Chapter 2

The first time Fang Zhizhu appeared at Zhou Haizhen’s doorstep, it was another sweltering night.

Zhou Haizhen invited her in for a cup of tea. She took off her mask and smiled at him. “Can I have an ice pop instead?”

Fang Zhizhu was strikingly beautiful. When her eyes curved into crescents, the scenery behind her took on the glow of a movie scene.

Zhou Haizhen led her inside and fetched her an ice cream bar. She unwrapped it slowly, nibbling at it bit by bit as she lounged in the chair at the center of the consultation room, utterly relaxed.

Patients like her were usually a handful.

Especially a red-hot celebrity.

Zhou Haizhen steeled himself for trouble, but Fang Zhizhu made things easy from the start.

She calmly laid out her symptoms, sketched the broad strokes of her prior treatments, and then told Zhou Haizhen, “I need a place to rest.”

He understood completely.

For a long stretch afterward, she kept coming to his place to unwind.

Fang Zhizhu never delved into specifics or aired her feelings. Instead, she painted pictures with words: the first tree bursting into bloom across springtime fields, a fan’s handmade drawing, stage lights so blinding that the audience below dissolved into an inky sea.

She dropped by at odd hours but always booked ahead—sometimes a week in advance, sometimes just ten minutes.

When Zhou Haizhen wasn’t home, she’d sit quietly by herself for a bit. He’d ask his wife to bring out some of her favorite snacks. Fang Zhizhu had none of a star’s pretensions and clearly didn’t require a top-tier specialist. She’d munch away, chat idly with his wife, and pay the consultation fee on her way out.

It took three or four years of acquaintance before her emotions began to peek through.

Changes had stirred in Fang Zhizhu’s life. She opened up more to Zhou Haizhen, laughed readily—but would also drift away into stares.

Five or six minutes at a stretch, her gaze fixed on the beads adorning her clothes. Her slender fingers flicked them one by one forward, then back again.

Zhou Haizhen asked, “What were you thinking about just now?”

Fang Zhizhu replied, “I feel happy.”

He smiled. “Just happy?”

She tilted her head. “Blissful, maybe.”

Zhou Haizhen knew she had found a wonderful partner. He asked, “Do you still feel exhausted these days?”

Fang Zhizhu answered candidly, “Yes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”

He suggested trying hypnosis. She turned it down flat. “I don’t believe in it,” she said. “And without belief, it won’t work.”

She had a point, but in her treatment notes, Zhou Haizhen didn’t jot down “doesn’t believe in hypnosis.” He wrote “afraid of hypnosis.”

One time later, Zhou Haizhen was out running errands when Fang Zhizhu arrived at the clinic first.

Worn out from work, no doubt. By the time he returned to the consultation room, she was asleep on the sofa.

He didn’t disturb her. Through the glass door, he watched her in silence.

Her nap was brief. She jolted awake on her own, gasping deeply as if breaking free from suffocation, her chest still heaving as her eyes flew open.

Zhou Haizhen pushed the door open and offered her a glass of warm water.

“Red House,” she murmured.

He asked, “What kind of red house?”

Fang Zhizhu described it: “Red brick, pointed roof with a little star on top.”

“Anything else?”

“A wall. Ivy climbing it.”

“How was the ivy?”

“A massive sprawl—full and green in summer, bare sticks in winter.”

“Where were you?”

She smiled, took a sip of water, then met his eyes. “Doctor Zhou, you’re prying again.”

“It’s my job,” he said. “I took your money. Least I can do is earn it.”

“I was inside the wall,” Fang Zhizhu told him. “It’s where I lived as a kid. I dream about it a lot.”

“More often lately?” Zhou Haizhen asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Pretty frequent these days.”

In time, she shared more of her dreams with him, and Zhou Haizhen duly recorded them all. But he held off on any bold interventions. Therapy demanded patience; you had to match the patient’s rhythm, and more often than not, it didn’t yield much anyway.

Fang Zhizhu’s career soared. Zhou Haizhen spotted her in ads everywhere and made a point of catching her films at the theater.

Much later, she stopped coming altogether. Then came the call from the police, asking him to help with their investigation.

The day he walked out of the station, Zhou Haizhen shuttered every window and sat alone in the darkened consultation room, lost in thought for a long while.

Like Chen Nian, he bore heavy responsibility for Fang Zhizhu’s death. Chen Nian was in the dark about it. He wasn’t—and still, he had done nothing.

Chen Nian came to see him time and time again.

Every time Zhou Haizhen caught sight of Chen Nian’s face, he had to go back and consult his psychological supervisor afterward.

Now, a full decade after Fang Zhizhu’s departure, he had finally decided to retire. Facing Chen Nian no longer weighed so heavily on his heart.

He spoke with her about so many things, and even he was surprised to find that during their conversation, he wasn’t approaching it as a psychologist. Instead, he was treating them both as genuine friends.

Chen Nian’s emotions remained steady throughout, save for the slight tremor when she first walked in.

Once she settled onto the sofa where Fang Zhizhu had once sat, she grew completely calm. The occasional smile that crossed her face even bore an uncanny resemblance to the Fang Zhizhu who lingered in Zhou Haizhen’s memories.

Fang Zhizhu had brought mostly joy to those around her—pain had been rare, aside from the moment of her leaving.

And so, when they spoke of Fang Zhizhu, neither of them wore expressions of anguish at the memory of their parting.

Chen Nian made it home late that night.

Thunder had already begun rumbling along the road by the time she arrived. The moment she pushed open her front door, a torrential downpour unleashed itself, turning the world beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows into a sheet of blinding white.

A photo of Fang Zhizhu still hung in the entryway. The house’s decor had never changed—it remained exactly as it had been the day she left.

