Li Shengran first realized how cold Beijing winters could be the night she dragged a twenty-eight-inch suitcase out of her boyfriend’s apartment in wretched defeat — and the corner of the case knocked against her ankle on the way down the steps, making her inhale sharply from the pain.

Feeling somewhat petulant, she dropped the suitcase to one side, sat down on the icy front steps, and lit a cigarette. Halfway through it, Li Shengran looked back at the building not far away — all dark, the cold air pressing in without stop, that one light still burning.

No one had come running after her.

Li Shengran’s eyes turned red in an instant.

She took out her phone, thumb hovering over Ban Sheng’s number. Instinctively she wanted to call him — she had so much hurt she wanted to tell her older brother: that her ex-boyfriend was a despicable person, that after so many years together she had only found out he had gotten back with his first love and that she had been a stand-in all along, kept around only because Li Shengran resembled that girl enough to pass.

But now, she had been cut out of the picture.

The motion froze.

Ban Sheng probably wasn’t going to pick up her calls anymore.

Li Shengran sat there smoking, and all of a sudden a great many things came flooding back. She was eleven years old when she was told she was the illegitimate daughter of the Chairman of the Li Group.

When her mother brought her through the door, it was only just after Li Yiran’s mother’s seventh-day memorial. Li Yiran received their arrival without any particular reaction, wearing the look of someone courteous and smiling to everyone — that polished, pleasant facade he put on for the world.

Li Shengran only learned later that it was a mask.

In truth, Li Yiran had hated the two of them — her mother and her — to the core.

Back then, in the face of Li Yiran’s provocations, Li Shengran’s approach was to be accommodating and keep a low profile.

She understood that she was the outsider here. Her mother had also been the one to shatter his family’s happiness. So, when it came to Li Yiran’s endless bullying, she consistently chose to endure.

The worst incident happened at a shooting range near the house. Li Yiran was playing at target practice, and he made her stand underneath the target like a living bull’s-eye. Somehow he had gotten hold of a compact disc.

The sun was scorching. Li Shengran remembered sweating from the heat while standing out there in the sun, yet cold sweat was pouring down her back from sheer terror.

Li Yiran crouched down lazily, ground the disc against the concrete until it was sharp and pointed, then narrowed one eye and aimed it as if to send it flying at her.

And the angle of his arm was unmistakably aimed at her body.

Li Shengran’s mind went completely blank. She was shaking. Just as she thought she had no possible way to escape what was coming, a voice cut in — flat and without a trace of emotion:

“Li Yiran. Let’s go.”

Li Yiran snapped back as if returning to his senses, let out a click of his tongue, tossed the disc aside, picked up his water bottle from the ground, and walked away alongside another young man.

After they left, Li Shengran could hold on no longer. She sank to her knees on the grass and cried in small, silent sounds.

She was still shaking all over with fright when, through the haze of fear, she saw the young man who had just spoken — lean and tall, with sharp, striking features — glance back at her.

In that glance, Li Shengran read concern.

But many years later, she would understand: that glance had been pity.

As time went on, she learned to survive in this tangle of a family. She also, at some point she could no longer pinpoint, had a complete and total falling-out with Li Yiran and stopped being afraid of him — even going so far as to quietly oppose him, openly and in small ways.

Li Shengran’s first love came early. She wasn’t sure whether it was because Ban Sheng was the only person in that household who had ever been kind to her, or whether it was the time she had been caught hanging around with older boys from a higher grade and Ban Sheng had spoken up and scolded her sharply on the spot.

Li Shengran remembered asking him once, half-testing: “Brother, what do you like?”

“Butterflies.” Ban Sheng answered without a second’s thought.

She was about to ask more, but Ban Sheng saw Li Yiran come out, immediately stubbed out his cigarette, and the two of them went off to play ball together.

She later gave herself an English name: Vany. In Greek, it meant butterfly. No one knew what the name meant. She had hoped so much that Ban Sheng would notice, but he never once brought it up.

Looking back now, he had never given it a second thought.

When she finally confessed to her older brother, she was being incredibly foolish — she was in middle school, and back then everyone was making paper cranes. Proud as she was, she had carefully and painstakingly folded five hundred and twenty paper cranes and put them in a glass jar.

She went to find him on Christmas. Ban Sheng was playing pool at a pool hall — he handed his cue to the person next to him and walked Li Shengran straight outside.

The two of them stood in the alley behind the shop. Li Shengran was nervous and flustered, afraid he would turn her down.

Ban Sheng unwrapped a preserved plum candy and tossed it in his mouth, glanced briefly at the glass jar in her arms, and spoke before she could say anything:

“I like someone.”

Li Shengran was stricken in an instant, tears spilling over: “Who? Where is she? You’re not fooling me — how come I’ve never seen you with any other girl?”

The night was pitch-black. Li Shengran couldn’t make out his expression, but she remembered that Ban Sheng crunched the candy between his teeth, dropped his head, and for just a moment his voice dipped into something lost, and he gave a small laugh:

“I don’t know where she is either.”

Li Shengran, red-eyed and refusing to give up, asked: “Then if you can’t find her, will you just never date anyone?”

