Chapter 37

*The Moon Runs to Me*
This feeling was strange.
She had waited for it for so long—she had even sensed it might happen. Yet when it truly turned into reality, she didn’t feel as happy as she’d imagined. Instead, there was an indescribable sadness.
“Sorry. I need to use the restroom,” Qin Sang said quickly, lowering her lashes.
Penny Song didn’t even have time to react. She only managed an “Oh,” and Qin was already hurrying away.
After a moment’s thought, Penny followed.
Qin stood in the washroom for a while with the tap running, the thin stream of water soaking every inch of her skin. If you didn’t look closely, you wouldn’t notice the tiny scar along the edge of her right index finger—left behind from winters in the capital, when her hands kept breaking out in chilblains, a mark that never truly healed.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her brows and eyes were vivid, but at the corners of her eyes there were faint traces—like a tailfin rubbed to pieces, tinged with a light red.
Penny watched her from behind for a long time before stepping forward, turning off the tap, pulling out a tissue, and taking Qin’s hand to carefully dry it.
“If you don’t want to stay here anymore,” Penny said softly, “I can take you back first. Go home, sleep well. Close your eyes and don’t think about anything.”
Qin’s nose suddenly stung. “Cousin… am I being a bit… dramatic?”
She just couldn’t stand it.
The emotions that surged up in that instant were like a raging tide, almost crushing her. She couldn’t catch her breath. If she didn’t find an excuse and run, she was afraid she would suffocate.
“Silly girl.” Penny laughed lightly. “That’s not being dramatic. That’s normal. You don’t have to force yourself to handle everything perfectly. You don’t have to respond to everything, either. If you don’t want to face it, you can avoid it. If you don’t like it, you can refuse it. That’s your right.”
“I do like him,” Qin said in a very small voice.
Penny paused. “Then why?”
“Because I like him too much, I don’t know how to face it.” Qin’s eyes were red; her voice trembled slightly, but she still forced a smile. “Cousin, have you ever liked someone—really, really liked them? You might have watched them for a long time from somewhere they couldn’t see, but you never dared to hope they’d stop for you one day. You never even thought… they might turn around and see you.”
To her, Xie Yuncheng was exactly that.
She had carefully kept everything connected to him—even if it was only an accidental glance in a crowd. To her, each one was precious. So precious that even if she died at once, in that moment when she closed her eyes and her life replayed like a lantern carousel, they would be the scenes she was most unwilling to let go of, the ones she most wanted to freeze and keep.
She had never thought a secret crush was something beautiful. When your whole being is tied down by someone who has nothing to do with you—whether you can’t stop thinking about him, or go crazy over him, or cry and laugh for him—no one cares.
Because to him, you are just an insignificant passerby. He doesn’t even remember your name.
You’re unwilling. Your heart hurts like it’s being twisted. And what can you do?
You can only hide those “secrets” that must not be discovered—carefully, awkwardly, like a thief.
Once, on Weibo, she’d come across an “emotions bot.” One topic was “secret crushes.”
“What does a secret crush taste like? Do you still remember the person you once liked?”
She had forgotten most of it. She only remembered that she’d been reading it on a cold night after filming. Winters in the capital always arrived early. The basement was damp and freezing—the kind of cold that stabbed into your bones. Even a shallow breath hurt.
There was no light, only a narrow long window. It was nearly three a.m. The streets were already quiet. Only the streetlamps stood silently in the deep winter night, their yellow glow slipping through that narrow window into the darkness below.
She was hungry and cold, exhausted to the bone. The fake blood on her face had dried, sticky against her skin; she couldn’t peel it off.
She sat on a crude folding bed—the only thing that could barely be called furniture. The convenience-store rice ball she’d bought on a whim had gone cold. It was filled with black-pepper beef; once cold, the sauce turned cloying and greasy. She scrolled on her phone.
Her phone had been smashed during filming. The screen was a little blurry, but it still worked—so she couldn’t bear to replace it.
Hengdian had a part-time group chat. Everyone inside was like her: no background, no stable resources, yet still holding a starry dream. They ran from set to set as extras, performing as hard as they could in front of assistant directors—like salespeople hawking goods, like clowns, desperately selling themselves.
*Ding.*
The group leader transferred her wages for the day. Two hundred yuan—fifty more than originally promised.
He said: “You worked hard today. The director was satisfied. The extra fifty is my own subsidy. Didn’t you say your phone broke? Find a shop and see if it can be fixed.”
Her hands were red from the cold, trembling even as she typed. “Thank you. You’ve worked hard too. I appreciate the thought. If there are suitable opportunities next time, I hope you can recommend me more.”
She was sensible. She didn’t dare keep the extra fifty; she transferred it back.
