Chapter 23

Take twenty-three bites.
“Did you see it—”
Miao-miao was about to lose her mind. She spammed Ying Tao on WeChat like crazy.
“Who is the Young Master sending New Year’s wishes to?”
“Who the hell is ‘little shorty’?”
“Waaah I’m so miserable. I have to work on New Year’s Eve, and I finally find some spiritual comfort—”
“—and then my idol’s house collapses. I refuse! Aaaah!”
Voice message after voice message popped up, throwing Ying Tao into chaos. She couldn’t keep up.
But in the end, all those messages were swallowed by the tidal roar of cheering.
The New Year bell rang.
Neon streetlights flared on at the same time.
Balloons clenched in hands packed the air, carrying the most beautiful wishes of the year, rising slowly into the night sky.
In the surging crowd she was shoved forward.
Without realizing it, the person beside her had already been separated.
She twisted around with effort.
Zhou Chaoli was frowning, looking tense as he tried to push toward her.
But she was swept forward relentlessly, until he grew farther and farther away—
Until she was swallowed by the heaving tide.
It felt suffocating.
Just when she thought she was about to be crushed so tightly she couldn’t breathe, a familiar voice poured into her ears—
“Little shorty. Happy New Year.”
She stood at the entrance of Xinjiekou Park.
Across from her, the giant LED screen on the mall façade was playing an ad.
After the countdown ended, pink peach hearts bounced all over the screen—
And that face, capable of bewitching anyone, suddenly leapt into view.
Her phone kept ringing.
New Year greetings kept flooding in, all timed to midnight.
But in the first second of the new year, the very first blessing she received—
Was from a sky she could never reach.
…
When Ying Tao sat down to rest at the intersection, she finally realized her phone was broken.
The screen had cracked into a mess of color. She couldn’t call.
She couldn’t reply.
Luckily, she dug two coins out of her down jacket pocket.
She found a nearby public phone booth.
But when it came time to dial, her hand paused.
In a daze, she realized the only number she could remember by heart…
Was He Mingye’s.
But ever since He Mingye went abroad, she had almost never called that number again.
So many years had passed.
Who knew if he had changed it?
Hesitating, she could only dial, holding onto a thin hope of “maybe.”
With every digit she pressed, her heart slammed hard once—
As if what she was dialing wasn’t “just a call.”
Ying Tao took a deep breath and lifted the receiver to her ear.
For a brief moment, she even thought the line might glitch out—
But to her surprise, it rang.
“Beep… beep…”
The long, dragging tone made her feel completely unsteady.
She was jittery and anxious, her stomach flipping.
The phone rang for a long time.
So long that she thought it would hang up on its own.
Then, suddenly, the other side picked up.
Ying Tao sucked in her breath reflexively, the hand gripping the red receiver tightening without her noticing.
She didn’t know why, but she was so nervous she could hardly breathe.
Her palm was sweating.
Before the other side could speak, she slammed the receiver down.
Only after she did it did she realize her hand had gone numb—
And her mind was blank.
What was she doing?
If she’d hung up, wasn’t that the same as throwing away her one chance to ask for help?
Ying Tao stumbled out of the phone booth, face scrunched in misery.
She decided to test her luck and walk forward a bit, see if she could run into a patrol officer on duty.
But she had mild night blindness.
If there were lights, it was fine.
If there weren’t, it was hard to see anything—let alone tell direction in the dark.
The Spring Festival frenzy drained away like a tide.
Most shops around had already shut their doors.
Even the square that had just been packed was now cold and empty—
Like overnight, the entire city had been reduced to her alone.
She was truly exhausted.
She’d walked so long. Forget a person—she hadn’t even seen a ghost.
And at this hour, the subway was done. There were barely any taxis.
Ying Tao gave up completely.
She plopped down on a bench and waited.
This area was complicated.
She’d turned and turned. After all that, she still couldn’t find the exit.
It was like a maze.
All it did was spin her around until she was dizzy, totally disoriented.
At least there was a self-serve vending machine nearby.
With that thin glow, she could barely see the surroundings—barely keep herself from falling into total darkness.
Everything around her was desolate and quiet.
No people.
Hardly even passing cars.
She wanted to ask for help—
But her one chance had been wasted by her own hand.
Ying Tao sat there gloomily, curled into herself.
Her back prickled. A cold, unexplainable chill crept up her spine into her skull.
The surroundings were pitch-black.
She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about those absurd horror stories she’d once read.
In her memory, it had been back in eighth grade.
Before she retired, after school every day, she went to the gymnastics team for training.
Back then, to compete at the National Youth Gymnastics Championships in better condition, she’d voluntarily trained extra.
In the entire team, only she would practice until the very end and leave last.
That day, she didn’t know what happened.
When she was changing in the lounge, the door was suddenly locked from outside.
No matter how she shouted, no one answered.
Later, the sky slowly darkened.
She was alone in the lounge. There wasn’t even a light.
Her phone was locked outside in the storage cabinet.
No way to call for help—
All she could do was hope a teammate who’d forgotten something might come back and open the door for her.
