I am Lin Xiaoxing, a star whose orbit was set in advance.
My world is a gilded cage. My parents built its frame with their absence and stitched my wings shut with golden threads of “we’re doing this for your own good.” I once thought that if I shone the way they wanted, I could earn even the faintest glimmer of warmth.
Then, at thirteen, I was sent away to a distant boarding school. So I shattered myself with my own hands: in the swirling smoke of internet cafes, wandering the streets at midnight, and through every attempt to defy convention, I used my cracks to declare that I existed.
They dragged me back, trying to mend those cracks with even tighter control. I learned to wear the perfect disguise: in public, I was a flawless porcelain doll; in private, a gale roared through every crack. I thought I would suffocate and die in an eternal war with myself.
Then I met Chen Muye.
He was a wilderness unto himself, a free spirit worn down by life yet still untamed. He never tried to fix me. He simply bent down, saw the shape of every crack, and softly said, “You’re beautiful this way, too.” Like two stars knocked off their orbits, we found each other’s frequency in a virtual universe and began a long-distance relationship, heedless of everything.
But the gravity of reality was cruel. When my world crashed into his, my parents’ disapproval froze all my courage in an instant. I pushed him away with my own hands, and extinguished my brightest source of light with those same hands. I returned to the “right path,” becoming that perfect, cold star, now on the verge of dying completely.
