Memory is a hard thing to describe — like snow that never melts, or light that vanishes in an instant. The things you long to hold onto slip through your fingers, and the things you wish to forget refuse to leave.
Zhou Tu had been haunted by that dream for a long time. He knew he was different from others, but he didn't dare trust that belief, and in the end he sank into deep self-doubt.
Until the day he met Chen Ge.
This man was the first person to affirm Zhou Tu's experiences. Every dream he'd had was real. Everything he'd gone through wasn't some fabrication — it was an indelible memory branded deep into his mind.
Zhou Tu had gotten the answer he wanted, but at the same time he'd been pulled into a dangerous whirlpool. He didn't know whether continuing to follow Chen Ge would tear him apart or set him free.
"Have you made up your mind?" Chen Ge stood before Zhou Tu and repeated the question.
"I..."
"If you really can't decide, maybe you should look at him." Zhang Ju and Wang Yicheng suddenly walked over, flanking Zhou Tu on either side. "Zhu Long, come here."
Zhu Long, who had been trailing behind, was acting strangely. His gaze was unsettling — it seemed to burn with fire, and he looked like he was on the verge of a complete breakdown.
"What did you do to him?" Chen Ge looked at Zhu Long's left hand. The boy's knuckles were white and the veins on the hand gripping his phone stood out starkly.
"We found a damaged newspaper article in the records room," Zhang Ju said. "A delivery courier who used to hang around the university campus went missing at the school. After investigating for several days, the police found his body — barely recognizable as human — in the storage closet of the anatomy lab." Zhang Ju handed Chen Ge several badly torn newspaper clippings. "That unrecognizable body was him — Zhu Long."
The fabricated memories shattered. The moment Zhu Long saw that newspaper, a flood of real memories came rushing back.
Studying hard, eventually getting accepted into university — that had all been a dream. Reality was cold enough to break your heart to look at.
The girl he liked was top of her class in every subject and had been admitted to the best medical university in the region, while his grades were a total mess. He couldn't even afford the tuition to repeat a year.
His family was destitute, and the only relative he had left was seriously ill, growing weaker by the day.
Fate had delivered blow after blow, but it hadn't broken this young man. He started learning to take care of others, shouldering the weight of the family on his own.
When looking for work, people thought he looked listless and unkempt. He cut off his messy, overgrown hair. They said his tattoos would scare the customers, so he took a small knife and scraped off a layer of skin, bit by bit. He refused to be defeated, and in the end he found a job that was his own — a delivery courier.
He worked hard. He was kind. There was a stubbornness in his eyes and a smile on his face. He lived with everything he had, earning respect and a modest livelihood through his own effort.
After getting through the toughest summer of his life, he grew accustomed to the job. He worked late every day, and his only pleasure was picking up delivery orders headed to Hanjiang Medical University.
Every time he entered the campus, a quiet hope stirred in his heart. He knew that girl was somewhere inside those walls. Even if he could only steal a glance at her from a distance, it filled him with enough satisfaction to keep him happy for an entire day.
The campus wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either — there was no telling when they might cross paths.
He had imagined their meeting a thousand times in his mind, but when the girl actually appeared, he realized all that preparation and rehearsal meant nothing. He was so nervous he couldn't speak, like a child whose secret had been discovered.
After that day, they exchanged contact information. The girl was surprisingly forward. She liked being in control, and Zhu Long mistook that for affection.