“Mm.” Ban Sheng gave a low, quiet sound of agreement.

Li Shengran’s first love came fast. She wasn’t sure it faded quickly — or quickly enough.

She only knew that on that occasion, Ban Sheng had, for once, told her the truth — and it was the truth about someone else. So she gave up, stepped back into the role of a good friend who might as well have been a sibling, and left it at that.

Since she couldn’t have him, she would hope he found the very best.

She held onto that feeling as the two of them went on, living side by side, until high school — when a transfer student arrived in the class. Her name was Lin Weixia.

Lin Weixia was very pretty, with the bearing of someone who had been raised on fine arts, yet her family was desperately poor. Strangely, Liu Sijia had taken up with her anyway. Li Shengran found this baffling.

But when she saw the butterfly-shaped birthmark at the corner of Lin Weixia’s eye, Li Shengran went still. In a flash of lightning, something came to her.

Afraid that Lin Weixia was the person Ban Sheng had feelings for, Li Shengran made a point of putting her in her place from the very start.

The result was that Ban Sheng came looking for her and told her to leave Lin Weixia alone and get along with her properly. Afraid of making her brother angry, Li Shengran still swallowed her pride and invited Lin Weixia to her birthday gathering as an olive branch.

But some things Li Shengran never forgot.

Lin Weixia had made quite a splash joining the new class, and then there was that conflict during the morning assembly over her hair — and Liu Sijia had put Li Shengran in a deeply embarrassing position in front of everyone on the spot. Li Shengran ended up isolated because of it.

She kept score of that.

Li Shengran had always been one to repay a grudge, and was particularly skilled at biding her time.

Eventually Li Shengran happened to learn that Lin Weixia kept her hair at waist length to hide the fact that she had a hearing impairment and wore a hearing aid — and so she went and found Zheng Zhaoxing, said a few things to provoke him, and also lied to him, saying that Liu Sijia had always despised Lin Weixia.

Predictably, Zheng Zhaoxing — the fool — went and yanked Lin Weixia’s hearing aid right out in front of everyone. He thought that by listening to Li Shengran and doing this, Liu Sijia would like him.

But Li Shengran hadn’t anticipated things spiraling so out of control. Ban Sheng ended up getting into a fight over it.

Li Shengran had also assumed Liu Sijia would finally see Lin Weixia for what she was — see through the supposed facade of her — but they ended up as close as ever.

What a pity that three people could never all be on the same side. During the falling-out between Liu Sijia and Lin Weixia, Li Shengran played it very cleverly: she chose no side, participated in none of the bullying. Every time something happened, she was either doing someone’s nails, discussing a magazine, or eating lunch with others.

Every single time, Li Shengran successfully made herself invisible.

So, in Ban Sheng’s eyes, she was at worst spoiled and willful — but had never been involved in anything bad. The one exception was when she had splashed water at Lin Weixia that time; he had apparently been furious, and she had been lumped in with the rest. But afterward, when Ban Sheng looked into it again, he found she had done nothing.

And so she could stay by Ban Sheng’s side.

People always said Li Shengran was obsessed with her older brother, that she only listened to Ban Sheng — and that was true. She felt her brother deserved the very best. And so the things that happened before the college entrance exam, involving Lin Weixia, had made Li Shengran furious to the core.

Later, Ban Sheng was sent to America, and at the time, almost no one came to see him. Li Shengran watched in person as he descended into a sunken, dissolute way of living.

Her heart ached right along with it.

When she went to see him again, Li Shengran had been relentlessly pursued by his roommate for several months, and the two of them had gotten together. Afterward, Li Shengran almost never heard Ban Sheng mention Lin Weixia’s name while they were abroad, and she assumed he had forgotten her.

But once, the three of them were eating dinner together when Lin Weixia called. She had said something along the lines of: “I don’t like you.” At the time, Ban Sheng had just finished a treatment session and was down to nothing but sharp bones, his face ashen. He coughed with difficulty and said:

“But I love you.”

How could Lin Weixia say something like that. Li Shengran was sitting right there and nearly cried from rage. She vowed then and there — if she ever ran into Lin Weixia again, she would make her feel exactly how much suffering Ban Sheng had been through at the time.

Later, when they ran into each other in the private room, Li Shengran watched Ban Sheng put on a mask of total indifference on the surface — cold as could be — and yet all it took was Lin Weixia getting a bone anchor, and that act fell apart completely. His emotions surged; his eyes went red; he walked out of there with Lin Weixia then and there.

Li Shengran couldn’t stand watching him keep losing. So she sent Ban Sheng a text lying to him, saying his father had texted her and needed to reach him.

She knew exactly what Ban Sheng cared about most.

Sure enough — by the time Li Shengran got downstairs, Ban Sheng had already left Lin Weixia behind and walked off with Li Shengran under the umbrella. But after they had been walking side by side for only a short while, Ban Sheng suddenly stopped, handed the umbrella to her, and said quietly:

“Go back on your own.”

And then Ban Sheng disappeared alone into the dark of the night, cigarette in hand, his figure lit by the streetlight — solitary and desolate.

