Chapter 17

Xi Yucheng paused.
Xi Siyan’s words were short, but what they carried was heavy. Xi Yucheng wasn’t surprised—only struck by his son’s blunt honesty.
“Siyan,” he asked gently, “have you ever thought about why Miaomiao used to like you?”
Xi Siyan froze. His mind sank into a long, painful memory.
Twenty-four.
An ordinary day.
After class, he walked alone out of Huada’s west gate and waited at the crosswalk. The countdown still showed seven seconds.
Those seven seconds.
A red sports car, out of control, slammed into a white sedan turning left. The white sedan crashed into a small van waiting at the light. The impact was so violent that, in sheer panic, the van driver stomped the accelerator. The white sedan was shoved outward again—straight toward Xi Siyan.
His mind went blank. Faced with catastrophe piling on catastrophe, he could barely move his feet.
Then, out of nowhere, a force struck him hard—shoving him away.
He rolled twice and fell onto the road. When he lifted his head, what he saw was Jing Miao, already thrown far away by the white car.
Crying, shouting, sirens—everything erupted around him.
Xi Siyan stumbled up and walked toward the person in a white shirt and gray pants.
Blood seeped beneath him, spreading along the grooves between the crosswalk tiles.
Xi Siyan didn’t dare touch him.
A thin line of blood slid down the boy’s face.
The first time Xi Siyan ever saw Jing Miao was like this.
Much later, when he could recall the scene with reason, there was only stabbing pain—and a belated, helpless sense of awe.
He lay in his own blood, lifeless, yet still beautiful like a white rose in full bloom.
Xi Siyan and his family kept vigil outside Jing Miao’s hospital room. Over and over the hospital issued critical notices and asked family to sign.
They searched based on the student ID he carried.
Department of Mathematics, sophomore year. Jing Miao. Eighteen.
Xi Siyan thought they would find a family shattered with grief.
Instead, they found a desolate orphanage.
There had been a well in the orphanage, so his surname was Jing.
No parents. No relatives. No siblings.
The only person he had been close to—the old orphanage director—had passed away two years earlier.
All he had left were classmates and roommates he wasn’t close to.
They flipped through the orphanage’s adoption records.
The more they read, the colder their hearts became.
The current director said with regret:
“Such a pity. So many people wanted to adopt this child—handsome, smart, good temperament… but he was too stubborn. When the old director got sick, he stayed to care for her. No matter what, he refused to go with adoptive parents. He insisted on staying with Mama Liu. Such a good child…”
“After the old director passed away, he was already sixteen. Who would still adopt him then?”
Xi Siyan stared at the records.
Fourteen entries.
In the span of his sixteen-year-old life, Jing Miao had refused fourteen families.
Xi Siyan couldn’t speak.
With part-time jobs and thin government subsidies, this child had made his way to the top university in the country.
Rootless, yet unbreakable.
And then, for a stranger, he offered everything.
Xi Siyan left the orphanage with a few photos Jing Miao had kept in the old director’s room.
After Jing Miao narrowly survived, his mind broke.
The genius who had been admitted to Huada’s mathematics department at seventeen woke up as a child.
He would never return to campus or to a normal life.
When the Xi family went to his dorm to pack his things, they found they could fit it all into a single canvas bag.
One backpack, a few clothes, basic toiletries, identification papers—
plus a few orphanage photos.
That was the entirety of Jing Miao’s eighteen years.
In the first half-year, Xi Siyan cared for him willingly.
This stranger who had saved his life treated Xi Siyan as “gege,” and seemed to like him very much.
One day, on a whim, Xi Siyan opened Jing Miao’s backpack.
There was a cheap model phone, long dead. Xi Siyan found a cable and charged it.
A wallet—inside, more than two thousand in cash, and a sticky note listing “this month’s salary,” probably from Jing Miao’s part-time job around the time he saved Xi Siyan.
In the inner pocket was a library card.
Xi Siyan carefully read the borrowing list: besides textbooks, there were many interesting titles—*The Three-Body Problem*, *The Big Bang*, a full set of *Tibetan Code*, *A History of Chinese Garden Development*…
Xi Siyan smiled.
From this small library card, he could see a lovely boy—someone who strongly resisted crowds, yet held a fierce yearning for the unknown.
Then, as he flipped further, confusion slowly rose.
*Introduction to Materials Science*, *The Evolution of Aerospace Materials*…
Almost all were books from Xi Siyan’s own major.
Books Xi Siyan had read during undergrad.
He kept searching.
Math competition certificates.
First-class scholarship awards.
And an ordinary, old-style diary.
It looked surprisingly new.
On the first page, in beautiful flowing script—each stroke smooth as wind and water—there was a single line:
“Still far from Xi Siyan’s excellent world. Must work harder.”
His hands began to tremble as he turned the pages.
Every page was a plan sheet: date in front, task in the middle, completion status at the end.
April 3: Finish *Introduction to Materials Science* — Completed
June 9: Do a first-year materials exam paper; reach passing line — Completed
July 12: Do a first-year materials exam paper; target 90 points — Completed
Dec 6: Pass CET-6 — Completed
Beside that one, Jing Miao had drawn a smiley face and written: “Easy.”
Feb 1: Save enough for IELTS prep course — Completed
…
The last “completed” entry was two days before the accident:
“Translate one of Xi Siyan’s papers into English, Spanish, and German — Completed.”
There were more plans after that.
Xi Siyan couldn’t read any further.
In a panic, he searched through the books again until he finally found a stapled stack of A4 pages.
With shaking hands, he opened it—
it was a handwritten version of a first-year master’s research paper, translated by Jing Miao for him.