Chapter 200

Chapter 200

My name is Wen Miao. I am an orphan, and for as long as I can remember, I lived at Happiness Orphanage.

I can no longer clearly recall anything from before I turned six. Time has washed away those stories and experiences, leaving them blurrier with every passing year.

But when I was young, I often had a hazy dream.

In it, I seemed to be trapped in a white world surrounded by cold machines. A group of people in white coats manipulated my body, and someone used a syringe to inject some kind of liquid into me. My awareness grew fainter and fainter until someone began calling something over and over beside my ear.

“Number Two. Number Two…”

The voices seemed to come from the edge of the sky, leaving me lost and confused. Their repeated calls roused me, and I opened my eyes in a daze. Blinding white light flooded my vision, a piercing alarm shrieked, and a blurred face hovered before me.

I could not make out the person’s features. I could only tell that he seemed to be a man, running with all his strength as he pushed a box.

When he saw that I was awake, he pressed a finger to his lips. Then he laid his broad palm over the crown of my head and pushed me back down into the box.

I felt as though I should have known him once, but I could no longer remember what he looked like.

I reached through the cramped darkness and gradually touched other warm bodies, each carrying a familiar scent. Drowsiness overtook me. I pressed closer to the others inside the box and fell into a deep sleep.

After that came my memories of life at Happiness Orphanage.

Every child there longed to be adopted. We all wanted a mother and father of our own.

Later, Xiao Shu and I were adopted together by Dad Gu.

But after Mom Gu became pregnant, I felt as though Xiao Shu and I had become burdens to them. I tried to take care of myself, but I ended up hurting Xiao Shu…

I decided to return to the orphanage.

Xiao Shu, I hope you live a happy life.

===

I knew what awaited me when I returned: a stomach that was never full, clothes that were always too short, and no more good-morning kisses on my forehead when someone woke me each day.

I thought it would be fine. That was how I had lived before, after all.

Only after losing those things did I understand how much it hurt. Perhaps this was what books meant when they said it was hard to return to hardship after knowing comfort.

During the worst of that time, Wen Tangtang appeared before me, leading Wen Xin by the hand.

They were orphans from Happiness Orphanage too. Director Mom said that they had actually arrived with me. There had been six children in our group.

But Wen Xin was only kind to Wen Tangtang.

Before that, Xiao Shu had been my closest friend.

During the most painful period of my life, Wen Tangtang was the one who took my hand.

From then on, the three of us relied on one another and became the most important people in each other’s lives.

We promised that no matter how the world changed, we would always, always stay together.

We would never abandon one another.

===

When it came time for university, all three of us were admitted to A University of Science and Technology, one of the country’s most prestigious schools.

We all applied to major in materials science.

Math, physics, and chemistry had always been our strongest subjects. Unfortunately, Tang Tang’s total score fell a few points below the cutoff for materials science, so she was reassigned to biology.

But that was all right. At least we attended the same university and could still go to class, eat, and visit the library together.

I thought the three of us would stay that way forever-until the day Tang Tang brought Nan Mu to sit at the little dining table that had always belonged only to us.

In everyone else’s eyes, Nan Mu was a brilliant star: modest and low-key despite drawing attention wherever he went.

I heard that his parents, uncles, grandparents, and other relatives were all experts or researchers in their respective fields. He came from a true family of scholars.

But I knew that man…

He hated me.

Our first real encounter happened when I joined the university basketball team’s cheer squad for course credit.

Before a game between the biology and chemistry departments, Wen Tangtang made me promise to cheer hard for biology.

I agreed with a smile, so I gave it everything I had from the sidelines.

Nan Mu was biology’s star player. He was tall, quick, and decisive on the court. The only opponent who could match him was a tall, thin player named Ah Chuan.

The two fought an evenly matched battle. During halftime, Nan Mu sat on the bench drinking water.

A crowd of girls outside the court worried over him and shouted for someone to take him water, saying he had expended more energy than anyone else.
Part of me sensed that it would be strange for me to take him water, though I could not explain why. But that vague unease seemed insignificant beneath the chorus of voices rising behind me. I wavered for a long moment before finally picking up the empty water bottle and walking toward him despite my reluctance.

Perhaps the noise behind me disturbed him. I saw him return to his senses, but the instant he noticed me, his previously calm expression tightened into a deep frown.

Beneath prominent brows, his eyes were cool and distant.

He gave me one glance, then radiated coldness as though he had seen something he never should have.

I did not know whether to continue toward him. But he rose from his seat and walked in my direction. As he passed me, he left behind one cold sentence: “You aren’t suited for this.”

Later, he even transferred me into the photography club.

I loved photography and had always wanted to join that club, but it was so popular that every opening filled almost immediately. Even so, his decision to transfer me without asking still infuriated me.

But I never confronted him.

I was ordinary and weak. That was simply the kind of person I was.

The only pride I possessed was this: if he did not want to see me, then I would make a point of appearing in front of him.

But people are strange. The more often I appeared before him, the deeper he found his way into my heart. I began paying attention without meaning to-wondering what he would do that day and where he might go…

But I knew he hated me, and I had no desire to offer my face only to have it slapped.

So I hid my feelings until our first year of graduate school.

Wen Tangtang sometimes brought him to eat with us, but I spoke as little as possible whenever he came…

I was afraid he would find me irritating. I was afraid he would stop coming to our little table.

===

The turning point in our relationship probably came one day in October, when he suddenly rushed into Chongjing Building, grabbed my hand, and asked if I wanted to eat with him.

No one knew how violently my heart pounded that day. It felt as though the moon I had always gazed up at had fallen into my palm.

I thought that moment would be our beginning.

But the moon would always remain the moon, no more than passing light and shadow. It vanished from my palm in an instant.

I did not understand why Xu Lei wanted to kill me, or why Nan Mu killed Xu Lei to protect me…

If I had known how much harm I would bring him, I would never have gone near him again.

If I had known that my moon would lose all his radiant light because of me, I would rather never have existed.

He should have remained someone everyone looked up to. Instead, because of me, he fell into the dust, was ground into the mud, and became a murderer in the eyes of the world.

He wasn’t…

I knew he wasn’t…

He could be anything-anything except a murderer.

So I devoted my entire life to changing his fate.

I developed the Time Machine and traveled through time, meeting him over and over as I tried to change his destiny.

The first time, I clearly managed to stop him, yet he still died.

The second time, I wrote a letter to my younger self and told her to reach the scene of the crime in advance. All I changed was the time of his death.

The third time, I realized Nan Mu could not survive unless Xu Lei died, so I killed Xu Lei instead. But several days later, Nan Mu tried to save a little boy who was falling from a building and ended up in a vegetative state.

The fourth time, I went back and pushed Nan Mu aside as he saved the boy, allowing him to avoid the most lethal impact.

I thought I had finally succeeded. But for reasons I could not understand, time seemed to reset again. Everything I had done abruptly disappeared, and he died at the same moment he had died the first time.

…

If knowing me was where this disaster began,

then I would rather he never knew me at all.

I traveled back to 2004.

Nan Mu was only six then, a tiny child with somewhat tanned skin.

No one could have guessed that this little boy would soon become such a dazzling man, radiant enough to light the world.

I took him to an amusement park.

During our university years, I sometimes imagined going to an amusement park with him, but that wish never came true.

This time, I would treat it as the fulfillment of that dream.

From this day forward, we would never meet again.

Nan Mu, in a world without me, may you remain forever like the moon-pure and luminous in the vast, boundless sky, high above anyone’s reach.