Huan'er's memory of that day was filled with many trees. Sturdy trunks, swaying leaves, the vibrant green of the forest park obscuring the azure sky. And then she learned that Jing's Father had sacrificed his life—caught in a sudden forest fire, he was forever left in those distant woods.
How cruel nature is. Wildflowers wither and bloom again, grass and trees turn yellow and green once more, rivers freeze and thaw—it holds the privilege of rebirth, yet selfishly monopolizes it.
It takes a life without a second thought for the family left behind in heart-wrenching grief.
Her mother didn’t return that night. She told Huan'er, "There are too many people here, don’t come for now."
Close to dawn, Song Cong sent a message: I saw Qi Chi. He’s not doing well. Ask for leave on his behalf tomorrow.
He wouldn’t be okay.
Life, which creates accidents without reason, wouldn’t know. Fate, which plays cruel jokes, wouldn’t know. Even nature, the unreasonable culprit, wouldn’t know—that when one person leaves, they take another with them.
That night, many lay sleepless.
The next day during break, Huan'er went to Lao Xu’s office. "I’m here to ask for a few days’ leave for Jing Qichi," she said. "Something happened in his family."
Lao Xu didn’t pay much attention. "Have him call me himself, or his parents."
"Teacher Xu," Huan'er’s nose stung. "Jing Qichi’s father… sacrificed himself."
She just thought—Jing Qichi couldn’t make that call, and there was no one left in his family to do so. Compared to what he was going through, asking for leave wasn’t even worth worrying about.
Lao Xu’s expression turned solemn. "When?"
"Yesterday morning." No one knew the exact time—only that his body had been found then. Back then, she had even covered for him, saying Jing Qichi had returned to school with another class.
Just one day.
"Alright, don’t cry." Lao Xu sighed. "This kid’s had a rough year."
First, his career dreams shattered. Then, the loss of a loved one. It was as if fate had randomly picked someone to vent its fury upon, leaving powerless people to endure this torment like hell.
If they were naive children, it might have been different—their memories not yet solid, the pain less lasting. But they weren’t. In the first transitional period of their long lives, these young souls were racing toward adulthood, emotions at their most intense, their understanding of the world rapidly expanding, their hopes for the future boundless. They would remember everything they experienced now, and it would seep into every inch of their skin like a tattoo—vivid, painful, indelible.
Huan'er’s tears fell harder.
Lao Xu stood and patted her back in comfort. "Life is unpredictable. As friends, the most important thing now is to stand by each other through hardship. Pull yourself together and go back to class."
That day passed in a daze for Huan'er. Even Du Man noticed something was off and asked several times if she was feeling unwell. She couldn’t describe what she felt, only replaying the memory of Jing’s Father smiling at them in the vineyard that summer, his hand on their faces. Such a kind elder, so strong and healthy—how could the heavens bear to take him from this world?
Huan'er asked Du Man, "Do you miss home living at school?"
"Not too much." Du Man hesitated. "My home isn’t far. My parents work hard—I stay at school so they don’t have to worry about me."
A family of three, even if they only reunited on weekends—it was still a whole, complete family.
Huan'er murmured, "We’re all so lucky.""Mm." Du Man responded, flipping a few pages of the vocabulary book in front of her. "Hurry up and study. There's a quiz in class soon."
Humans, who pride themselves as the supreme species at the top of the food chain, are nothing more than ants in the vast universe—fragile, insignificant. The cruelest act of fate is not knocking us down, but never even granting us the right to step onto the stage in the first place.
Jing Qichi reappeared a week later.
After a long silence, he sent a message: "Come to the base."
Huan'er was halfway through her English essay when she immediately dropped her pen, told her mother she was heading out, and ran downstairs. This must be what they call "a day seeming like a year." She knew the unit had held a memorial service for Jing's Father, knew that Jing Qichi hadn't been home because his grandmother had fallen ill from the unbearable stress, knew that Jing's Mother had returned to work—though her own mother had said, "Your Aunt Lin is just numbing herself, forcing herself to cope." She knew all of it but dared not ask a single question. Asking would only deepen the sorrow. All she could do was check her phone countless times a day, silently resolving to be there the moment she was needed.
Finally, she saw him. A desolate figure standing before the cedar tree, like a ghost in the darkness, effortlessly blending into the night. Without pausing to catch her breath, Huan'er rushed forward. She heard him murmur to himself, "If only trees could talk."
If trees could talk, I wouldn’t ask for apologies or explanations. I just want to know what that warrior was like in his final moments.
Such a simple thing had become an unsolvable mystery.
"Qi Chi," Huan'er called out, her voice trembling on the verge of tears.
