“I’m a bit tired” was, perhaps, the finest eviction notice there was.
The atmosphere cooled in an instant. After a few seconds of mutual silence, Cen Mingchan heard her eighteen-year-old self say, “Since you’re tired, Sister, get some good rest. I’ll say it early, then—goodnight, Sister.”
“Goodnight, Mingchan.” Cen Mingchan hung up.
She rose and went to the bathroom, filling the snow-white tub with warm water, then fetched two cans of beer from the fridge.
She hadn’t lied. She really was exhausted.
As the water level climbed, steam began to churn through the bathroom, and the bright light, wrapped in mist, took on a hazy beauty.
Cen Mingchan shed her clothes and stepped into the tub. When the warm water closed over her bare skin, she let out a breath and closed her eyes, emptying her mind, thinking of nothing at all.
After a while, she opened a can of beer and drank it slowly.
She ought to go resign, Cen Mingchan thought.
She didn’t like her current job. She’d gone out and found it mostly because of Ran Meidong—she’d wanted to prove she could live a normal life. That way Meidong could relax, wouldn’t have to be on edge every waking moment, wouldn’t have to worry something might go wrong with her.
She refused to be the person holding Ran Meidong back from moving forward. She wanted Meidong to return to a normal life.
In the blink of an eye, two years had passed since that upheaval. Everything had settled into normalcy. Whether she kept working now hardly mattered.
She wanted to do something she loved.
So what did she love?
She turned the question over in her mind.
Without realizing it, two cans of beer had gone down, and the alcohol was beginning to rise in her.
Her eyes stayed closed. Her legs couldn’t help but shift and brush together. Her fingers—pale, slender, with sharply defined knuckles—danced gracefully through the water. Her body trembled and rose in small waves, like a weightless butterfly. The pads of her fingers moved gently, softly, as though on some afternoon she were playing the world’s most exquisite piano piece for the roses blooming outside the window.
That wet, soft, warm sensation was like a freshly steamed rose cake—delicate and luscious.
She bit her lip, holding back, resisting the pleasure surging over her like the tide.
＊
Cen Mingchan woke the next day at a reasonably early hour.
Still groggy, she opened her phone and saw the morning greeting. She mustered her energy to reply “Morning,” then tossed the phone aside and fell back asleep.
By the time she woke again, it was already noon. She went to the bathroom to wash up, then scrolled through the messages that had come in while she slept.
【Sister, you’re awake!】
【Sister, I want to practice my speech draft today. I’ll need your help finding the problems with it later.】
【Thanks for your hard work, Sister.】
【I guess Sister fell asleep again.】
【I’ll be good and wait for Sister to wake up!】
The chat log painted her eighteen-year-old self as obedient and sweet.
Only after washing up did Cen Mingchan reply.
【I’m awake.】
The response came almost instantly.
【Sister, hurry up and get out of bed and eat something.】
Cen Mingchan fetched a can of instant porridge from the fridge and replied while eating.
【Okay. What time do you want to practice the draft?】
What came back was a Samoyed sticker, acting cute.
【No rush. Just come find me when Sister’s done with everything.】
Cen Mingchan glanced at the time and replied.
【Give me ten minutes.】
As she drank her porridge, she was still turning over last night’s question: what did she love?
Actually, she did have hobbies. She loved debate, loved gaming, and loved writing.
Debate and gaming she ruled out first.
A debater needed formidable psychological fortitude and broad learning—sharp, quick-witted, with empathy and the power to stir emotion all at their peak.
She’d watched videos of the New National Debate Championship and knew clearly that the gap between her and those professional debaters was like the distance between heaven and earth.
As for gaming, boosting accounts for others was out of the question. Esports players and technical game streamers mostly lived off their youth—fast reflexes, fine-tuned mechanics, exceptional game sense. At twenty-seven, her competitive level had already declined. Clearly unsuitable.
And if she were some other kind of game streamer, she’d have to please the audience, develop her own streaming persona. These days the traffic mostly flowed to the top streamers; it was brutally hard for a newcomer to break through.
But the biggest reason she gave up both options was this: she didn’t want to appear anywhere she’d have to show her face. She didn’t like being watched, being scrutinized.
That left only one option—writing.
She looked at this dream from her younger days and fell silent.
One of Cen Mingchan’s old dreams had been to support herself with the pen in her hand, which was why she’d joined the Literature Club in both high school and university.
She’d started writing in middle school, back when stories like “The Nine-Year-Old Demon Empress,” “The CEO Falls for Me,” “The Genius Mommy Runs Off with the Baby,” and “The Ice Prince and Ice Princess Reunite on Campus” were all the rage.
Influenced by all that, most of what she wrote followed the same formulas.
Back then web novels were just taking off, home computer ownership wasn’t high, and every platform was desperately recruiting writers.
Cen Mingchan was young. When she got a direct message from an editor, she worried it was a scam—that if she signed some crooked contract, they’d make her pay back a million yuan. She hesitated a long time and never added the editor’s contact.
And so she missed her first chance at a signing.
