I bawled outside the operating room, almost in hysterics until my game-obsessed brain chimed in: If the Feverish Longing skin was available before the actual event date, Xu couldn’t possibly die, right?
I scrambled for my phone. In-game, Hanhan lay unconscious, HP bar draining fast. I tapped him over and over nothing. Just when despair hit, a dialogue box popped up:
“Are you willing to give your life for the one you love?”
Without thinking, I hit “Yes.”
Xu had just risked everything to save me how could I do less? As soon as I confirmed, Hanhan’s vitals on the screen stabilized. My heart dropped back into my chest.
Hours later, the surgeon brought good news, the bullet’s angle looked scary but didn’t do major harm. A minor surgery and a lot of rest, and Xu would be fine.
Xu’s recovery took weeks, and I moved into the hospital, personally mother-henning him like the world’s most neurotic spouse. The day he was finally cleared to go home, he reached out, catching my hand as I raced around his room, and gave me a gentle smile.
“Alright, enough, you can stop hovering now. Docs said I’m fine,” he teased, holding out a hand for a high-five.
I grinned, ready to pretend to be mad, then froze. For the first time, I actually noticed a tiny butterfly-shaped birthmark just below his left ring finger. I’d only ever seen that mark on one person before.
My whole body trembled. I tentatively held his hand. “Hanhan?”
Xu blinked, clearly mystified.
I rushed to Dr. Xue, beyond sure Xu was Hanhan, the person I’d loved and searched for all those years.
She seemed stunned. That had been a secret only she and Xu supposedly shared. Driven by desperation, I pressed until she confessed everything. Xu had been brought back into the family not from kindness, but because both he and one of the “main branch” sons had the same exceptionally rare blood type. Xu’s only value to the family, for a long while, was as a living blood bank. Once the real heir passed away, Xu was released, finally escaping his living hell.
No wonder Xu had denied ever being seriously ill those traumas, those endless transfusions, left him with an instinctive fear of IVs and an underlying fragility. And Hanhan, like me, had “panda blood” impossibly rare. There was no way they weren’t one and the same.
Dr. Xue told me Xu had lost memories after repeated trauma; for a while, he’d desperately tried to recall them, but the demands of work and the weight of survival had buried that hope. Eventually, he let himself forget.
I replayed the game’s cutscenes little Hanhan, frail and motionless, staring at the world through a window, his future slipping away in that sunlit orphanage room. How hopeless must he have felt?
I grew up an orphan too. My closest bond was my “big brother” at the orphanage the one I nicknamed Hanhan for his sweet, plucky personality. In all those hard years, just calling his name made life feel okay. Then one day he was taken from me, and before leaving, he’d sworn he’d make a good life for himself and come back for me. But years passed, and he never returned. I never stopped searching.
He hadn’t stepped into the light. He’d stepped into hell.
Yet, though we grew apart, through all that time and pain, his heart still sparked when he heard my name Lin Qian. He still subconsciously cradled a white rose, the same rose I’d given him that last day, a symbol of pure, untainted love.
I sobbed in front of Xu, totally losing it. Dr. Xue had to help tell him what was happening why I was such a mess. Xu was staggered. He’d never expected his lost memories to come rushing back in such a wild, almost magical way. He pulled me into a tight embrace, wordless, but I knew the feeling was real, even if the memories were only starting to return.
After his recovery, as Spring Rains finally arrived, Dr. Xue prescribed him a medicinal bath her excuse for gently nudging us along. Ever since Xu and I had officially declared ourselves together, she left most of his care in my hands, saying I’d help him heal better than any doctor.
So it was me coaxing him into the bath, my face burning as I massaged overly rigid muscles. “Why are your shoulders so tense?” I grumbled, feeling my biceps burn.
A few days later, Xu promised a surprise. Peeking at my phone, I caught the new game event: “Firefly Memories.” I had a strong suspicion about what was coming, but kept my mouth shut.
That night, Xu brought me to an open field. All around us, thousands of fireflies flickered in the starlight a living constellation. It was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
He knelt, presenting a white rose just like in the game and proposed.
As I slid on the ring, the white rose in my arms burst into sparkling light, streams of color flying into Xu’s chest. He froze in astonishment, then hugged me close, and I felt his shoulders shake those were tears.
“I remember,” he whispered, voice raw. “I remember everything. I’ll never forget you again.”
I reached up and mussed his hair. “Don’t worry. I’ll always be with you.... my adorable Hanhan.”
Epilogue : The Soft-Hearted God
I’m a bored god, just drifting around the cosmos, swapping stories with other immortals. One day, cruising by this little blue dot, I was startled by a wish so intense it almost pulled me off my starry ride.
Curious, I peeked down. A human girl, Lin Qian was praying, wishing only for her Hanhan to live safe and well.
I skimmed her life and saw immediately she and her beloved were meant to keep missing each other, condemned to lonely fates. That annoyed me, so, after giving the planet’s “matchmaking deity” a thorough pounding and pilfering his fabled red thread, I knotted Lin Qian’s fate straight to Hanhan’s and tied it so tight even fate couldn’t untangle it.
I even made a little game for her phone. Raising virtual cubs is trendy these days, isn’t it? Gotta stay hip if you want to be a relevant god.
Love can break barriers and heal hearts, so, really, what’s one more brawl with the King of the Underworld in the name of happy endings? I’m not just a bored god, after all I’m a softhearted one too.
So next time you see a shooting star, make a wish. Who knows. Maybe I’ll be listening.
END
Chapter 05
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