Chapter One

Tu Qin gazed at the somewhat unfamiliar young face in the portrait at the center of the mourning hall and thought she might be losing her mind.

The deceased was her ex-boyfriend, Liu Lingxu, who had been gravely ill for several years. Two months ago, he contacted her, and they chatted online a few times after that.

Calling him her ex-boyfriend wasn’t entirely accurate. Liu Lingxu had been her senior in high school, two years above her. She developed a crush on him after one of his speeches, and after a week of infatuation, she cornered him outside the boys' restroom to confess her feelings. Liu Lingxu accepted, and they became a couple. Their relationship lasted about as long as a class break, ten minutes or so; before the next bell rang, Tu Qin had already changed her mind.

They were boyfriend and girlfriend for only ten minutes. Their entire interaction consisted of “I like you,” “Shall we date?” “Let’s go see a movie after school tomorrow,” “Oh, I can’t—thank you, goodbye.” And that was it.

Tu Qin was twenty-six now. All her relationships were like this: she’d fall for someone, confess or be confessed to, and then break up. Her longest relationship lasted three hours, because she’d gone to the cinema—she didn’t want to leave early, so she forced herself to endure for the whole movie.

She was a lithromantic—she could only feel attracted to others in a one-sided way. The moment her feelings were reciprocated, she would feel repulsed or even disgusted.

So none of her relationships ever ended well. If she didn’t get punched when breaking up, she considered herself lucky to have met someone with a good temper.

But Liu Lingxu was an exception. He was the rare one with whom she could maintain a friendly, chatty relationship after breaking up. Later, Liu Lingxu went to college in another city, and they naturally drifted apart.

They had little contact. Even now, as she looked at his funeral portrait, he felt like a stranger.

Two months ago, when Liu Lingxu finally got back in touch, it took her half a day to remember who he was.

He had contacted her to invite her to his funeral.

He said his life had been too short and he wanted it documented. Tu Qin was, among his acquaintances, the only writer.

Tu Qin wrote web novels and had a bit of niche popularity. She’d been earning pocket money writing since high school, traveling around with the proceeds. After college, she became a web drama screenwriter—though after three years, she was still just a low-level, almost invisible assistant writer.

Liu Lingxu told her, “Come to my funeral, gather some material. Maybe you’ll use it someday.”

That way, he could leave some trace of himself in this world.

His reasoning moved her. So she braved planes, trains, buses, e-bikes, and unlicensed taxis, enduring a long journey to this small county town, to witness, up close, a chaotic spectacle.

Liu Lingxu was a minor internet celebrity who never showed his face. His family had been potters for generations—one of his ancestors had crafted ceramics for the emperor. This craft was passed down, and Liu Lingxu made vlogs selling small ceramic pieces. During the peak of livestream e-commerce, he made enough that, after medical expenses, a decent sum was left.

His parents were divorced, each with new families.

So, the question of what to do with his remaining money became the cause of the current uproar.

He’d been ill for so long that, at the funeral, no one seemed truly sad—just tense, ready to fight, and prone to breaking into wailing arguments.

Tu Qin stood in the corner, watching Liu Lingxu’s grinning face in the black-and-white portrait.

Did you really want to leave this kind of mark in the world? she couldn’t help but wonder.

Wouldn’t it be better to leave something beautiful behind?

Your dad and your other dad are about to start brawling.

Still, Liu Lingxu smiled at her, and she could almost remember that teenager on the podium, delivering his speech.

She couldn’t recall what he’d said, but she remembered the moment she fell for him—the way he stood, backlit, with a mocking smile, just like the photo now.

Tu Qin took a step back, leaving the hall before the chaos could escalate.

***

Liu Lingxu had chosen this county for his final days on purpose. He said it was far from any top hospital, so when the end came, he wouldn’t be rushed off for one last round of futile resuscitation.

Moreover, while he was alive, his parents hadn’t suffered much. He wanted them to suffer a little now, on the journey. Pain, after all, makes things memorable.

That was one of his last wishes.

Dead at twenty-eight, his life had been anything but smooth, and his parting wish was simply to be remembered.

The town was dilapidated, the funeral home on the outskirts even more so. Tu Qin stood outside, hands in her pockets against the wind, feeling a chill.

She wasn’t sad—melancholy would be too detached for her mood. What she felt was closer to desolation.

She thought of Liu Lingxu at sixteen, and herself at that age.

They’d managed to keep in touch after her confession and breakup, mainly because of their similar family backgrounds.

Suddenly, Tu Qin wanted a cigarette. She patted her pockets—she’d resolved to quit this year, so all she had was her phone and a card holder.

Inside, the shouting grew louder—from bitter, cold complaints to outright airing of dirty laundry: affairs, gambling, stock market disasters—the usual. Tu Qin squinted at the small shop across from the funeral home, which sold cigarettes and lighters.