That once wildly popular novel site was acquired by capital and teetered on the brink of collapse, which made missing out seem not so regrettable after all.
Later, she kept writing. She wrote in her high school journal, wrote during evening self-study. Her notebooks got passed around among classmates—those were her first loyal readers.
Then later still, she fell in love with gaming and put down her pen for good.
And it stayed down for years.
Until now, when she’d met her eighteen-year-old self.
She could drift through life in a daze, and Ran Meidong would never disdain her for being so listless. Yet she was a little afraid—if the person on the other end of the phone ever learned who she really was, would she be disappointed?
Would she sneer and say with contempt, so this is all you amounted to in the end?
Everyone, when young, believes they’ll become the center of the world, holding the most unique script, becoming the most dazzling protagonist.
As they grow older, most people eventually understand they’re just the most ordinary NPC in this world’s online game.
Only her eighteen-year-old self wouldn’t believe that. She’d think her future was endlessly bright, forever smooth sailing.
But if she picked up the pen now—could she still write anything?
Cen Mingchan had no answer.
Writing required a surging desire to express. These days she rarely communicated with the outside world. The only connections she kept were Ran Meidong and that eighteen-year-old self inside her phone.
Thinking of her eighteen-year-old self, Cen Mingchan suddenly realized she’d been spacing out for a long while.
She checked the time—oh no. Twenty minutes had passed since the ten she’d promised.
Cen Mingchan immediately sent a message.
【I’m done now. Something came up just before.】
Still an instant reply.
【Is it convenient for Sister to take a call?】
Cen Mingchan called directly. The first second it connected, the other end came that obedient, sweet address: “Sister—”
The tail of the word quivered slightly, unbearably cute.
“I’m here.” Cen Mingchan had grown more and more used to the name. She stood and walked toward the study. “I’ll turn on the computer and use the phone to time you. Have you gotten familiar with the draft in advance?”
“I’ve read it many, many times. I can read it very smoothly now, but reciting it from memory is still a bit bumpy.”
Cen Mingchan was fairly satisfied with that answer. “Not bad. For the school competition you don’t need to memorize it—just don’t read straight off the page the whole time.”
She turned on the computer, quickly logged into her social software, put on her headset, transferred the call to the computer, and said, “Begin.”
Her eighteen-year-old self wasted no more words this time. She cleared her throat and started reading: “Thank you, Chair. Adjudicators, audience, good evening. First, thank you to our opponents for their excellent remarks. Today our motion is…”
Cen Mingchan listened, occasionally glancing at the minutes displayed on the timing app.
A fourth debater’s closing summary ran three minutes; generally, keeping it around two minutes forty-five seconds was ideal.
She also had to factor in the debater’s psychology—under nerves, the speaking pace often sped up.
The first run-through finished at two minutes thirty, a dozen-odd seconds faster than expected.
“Your voice was trembling the whole time.” Cen Mingchan looked at the draft on the screen. “You’re very nervous.”
“Yes.” The voice on the phone was still shaking. “…I’m a little nervous. I’m afraid I won’t do well.”
“Throw out all that off-stage emotion you shouldn’t be bringing in.” Cen Mingchan knew perfectly well what was making her nervous, but she had no intention of coaxing her through the draft. Her tone turned stern. “Again.”
“Okay, Sister.”
A deep breath, and then that familiar opening again: “Thank you, Chair…”
The voice came through the headset—lovely enough, calm enough, flowing gently along.
“…In summary, our side maintains that on the road of life, it is harder to let go.”
“This pass was better. The emotion in the third paragraph still doesn’t feel like quite enough, personally.” Cen Mingchan put her finger on the problem at once, then read the third paragraph herself: “…’The thread sewn close before parting, the fear of a late return’—that is a loving mother unable to let go of the child about to travel far. ‘I raise my head to the bright moon, I lower my head to think of home’—that is a wanderer far from home unable to let go of the hometown he grew up in…”
“All of these can be delivered more gently.”
“But the tone has to change on the next line.”
“…’Thirty years of fame and dust, eight thousand li of cloud and moon’—that is a loyal general unable to let go of the country and people he loves deeply. Can he let go? He cannot. How could he let go? How could he possibly let go?”
“Speed up the pace here. Put yourself inside it—you are that general.”
Cen Mingchan taught with great care. If she could, she’d have taught her line by line.
Suddenly the eighteen-year-old on the other end spoke, her voice carrying a hint of coyness: “Sister.”
Cen Mingchan made a “Hm?”
With a shy note, the other said softly, “Your voice is really nice.”
“…”
Cen Mingchan choked on her anger for a moment. She suddenly recalled a short video she’d seen long ago.
In the video, an older sister was tutoring her younger sister through homework, while the younger one played with an eraser, then a pencil, then her fingers.
You hopeless thing!
Her face darkened. “Cen Mingchan, stand up, please.”
“Huh?”
Then came the sound of a chair scraping—it did sound like she’d stood up.
Cen Mingchan sneered. “You seem to have plenty of leisure on your hands. When you’ve memorized this draft, you may sit down again.”
