clumsy heart-flutter. She liked him more and more and became more and more dependent on him.

Everything seemed perfect—wasn’t this how her life should continue?

As their romantic relationship grew increasingly intimate, Miao Jing noticed something unusual when they began integrating into each other’s lives.

A harmonious family nurtures children with good personalities. Her boyfriend came from a very happy family and had a younger sister in middle school. She often heard him share family stories, show concern and care for his family members, and give small gifts on holidays and various anniversaries—they were a very warm and enviable family.

When chatting, they inevitably discussed her family situation and life experiences. While Miao Jing could be intimate with him, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about her past—she didn’t want anyone to know, didn’t want anyone to understand or intervene in her past, and only wanted to keep the past as her secret.

When her boyfriend video-called or talked on the phone with his sister, hearing the girl cheerfully calling him “brother” repeatedly, she would easily fall into a daze, feeling heartache, and irritation, wanting to avoid it. When the family indirectly reached out to their son’s girlfriend, expressing goodwill toward Miao Jing, she would become nervous and at a loss, completely unsure how to express her feelings.

Miao Jing also didn’t like frequent dating. Her living expenses and tuition mainly relied on her scholarships and work income. Unless for emergencies, she refused to touch the money in that bank card, let alone use it for eating, drinking, playing, traveling, or dating. Every time she saw the numbers at the ATM, she instinctively wanted to run away.

Spending the night with her boyfriend, during intimate moments of whispered sweet nothings, she could fully experience the tenderness and beauty, but sometimes vaguely wanted him to be more dominant, wanted him to hug her from behind while talking and kissing, wanted the spicy, strong taste of tobacco passed between their lips and tongues, wanted the feeling of an electric fan blowing, being drenched in sweat and completely exhausted.

Even though so much time had passed, even though she had never mentioned Chen Yi to anyone.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of him. Each time she imagined it, she would simulate a scene in her mind—the first moment of reunion. The time, place, and reason could vary endlessly: they might pass by each other as strangers, or stop to talk, what words would be said, what expressions and movements, who would be nearby, detailed down to like a freeze-frame in a movie.

After being together for a while, her boyfriend also felt that beneath her gentle, cool exterior lay coldness, distance, and awkwardness—she was unwilling to open up herself. He didn’t understand her at all.

During the Spring Festival, Miao Jing made up her mind to go home with her boyfriend for the New Year. When she truly experienced the family’s overwhelming enthusiasm and enviable harmony, watching the daily interactions between her boyfriend and his sister, she suddenly wanted to withdraw. She didn’t like crowds, didn’t like family intimacy, didn’t like this living atmosphere that made her feel such strong contrast.

She would occasionally miss that very quiet home—her cooking in the kitchen while he fixed chairs in the dining room, her standing on a ladder changing light bulbs while he angrily ordered her down, they curled up on the sofa eating cake and watching movies, her making him very salty noodles, her coldly arguing with him, his appearance when furious yet helpless.

She also had a brother, who was sometimes good and sometimes bad to her. They depended on each other for survival. He taught her how to make money, took her motorcycle racing, worked as a laborer with a broken leg to earn her tuition, picked her up after evening self-study, attended parent-teacher meetings for her, kissed her in his arms on a night of pouring rain, held her by the river and pecked her cheeks, gave her very vague feelings and very deep desire, bullied her, blocked her at the school gate, left her alone at home to fend for herself, kicked her out of the house, forgot her birthday, ignored her college entrance exam, always telling her to get lost, completely losing contact with her.

It was like delayed malaria, with recurring intermittent chills and fever. She relied on her immunity to fight the symptoms, but it was difficult to get rid of. Just when it seemed to be gradually improving, it suddenly worsened again, impossible to completely cure.

After that Spring Festival, she broke up with her boyfriend.

Deep in her body, there was always a voice calling her, calling her to return, calling her to look back.

Miao Jing attributed this condition to being too young and naive, having experienced too little of life. During her senior year internship, job hunting, and graduation, she truly entered the sophisticated world, got an enviable job and salary, and met more outstanding people and all kinds of strange and complex stories.

Perhaps the satisfaction brought by designer clothes and luxury handbags only equaled her picking up a dress from a roadside stall, with someone tall and thick-browed lazily saying this color looked best on her, her wearing that dress and riding on his motorcycle around the city. Perhaps at high-class dinner parties, those exquisite dishes and wines only equaled the boiled noodles she ate for half a month, the braised beef and large chicken legs he brought back from the braised food shop. When she took documents from well-dressed, spirited workplace elites for signing and saw the letters C.Y., she unconsciously read them as Chen Yi.

She found an even more excellent, more charming boyfriend whom she liked. She thought she would surely love Cen Ye madly and passionately, would be deeply trapped and unable to extricate herself, would have instantly ignitable passion and romance and satisfying worldly achievement, but would still hold a man’s body in moments of passion, obsessively and emotionally sucking the tobacco taste from his lips.

“You seem to like the smell of smoke?”

No.

She just liked that person.

She already had such a good present, why would she still think of that chaotic, entangled past?

Return to Teng City.

Either return to sink again or return to break away completely.

Miao Jing thought again and again, simulated, and hypothesized the story’s direction again and again. For this, she specifically spent money to have someone investigate some information about him—still in Teng City, with no marriage record.

The moment she stepped off the train onto Teng City’s soil, this city’s familiar atmosphere and humid heat waves brought her back to years ago, when she spent those calm, numb, painful days on this land.

When she returned to her former home and pried open that door, Miao Jing had already imagined all possible endings.

Finding her old belongings in her room, she held them and cried for a long time.

“You’re back?”

“Want some chicken soup? I’ll get you a bowl.”

She smiled softly.