MFW 30

Chapter 30

Soon, not only did the sounds around him grow increasingly chaotic, but everything beside him, the soft silk quilt, the glass jellyfish lamp, began to blur. Even the warmth of the embrace started to fade. When this moment finally arrived, Fu Siting found himself calmer than ever before.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t cling to Li Fei’s shirt in a mad panic, desperately pleading, “I can’t let go. I don’t want to leave.” He just tried so hard, so hard, finally squeezing a tiny sound from the depths of his throat, softly calling his name.

“Li Fei.”

“Hmm?”

“I want to know… where we first met.”

When everything slipped through his fingers and shattered into pieces, the only thing he desperately clung to was one more tiny detail. One more shred of reality that would allow him to keep struggling in the endless swamp of doubt and confusion, rather than drown completely.

“Our first meeting? It was in Beijing, where you were attending university. At the Campbell boutique in Yanjiao.”

“Luxury…”

“Yes. I happened to need a new tie that day, and you were working part-time as a sales assistant at the boutique.”

“…”

“But earlier, you said I studied computer science in college…”

“Yes, you studied computer science. But you hadn’t graduated yet. I think you were using your free time between classes to earn some extra cash.”

“You were twenty-two that year, a senior in college.”

“…”

Fu Siting’s heart skipped a beat. He clearly remembered Li Fei saying in that dream about the wedding ring that they’d met at that age. It matched.

“Then… there are still… six years.”

“Yes,” Li Fei lowered his gaze, gently nuzzling his forehead. “For sixteen-year-old Xiaoting, there were still six years.”

“…”

“…”

Six years. Fu Siting silently told himself, That’s good. Only six years.

Six years was still a long time, but at least it was half as long as twelve. In six years, he would meet Li Fei. It wasn’t so impossibly distant after all.

Six years. He should be able to endure it. He could grit his teeth… and get through those lonely days and nights.

He comforted himself like this, hopeless yet persistent, until Li Fei lowered his neck and buried his face gently in Fu Siting’s shoulder. “Fu Siting.”

He said, “If only I could ‘travel through time’ too.”

“Then I could go back to when Fu Xiaoting was sixteen, stay by your side every day to protect you and take care of you. Raise you happily.”

“Buy you snacks every day, take you to amusement parks, buy you new clothes, feed you until you grow up healthy and strong, wake you up every time you have a nightmare.”

“If only we could have grown up together.”

“If only I had attended high school back home.”

“If we had gone to the same high school, I could have protected you all along.”

“If only we had been childhood sweethearts from a TV drama, growing up together in a bustling alleyway.”

“…”

“Li Fei.”

“What?”

“Don’t we have a pair of rings?”

A rustling sound followed as something cold and metallic slid onto his ring finger.

“The ring… is it shaped like… a little fox… or a rose?”

“Yeah, what else would it be?”

Fu Siting could no longer see anything. The object on his finger felt like it had captured his heart. He whispered softly: I want to hear more… details about the day we met.”

“Alright.”

“It was spring then, well, strictly speaking, the transition between spring and summer? That day was unusually hot. I’d never been to Yanjiao before, only because I was visiting Director Wang at his new place…”

Li Fei chattered on, but Fu Siting gradually lost the ability to hear the specifics.

Sudden, excruciating pain shot through every bone in his body, his windpipe and lungs burning fiercely. He curled spasmodically in Li Fei’s gentle embrace. The lingering warmth of his arms slightly tempered the agony, while the fingertips caressing his back seemed to transcend time and space, slowly, steadily anchoring his shattered self to this world.

Li Fei: “You must be tired, Xiaoting, my darling. Sleep a little longer if you’re weary.”

Yes, he was so tired. He wanted to embrace him one last time. But he couldn’t do it. Fu Siting’s world finally plunged into darkness. Only a faint whisper remained in his throat, drifting into nothingness along with his fading consciousness.

“Hmm, Fu Xiaoting, what did you say?”

“…”

“Mm. I know. I love you too.”

“I’m so glad I met you. You’re my favorite.”

“Good boy. Sleep well now.”

…

… That day was December 29th, 20X3. A clear, bitterly cold winter day. The wind was fierce and biting. “Doctor! Doctor! The patient seems to have truly woken up this time!”

Footsteps, commotion, nurses’ voices, the scent of disinfectant. Fu Siting slowly opened his eyes on the hard, cold bed, seeing only the hospital ceiling lights and white walls. His skin still held the lingering warmth of an embrace, his nose tickled, and he seemed to recall the faint scent of ink. But all his fingertips could touch was the icy edge of the single hospital bed.