She hesitated. October was nearly over—just two more months and she’d have gone a year without smoking.

Suddenly, a crash behind her. Amid the turmoil, a man’s furious roar: “You think just because I don’t blow up, I’m easy to push around? Two sons, not one survived, and you—daring to come after my boy’s money? Are you even a Liu? What do you have to do with our family?”

A brief, stunned silence.

Then, a woman’s shrill wailing and cursing, and chaos all over again.

Tu Qin sighed, straightened up, and headed for the shop.

Life was too bitter. She’d quit next year.

The shop was oddly festive, surrounded by other stores selling mourning goods, yet it alone burst with color. Tu Qin’s attention was caught by a red kite hanging in the doorway. She wondered who would buy a kite at a funeral home’s grocery store, and didn’t watch her step—on the stairs, she bumped into someone.

Dressed all in black, tall, and clearly equally distracted, they both instinctively reached out to steady each other, then let go. He spoke first, apologizing.

His voice was pleasant—deep and hoarse, but not exaggerated, not like the overly affected “voice bubbles” online.

“No problem,” Tu Qin replied, catching her balance and looking up with a smile. “I wasn’t watching either.”

He nodded politely and headed straight for the innermost mourning hall—Liu Lingxu’s.

Tu Qin watched him go.

She was a little stunned. In that brief eye contact, she’d seen the redness around his eyes, the unmistakable grief on his face.

A grief completely out of place in Liu Lingxu’s farcical, stage-like funeral.

A friend?

But Liu Lingxu had told her he had no friends; after being ill so long, he wanted no emotional ties, no one to shed tears at his funeral.

But someone was crying, after all.

Her poor ex-boyfriend—none of his final wishes seemed to have come true.

Tu Qin sighed again, pulled her hoodie up, bought the most expensive pack of cigarettes in the shop, lit one, and stood in the doorway, exhaling smoke toward the mourning hall.

From so far away, she could still hear the shouting and crying. This time, the focus seemed not to be Liu Lingxu, but his brother Liu Lingpeng, who had disappeared at age ten. Tu Qin remembered him; Liu Lingxu had shared enough in their last two months of chatting that she could have written his autobiography.

Liu Lingpeng had been a pottery prodigy, taken under the wing of the family’s patriarch from a young age. They’d even changed his name to match the main family line. But at ten, he ran away in the middle of the night and was never seen again.

Liu Lingxu had said Liu Lingpeng was the real reason their parents’ marriage failed, and he himself was the reason they finally divorced.

He was probably right, for at his funeral, just the mention of Liu Lingpeng could send his mother into a meltdown, and both parents would stop fighting over money to accuse each other of being unfit parents.

They were being modest, really—neither was fit.

Tu Qin exhaled smoke.

She hadn’t smoked in a long time, so the first two drags made her dizzy. She found a relatively clean step outside the shop and sat down, planning her next move.

She didn’t want to attend Liu Lingxu’s burial. Just seeing his black-and-white photo was enough for her.

She’d spent two days traveling from Mo City to get here and didn’t fancy another two days of planes, trains, and hanging onto a motorcycle for dear life. She planned to head south instead, travel for a week, and then return to Mo City—take her vacation before joining her next production, and write enough drafts to last a month.

Thinking about these things here gave her a strange, suspended feeling. Her mundane, grounded life, compared to the life and death unfolding in the mourning hall, seemed as insubstantial as the smoke she exhaled—one puff and it vanished.

After a bout of fierce arguing, the funeral hall fell quiet—either they were exhausted or finally realized it was their own child who’d died. Now came the intermittent sounds of weeping and lamenting the cruelty of fate.

Tu Qin rolled her disposable lighter between her fingers and lit another cigarette.

Once she finished this one, she’d leave.

In her heart, she said goodbye to that black-and-white portrait, without promising Liu Lingxu she would write his story.

His story was too tragic—no one would want to read it.

Before she finished the last cigarette, she saw the man in black—the one with the pleasant voice—emerge from the mourning hall.

Now she could see him clearly: on this late autumn day, he wore only a black shirt with a stand-up collar, perfectly pressed, impeccably formal.

He paused outside the hall, head slightly bowed, then walked toward the gate without looking back.

His bearing was impeccable.

It was like a long take in a film—his solemn, almost classical black attire set against the dilapidated hall, the wailing behind him. For a moment, Tu Qin was transfixed.

Sunlight, broken by leaves, fell in scattered patches over him. The shattered blackness seemed to seep into his very veins.

For the first time, Tu Qin felt, viscerally, a sense of brokenness emanating from someone she’d never met.

She watched as he reached the gates.

He paused again, his tall figure standing alone against the bleak backdrop of early autumn.

Then, he swayed.

And collapsed face first onto the yellow earth with a heavy thud.