Jing Qichi looked up but said nothing, slowly sinking to the ground.
He gazed at the tree’s shadow, at the night sky, at the hospital building’s flickering windows. Huan'er could only watch him, following his line of sight, trying to understand what these ordinary things meant to him now.
"Let me tell you a joke," Jing Qichi suddenly spoke, not waiting for her response before continuing. "I accidentally saw my mom’s phone. That night… it wasn’t even my dad’s shift. Do you know why he switched?"
Huan'er didn’t understand his point but shook her head.
"Want to guess?" Jing Qichi asked with a smile, but his eyes were streaming tears.
He wiped his face. "It was for me. Because the next afternoon, we had an appointment with a coach from the local sports school. They said they wanted to learn more about me, see if there was a chance for me to transfer and keep playing soccer."
Jing Qichi cried quietly, just wiping his tears over and over, barely making a sound.
That was why Jing's Father had swapped shifts. That was why he’d been swallowed forever by that forest fire.
The coincidence was too cruel to be real.
Huan'er gently patted his back. "It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault."
"He knew I wasn’t ready to give up, knew I still wanted to play… He was always asking around, always fighting for me… Huan'er, I know I shouldn’t think this way, but it really shouldn’t have been him. The one who left… it shouldn’t have been my dad…"
His voice grew smaller and smaller, until only sobs remained.
Perhaps the shattering of the Jing family had, in some way, preserved the wholeness of another. Huan'er didn’t know how to process that truth.The absence of absolute fairness in this world stems solely from the irrevocability of past events. All we can do is seek a semblance of balance through compensation—like the perpetrator who harmed Song Ma being sentenced to two and a half years, or Jing's Father being posthumously honored as a martyr, becoming a symbol of courage and resilience in many hearts. Even if only relative, the world has shown its warmth with the utmost sincerity. This is an unshakable order, a solace brimming with genuine compassion.
"It's not your fault." Faced with a friend drowning in self-blame, Huan'er desperately wanted to pull him out, but she found herself powerless. All she could do was repeat, "It's not your fault. Not your fault at all."
In the end, Jing Qichi wiped his tears and abruptly tilted his head to look up at the hospital building beside them. "So many times, I wanted to jump from there. I wanted to see him, to apologize."
His gaze was fixed on the hospital rooftop.
Huan'er suddenly cupped his face, forcing their eyes to meet, and said word by word, "Don't even think about it."
No. Wrong. Not allowed.
Jing Qichi laughed, his eyes red, and patted her hand. "You go back first. I need some time alone."
Huan'er had no choice but to leave. He had so much to say to his father; he needed undisturbed time.
Cutting through the base to return to the Family Compound, she deliberately detoured past the Jing residence. The living room light was on, its glow pale and weary. Turning back to her own home, the motion-activated lights flickered on with each floor she climbed. A feeling grew stronger and stronger, like a fist pressing outward against the membrane of her heart, harder and harder. By the time she reached her doorstep, her heart felt punctured, and with a deafening roar in her body, she turned and sprinted downstairs.
The base was empty. She ran all the way to the hospital rooftop in one breath, but the door was firmly locked, impossible to open no matter how hard she shook it. Chen Huan'er began searching frantically—the hospital, the Family Compound, the affiliated elementary school. The area wasn’t large; where could he have gone?
The phone rang endlessly with no answer. The echo of an explosion reverberated in her mind, threatening to shatter her.
She ran along the main road, searching as if guided by some unseen force, until she spotted Jing Qichi at the construction site where the earlier struggle had taken place.
He lay sprawled in the middle of the road, motionless.
Chen Huan'er charged toward him, stumbling several times in her haste, her mind blank.
No blood, no injuries—just those hollow, bottomless eyes staring up from the ground.
She yanked him up like a madwoman, dragging and pulling him to the roadside, then slapped him across the face without hesitation. "Jing Qichi, what the hell are you doing?! Snap the fuck out of it!"
He wanted to die.
But he didn’t know if death was the right choice.
So he left it to fate: if a car stopped, he would live on; if it ran him over, then so be it.
The least likely outcome was that, in the dead of night, in this deserted ruin of a place, he was saved.
Huan'er kneaded his face, shook his shoulders, grabbed his hair, but the person before her was like a walking corpse, impossible to rouse.
Furious, she punched him in the face. "Say something!"
The blow was heavy—so heavy that Jing Qichi staggered back a step. Slowly, he lifted his head, pleading, "Huan'er, hit me. I wish someone would hit me, curse at me, torment me. But everyone just says it’s okay, it’s not my fault, it’ll get better. How? How the hell will it get better?"
Under the flickering streetlights, a car sped past, leaving only the roar of its engine in the air.
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