Chapter 3: Twenty-Seven Years Old

These days, Cen Mingchan was busy.

Thanks to company layoffs, her colleagues in those positions had been cheerfully shown the door with an N+1 severance package, and now she had to take over their work.

[T/N: “N+1” refers to the standard severance package under Chinese labor law: one month’s salary for each year of service (N), plus an additional month of pay in lieu of a 30-day notice.]

And through their chats, she knew her eighteen-year-old self was busy too.

The girl sent a screenful of complaints, capped off with a voice message a few seconds long.

Cen Mingchan didn’t bother reading the text first—she tapped the voice message and played it several times. “Sister, I’m so mad!”

The trailing lilt was cute, almost like she was wheedling.

Cen Mingchan knew that trick all too well—it was her own usual play.

She smiled softly and turned to the messages the other had sent.

[Sister, I never imagined you’d have to pay membership dues just to join the Literature Club.]

[The money isn’t even the problem. The scary part is there’s no team-building at all, and they don’t pull any sponsorships to print magazines and hand them out free on campus.]

[The absolute worst is that they make us hold meetings after class at noon. Everyone sits there starving while the club president brags.]

[If he actually had talent, I’d take it as a senior passing down his experience. But what he writes is nothing at all!]

So she was venting about the Literature Club she’d joined at university.

Cen Mingchan still had memories of university clubs.

She remembered that not long after the semester began, the clubs started recruiting. Following her interests, she’d joined the Esports Club, the Literature Club, and the Debate Club.

The Esports Club was mostly male, and they played mostly big online games or titles on Steam. She hadn’t bought a laptop back then and only liked playing the mobile game Prosperous Era, so she quit the club before long.

Quitting the Esports Club was a matter of clashing temperaments—a mutual parting on good terms, a dignified breakup.

But the Literature Club had left her with a resentment so deep it stuck with her to this day.

Cen Mingchan’s high school was a local key school, with a university admission rate as high as eighty-eight percent—and that was without counting the international classes.

Back then, the high school also had a Literature Club. Everyone gathered out of a shared love of literature, and each semester they published a magazine handed out free to teachers and students.

The club printed its contact information in the magazine—a submission email address open to the whole school.

There were dedicated people to sort the submissions, review them, fix typos and grammar, and pick out the best pieces. After a preliminary and a final round of review, they’d decide what to use, then hand it to the designers for layout.

Even though there was no payment for submissions, everyone was eager to contribute.

Who wouldn’t want to see their words printed and bound into a book?

And it was because of the high school Literature Club’s magazine that Cen Mingchan came to know Ran Meidong.

It was during the freshman-year sports meet. A fellow club member suddenly called out to Cen Mingchan, and as she came down the steps, she found a cute, sweet-looking girl standing beside the other—Ran Meidong.

Ran Meidong seemed quite forward. “Mingchan, I’ve read your writing in the magazine. I really liked it. I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

At the time, Cen Mingchan had no idea that the person standing before her would become the best friend of her life. She was always guarded and distant with strangers, so her reply was polite, official, and aloof—even her smile was formulaic. “Thank you for liking it. You’re welcome to submit to us.”

Later, when they were inseparable and got to talking about that first meeting, Cen Mingchan laughed so hard she could barely breathe. “I bet you were cursing me in your head the whole time—this one sure knows how to put on airs.“

But Ran Meidong had only looked at her with a gentle smile and said, “Back then, I just felt sure we’d become friends.”

Because of how wonderful the Literature Club had been in high school, it was the club Cen Mingchan looked forward to most when she entered university.

But when she actually joined, she found that very few people were truly creating literature.

There was no literature in the Literature Club—only the habits of the wider world.

The meetings were always a rambling mess. When they finally got around to a real matter, it was only that the school’s club had ties to the Municipal Writers Association and could help members apply, with no guarantee of success, and at two hundred yuan per person.

Whether it was really two hundred, Cen Mingchan couldn’t remember clearly. She just remembered that after that meeting, she bolted.

She’d rather write novels all on her own and pass them around to the people near her than listen to the president brag and his little sycophants chime in with their flattery.

So when she finished reading her eighteen-year-old self’s complaints, she advised:

[Don’t lower yourself to their level. Just quit.]

A pitiful cat emoji came back at once, followed by an answer as good and obedient as could be.

[Okay, sister.]

[The school’s holding a debate competition between departments, and I want to compete for the Department of Chinese. The club’s been running internal tryouts lately, so I might be pretty busy, sister.]

Cen Mingchan’s memory of those tryouts was hazy. She only remembered that the Department of Chinese and the Department of Economics and Management had always been bitter rivals. They’d cut down every opponent in their path and utterly crushed the Department of Economics and Management—even preparing props specifically to mock the other side.

Feeling a pang of nostalgia, she couldn’t help asking.

[What’s the topic?]

The other held nothing back.

[Which is harder—being able to pick something up, or being able to let it go? Our side argues for letting go. I’m the Fourth Debater, in charge of the free debate and the closing statement.]

Cen Mingchan remembered this topic now.

[I was in the Debate Club in university too. If you don’t mind, send me your speech draft and I’ll take a look for you.]

Before long, a voice message came back.

“Sister, you’re so good to me. I love you so much.”

Her eighteen-year-old voice was like a fresh, sweet lychee—one bite and your mouth filled with sugary juice.

Especially the way she deliberately softened it.

Cen Mingchan knew her own little tricks far too well. It struck her as a bit funny.

