From a young age, Ban Sheng had a cold and solitary temperament, but his mind was sharp and quick — the kind that stood out in any group. Teachers at school liked him, and other parents often held him up as a comparison to their own children.

Over time, nobody wanted to be his friend. He was quietly excluded.

Though the strong always drift at the edges of the crowd, Ban Sheng had not a single friend at school, and since Li Yiran and Cheng Wusuan attended a different school, Ban Sheng was, in the end, a little lonely.

What he did have was a happy family. His parents had a warm and loving marriage — they had fallen in love at university, graduated and started a business together. His father, with help from his wife’s family, secured his first significant capital, and the business grew steadily from there. There was no infidelity, no betrayal — none of the drama that plays out in television dramas.

Every morning before leaving for work, his father would press a kiss to his mother’s forehead. No matter how late he came home, he would always remember to bring back her favorite sugar-roasted chestnuts.

The one difficult moment had been his mother’s difficult labor when she gave birth to Ban Sheng — a significant hemorrhage that took a long and fraught process to survive. But perhaps because of it, the couple loved Ban Sheng all the more.

Song Zhili regarded this child as the whole of her existence.

One afternoon at school, Ban Sheng came out of his mathematics gifted class and went back to his homeroom — to find it completely empty. Another teacher told him that the whole class had gone with their teacher on a camping trip to stargaze.

Not one person had told Ban Sheng.

Ban Sheng picked up his bag and walked home, kicking at pebbles along the way. Summer in Nanjiang was long and oppressively humid, with soft clouds tumbling overhead — like heaps of cream cake in misshapen forms.

Walking along the pavement, Ban Sheng passed a row of fortune-tellers fanning themselves and calling out to passersby: Physiognomy readings — twenty yuan a session.

“Little boy,” one old man said, fanning himself with a leisurely smile, “you have the face of a star of calamity. Shall I help you dispel it?”

Ban Sheng gave him a cold look and kept walking.

At the far end of the avenue of palm trees, a man in his forties sat on the ground. He was very thin, his skin sallow, wearing a pair of glasses — a bookish-looking figure, his clothes reasonably neat. In front of him was a white sign, written on in marker: Sudoku companion — ten yuan per game.

His price was cheaper than the others, and still no one came.

Ban Sheng glanced at the sky — it was still early. He stopped, and began playing Sudoku with the middle-aged man. The man was quiet by nature, content to simply play without talking.

Ban Sheng lost three games in a row at the start, and only won one in the end. Stung but quietly exhilarated, he felt the thrill of playing against someone genuinely skilled.

By the end, they had played eight games. Ban Sheng pulled out a hundred-yuan bill and held it out. The man took it, then fished a fistful of worn change from his pocket — some coins even had a faint smell of metal on them — and began counting it out for change, head bent.

The middle-aged man was stooped. Ban Sheng noticed the collar of his blue shirt, worn through at the back to a dark line, and the grey trousers he wore, laundered to near-white. Something stirred in him, and he said:

“Keep it.”

“Will you be here on Friday?” Ban Sheng continued.

The middle-aged man put away his white sign and answered: “If you come looking, I’ll be here.”

Ban Sheng liked that answer very much — as if the other person had placed a kind of trust in him. He replied with a quiet “alright” and went home.

School was lonely, but Ban Sheng was not troubled by it. He often came to the palm-tree avenue after school to play Sudoku with this middle-aged man. Over time, they became friends.

Seeing how thin he was, and how often he had nothing to eat, Ban Sheng would bring bread when he came to find him — or share whatever packed lunch he had with him.

Once they became friends, they no longer met at the palm-tree avenue. The middle-aged man brought Ban Sheng to his home.

The man’s home was tucked away at the deepest end of a village that had been absorbed into the city — a low, run-down blue factory building, hidden from view. He had little income and no friends or neighbors.

The space was small — about twenty-five square meters — with the sitting area and bedroom opening into each other. The moment you walked in, the heat was stifling. A green rusted fan turned and rattled. The plaster on the walls was peeling, the whole place damp and airless.

The apartment had a single window. Outside was a pond and a wide spread of banana trees. Hanging by the window was a string of beautiful purple wind chimes, which rang out clearly whenever a breeze passed through.

“What beautiful wind chimes,” Ban Sheng said.