Chen Nian unzipped her backpack and pulled out the notebook where she’d been jotting down notes earlier. She headed straight to the study.

There, she delved into Fang Zhizhu’s dreams, sifting through the clues they revealed.

It was another world, one Fang Zhizhu had refused to share with Chen Nian.

A red brick house with a steeply pointed roof, crowned by a little star.

A wall overrun with ivy, enclosing a city where the seasons shifted in vivid clarity.

Inside those walls, a small Fang Zhizhu forever peering outward, the window frame marred by flaking green paint.

The computer’s glow lit Chen Nian’s face through the night, until dawn broke.

The room’s lamps served little purpose now; outside, the sun blazed mercilessly, its heat waves scorching the air.

Chen Nian stepped out of the study and slid open the balcony door, stepping into the sunlight.

Their balcony was vast, once lined with winding pebble paths and bursting with flowers.

In the peak of summer, it lay barren. Chen Nian padded across it barefoot to the very spot where Fang Zhizhu had jumped, peering over the edge.

The city thrummed below with traffic and clamor, but all Chen Nian could see was the red house—its pointed roof, its little star.

She burst into laughter. It struck her as absurd, the cruel twist of fate that had led them here.

The red house wasn’t some distant dream. It sat on the outskirts of the city where Chen Nian had grown up—an orphanage cobbled together from an abandoned school.

But it had been torn down long ago. It endured only in Fang Zhizhu’s dreams, at the farthest reach of time’s backward trail. Chen Nian could no longer steal even a glimpse of the girl she loved within its walls.

She closed her eyes, a wave of dizziness washing over her.

When she opened them again, the oppressive heat had vanished from her skin. A cold wind grazed her face, crisp and chilling.

Chen Nian blinked hard, taking in her surroundings. She was sitting in a language class full of young children.

Another gust swept through the open window. The boy seated beside it sneezed, and the teacher at the front—her Mandarin thick with local dialect—barked, “Wang Xiaoming, close that window!”

Sniffling, Wang Xiaoming muttered, “Report, teacher—I’m hot.”

The teacher hurried down from the podium to check his forehead. A cluster of students popped to their feet, necks craning like swallows all in one direction to gawk.

Chen Nian stood as well. She glimpsed her own tiny hands and feet, felt the soft twin tails brushing her cheeks.

Frowning, she seized her deskmate’s arm. Her voice came out high and childish: “What’s my name?”

Her deskmate’s eyes went wide, his expression dazed and confused. “Chen Nian.”

Chen Nian: “What grade are we in?”

Deskmate: “Grade 2 Class 3.”

Chen Nian: “…”

The deskmate started reciting by rote: “My school is North Temple Elementary School. My home address is in Anliang City…”

Chen Nian shoved back her chair and bolted for the door.

Wang Xiaoming was burning up with fever, and before the teacher could tend to him, a chorus of shouts erupted from the classroom.

“Chen Nian’s running away!”

“Teacher, Chen Nian’s running away!!!”

The teacher whipped around, catching only a flash of Chen Nian sprinting out the door.

“Ah, Chen Nian, what are you running for!” “Class Monitor, go after her! No, Class Monitor, don’t—go next door and get Teacher Li!” “Wang Xiaoming, you’re coming with me to the infirmary. Wait, Class Monitor, tell Teacher Li to take Wang Xiaoming!” “Chen Nian, why are you running—!”

The once-quiet campus exploded into pandemonium.

The language teacher dashed out after her, nearly tumbling down the stairs in her haste.

By the time she burst from the school building, Chen Nian was already halfway across the central courtyard. Gasping, the teacher pointed at the Discipline Director emerging from his office and yelled, “Chase her! A student’s bolted—go!”

Thus, Chen Nian had a group far behind her, but no one imagined a child who barely reached waist height could run so fast.

Her legs whirled like spinning wheels in a blaze, her target clear and her momentum unstoppable as she charged straight ahead without so much as a glance back.

She dodged the people trying to block her path up front and bolted to the school gate. Squeezing her body through the narrow gap, she slipped right out.

The clamor of the old world burst open before her.

It was a memory carved straight into her mind, no need to dredge it up deliberately.

Dust-choked streets, squat little stationery shops, snack carts crammed tight from the school entrance and spilling outward.

Chen Nian had no time for nostalgia or second thoughts. Her legs never faltered—like ten years of bottled-up energy finally pouring out in a glorious rush.

She darted down the alley on the west side and hit North Street. Keep straight along North Street, just keep running, and she’d reach the Orphanage. She’d see the Red House.

Her heart hammered wildly in her chest. The cold wind sliced across her face like a knife.

Running was no picnic, but Chen Nian felt joy.

A joy brimming with long-lost hope.

The scenery blurred and fell away. The world around her grew hushed.

In 1997, the suburbs of Anliang stretched out in vast farmlands, bleak and barren come winter, shrouded only in chill mist.

Chen Nian couldn’t keep up her starting pace, but she ran on.

The fastest this body—this soul—could manage.

At last, she spotted the Red House with its sharp-peaked roof. She saw the rusty stars etched on its walls.

She skidded to a halt, circled beneath one of those stars, and found the exact angle from Fang Zhizhu’s dream.

Chen Nian turned, scrambled up a pile of bricks, and clambered over the wall tangled with dead vines.

She scarcely dared to breathe, hardly blinked. Her eyes raked every inch of the scene.

Finally, she saw her: Fang Zhizhu.

Tiny Fang Zhizhu, bundled in rumpled cotton clothes, her long hair spilling wild like seaweed. There in the crumbling gray building, framed by the chipped green window, those beautiful eyes stared out blankly at her.