There was no warm embrace from his beloved, no tender, careful kisses waking him from nightmares. No villa, no jellyfish lamp, no small garden bursting with flowers. No little white dog yapping and frolicking. No little dinosaur balloon bouncing on the ceiling. Nothing, only the hospital’s white walls and the cold, goose-down winter snow drifting outside the window.

Soon after, the principal received word and quickly arrived at the hospital with several parents carrying fruit baskets to visit him. They chattered incessantly by his bedside. To Fu Siting, their voices rose and fell, unable to drown out the constant buzzing in his head.

The attending physician arrived too.

The ringing gradually subsided, and Fu Siting heard the doctor tell him he’d lost a lot of blood after being pushed down the stairs by that group of second-generation rich kids from school. Fortunately, his ribs weren’t broken. The main injuries were internal organ contusions, a mild concussion, and a fracture in his left hand. Because of the fracture, the injuries weren’t severe, but they weren’t minor either. “You were unconscious for a full day and a half.”

The incident had caused such a scandal that the school had reported it to the police. Officers had already interviewed each of the students involved, reviewed surveillance footage, and taken statements. The parents of the troublemaking rich kids were now in a complete panic, which explained the mountain of gifts and fruit baskets piled at Fu Siting’s bedside.

“A fracture qualifies as minor injury under forensic standards. According to China’s Criminal Law, intentionally causing minor bodily harm to another person constitutes the crime of intentional injury, punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment.”

After closing the door, the attending physician whispered to Fu Siting, “Keep that in mind.”

“All perpetrators are over sixteen, and the ringleader is already eighteen, an adult. Remember, if they want to settle, with injuries of this severity, you can negotiate compensation of 100,000 or even 200,000 yuan. You’re young, and your mother is ill. Don’t let them fool you with a few baskets of fruit and milk.”

“You must fight for your rights. Fight to the end.”

“Either demand a substantial sum from them, or make sure their kids get a criminal record. Under no circumstances should you settle with them lightly, understand?”

The orthopedic surgeon and Principal Li had been classmates. Meeting again at the hospital, he listened to the principal recount Fu Siting’s background and the entire incident with mounting indignation. How could anyone bully an orphan and his widowed mother so brazenly?

He felt compelled to guide the boy, lest he be swindled by those people. Given the severity of his injuries, he deserved every penny of compensation. After giving his instructions, however, he noticed something terribly wrong with the boy, his dejected, dazed expression and deathly pale complexion.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Nurse! Nurse, come in here! Check this kid’s blood pressure and blood sugar, quick!”

The nurse rushed in with the equipment, startled by the boy’s appearance.

She hastily strapped on the blood pressure cuff and pricked his finger. Throughout the process, the boy’s breathing was alarming. He seemed incapable of normal respiration, each gasp a short, sharp intake from his throat, as if he might suffocate at any moment.

His knuckles turned white from clenching, his body trembled uncontrollably, and he didn’t respond when spoken to. His blood pressure read normal, and his blood sugar was fine, but his pulse was completely off, his heart was racing alarmingly fast.

“Could this be… a panic attack? Hey,, relax a little. It’s okay, right? Your injuries aren’t that bad. Oh dear, I wonder why you suddenly went into shock. Here, have some water. Does this kid have emotional issues? I’ll need to ask his homeroom teacher about this later…”

Fu Siting could hear the doctor and nurse speaking, yet it felt like they were shrouded in a thick fog. His heart pounded violently in his chest, like a drumstick hammering his body relentlessly. He couldn’t control it. He had been trying so hard to escape, to avoid thinking, to forget everything he had possessed just moments before. The puppy, the warm bed, the gentle embrace, Li Fei.

Yet overwhelming terror still engulfed him like a tidal wave. In that moment, Fu Siting felt his entire being split apart. One part of him could still hold on, he desperately wanted to tell the doctors and nurses he was fine, but the words stuck in his throat, unable to escape. The other part saw everything around him spinning, blurring, real yet unreal, as if everything was being mercilessly swallowed by darkness.

The world had actually fell apart the moment he woke up. Only now did it feel like he was being swallowed whole. His hollow heart was being gnawed away by something bone-chillingly cold. This was the world he’d lived in for sixteen years, the one he knew best. So why did it feel so cold and unfamiliar? He wanted to scream, but no sound came out. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go.

