Some people can never break free of their own chains, and yet they can still become the ones who set others free.

Aunt Zhou was like that. So was Zhou Haiyan.

They told me that at fourteen, I was still a child—what I needed wasn’t strength, but safety and protection.

So, I no longer had to get up before dawn and stay out until dark, dragging a woven sack around picking through trash. I could sleep in until six-thirty like everyone else, then eat a full breakfast, instead of worrying whether there’d be food for the next meal.

So, I no longer had to endure sudden beatings in the middle of the night. I could sleep soundly with a goodnight like everyone else, instead of spending the whole night on edge, bracing a table against the storage room door.

So, I no longer had to hide my face behind my hair on the way to school. I could tie my hair up in a high ponytail and skip along humming a tune like everyone else, instead of cowering, afraid of being dragged into the bathroom at any moment.

So, I no longer had to dread the last class of the day stretching on like a century. I could pack my bag early like everyone else, waiting for the teacher’s dismissal, then dash out of the classroom like a young bird eager to return to its nest—because I knew, this time, there was finally a light left on for me.

I never expected to be better than anyone else. I only ever wished to be a normal, ordinary person.

But they told me I could become someone truly excellent, that I could strive and fight and work for it.

They said, Tang Heqing, don’t be afraid. As long as you turn around, home is right there behind you.

Everything I’d been missing, they filled in for me, piece by piece.

I’d never once had a birthday, never heard someone say happy birthday to me, and didn’t even know the exact date of my own birth—the date on my ID card had just been made up on the spot. My mother never told me the real date either; she said she couldn’t remember it herself. All I knew was that I’d been born in 1999.

That day, Auntie gave me fourteen red envelopes, Zhou Haiyan took me to fourteen amusement parks, and together they made me a big cake with fourteen candles on top with their own hands.

Zhou Haiyan dabbed the first bit of cream on my forehead, saying he was giving me all his good luck for the coming year.

The moment I closed my eyes to make a wish, I heard “happy birthday” spoken for the fourteenth time by my ear.

They said the previous fourteen years were behind me now, and starting from the fifteenth, it would be a fresh beginning—if I wanted, any day at all from then on could be my birthday.

He qing hai yan.

The elders say that if two people are fated to each other, their names can be joined as one.

At fourteen, worried that fate might not run deep enough, Tang Heqing set her birthday on the same day as Zhou Haiyan’s:

—June 26th.

After that, we celebrated our birthdays together every year.

Auntie smiled so wide she couldn’t stop, saying she never imagined that even in middle age, she’d end up with both a son and a daughter.