The middle-aged man let out a quiet laugh and said, obliquely: “Those are my signal — that I’ve made a new friend.”

Ban Sheng was only ten years old then, and didn’t understand what those words meant. As he grew older and thought back on them, they would make his skin crawl every time.

Ban Sheng had spent a long time in Nanjiang, and he had grown used to high-rises and the office buildings of the CBD — this was the first time he realized Nanjiang contained places like this.

The apartment, at least, was kept clean. There were no unwashed dishes in the sink, the bedding was folded neatly, and the room held many books on physics and mathematics.

Once they grew comfortable with each other, they didn’t just play Sudoku — they played Chinese chess together as well. The middle-aged man taught him a great many things, though at Ban Sheng’s age much of it was dense and hard to grasp. But he loved a challenge.

After each game of chess, they would talk. The middle-aged man taught Ban Sheng to keep his feelings from showing on his face. He lit a cigarette, seemed to remember something, and continued — his eyes taking on a cold, sharp gleam:

“If you encounter something unjust — you repay it tenfold.”

Ban Sheng nodded, not entirely understanding, and eventually left.

On Ban Sheng’s birthday, he finished lunch at noon and picked up a cake to take out. His mother called after him: “Where are you going?”

“It’s my birthday — I want to share the cake with a friend.” Ban Sheng said it seriously.

Song Zhili objected at once, frowning. “Ah Sheng, he’s practically homeless. Why do you keep spending time with someone like that? Don’t go today.”

Ban Sheng was irritated at her words about his friend. “He’s not homeless. He’s my friend. And I think he’s quite lonely — no family, no friends. That’s why I want to give him a piece of cake today.”

That was Ban Sheng — cold on the outside, deeply warm at the core. From a young age he had enormous compassion for people and animals alike. His parents had always taught him to be honest, and to carry goodwill toward others.

Song Zhili was left without a word to say in response. All she managed was: “Be back before evening then, and I’ll come get you. Once your father finishes up, we’ll take you out to the cinema for your birthday.”

“Alright.”

Ban Sheng arrived at the middle-aged man’s home with the cake. The man was surprised for a moment, but welcomed him in. He made Ban Sheng a cup of milk tea and smiled, wishing him a happy birthday.

As dusk deepened, the sky turned a strangely lurid and beautiful color. Song Zhili, unable to say why, grew unsettled when her son still hadn’t come home. A persistent, nameless worry tugged at her. She picked up the car keys and went out.

She arrived at the iron gate, the blue paint long since flaking away, and knocked. The door creaked open. The thin man pushed his glasses up and looked at her without speaking.

Song Zhili managed a faint smile. “Hello. I’ve come to take my son home.”

The thin middle-aged man invited her inside. Song Zhili, in a white mermaid-style dress, hair loose over her shoulders — beautiful and clearly out of place here in every way.

She walked in with her handbag, looking around the room. A breeze came through, and the purple wind chimes by the window rang softly.

The middle-aged man sat down at a small low table and prepared her tea with great care, his manner perfectly polite: “Please, have some tea.”

Song Zhili didn’t take it. She moved around the room, asking in a cool voice: “Where is my son? And going forward — please keep your distance from him. Otherwise, I’ll——”

“You’ll what?” A voice came — cold, and wrong.

A cup of scalding tea flew past her ear and hit the wall.

Song Zhili’s heart seized. She stopped, her back to the middle-aged man, and moved her hand quietly toward the inside of her bag to reach for her phone.

A white data cable appeared in front of her eyes. Her pupils shrank violently. Before she could react, the middle-aged man wrapped it swiftly around her neck — and pulled tight. Tighter. A red line appeared at her throat. Song Zhili fought with all her strength, her breathing going faint, her bag falling with a thud to the floor. Her legs pushed against the ground, her arms swung wildly — but she couldn’t reach the man behind her.

It was useless. The man pressed close to her ear, his voice malicious and low:

“I despise people like you — all your money, all your arrogance.”

After those words, the hands and feet that had been struggling and thrashing went still.

A breeze came through the window, and the purple bell chimes rang out.

When Ban Sheng was pulled out of the sealed wardrobe, his consciousness was scattered. People kept calling his name, trying to wake him. He forced his eyes open with great effort, his vision blurring. He seemed to be in the factory building. And then his gaze found the window — and the string of purple wind chimes hanging there, swaying in the air.

