Chapter 1
WHEN HIS PHONE VIBRATED in his pocket for the fifth time in the span of three minutes, Jiang Cheng opened his eyes.
He’d been on this train for almost three hours. Outside, the sky was as gloomy as it’d been the last time he’d looked out the window. The stranger beside him was still asleep. Her head rested heavily on his right shoulder, which had gone numb.
Jiang Cheng shrugged in irritation, but the girl only shifted in place. With one finger, he nudged the girl’s head away from him, but it was back on his shoulder within a few seconds. This was absolutely not the first time he’d done this. He was starting to wonder whether she was really asleep or actually comatose.
Ugh.
He didn’t know how much longer it would be until his stop; it wasn’t something he’d paid attention to when he got the ticket. He only knew that the destination was a city he’d never even heard of before embarking on this trip.
Life… It was nothing if not absurd.
The sixth time his phone vibrated, Jiang Cheng sighed and pulled it from his pocket.
– What’s going on?
– How come you never mentioned leaving?
– Why’d you leave so suddenly?
– Why didn’t you say anything?
What what how how why why why blahblahblahblah…
The messages were from Yu Xin, who must not have been able to call him because she was in cram classes over the holiday. He glanced at the screen: It was filled with question marks.
Jiang Cheng was about to put the phone back in his pocket when a seventh message came in.
– If you don’t reply, we’re over!
Finally: a message without a question mark. He breathed a sigh of relief, turned his phone off, and stuffed it back in his pocket.
Breaking up didn’t mean very much to him. All a two-month-long high school romance like theirs meant was talking to each other a little more than everyone else, having someone to bring you breakfast, and having a dedicated cheerleader by the basketball court… They hadn’t even gotten to the “doing stuff” stage.
As Jiang Cheng watched the landscape outside the window—shifting, but somehow constant—he finally heard the conductor call his stop over the intercom. Beside him, the girl stirred as if she was about to wake up. He quickly pulled a red marker from his backpack, pulled the lid off, and twirled it between his fingers, moments before the girl woke up and lifted her face.
There was a prominent imprint on her forehead where it had been pressed against his shoulder, as if she was a practitioner of some kind of divine cultivation. When she met his gaze, the girl wiped the corner of her mouth and took out her phone.
“Sorry about that,” she said, tapping around the screen with her head down.
What a surprise—Jiang Cheng couldn’t make out so much as a hint of actual regret. He chuckled pointedly. There was a pause as the girl’s gaze fell on the marker twirling in his hand.
Jiang Cheng popped the lid back on the marker with a loud snap.
The girl was still for two seconds. Then she suddenly covered her face with her hands, jumped up, and bolted down the aisle to the bathroom.
Jiang Cheng stood and glanced out the window. It had been overcast the whole way here, and now it was finally snowing. Retrieving his suitcase from the overhead luggage rack, he put on his jacket and walked to the door, then pulled out his phone and turned it on again.
His notifications were quiet. There were no more messages from Yu Xin, nor were there any missed calls. This was the most pleasant Yu Xin had been since they got together, he thought. What a feat. But apart from Yu Xin, nobody else had tried to contact him, either—for instance, there was no sign of the person he’d thought would come pick him up.
As he followed the crowd out of the station, Jiang Cheng zipped his puffer jacket all the way up to his chin and looked out at the city, bleak and gray in the chill of winter. This was his first impression of the city: the decay and disarray around the train station.
But no—it was his second impression. His actual first impression was the stunned confusion when his mom had said, “Go back there, then—that’s your real home.”
He dragged his suitcase to the southernmost edge of the station square, away from the crowd. Nearby was a side street lined with all sorts of sketchy-looking inns, the kind people probably entered and never came out of, and small restaurants that looked like they’d give you food poisoning. He sat on his suitcase and checked his phone periodically. Still, nobody tried to contact him.
Jiang Cheng had been given a phone number and an address; he was just reluctant to move from this spot. In fact, he didn’t feel like moving or talking at all. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and put it between his lips. Inside him was a deep, inexplicable, confused, and hopeless anger about how he’d come to be in this situation. He stared at the ice on the ground and fumed, fumbling in his pocket for a lighter. When he finally managed to light the cigarette, his back hunched against the bitter wind, he watched the smoke disperse before his eyes and sighed.
If only his old homeroom teacher could see him now.
But that didn’t matter anymore. He was here now, a million miles away. He might never again see the people who’d lived under the same roof as him for more than a decade, so what did a mere teacher matter? Whatever run-down school he wound up going to in this run-down city, he doubted anyone there would give a crap if he smoked.
By the time Jiang Cheng was halfway through the cigarette, he couldn’t stand the cold anymore. He stood up, planning to hail a cab to go get some food first, but he’d barely taken one step with his suitcase when he felt a surge of pain—something had knocked hard against his ankle.
He turned with a frown. There was a skateboard on the ground behind him. Before he even had a chance to work out where it had come from, someone fell to the ground next to his feet.
“Are you…?”
Out of reflex, he reached out to help, but his hand paused in mid-air.
The person had a mop of untidy hair, as uneven as if it’d been chewed on by a dog. Their clothes were dirty, too… Was this a beggar? A homeless person? A scam artist, or a thief, or something?
It wasn’t until the person raised their head that he clearly saw it was a little girl, probably eleven or twelve years old. Her face was streaked with mud, but he could still see that she had a fair complexion and incredibly large eyes.
Before he had a chance to offer a helping hand again, the girl was dragged away roughly by four or five other little girls who came chasing after her. One of them even landed a kick on her back, making her stumble forward and almost fall again.
Jiang Cheng immediately understood what was happening. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned to continue on his way. But a peal of laughter behind him made him pause again.
He didn’t like to get involved in other people’s business when he was in a bad mood—and it just so happened that at this very moment he was in an extremely, extraordinarily, exceptionally terrible mood. But in the end, the lingering image of those large, dark eyes made him turn around.
“Hey!” he called out.
The group of girls stopped. One, who looked like she might be their ringleader, narrowed her eyes at him.
“What?!”
Jiang Cheng walked over slowly, dragging his suitcase behind him, keeping his eyes fixed on the girl who still had Big Eyes’ clothes in her grasp. After a couple more seconds of staring, the girl loosened her grip.
He pulled Big Eyes to his side and looked at the other girls. “Nothing,” he said. “Go on, then.”
“Who the hell are you?” their leader blurted out in obvious displeasure, despite her apprehension.
“I’m a big brother with a knife.” Jiang Cheng glanced at her. “I can give you the same haircut she has in just thirty seconds.”
The leader clearly wasn’t used to this kind of confrontation. She was a little cowed by his words, but she didn’t want to give in so easily. “I’m gonna tell my brother to get you!”
“Then tell him to hurry up.” Jiang Cheng yanked on his suitcase with one hand and grabbed Big Eyes with the other. “I’m scared to death, so I might run.”
As the other girls walked away, Big Eyes shook off his hand.
“Are you all right?” Jiang Cheng asked.
She nodded and walked back to the skateboard. She stepped on it with one foot and looked back at him.
“Yours?” Jiang Cheng asked again.
Big Eyes nodded. She pushed off lightly with one foot and rolled to his side before coming to a steady stop, her eyes still fixed on him.
Jiang Cheng nodded as well. “Then…you should go home.”