During her sophomore-year chemistry class, Lin Xia gets distracted and drops her pencil. She bends down to pick it up, and when she looks up, everything in the world has shifted out of place: the teacher is wearing a suit, her deskmate has a mole behind one ear, and her childhood sweetheart is smiling at her. There is also a copy of Organic Chemistry notes in her uniform pocket that doesn’t belong to her. A photo is stuck to the title page, showing her at age seven with “transfer student Lu Chen.” But in reality, the fire that broke out when she was seven destroyed every photo from her childhood.