Purple wind chimes streaked with blood.

His pupils dilated to their fullest. His entire body began to shake uncontrollably — and then he lost consciousness.

When Ban Sheng came around again, he was in a hospital. Countless people surrounded him — police, doctors, nurses, relatives.

Ban Sheng looked around. There was no sign of his parents. A strange dread crept over him. Then came the police questioning, a nurse assisting nearby.

He could barely hear, yet was forced to hear anyway. All he knew was that he had drunk a cup of milk tea in that stifling factory building and then lost all memory of what followed. The police told him: the milk tea had contained a large quantity of sleeping pills. Someone had found him in time and rushed him to hospital for a stomach pump — that was the only reason he was alive.

“Then where are my parents?” Ban Sheng asked instinctively.

The police hesitated, exchanged a look with the doctor, and said nothing. A relative standing nearby was the one who spoke: “Your mother is dead. She came to find you, but that psychopath killed her.”

The police investigation later told Ban Sheng that the middle-aged man was disturbed. He had been reported by a colleague for academic fraud and dismissed from his university position. He had then rebuilt himself from nothing, painstakingly built up a company — only to have it destroyed and absorbed by others through sabotage. His life fell into darkness a second time. He had accumulated massive debts. Tired of running and hiding, his wife and daughter had jumped from a building together and died. In the end, the man had built up a psychology of revenge against society. Ban Sheng had been his first target.

Ban Sheng’s whole body went numb — and then he began to shake, erupting into furious, screaming sobs:

“You’re lying! Today is my birthday — my mom said she’d take me to the cinema, and after that we’d go to that pizza place I’ve been wanting to go to for so long, I need to find her——”

Today was his birthday.

He said it, then lunged to pull out his IV — and was held down by several people at once. Then he lost consciousness again.

From that day forward, Ban Sheng was left with a deep psychological wound. He was young then and didn’t know that this was an illness.

Everyone said Ban Sheng was a pitiful child. And in expressing their sympathy they would murmur under their breath: “His poor mother — went to find her son, and ended up strangled to death with a data cable. And that wasn’t all — apparently the psychopath stabbed her twice on top of it.”

“It was you who got your mother killed.”

Maybe he really was what the fortune-teller had said — a star of calamity, who had brought death to the person who loved him most.

From that point on, Ban Sheng never dared to celebrate his birthday again. He felt, always, that his existence in this world was a curse. He had lost the mother who loved him more than anyone, and that home had shattered into pieces.

What tormented Ban Sheng psychologically, over and over again, was his father. Because Ban Sheng’s father grieved his wife beyond what any person could recover from, he subjected Ban Sheng to more than a decade of cold contempt and silent blame.

His father never said anything. But every movement, every look he gave Ban Sheng was that of someone who held him responsible for a murder. As a father, he had never once celebrated Ban Sheng’s birthday, never attended a parent-teacher meeting, never showed any interest in anything about him — not how tall he’d grown, not what shoe size he wore.

He grew up entirely alone.

Because he carried what felt like a cross of guilt made of nothing — invisible, and yet crushing — Ban Sheng had never slept a full night in his life. He was prone to insomnia, to depression. He needed long-term sedatives just to function. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw his mother being strangled.

Ban Sheng had tattooed a black lily on his ankle. It was his mother’s favorite flower.

Ban Sheng didn’t dare show kindness openly to anyone. He no longer knew whether goodness was the right thing — it seemed like it wasn’t, because his goodness had gotten his mother killed.

Later, he figured out that wearing malice as a mask could protect him. So at school, he kept his expression cool and indifferent. He never involved himself in anyone else’s affairs. His eyes held the look of someone who had given up on the world — whether others lived or died was entirely their own business.

As for Liang Jiashu — Lin Weixia had guessed it herself, even before Cheng Wusuan said a word.

“Why — why——” Lin Weixia couldn’t help sinking into a crouch, phone still raised in her hand, tears streaming down without stopping, soaking into the dust below her. It felt as if her heart were clenching, over and over, each time like a stab.

She screamed it into the phone the way you’d scream at the sky — as if the world might answer. And what answered her was silence.

Where was the answer?

Ban Sheng’s condition had deteriorated. His doctors decided to initiate MECT treatment and electroacupuncture therapy to intervene in the negative thought patterns and pessimism that had taken hold in his mind.

