Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng treated each day as though it might be their last day with Lu Siyan.

The ritual of saying goodbye was given its full weight.

Every morning Jiang Ruoqiao would get up very early and come over to Lu Yicheng’s rental, where Lu Yicheng would also have gotten up beforehand to prepare breakfast for the three of them. When Lu Siyan woke up, the family of three would sit together at the table and enjoy breakfast. After eating, Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng would see Lu Siyan off to kindergarten together. From Lu Siyan’s perspective, this was the kind of life the immortals led — though why use “like”? He felt that immortals probably didn’t have to go to school, and if only his dad and mom would agree to let him stay home once in a while, then it would truly be paradise.

When school let out, Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng would always do their best to carve out the time to go pick him up together.

Every evening before Jiang Ruoqiao left, she would hold Lu Siyan tightly and tell him, with deep reluctance to part: “My darling, even though you’ve only been with me for eight months, please believe me — you are more important to me than you can imagine. Mom truly loves you very, very much.”

Mom had never lightly said the word “love” to anyone before.

Even toward your father, Mom feels that her feelings for him haven’t yet reached the stage of love.

Your arrival in my life has been a miracle. Through you, I’ve come to understand that I’m capable of having this kind of deep feeling for someone I’ve only known for eight months.

Lu Siyan would also hold Jiang Ruoqiao tightly. “Mom, I love you too!!”

After Jiang Ruoqiao left with great reluctance, Lu Yicheng would read Lu Siyan a picture book.

After finishing the book, he would gently run a hand over those little curls, and say warmly: “If you do go back, listen to that dad and mom over there. Your grades don’t matter so much — what matters most is that you grow up happy and healthy, and that you become an honest and kind person.”

……

……

Half a month later, Lu Siyan had not left.

A month later, he was still there.

Jiang Ruoqiao: “……”

She wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or just relieved.

That one month had been genuinely exhausting — the pain of getting up at six every single morning. Who could possibly understand?? Who??

Even her roommates had started asking around, wondering what she was doing up and out the door so early every day.

Yun Jia even pulled her aside privately to ask: “This is probably unlikely, but I have to ask — you don’t happen to have two boyfriends, do you…”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

“Look at you — up earlier than roosters, in bed later than dogs. Hard not to wonder.” Yun Jia was only joking, of course.

Jiang Ruoqiao was severely sleep-deprived, lying there with a face mask on, and said in a hushed voice: “You really want to know?”

Yun Jia nodded eagerly. “Absolutely. Tell me and I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: As if I’d believe that.

If she told Yun Jia, Yun Jia would tell Luo Wen and Gao Jingjing. All in all, there were almost no secrets in their dormitory.

Almost.

If Siyan were going to stay with them permanently, she and Lu Yicheng would definitely tell their close family and friends. But given Siyan’s unsettling situation, there was no need to let others know at this particular juncture.

Jiang Ruoqiao curled a finger at Yun Jia.

Yun Jia leaned in close.

Jiang Ruoqiao deliberately put on her sweetest, most coy voice: “I have no choice — my Lu Yicheng absolutely insists on cooking me breakfast first thing in the morning. Look, he’s already asking me if I want beef noodles tomorrow — if I do, he’s going to the market right now to buy the beef and braise it himself.”

Yun Jia: I am going to lose my mind……

Kill this person who won’t stop showing off her relationship and her boyfriend!

Yun Jia looked at her with a completely expressionless face: “Jiang Ruoqiao, I may be a dog, destined to be tormented, but you are truly not human.”

Time really is the most effective medicine.

Through daily farewells, through treating each day as though it were the last day together, it seemed that both Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao had gradually, quietly come to accept the reality that their child would one day leave them. Lu Siyan had probably sensed this too. Sometimes he would ask Jiang Ruoqiao quietly, “Mom, am I going back soon?”

This five-year-old child was far too clever.

He obviously knew his dad and mom had become younger. He knew something was off. He also remembered that when dad and mom first met him, they hadn’t loved him. But he had never been afraid — because dad and mom had always been by his side.

Jiang Ruoqiao gave a small nod, then shook her head slightly. “I’m not entirely sure either, but I think so.”

She paused. “Are you scared?”

Lu Siyan said: “I’m not scared. I’ll definitely still be with Dad and Mom, won’t I?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “Hearing you say that makes me feel just a little bit jealous.”

She held up the tiniest amount between her thumb and forefinger. “Only this little bit.”

“Then if I go back,” Lu Siyan said, “and Mom asks me what happened, should I tell her?”

Jiang Ruoqiao smiled. “Of course you should tell her. Oh, and if you do go back — if you go back to Shuxiangyuan — would you pass along a message for me?”

“For who?” Lu Siyan asked.

“For me,” she said.

Lu Siyan: “??”

A little head full of question marks. “Pass it to you? You want to send a message to yourself?”

Jiang Ruoqiao smiled and hugged Lu Siyan to her. “Mm, you could put it that way. Pass a message from me, to my future self.”

Lu Siyan looked up at her. “So what should it say?”

“Just say—” Jiang Ruoqiao paused, her expression soft. “Just say: thank her.”

Thank her for picking herself up again.

Thank her for not being defeated. Thank her.

Lu Siyan left on a day in late spring, on the cusp of early summer.