But her luck was bad.
That day, forget teammates—even the security guard who was supposed to do rounds never came.
Ying Tao huddled in the corner, staring into the silent lounge.
She suddenly remembered the ghost stories Tang Mingfei listened to every night.
She’d heard too many creepy, supernatural things.
Alone in that room, thinking of them made her skin crawl.
Terrified, she hugged herself tighter.
Her face buried in her knees, she was tense to the point of breaking.
Back then she thought: it didn’t matter who it was.
As long as someone came to open the door and let her out,
No matter what they asked for, she would agree.
Even if she had to be their ox and horse—it was fine.
But no one came.
Ying Zhaohui didn’t care about her affairs to begin with.
He even hated her training gymnastics.
He felt her choice was a kind of betrayal against him.
And with a new lover, his attention was already completely occupied by the new family he was about to build.
No one would come.
That was what she thought.
No matter who it was, they would all abandon her.
She didn’t know how long she’d been locked there.
So long her legs went numb, so long she could barely hold herself up—
When footsteps suddenly sounded in that silent lounge, drawing nearer from far away.
Ying Tao lifted her head blankly and stared toward the door.
There was no light, so she couldn’t tell who was coming.
Was it the security guard? The coach?
In the dark, the sound of a key sliding into the lock and turning was painfully clear.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t even dare blink.
Her body was wound tight as a wire.
With a creak—“squeak”—the door opened.
Her scalp went numb, and all those messy ghost stories flashed through her head.
The flashlight beam stabbed her eyelids, making her eyes ache.
She flailed an arm and screamed,
“Don’t catch me, don’t catch me! I’m not tasty at all—”
“Oh yeah?” a voice drawled.
Hearing it, she snapped her head up.
The person holding the flashlight wore a blue-and-white school uniform.
Loose and boneless, he leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, looking at her with a half-smile that wasn’t quite a smile.
“You’re that scared?”
Ying Tao’s nose stung instantly.
Tears trembled, refusing to fall, but her eyes were red.
Seeing she was about to cry, the boy put away the teasing and said lazily,
“We’re going home. Little shorty.”
Ying Tao looked miserable.
After a long while, she mumbled, “My legs are numb.”
He Mingye looked at her for a long time.
Then he stepped forward, crouched halfway, and said,
“Get on.”
That night, the boy’s back wasn’t wide—
Yet it became her only pillar.
She obediently climbed on, her chin resting on his sharp shoulder bone.
There was no moonlight.
Only dim streetlamps lit their way home.
Curled against him, she asked softly,
“How did you know I was there?”
The boy’s voice was lazy. “Where else would you be besides the gym team?”
Ying Tao gave a quiet, unhappy “Oh.”
Then she asked, gloomily,
“What if I wasn’t there?”
“If one day I went missing, got lost… would you find me too?”
“What do you think?” he replied.
She pressed her lips together, not happy at all, arms tightening around him in a burst of inexplicable temper.
“I don’t know.”
Who knew what the future would become?
She was only afraid of being abandoned again.
She only remembered that the road that night was long—
So long it felt like it had no end.
Half-asleep on his shoulder, she didn’t know if it was real or just her imagination.
In a blur, she thought she heard the boy speak in a flat, faint voice:
“No matter where you go, I’ll find you.”
…
But those were childhood things.
After so much time, who would remember a line like that?
Even she couldn’t tell whether what she’d heard was a promise he’d made—
Or a hallucination from being half-dreaming.
Teenage vows were always made too easily.
Maybe it was because you knew you’d forget, so you could say them so lightly.
“Tch—”
In the silent night, a sound suddenly rang out.
Ying Tao jolted awake.
She sat upright, but the vending machine’s light was weak.
The person was hidden in darkness; she couldn’t see their face clearly.
Ying Tao tried hard to make it out.
Night was like a veil draped over everything, thick and tight.
She couldn’t tell who it was.
But…
At this hour, there weren’t many people who could find this place.
She hesitated for a long time, then called out tentatively:
“Little Uncle?”
After all, she’d come out with Zhou Chaoli.
After being separated by the crowd at the mall, with Zhou Chaoli’s sense of responsibility, he wouldn’t just ignore it.
As long as he knew she hadn’t made it home, he would find a way to look for her.
That was why, after walking for a bit, she’d stopped trying to walk anymore.
First—she couldn’t see the road.
Without streetlights, she couldn’t even tell east from west.
If she kept walking and went farther and farther away… what if something happened?
Second—she knew Zhou Chaoli would come.
As long as she wasn’t safely home, Zhou Chaoli wouldn’t be able to rest.
Thinking it was Zhou Chaoli made her feel calmer.
In a place like this, empty and eerie, a familiar person was everything.
But for some reason, the other side didn’t answer.
Ying Tao narrowed her eyes slightly, trying to look.
But there was a haze over her vision. She really couldn’t see.
After waiting a long time, she finally heard a familiar voice in the silent night—
Laced with a faint, mocking smile.
“What?”
“You want to see him that badly?”