Lin Weixia knew what this treatment involved: anesthetic, a muscle relaxant, electrode pads — a calibrated short pulse of electrical current sent through the brain, causing the patient to lose consciousness, designed to interrupt suicidal ideation and depressive thought.

When they wheeled Ban Sheng into the operating room, Lin Weixia stood outside the door, cold all over. She didn’t know how long she waited. When he was brought back out, his face was white — he lay there, lashes dark and still, like a beautiful, lifeless statue.

Lin Weixia felt as if her heart had been wrung dry.

After the treatment, Ban Sheng’s mental state improved somewhat. But his memory had declined significantly. Recent small things slipped away from him constantly, while things from further back in the past had come into sharper relief.

One afternoon during rest time, Ban Sheng pushed open the balcony door and sat there in the sun. Lin Weixia sat beside him, peeling an apple. Ban Sheng rubbed at his eyes with his fingers, leaned back against the chair, his expression weary and flat, and said:

“I’ve been dreaming about Liang Jiashu a lot lately.”

The peeling knife paused. Ban Sheng noticed her reaction and raised an eyebrow: “Are you wondering why I brought him up?”

Lin Weixia set down the apple and the knife, met his eyes, and when she opened her mouth found her voice had gone hoarse: “Ah Sheng. I know everything now.”

Everything he’d been through all these years. How he had survived.

At school, Liang Jiashu had been subjected to unrelenting bullying. Ban Sheng, who sat beside him, had always appeared entirely indifferent and uninvested in Liang Jiashu’s fate — on the surface. But underneath, moved by something in his bones that he couldn’t override, he had quietly helped Liang Jiashu a few times in private.

The day at the swimming pool — after Ban Sheng pulled Liang Jiashu out of the water, Liang Jiashu’s body was covered in bruises and wounds. He instinctively used his clothes to cover the injuries, then slowly and painfully wiped the blood and grime from his face.

When it was done, Liang Jiashu gave a small, restrained sob — and then wiped away his tears. His pure, clear eyes held unmistakable sincerity. One of his teeth had been knocked out, and he leaned weakly against the wall, working through the words with some effort:

“Ban……Sheng. Thank you.”

That day, Ban Sheng had just come from being punished by his father, and his whole state was one of exhaustion and something close to disgust with himself. He said, with something not unlike weariness:

“Don’t let me see you again.”

And the words became prophecy. Liang Jiashu had an accident.

He had only once failed to reach out his hand. And it had cost him Liang Jiashu.

He had never been a lucky person.

So that was why he had deliberately cast himself as a villain afterward — guilt, and self-blame.

Ban Sheng coughed sharply enough that his chest shuddered, his eyes going red, his breathing unsteady as he spoke: “If I……if I hadn’t said that to him. If I had been responsible afterward — if I’d made sure he got home safely.”

Would the ending have been different?

Ban Sheng’s family was complicated. Later, his father found a new woman. When Ban Sheng was in high school, he was constantly finding ways to antagonize this woman — the only reason being that he didn’t want his father to marry her.

Ban Sheng felt, in some way he couldn’t explain, that if his father married, the world would have one less person who was his.

During the college exam period, after the bullying incident, his father used the opportunity to send him abroad. The reason given was blunt: “Your aunt is pregnant.”

The young man’s dark frame stiffened. Silence settled. He didn’t know how to respond, and wore a reckless smile instead: “Congratulations.”

He had no home anymore. Not truly.

And so Ban Sheng was exiled abroad for nearly three years. Throughout those years, he was consumed by his emotions, living inside the guilt of two lives lost — in his mind — because of him, a guilt he had carried to the present without relief.

And there was no one who loved him.

He was a grain of dust in a vast universe, noticed by no one. A fragment of something swept into the train tracks by the wind — scattered to nothing. He was a green apple left in the refrigerator and forgotten — wrinkling, rotting slowly. He was a piece of gum stuck to the carpet, that someone desperately wanted to peel up and throw away.

Every moment of every day, the thought of dying.

No one called from home. On Christmas Day, when Ban Sheng called, he found out his father had changed his number.

Perhaps, in their eyes, Ban Sheng was already as good as dead.

Why, why — Lin Weixia couldn’t stop asking herself.

Her boy had been so full of light, so much ahead of him — and he had borne all of this.

