At four in the morning, Xu Cheng woke from a nightmare.
It was pitch-black outside. Even the streetlights were off. The entire building was silent.
There was a faint sound of breathing by his ear—very light—falling on Xu Cheng's cheek like a dragonfly skimming the water, like a kiss.
Xu Cheng's arms were instantly covered in goosebumps. He turned his head abruptly and saw a familiar face.
Yang Zhou was lying on his side, curled up next to him. He looked exhausted, and very quiet.
At that moment, Xu Cheng instinctively reached out to touch his brow and eyes—features he'd been looking at for so many years that he could draw them even with his eyes closed.
What exactly is love?
Xu Cheng wondered.
Love seems to last forever, but it also seems to be fleeting. He and Yang Zhou had held on to love for ten years, only to be defeated by it in an instant. So you see, how unfair it is — one still in love, as if nothing had changed; the other already long gone, love reduced to a distant memory.
Yang Zhou woke up.
He opened his eyes and gazed at Xu Cheng with a gentle, lingering look, until a faint light appeared outside the window.
Xu Cheng was so sleepy he couldn't keep his eyes open.
He could only watch as Yang Zhou got up and left the room.
But Yang Zhou, your leg is injured. Why do you have to walk so fast and in such a hurry?
When Xu Cheng opened his eyes again, he was still the only one in the room.
He bought a ticket for a 10 a.m. flight to America.
He was nineteen when he and Yang Zhou moved into this apartment—young and headstrong, believing that they had a long future together.
Now he was twenty-nine, left only with missing memories and confusion.
The airport was crowded.
Xu Cheng walked alone through the throng, the roar of airplane engines ringing in his ears. He looked up—into a sky so vast it seemed to have no end, and he was just a tiny bird.
"ChengCheng!"
Someone called his name from within the crowd.
His suitcase stopped rolling. Xu Cheng looked back and saw 27-year-old Yang Zhou standing there waving at him.
"May ChengCheng be safe and sound."
Xu Cheng opened his mouth. These words, wrapped in memory, surged into his mind all at once.
Yang Zhou didn't remember his own birthday, so Xu Cheng had picked the day they first met and declared it as Yang Zhou's birthday. He would buy him a cake, set up a surprise, and watch as Yang Zhou closed his eyes to make a wish, then blew out the birthday candles.
"What did you wish for?"
"May ChengCheng be safe and sound."
"Why is it the same every year? Can't you change it?"
"I'll change it next year."
But next year never came.
A crazy thought kept repeating in Xu Cheng's mind—Don't get on that plane to America.
But why?
Xu Cheng blinked; Yang Zhou was gone from the crowd.
The airport screens kept cycling through advertisements. A woman's name caught his eye.
Chen Jia.
A co-founder of the Cheng'an Group.
A woman's face slowly surfaced in his mind. It began to overlap with the woman in the photo and video—until at last, they became one and the same.
The 26-year-old Yang Zhou brought Xu Cheng to his studio for the first time. Back then, the company had only just been founded, and conditions were very simple. "ChengCheng, let me introduce you. This is my business partner, Chen Jia."
Xu Cheng had thought the woman in front of him seemed intelligent and capable. Time proved his judgment right—Yang Zhou and Chen Jia became a powerful team, and everything began to develop rapidly.
Perhaps it wasn't just their careers that were developing, but something between the two of them as well.
Xu Cheng looked up and gazed at the name on the screen, a sudden wave of frustration sweeping over him.
The truth was—he wasn't someone particularly useful.
He had lived his whole life following a predictable path—no bold changes, no unexpected turns. If there was one, it would be coming out with Yang Zhou. That was the only time he'd ever stepped off script.
He had always known he couldn't help Yang Zhou with his career. So he quit his own job and chose to support him in their day-to-day life.
But even that… he hadn't done particularly well.
If anything, it had always been Yang Zhou who took care of him more.
Thinking this, Xu Cheng felt a faint sense of relief.
Because no matter in work or in life, Chen Jia always seemed to do everything better than he could.
The boarding announcement sounded through the terminal.
Xu Cheng pushed down the thousand tangled thoughts in his mind and began walking toward the boarding gate.
Somewhere nearby, people were saying goodbye.
"A man about to turn thirty—you need to take better care of yourself out there."
"What do you mean, about thirty?"
"Of course you're turning thirty. Once the New Year comes, it'll be 2044, and you'll be thirty."
No one came to see him off.
Xu Cheng walked across the jet bridge, boarded the plane, and found his seat by the window. From there, he could see the blue sky outside.
He placed his bag beside him. Sunlight streamed through the window, casting the reflection of a pallid face, like someone gravely ill.
As the plane left the runway and flew into the blue sky, the face disappeared.
Xu Cheng should have said goodbye in his heart. At the very least, here—now—he should have been able to say goodbye to Yang Zhou. But strangely, he couldn't do so, as if the person who was leaving was not him.
In the end, he became a bird.
Xu Cheng truly became like a bird, throwing himself into the embrace of the sky—and from then on, vanished without a trace.
In the year 2050, Cheng'an Group announced a breakthrough:
Their company had made significant progress in the development of humanoid robots, achieving perfect results in the trial phase.
These robots were called Q. They could have memory chips implanted—chips that carried human memories—allowing the dead to live again around those who still needed them.
And the very first person to undergo this trial was Cheng'an Group's original founder—Yang Zhou.
The robot implanted with his memory chip vanished from public view after the successful trial.
No one knew where it had gone.
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