Replaying Your Heartbeat

In high school, he was someone I could only dream of reaching.

Shen Muyan, the school's piano prodigy, was cold and withdrawn, burdened by the shadow of his broken family. One afternoon, I wandered into the music room and witnessed the sorrow flowing from his fingertips, catching a glimpse of the vulnerability he kept hidden. From then on, I became the silent shadow at his back, doing everything I could to bring warmth to his icy world.

But fate had other plans. A serious illness wiped away every memory he had of me. His family sent him overseas, and he vanished without a trace.

For seven years, I grew from a naive girl into a mature woman, but I never stopped searching. Everyone laughed at me for chasing an impossible dream. Only I knew that the faint light that once shone into his life shouldn't be allowed to go out.

When we met again, I was a newcomer in the workplace, while he was at the helm of a business empire.

In the interview room, he sat in a sharp suit, his gaze as keen as a blade. He looked at me with nothing but complete unfamiliarity. At his side stood his elegant, poised assistant, his “childhood sweetheart,” who reminded me with a smiling face, “Miss Lin, please remember your place.”

I swallowed my heartbreak and focused on proving myself. Yet my presence kept unsettling him. My stubbornness in solving problems, the way I lost myself when I heard a certain song, everything about me struck him with a devastating sense of familiarity. His “childhood sweetheart” kept warning me to stay away, but whenever I was given a hard time, he instinctively stepped in to defend me.

Then he found the sheet music I had treasured for seven years, yellowed with age: the piano piece that belonged to the two of us alone.

Fragments of memory came rushing back. His eyes red, he cornered me and rasped, “Who are you... Why does my heart hurt whenever I see you?”