In the end, he could only breathe in shallow gasps, sitting frozen like a statue in the doctor’s office chair, unable to move. Without a definitive diagnosis, neither the doctor nor the nurse dared to prescribe medication. Finally, the nurse brought over a cup of warm sugar-salt solution. “Drink some. It’ll replenish your energy and electrolytes.” The boy lifted his eyes, startling her once more.

The boy was emaciated, his gray eyes deep and hollow, his expression listless, his sunken eye sockets frighteningly pronounced.

Looking closer, she saw his lips trembling slightly, as if he’d been murmuring something all along. “What are you saying?” the doctor frowned.

“Xiao Wu, did you catch what he said?”

“Li Fei.”

“Li Fei, Li Fei…” He murmured softly.

“Where are you? Take me with you.”

“Take me with you. I want to return to you. I want to be with you…”

“I want to go back. Take me home, please. I want to see you so much. I want to see you so much. I want to see you so much…”

The boy slumped in his chair, soon curling into a painful ball. The doctor and nurse exchanged glances, their expressions filled with pity, for no one could make out what he was muttering.

Fu Siting only thought he was making sounds, but in truth, he wasn’t. He was producing dry, meaningless syllables of agony from his hoarse throat.

…

By evening, Teacher Kan Baiyun also paid a visit. She had come to the hospital several times these past days and was delighted that Fu Siting had finally regained consciousness. She brought him his schoolbag and did her best to comfort him, assuring him not to worry, the school would fully cooperate with the police in handling his case. Unfortunately, she had evening study sessions later and had to leave in a hurry. Before she departed, Fu Siting asked her to find a mirror for him to look at himself.

In Teacher Kan’s compact mirror, Fu Siting finally saw that familiar, sixteen-year-old self again, skinny, malnourished, and emaciated. Not the healthy, handsome twenty-eight-year-old from his dreams. Though the features were similar, the face before him was worlds apart, drab, cold, miserable, and lifeless.

After Teacher Kan left, Fu Siting gritted his teeth, enduring the dull ache in his body, and pulled the heavy backpack from the bedside table. Inside were textbooks and workbooks for every subject. He opened one, flipped through a few pages, and revealed a poster of Li Fei tucked inside—the sixteen-year-old Li Fei on the poster had sharp eyebrows and eyes, his expression noble yet icy.

Though facing the camera directly, not a trace of a smile graced his lips. His tightly pursed thin lips seemed to freeze all emotion. Even the lines of his face appeared taut. His gaze resembled the moon on a bitterly cold winter night, emitting a faint, distant, and indifferent cold light.

Fu Siting fell silent for a moment, his fingers lightly tracing the cool surface of the poster. Though it was the same face, he struggled to discern even a trace of the elegant cunning, gentle warmth, and infectious smile he remembered from his twenty-eight-year-old lover in Li Fei’s current expression. For an instant, Fu Siting thought he must keep this poster safe.

He would keep it until they met again in six years, until they got engaged at twenty-eight. Then he could pull it out in front of Li Fei as embarrassing past history. When Li Fei teased him about his memory loss and foolishness later, he could turn it around and laugh at him, “Our esteemed Actor Li, back in the day, was once such a rebellious, aloof, and unapproachable young man?”

…

Outside the window in winter, the sky had grown completely dim by five o’clock. The nurse had just turned on the ward lights. The glare from the bulbs reflected in his eyes and cast a pearlescent sheen over the poster. Fu Siting finally closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to slowly allow himself to revisit the happy fragments of these past few days. He braced himself for the pain.

After all, the warmer those fragments had shone while he possessed them, the more likely they were to feel like raging beasts upon re-encounter, sharp fangs ready to tear open his pain-wracked heart. Yet something far more terrifying than pain unfolded…

Everything that had transpired over these ten days had been crystal clear when he awoke that afternoon. But in this moment, it all abruptly dissolved into a rapidly receding illusion.

Memories of him and Li Fei, moments that had seemed so close, suddenly blurred. Shopping for collectibles together, walking the red carpet, touring the estate, Li Fei placing the puppy paw in his palm, that kiss atop the Ferris wheel amidst fireworks, Li Fei reading by the bedside in his gold-rimmed glasses, Li Fei playfully teaching him mischief…

Countless scenes etched in his mind, moments he’d thought would stay with him forever, began to fade, shatter completely, and blur.