If she could choose, she would have preferred he be an ordinary young man. One who could come home after basketball and eat dinner with his family. One who would receive birthday wishes. One who might crack open a beer to celebrate discovering a new star.

Not one who had fallen into a dark tunnel.

Walking it alone.

Lin Weixia sank down, pressed her face against his side. She breathed in the faint, clean scent of him — something so soft it made her want to weep. Her tears soaked into his clothes. She couldn’t stop crying, the sounds coming out broken and desperate:

“I’m sorry. Ah Sheng. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”

If she hadn’t exposed Zheng Zhaoxing back then — if she hadn’t put that video out — maybe none of this would have happened.

Ban Sheng placed his hand over her dark hair, his voice rough: “Foolish girl. What does any of this have to do with you?”

Even without that, his father would have found another excuse to send him away.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Those were all accidents.” Lin Weixia quickly wiped the corners of her eyes and looked up at him. “Heaven sometimes forgets about kind people. Like you.”

“Lin Weixia,” Ban Sheng said quietly, “no one loves me anymore.”

“The person in the world I love most is Ban Sheng.” Lin Weixia sniffled. A tear fell onto Ban Sheng’s arm, the one covered in needle marks.

Ban Sheng was the boy who had taken her to the sea when she was at her lowest and told her he could catch anything she threw at him. He was the one who had come with her to Nanjiang to see the snow. In winter when it was cold, he would warm her hands and her frozen feet in his. He was the one who had changed his entire major without a word — quietly, without telling her — to protect her.

Ban Sheng turned his head. He reached out and wiped the tears from her face. They touched their foreheads together, looking at each other — both red-eyed. And then they kissed, lips and tongues meeting, and Lin Weixia tasted something salt and damp, and bitter, and despairing.

Lin Weixia had hoped that after the electroconvulsive therapy, Ban Sheng’s condition would be better. Instead his mental state deteriorated further. He would have tremors in his hands, and heart palpitations. Sometimes the medication made him sleep through an entire day. Other times he would simply go missing.

Ban Sheng refused the MECT and electroacupuncture. He would slip away when the doctors and nurses weren’t watching — pass by a convenience store and buy a pack of cigarettes and two cans of cold beer. Then he would drive himself, alone, to somewhere.

Each time, Lin Weixia would borrow someone’s car without complaint and go find him. The worst time, Ban Sheng had parked his car at the edge of a cliff.

One step forward would be a sheer drop into an abyss — the mist below so thick you couldn’t see the bottom. Just walking close to the edge made Lin Weixia’s legs turn to water beneath her. She didn’t understand how Ban Sheng could stand there for three hours. His back was a figure of utter solitude.

But Lin Weixia was far more frightened than he was — her face was paler than his. She was terrified he might do something irreversible.

She walked to his car, opened the passenger door, and got in. The interior was very quiet. She placed her hand over his, and her clear, unobstructed eyes looked at him: “Ah Sheng, I’m frightened. Can you take me home?”

Ban Sheng’s hand — the one holding the cigarette — went still. His knuckles tightened.

He sat in the driver’s seat smoking alone, his expression exhausted, his skin a sickly white. The cigarette was burning close to his damp fingers, white smoke coiling around his long neck.

Like a star going dark.

In the car, a strange, punk-inflected rock song played — a jagged, unsettling melody, with a click-click-clicking beat and a deadpan male voice:

“I’ve seen all of this world now. It’s not that beautiful. Just kind of ordinary.”

With a sharp click, Lin Weixia leaned forward and turned off the music. Silence poured in. It was just after five in the morning. There were only larks, and wind.

“Then can you look at me instead?” Lin Weixia turned and took his face in her hands, her voice stubborn, trembling close to tears.

Ban Sheng was compelled to turn his head. Their eyes met. A face, simply and quietly beautiful — and behind her, the sun rose from the dark sea, broke through the clouds, and came through. The deep indigo of the night dissolved. In that moment — gold, and immense, and light fell across every inch of the earth.

The dark night was gone. And the sunlight — merciful, and soft, and burning — fell across him and wrapped him completely.

So warm it could make a person weep.

In Lin Weixia’s eyes, he found daylight.

The world, all of it, was new again.

“Alright.” Ban Sheng dropped the cigarette. He leaned forward, and their foreheads met. His eyes were red, and his voice trembled.