When Bai Fan opened his eyes, the sky outside had already brightened.
His face felt a little wet.
He raised a hand and wiped it, only to realize it was tears.
It seemed like he had an extremely long dream last night.
A train speeding under the dusk, the window outside a sheet of gold and red.
His mom and dad sat beside him, bought his favorite burger, smiled and talked with him about the future, about where they would go, what kind of person he would become.
After waking up, his chest still ached a little.
But more than that, there was a happiness almost about to overflow.
So happy that he even wanted to grab the first person he saw on the street and tell them.
I dreamed of them.
I found them.
“Meow!”
A soothing cat cry suddenly came from beside him.
A white tail stretched over, pressed against his forehead, and gently rubbed.
Bai Fan was stunned.
By the hospital bed sat a white cat with blue and heterochromatic eyes, raising its tail and rubbing his forehead like a person.
“A cat?”
He jolted in shock and almost rolled off the bed.
“This cat is called Puer. It has a Calming Spirit talent that can stabilize your Spiritual State.”
Only then did Bai Fan realize there was someone else in the room.
Lin Xincheng leaned by the window, holding that longsword in his arms.
Morning light fell from behind him, carving his silhouette very faintly.
When he looked over, his gaze was very calm, as if he had been here for a long time.
“C-Captain?”
“Mm? Mm… uh—”
Bai Fan suddenly froze.
No.
The voice was wrong.
A few days ago it had been crisp and soft like a silver bell, but now it had inexplicably become deeper, like compacted celadon—dull and heavy.
Wait…
Could it be…
He lowered his head and reached a hand to touch his chest.
Originally, even though it wasn’t big, there had at least been some sensation.
Now… it was flat.
Bai Fan refused to believe it. He instinctively wanted to move his hand a little lower to verify the truth.
Tap, tap.
A short knocking on the window suddenly sounded.
He looked up.
Lin Xincheng had already turned his face away, knocking on the glass with his knuckles.
But the corner of his mouth was clearly struggling to hold back.
It looked like he wanted to suppress a laugh, but felt it wasn’t polite.
Bai Fan: “……”
He finally reacted.
There was someone else here.
What had he just done? Fumbling himself in front of someone else?!
He was done for.
Would he be mistaken for some kind of pervert?
A cross-dressing freak? A hermaphrodite? Or someone with weird fetishes?
And—
Had he already found out what I used to do at Shisan Kai?
If I were still a girl, maybe I could act pitiful and get away with it.
But now…
The more Bai Fan thought about it, the more suffocated he felt.
In the end, he could only steel himself and take a deep breath.
Forget it.
Live or die.
He raised his head and looked at Lin Xincheng.
“C-Captain?”
Actually, he wanted to ask a lot of things.
Am I already changed back? Did you already know? Do you think I’m weird?
But the words got stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out.
However, the next second.
It was like a winter morning that had been cold and overcast for a long time, suddenly shone with a beam of sunlight.
Lin Xincheng smiled.
“Xiao Fan, I found you.”
Bai Fan was stunned.
That smile was too clean.
No probing, no scrutiny, no trace of the strangeness he had imagined.
It was like someone who had walked for a very long time in a very long night and finally saw an old friend again.
If Ruan Mingxi were here now, she would probably be dumbstruck.
Because she had never seen Senior Brother smile like that.
Federation high officials, academy shareholders, the dazzling socialites at banquets—no matter who came to talk, Lin Xincheng always wore that polite but distant expression.
She would probably cry out in grievance on the spot:
‘Senior Brother, your double standard is way too obvious! Why have I never seen you smile like that at me!’
“Sorry.” Lin Xincheng said softly. “I came too late.”
Bai Fan was completely baffled.
“W-What are you talking about?”
“If I had found you sooner, you wouldn’t have had to struggle under those people for so many years.”
“Who are you?”
Lin Xincheng was slightly taken aback.
“Xiao Fan, do you remember anything from before you were ten?”
Bai Fan hesitated.
“…Not very clearly.”
After arriving at Lincheng, he had inexplicably come down with a high fever.
From then on, many memories had become hazy and indistinct.
He only vaguely remembered fragments of his parents being with him.
“I see…”
Lin Xincheng said in a low voice.
“It seems that the miracle… really didn’t come without a price.”
“Miracle?”
“When you were seven, you contracted an extremely rare terminal illness.”
“At most three years, the disease would cause a person’s body to break down irreversibly, little by little.”
The room was silent for a moment.
“At that time, there was no record of a cure. Professor Bai and his wife—your parents—took you everywhere seeking medical treatment.”
“Then they disappeared.”
“I originally thought…”
He paused here.
“That you were gone too.”
Bai Fan subcovered his forehead.
His head felt vaguely swollen.
He realized he really couldn’t remember that period.
It was as if someone had taken an eraser and wiped away most of the life before ten years old.
Only vague remnants remained.
“It seems they succeeded in the end.”
Lin Xincheng said quietly.
“They created a miracle.”
Bai Fan somehow didn’t dare to meet his eyes.
“I’m sorry… I really can’t remember a lot of things.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Lin Xincheng said it very calmly.
But Bai Fan still caught a very faint trace of disappointment.
It was like thin ash falling on the heart—not heavy, but enough to make one uncomfortable.
He asked quietly, “Captain… were we close before? Were we friends?”
Lin Xincheng smiled.
“Maybe it’s more accurate to describe it as ‘betting buddies.’ ”
“Huh?”
“ ‘I bet you.’ ” He said. “That was the phrase you said the most as a child.”
Bai Fan’s ears inexplicably turned a little red.
“Was I that childish when I was little?”
“Betting whether it would rain tomorrow, whether the teacher would run over time, whether there would be fried chicken in the cafeteria today,” Lin Xincheng said with a faint smile. “In short, you’d bet on anything. You seemed especially eager to beat me.”
Bai Fan muttered softly, “So I was that competitive before…”
“Xiao Fan has always been very strong-willed.”
The room fell quiet for a while.
Bai Fan suddenly asked, “Did we… have any unresolved bets between us?”
Lin Xincheng was silent for a moment, then shook his head.
“You don’t have to call me Captain. Just call me Xincheng from now on.”
Bai Fan hesitated.
“Xincheng.”
He paused.
“You seem to… have remembered everything about me for nearly ten years now. Why? Did something special happen before?”
Lin Xincheng was a little dazed, as if suddenly pulled back to many years ago.
After a while, he finally spoke softly.
“Back then, some things the adults said made me very uncertain.”
“You told me not to believe them, and insisted on pulling me away.”
“But I didn’t know what to do, and then you made a bet with me.”
“You said, if you could run to the tree on the hillside first, I would have to listen to you from then on.”
When he reached this point, sunlight flooded in, gradually lighting up his face and dissolving the faint distance from before.
He slowly started to smile.
“The sunlight was especially bright that day.”
“The wind was cool.”
“Leaves kept floating down from the mountain.”
“You had just finished the bet, and before I could even agree, you had already charged up the hill.”
“While running, you even turned back and yelled, ‘Take the bet and accept the loss!’ ”
“ ‘I’ve already won!’ ”
The room was very quiet. The sunlight fell by the window, like that afternoon from many years ago shining in again.
“After that, I chased you up the mountain, watching the leaves drift past you one by one.”
“At that moment, I suddenly thought, if life must have some meaning from birth…”
His voice was distant.
“Maybe I was born into this world… precisely for this moment, to run toward that tree at the top of the mountain with you.”