It was like her little nephew, just starting kindergarten, challenging her to a one-on-one duel—a childish, clumsy, adorable kind of funny.

She repaid her in her own coin. Deliberately lowering her voice until it was laced with honey, she sent a voice message: “What’s so good about sister?”

On the other side of the screen, Cen Mingchan saw that her sister had sent a voice message and scrambled to open it.

“What’s so good about sister?”

Just five simple words, and her heart gave a violent throb, as if Cupid’s arrow had pierced clean through it.

She steadied herself, then couldn’t resist playing it again.

“What’s so good about sister?”

Cen Mingchan couldn’t quite say, either.

From the very first time they met, her sister had been like a pool of water—clear, clean, and steady.

No ripples. Always gentle, always distant, always light as a passing cloud.

Sometimes she was like an untouchable cloud at the edge of the sky, and sometimes like a soft breeze brushing the face.

Cen Mingchan was born to be drawn to people like that.

Perhaps because of her family, deep down she loved people who were emotionally steady, gentle, and mature—that was the person she most wanted to become.

She’d tried. But she couldn’t do it. She loved and hated in stark lines, was moody and unpredictable, cold and sharp-tongued.

Her sister was wonderful. She spoke softly and gently, and even after being flamed by her in a game, she would only apologize sweetly. If it had been her, she’d have cursed the other out until they were drenched in dog’s blood—and even burning their whole family to ash and scattering it to the wind might not have eased her fury.

If her sister was the pure white snow drifting down from the sky, then she was the foul-smelling mud rotting in a gutter.

Thinking this, she began slowly to weigh her words.

Cen Mingchan had assumed her eighteen-year-old self would brush her off with the usual line—Sister’s good in every way—but she’d miscalculated.

[Sister is very gentle. You have a good mindset when you game, and a good temper too. In the days since we met, you’ve been helping me all along. You’re kind-hearted and strong inside.]

Gentle. Strong.

Cen Mingchan looked at those words and couldn’t help parting her lips in a soft smile.

So her younger self had such terrible judgment when it came to people.

The year she turned twenty-five, her parents died in a car accident. Cen Mingchan couldn’t bear the blow. She had already decided that once the funeral and the follow-up matters were handled, she would kill herself.

For those few months, she never left the house except when she had to. She locked herself in her room.

She didn’t cry, didn’t make a fuss—but she didn’t speak, either.

It was Ran Meidong who moved in to live with her, willing to spend three hours commuting every day just to stay by her side.

When her annual leave ran out, Ran Meidong ignored her protests and simply quit her job.

Cen Mingchan knew that during the month Ran Meidong spent handing over her work before leaving, she’d had a hard time of it.

She had to hand off her job and take care of someone dead inside, all at once.

Ran Meidong would call at any hour, and the moment a call didn’t go through, she’d take leave on the spot and rush back.

She remembered it clearly. Once, she’d finally managed to fall asleep, only to be woken by the sound of the door being pushed open. She opened her eyes and saw Ran Meidong slumped on the floor, utterly spent, biting down hard on her own arm and sobbing quietly, her whole body trembling beyond control.

The bite marks were deep. Cen Mingchan thought, that must hurt terribly.

She walked over barefoot and leaned against Ran Meidong, who couldn’t stop shaking.

Ran Meidong wrapped her arms around her in return, tears streaming down her face, her voice choked. “Your phone wouldn’t go through. I was scared to death, Mingchan.”

So there was still someone in this world who cared about me.

Cen Mingchan thought, that’s truly wonderful.

Looking at Ran Meidong, crying her eyes out, the first thing Cen Mingchan said was, “Stop crying. It’s so noisy.”

Ran Meidong stared at her blankly, then cried even harder. “You heartless little wretch.”

From that day on, Cen Mingchan began to speak again.

Once the accident matters were completely settled, Cen Mingchan could finally leave in peace.

Having gone through the parting of death, she wasn’t going to leave behind her social media for Ran Meidong to look at and grieve over. She wanted to pretend she had never left at all.

She deactivated her social media, sold the game account she’d poured her heart into, and finally express-mailed it all to Ran Meidong, along with the bank card holding the accident compensation.

The bank card’s password was Ran Meidong’s birthday.

Her plan didn’t succeed. Ran Meidong saved her once again. Lying in the hospital bed looking at Ran Meidong, Cen Mingchan couldn’t help sighing softly. “You’re so annoying.”

“I’m just really annoying.” Ran Meidong was still crying her eyes out.

Cen Mingchan closed her eyes, tears pattering down from the corners. “You’re not annoying.”

Later, with Ran Meidong by her side, she slowly climbed out of it.

The her of today was dispirited, withdrawn, and weary—like a stagnant pool of dead water, like a wandering ghost drifting through the world with no path behind her and no place to go.

She owed Ran Meidong, and what Ran Meidong wanted was for her to live well.

In the past, Cen Mingchan had only ever been willing to be good to Ran Meidong. But now it seemed she had another choice—her eighteen-year-old self, and her family.

Cen Mingchan remembered the awkwardness of her first debate competition. Fresh into university, she’d had no formal clothes; the suit she wore for the competition was borrowed from a senior and sent to the dry cleaner afterward before being returned.

Thinking this, she opened the chat box and transferred a thousand yuan to her eighteen-year-old self.

[Get yourself a proper suit for the competition.]

[And then, go win it.]

[You can definitely do it.]