On a summer night in 1999, an heirloom silver ring was fastened around a baby boy’s wrist.
Lin An’an was different from the moment he was born
He never cried or fussed, yet could soothe the nightmares of his twin sister, Lin Miaomiao;
He was as quiet as a deep pool, yet when he shielded his sister from a bully’s punches at kindergarten, he called all three teachers by name with perfect accuracy;
When the whole class stumbled over their recitation, he repeated the likes and dislikes of all 25 children from memory, making the principal’s teacup slip from her hand.
His parents thought they had a child prodigy, until one strange event after another began to occur:
Mysterious coins kept appearing in An’an’s piggy bank,
He used “magic coins” to buy the colored pencils his sister had been longing for,
But then collapsed in the classroom from dizziness: a sudden warning that his power was backfiring!
On the first day of elementary school, his teacher excitedly recommended that he skip grades,
But under the moonlight, An’an tore up the registration form for the math olympiad class and locked his middle school textbooks beneath his bed:
“If I skip a grade, I won’t be able to sit with my sister anymore.”
He was willing to hide his astonishing talent and become invisible in class,
Writing out solutions on scratch paper for his sister, who struggled with school,
And letting the yellowing pages drift down like notes of devotion.
But when Miaomiao faced a life-or-death crisis,
The silver ring on the boy’s wrist suddenly grew scorching hot
Coins floated and spun rapidly in his palm,
And mathematical formulas became golden streaks of light, tearing through the night sky!
“Don’t be afraid, Sis.”
In his clenched palm lay the stars that could turn fate around,
Along with an abyss powerful enough to consume him…
