The greatest shadow hanging over my life was the boy next door, Lin Xubai.
He was always top of the class, always immaculate, and always the center of everyone's attention.
To get away from him, I secretly changed my college choices after the national entrance exams and went to a university thousands of miles away.
Four years later, we met again. I was a fashion designer, and he was the youngest attending physician at his hospital.
He smiled as he blocked the entrance to my company. “Cheng Yi, did you really think you could get away?”
Even worse, Gu Yan, the gentle client who was always smiling at me, got caught up in it too.
“Yiyi, choose me.” Lin Xubai trapped me in a corner, his voice hoarse. “Otherwise, I don't know what I'll do.”
My younger brother, Cheng Chen, frantically handed him the keys. “Brother-in-law, go get my sister!”
Meanwhile, my best friend Xu Weiwei linked arms with Gu Yan's brother. “Xubai is handsome, has long legs, and even has an eight-pack. Yiyi, you can't lose.”
Then one day, Gu Yan pinned me against a fitting-room mirror, just as Lin Xubai happened to walk in.
He slowly took off his watch and chuckled. “Time to end the game, my childhood sweetheart.”
Summer in Nancheng was always so muggy it took your breath away. The asphalt softened under the blazing sun. The air was thick with the sticky scent of camphor trees and the endless, dull rumble of some construction site in the distance.
For the umpteenth time, Cheng Yi struggled awake from that suffocating dream, her bangs damp and her back clammy. In the dream, she was always in her fifth-grade classroom. The old fan creaked overhead, casting wavering, dizzying patches of light. The math teacher held the tests that had just been handed back, her voice shrill enough to pierce eardrums. “Cheng Yi...”