They had been saying their goodbyes for two months by then. But when that day finally came, both Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao still felt that wave of pain crashing over them all at once.

Lu Yicheng checked the security footage. Siyan had disappeared in his sleep. The night before, they had said their proper goodbyes. Lu Yicheng had given him a goodnight kiss, and father and son had fallen asleep in the same bed — only for Lu Yicheng to wake to find himself alone. His heart already knew, even before he confirmed it, but he still got up and checked every corner of the apartment, then went out into the hallway without changing out of his pajamas or putting on proper shoes, and searched the corridor, then went downstairs to check the area around the building.

The hollow feeling in his chest was immense.

He went back inside, pulled up the room’s security footage — the camera he had installed months ago.

Just as he’d feared. At some point past four in the morning, in the span of a single second, Siyan was simply gone.

Lu Yicheng sat there, motionless, forgetting to make breakfast. And then Jiang Ruoqiao arrived, knocking on the door all full of brightness. When the door opened, she was all smiles: “Is the little sleepyhead up? I was so lucky today — the line at Sijixiang Baozi Shop was actually empty, I bought some soup dumplings…”

The words died in her throat. Only then did Jiang Ruoqiao notice Lu Yicheng’s clothing — still his pajamas — and the expression on his face.

Her own expression slowly solidified. She forced herself to ask: “Where’s Siyan?”

Her eyes went red. The tears came.

Lu Yicheng reached out and pulled her into his arms. He pressed it all down, held it in — but when her first sob broke through, he finally couldn’t hold it back either, and the tears fell.

Siyan’s departure took away half of Jiang Ruoqiao’s soul.

Both of them were low for a long, long time afterward. Seeing the little turtle Siyan had drawn on the wall made them sad. Seeing other small children made them sad. When they passed a Lego store, they would still go in and buy toys. But both Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng were people of strong will. By the time high summer came, they had found their footing again, pulling themselves together. After Siyan left, Lu Yicheng found the pocket watch in the wardrobe — that broken pocket watch that had no photos inside at all.

When Lu Siyan had taken the pocket watch and left, a pocket watch reappeared in this world.

Lu Yicheng comforted Jiang Ruoqiao: “This means he truly made it back.”

Jiang Ruoqiao was still afraid. “Are you sure? I’m so worried he might have ended up at some other point in time. I’m scared.”

There was no way to communicate across time.

If only she could somehow know Siyan was doing well. That would be enough.

Instead, it was like this — it looked like he was fine, but she still worried herself sick.

Had Siyan really made it back to that future?

Lu Yicheng soothed her. “He did. I’m sure of it.”

Jiang Ruoqiao asked: “But what if?”

“Though I don’t think this possibility is likely, still…” Lu Yicheng looked at her. “Even if he ended up at some other point in time, I believe he would find his way to us. And whatever version of us he found — that version of us would protect him.”

In a way, they found some comfort in the absurd — entertaining all sorts of possibilities and imagining how each might play out, as though running through these scenarios in their minds made the ache a little easier to bear.

Jiang Ruoqiao said: “I hope he doesn’t land in my high school years — because back then all I wanted was to study…”

Lu Yicheng also nodded. “Very reasonable. Arriving after we’re both adults would be the best outcome.”

If it really were his high school years, he wouldn’t be able to handle it either.

As fate would have it, on the very night they were discussing all these possibilities, Jiang Ruoqiao had a dream.

She dreamed of… Shuxiangyuan.

So this was what Shuxiangyuan looked like. So this was what her and his home looked like.

Their home.

It wasn’t small. That future her had her own walk-in closet, and inside were carefully folded paper roses — clearly something the future her treasured dearly. That Lu Yicheng had his own study. They had made their home feel very warm and lived-in. In the living room, one entire wall had been turned into a drawing surface, covered in Lu Siyan’s impromptu scribbles. The light was bright. The potted plants were fresh and green.

Neither the future her nor the future Lu Yicheng could see her.

She drifted through the apartment at her leisure, taking it all in.

She found her way to Lu Siyan’s room. On the desk was a large sketchbook. The most recent page held a strange drawing.

In the drawing were four adults and one child.

Without any doubt, the little figure with a few curly tendrils of hair on its head had to be Lu Siyan himself.

And the four adults?

She looked more closely and froze.

If she wasn’t mistaken — it was her and the future her, and Lu Yicheng and the future Lu Yicheng.

In one corner at the bottom, someone had written a penciled comment: 【Three stars for artistic skill, ten stars for what it represents! An unsolved mystery: why, in his son’s rendition, does twenty-year-old me and thirty-two-year-old me both look somewhat unattractive? Is he asking for a spanking?】

Below that, clearly written in a different hand, was a reply: 【I have a concern as well: why does he give people only a few strands of hair? Would that make twenty-year-old me think that thirty-two-year-old me has gone bald? I’d really like to tell twenty-year-old me: don’t worry — I may be a corporate drone, but I’m a corporate drone with a full head of hair. No need to misread the situation.】

When Jiang Ruoqiao finally woke from the dream, she was still smiling.

She breathed out in relief.

Perhaps this was the wondrous thread that connected it all. She knew now: her Siyan had gone home. He had gone back to that other her and that other him, and was still the little boy loved by his parents.