Fu Siting’s heart plummeted. A wave of overwhelming panic engulfed him once more. In an instant, he was knocked down, pinned to the bed, unable to breathe, his body stiff and cold. For a full ten minutes, he couldn’t move. Cold sweat poured down his body, his throat constricted, unable even to cry out.

After what felt like an eternity, the numbing cold that had consumed him finally began to slowly recede.

Suddenly, an intense urge to vomit seized him. His stomach convulsed, contracting uncontrollably. He retched fiercely, yet nothing came up.

When he finally emerged, drenched like a waterlogged man, lifting his red eyes once more from the torrent of cold sweat and overwhelming discomfort, all his precious, meticulously detailed memories had dissolved into a single, vague, hazy impression. That impression told him he must have had an exceptionally beautiful dream during his unconsciousness.

But it was simply a sweet illusion about Li Fei. After the dream ended, the beautiful bubbles burst and vanished, leaving him to face the cold, grim reality once more. Fu Siting was sixteen that year.

Alone in an unseen corner of the world, ravaged by illness and covered in scars, he had no one to lean on. He was solitary, no one would offer him a warm embrace, no one would ask if he was tired or in pain. No one would love him, no one would tie a playful little dinosaur balloon to his wrist.

 This was his reality. And that absurdly beautiful dream felt so… impossibly distant.

But.

But.

Was it all really just a dream?

“Impossible. That wasn’t a dream…” he murmured to himself, his expression dazed, muttering like a man possessed.

It wasn’t a dream.

How could it be just a dream? What dream could feel so real, every detail crystal clear and perfectly intact? Yes, he had forgotten most of it, but there were always those elusive fragments, tiny yet impossibly vivid details!

For instance, he still vividly remembered the fur color of the puppy Cheese. Amidst a sea of creamy white, only the back and belly had flecks of soft, butter-yellow fur, making the little dog look just like a fragrant, fluffy little bread roll.

He also recalled the cold, hard texture of Li Fei’s chain-framed metal glasses and the cool sensation of sunscreen melting on his cheeks. He remembered the exact brand and logo of the coconut-scented body wash. He could even vividly recall the multicolored halo refracted by the glass jellyfish under the starry lamp on the table. That couldn’t have been just a dream.

No dream could possess such vivid detail. He even remembered the exact address of the villa they lived in, the state, city, and neighborhood in America, the house number, and how many bathrooms and garages it had!

Given his impoverished background, it was impossible and completely illogical for him to have conjured the interior layout of a multi-million-dollar mansion out of thin air. Moreover, before his coma, his entire understanding of “America” had been nothing more than scattered fragments from geography and history textbooks.

He vaguely knew Disneyland existed in the U.S., but had no idea which state or city the theme park was located in. Yet now, he even knew the exact driving distance from Orlando to Miami!

How could this be? Such illogical knowledge and intricate details could never be bestowed by a mere fantasy dream…. This wasn’t a dream. Fu Siting desperately searched for evidence, any proof that everything in the “dream” had actually happened. The surgical incision where his broken bones had been repaired throbbed painfully, and every movement of his internal organs caused agony, but he couldn’t afford to care.

The first thing that connected most strongly to the dream was the fox charm bracelet on his wrist. But that had been left to him by his grandmother. It was already on his wrist now. It couldn’t prove anything. He searched his backpack in vain, finding nothing, of course. Nothing could prove it wasn’t a dream.

The stiff, cold sensation crawled up his spine again, and Fu Siting began to struggle for breath once more.

His heart pounded so fiercely his mind raced with wild thoughts. Amid the intense unease, he felt an overwhelming urge for his soul to break free from his body, to seek out Li Fei, to see him.

If… if it really was just a dream… Could he then go find him in that dream? Fu Siting knew this notion was absurd. But reality, at this moment, felt more like a genuine nightmare.

Amidst this suffocating agony and bewildering despair, perhaps the only silver lining was that he had woken up in an ordinary hospital, not a mental institution.

Yet why did he feel like he was on the brink of madness?

There was paper and pen in his backpack. So many memories had already vanished…Fu Siting suddenly realized what he needed to do first wasn’t lose his mind, but seize the moment before his memories faded completely, to jot down every fragment he could still recall!

He bit off the pen cap, flipped open the silver softcover notebook he’d used for class notes (only two pages filled), and began writing furiously. As he wrote, cold sweat trickled down his forehead once more.

The collapse of memory had begun its race against time. Sometimes, the story of the previous sentence would already feel unfamiliar by the time he finished writing the next one.