Because even kids could block your way, and Sister Wen couldn’t help her with everything. She had signed with Sister Wen, but the agency was reforming internally. Sister Wen had been targeted by artists she used to manage; after the reform she was sidelined, with no good resources in hand. People like Qin could only fight on their own—and had to understand the “rules” of survival.
The group leader was clearly pleased by her tact. “Don’t worry. I know your situation. Keep working hard and you won’t be treated badly. In a few days there’s a featured extra role—I can recommend you, but the pay won’t be high. Try it. Seize the chance and perform well. When you’re successful one day, don’t forget me, hahaha.”
She replied with a “thanks” sticker. A new push notification popped up: the bot she followed had posted a new topic submission—“secret crushes.”
She bit into the cold rice ball. It tasted like nothing, like chewing wax. The phone’s dim cold light fell on her face; the dried blood was mottled, eerie.
Everyone was talking about their feelings, their experiences. She was just the most ordinary one among the countless lives in the world. Those crazed, feverish feelings weren’t unique to her alone.
How pitiful, she thought—people with secret crushes even share the same emotions. They aren’t one of a kind.
Because it isn’t rare, because it’s everywhere, it feels especially cheap.
On winter nights in the capital, she tossed and turned, struggling to survive inside this gorgeous dream-castle city.
The corner of her phone screen had bled color, glowing green. The fingers holding it were swollen with chilblains—red, hot, aching.
She lowered her lashes. She weighed every word, every sentence, as if what she typed wasn’t text but boulders, a thousand jin each, pressing on her bones so heavily she could hardly move.
“A secret crush is me on a winter night in the capital, sitting on a basement bed, holding a hundred and fifty yuan in wages, eating a cold rice ball, and still arrogantly daring to imagine a future with him.”
The capital’s winter was so long—so long she didn’t know how she could endure these nights of biting cold.
How far was the future? What would happen later? How could she, as she was then, know?
Feelings have no hierarchy. People do.
She had nothing. Just an ordinary person clutching an old, reckless summer dream—walking alone for tonight’s precarious survival, for tomorrow’s unknown road, barely breathing through life.
No dignity.
How humble.
The happiest she’d ever been was when the first McDonald’s opened in her town. To others it was an ordinary fast-food brand; to a small-town girl like her, it was rare.
Qin Dahai had taken her after school. She ate her first double cheeseburger. She’d loved it so much—but once it stopped being special, it lost its pull.
Like that little bear.
The broken JSG bear brought back from abroad—when she lost it, still so young, she cried for two whole days.
And now, she had gotten it back.
Yet it stuck in her throat.
Perhaps because the pain of losing it back then had carved itself into her bones, hiding in every crack of memory. The moment she stirred it, the past she’d tried to forget turned into countless fine needles, stabbing into flesh and blood.
Only later did she understand: what she was clinging to was never the “bear,” but her own unwillingness—her helplessness and cowardice then, which she couldn’t forgive.
…
“I imagined it countless times,” Qin said, tears in her eyes, shaking her head as she forced her mouth into a smile. “If he saw me now… would he regret it for even a moment? Regret ignoring me. Regret missing me.”
“But that was too long,” she whispered. “Waiting… it feels terrible.”
She had tried so hard, though she didn’t want to admit it. That was why, ten years later, whenever Liu Chengcheng mentioned him, she would put on an affected, deliberate act—saying it was only a reckless youth, as if that could numb herself, persuade herself, make it seem like it truly was a trivial past she had completely put down.
“I thought I’d be happy. I thought it would feel satisfying—because the scene I’d imagined countless times finally came true. But it isn’t like that.”
She was sad.
“Cousin,” she said, voice low, “I only realized now… I’m not as happy as I thought I’d be. I don’t think this is something worth celebrating. What I hurt for is myself. What I can’t let go of is everything I went through, bit by bit.”
Longing was a prison. She was a bird with broken wings—always looking up at the sky, always clinging to the fantasy that one day she could soar.
But when the gate that had been shut for years finally opened, when she cautiously stepped out of the cage, she forgot how to fly.
What she’d lost was an inborn ability—her pride, smashed inch by inch.
…
Her voice was very low. Even her collapse was almost soundless.
Perhaps because she was too used to considering other people’s feelings—she didn’t even dare to vent loudly.
It was just too quiet.
Quiet enough that every word of her sadness was heard, clearly.
Xie Yuncheng subconsciously reached for a cigarette—then, with a bitter smile, stopped. He hadn’t touched cigarettes for a long time. For him, the mint candy he’d regained was already enough to replace the craving of smoke.
Only now he realized: what he’d thought of as “regaining” was, for her, an old illness she’d carried for years.
Did he regret it?
He leaned against the wall, eyes lowered. Long, dense lashes cast shadows. His throat bobbed with difficulty. His voice was so hoarse it was almost unbelievable, rough as sand as it spilled his true thought.
“I regret it.”
Only… she couldn’t hear.