Later still, Li Shengran had in fact tested Lin Weixia’s sincerity, and confirmed that she genuinely loved Ban Sheng. Knowing that Ban Sheng truly could not do without this one person, she had gone ahead and told Lin Weixia the whole truth about everything.

What Li Shengran hadn’t expected was that after everything had been resolved, the two of them would run into someone they should never have had to see again — out on the street.

That day, Li Shengran had gotten into some trouble at school, had no one to help her, and it was the kind of thing only Ban Sheng could handle. So she’d gone looking for him. As the two of them were passing a barbecue stall, Li Shengran spotted Zheng Zhaoxing.

She had heard classmates mention that after Zheng Zhaoxing got out, his family had spent money to get him into a low-tier university in the north where he spent his time coasting by. She hadn’t thought he’d be in Jingbei too.

Zheng Zhaoxing hadn’t changed much from before — still in a leather jacket, draped in various thick chains, fingers loaded with rings, coarse and garish.

He had clearly spotted them as well. When his eyes met Li Shengran’s, she instinctively flinched and half-hid behind Ban Sheng.

When old schoolmates run into each other, Zheng Zhaoxing moved to block their path. Ban Sheng put the cigarette between his lips and raised his chin at him — gesturing toward a spot not far away where they could talk.

Zheng Zhaoxing gave her a meaningful look.

Li Shengran stayed put, not knowing how long they talked. They seemed to have arrived at some kind of agreement. Li Shengran saw Ban Sheng press the cigarette out against a leaf, burning a hole through it, and from a distance came a low murmur of words:

“Don’t go after her again. Don’t threaten her.”

Li Shengran knew that “her” referred to Lin Weixia.

She waited a little longer. The longer the wait, the more uneasy she became. Finally, the thing she had been dreading happened.

Zheng Zhaoxing told Ban Sheng what had actually happened the day the hearing aid was ripped out back in high school.

After hearing this, Ban Sheng gave no reaction whatsoever. After a long pause, he turned and gave Li Shengran a long, silent look.

That look made her heart clench — and filled her with fear.

After Zheng Zhaoxing left, Li Shengran stood where she was. A wind blew in — cold. Her fingernails pressed unconsciously into her palms. She opened her mouth:

“Brother—”

“Don’t come looking for me again.” Ban Sheng’s gaze stayed on her for less than a second before he withdrew it entirely.

At first she thought Ban Sheng was only angry in the moment. But eventually Li Shengran came to see that he was genuinely drawing a line.

Ban Sheng also stopped letting her reach him.

The matter she had needed help with — he never handled it. He left it to sort itself out.

Until now. The sound of a distant horn pulled Li Shengran back to the present. She sniffled, tossed the cigarette butt into a rubbish bin, and walked away dragging her suitcase.

In the dead of night, Li Shengran dragged her suitcase along the road for nearly half an hour. Her head was a mess, and she felt quite miserable.

She didn’t want to hail a cab to a hotel. She just wanted to keep walking and walking down this road with no end in sight.

The further she went, the more she realized she was walking through a tunnel, dragging her case along in a daze. Without warning, a thunderous roar came — out of nowhere, a group of motorcycles came tearing through, and one of them snatched the earring from her ear, the hook tearing straight through the flesh, blood gushing instantly.

“Ah— ah—”

A shriek that tore through the night, and then tears. By the time the group had grabbed her jewelry and made off with it, Li Shengran didn’t even register when they had gone. She went down hard onto the ground, in a complete wreck.

The phone that had fallen with her on the ground began to buzz. Li Shengran forced herself to answer it. From the other end of the line came the familiar, vicious laughter of Zheng Zhaoxing:

“I took the fall for you for so many years — how’s that little taste of suffering treating you?”

“Get out of my life.” Li Shengran ground the words out through clenched teeth.

After she hung up, tears and snot mingled on her face. She reached out with a trembling hand and dialed Ban Sheng’s number. The wind was still, the tunnel empty and cold. Her heart pulled tight around itself — and at last the call connected.

“Hello, brother, I—” Li Shengran started, her voice raw.

Ban Sheng recognized her voice and cut in, ice-cold:

“Don’t call again.”

My ear is bleeding badly, it hurts so much, can you take me to the hospital — that second half of the sentence lodged in her throat. Then Li Shengran heard a soft, warm female voice from his end of the line asking: “Who is it?”

Li Shengran heard the man’s voice go low and cold and merciless:

“Spam call.”

Then he ended the call. Li Shengran refused to give up and tried again — Ban Sheng had already blocked her number.

Li Shengran gave a cold laugh, lay back on the filthy concrete ground, and hurled her phone against the tunnel wall. It shattered into pieces.

The ear wouldn’t stop bleeding. The pain made it hard to breathe — she felt like she might die from it. Li Shengran had never allowed herself to be this wretched. The expensive clothes were soaked through with blackened mud. The makeup was ruined, tears streaming steadily from the corners of her eyes.

She felt that whether she was in the story of her ex-boyfriend or in the life of Ban Sheng —

She had always been the one who didn’t matter. Not the main character. Just a disposable third-party figure standing to one side.