Driven to even greater desperation, he ignored the pain in his fractured left hand and the bruises across his chest and abdomen. Clutching the notebook, he gritted his teeth and wrote relentlessly, completely ignoring the kind nurse’s pleas to stop!

He wrote for an unknown length of time. Perhaps tens of minutes, perhaps hours. All he knew was that by the moment he finished, his hospital gown was completely soaked through from front to back. Then he stared blankly at the notebook, its pages covered in his ugly, sloppy, twisted handwriting. It read, “Fu Siting, you must not forget.”

It read, “Fu Siting, that was no dream. You absolutely must not forget!!!”

Yet despite the words being written with such force they seemed to pierce the paper, as he now stared at the pages he had just penned himself, he found himself doubting the very words he had written. His sanity and the frantic, ink-still-wet scribbles began a relentless tug-of-war. Time and again.

One voice seemed to say, What the hell are you writing? It was just a dream, nothing but a dream. Yet the other side, the words pressed into the paper with such force, wailed repeatedly, begging him not to forget. It was all real. It was real. It was real. It was real. It was real!!!!

You only think it was a dream, but it was all real. So Fu Siting, don’t forget. Never forget. You must try. You must go see him in the future. You must go see him. You must fight with all your strength to see Li Fei. Fu Siting. Li Fei, twenty-eight years old. He was so good to you. You must go to the future to see him.

Go see him. He’s waiting for you. He stared at the words, his back drenched and cold, his heart pounding relentlessly, his head spinning. Tears welled up uncontrollably. Fighting the nausea akin to low blood sugar, he picked up the pen again with trembling hands. At the end of the notebook, he carefully drew another cluster of Little Princes, foxes, and roses.

These were Fu Siting’s secret codes to himself, codes to remind him, no matter how many years passed, to never forget who he once was. Because he couldn’t forget. He couldn’t forget the sunsets they watched together by the glass window, the lobster Li Fei smashed open right before his eyes, the candy rain shower they laughed through together, and… He couldn’t forget. If he forgot, everything would be lost forever.

If he lost faith in the hope that one day he would stand before him, then his entire life would truly never have that day of meeting him. The suffocating sensation engulfed everything once more. Fu Siting was afraid. Afraid that soon more memories would fade, that he would forget even having had this dream, that he would no longer trust the secret messages in the notebook.

He was afraid. So he drew it countless times, feeling it still wasn’t enough, then wrote lengthy annotations for himself. Still not enough. For a moment, he even picked up the pen and aimed it at his wrist. He thought of leaving some mark on his body. Something indelible, unforgettable for a lifetime.

But… He looked again at the cast and bandages on his wrist, the ugly frostbite on the back of his hand, and his slightly lame leg. His body was already covered in wounds, covered in imperfections. In the only fragmented memory he had left, Li Fei held his knees and rubbed them gently, but suddenly slapped him. “This is for you.”

“Sixteen-year-old Fu Xiaoting didn’t take good care of my treasure,” he said. In the dream, Li Fei loved him, cherished him deeply. He’d ache over every old wound, gently rubbing the marks on his body. He wouldn’t want another scar added to his body…

Exhausted, Fu Siting drifted into a dazed sleep.

Waking at three in the morning, he retrieved the silver notebook and re-examined it. The contents, upon renewed scrutiny, appeared as a jumble of highly abstract summaries. Descriptions of the beautiful dream were filled with hollow platitudes like “he kissed you,” “he took you to Disneyland,” “he doted on you” devoid of any concrete details. At first glance, it resembled the ramblings of a delusional mind.

Yet behind the meticulously drawn fox and Little Prince illustrations, he had written in his most careful handwriting that he wasn’t delusional. He even had to explain to himself in words that his mind was perfectly sane. He had simply fallen down the stairs and briefly traveled twelve years into the future. Twelve years later, he was successful in his career and with the world’s best Li Fei. But these words still seemed insane.

Claiming to be dreaming one moment, then asserting he’d time-traveled the next, incoherent.

***

Author’s Note: Campbell is a brand created by Lister in Rich Guy vs. Poor Guy. It’s a more affordable luxury label, hence hiring part-time staff. Genuine luxury brands rarely hire part-timers. (Not important)

Some suggested Fu Siting could pragmatically ask about his fortune-building secrets or future lottery numbers. But neither option made sense. After all, during those ten days, Fu Siting had no certainty of returning, how could he prepare contingency plans? Plus, with this chapter’s amnesia, recording it would’ve been pointless. Xiaoting’s life is a bit rough, but everyone should have faith in him!