"Ugh. You're so annoying—stay away from me."
"Mei-mei, don't be mad. I'm sorry, okay?"
The bickering beside her snapped Lin Wan out of the place she'd fallen into. Only then did she realize how long she'd been standing there—long enough to drift backward, long enough to forget that the world didn't pause just because hers had shattered.
A young couple in matching outfits walked past, bright and careless. The girl yanked her hand free. The boy chased after her and caught it again. She threw him off. He took it again.
Back and forth.
Lin Wan watched them with something bitter enough to taste like envy.
They were young.
They were stupid.
Most importantly—
They were alive.
Her tears came without warning. Her vision blurred, and through the watery haze the couple seemed to melt into one shadow, drifting farther and farther away until the crowd swallowed them.
She lowered her gaze to her own right hand.
Empty.
The hand that used to be held—held so naturally she'd stopped noticing it—was empty now.
Her throat tightened. Something inside her chest stabbed again, sharp and familiar.
Wang Xiao…
She whispered his name as if it were habit, as if her mouth refused to surrender it. A name she'd once believed she would say for the rest of her life. A name she'd been forcing herself not to think about for days—not because she didn't miss him, but because she had been trying to remain functional.
Restraint didn't mean absence.
The truth was, she missed him so much it felt like she could die from it.
Tonight, whatever control she'd been holding together finally failed. The longing she'd kept pinned down surged back like a tide and swallowed her in one merciless rush.
Lin Wan collapsed.
Not dramatically. Not gracefully.
She squatted right there on the street, shoulders folded, and cried until she couldn't breathe.
She cried ugly.
Her throat still hadn't fully recovered; each sob tore out of her half-formed and hoarse, rasping into nothing before it could become a proper sound. And she'd been wearing makeup—too much, the way people did when they needed to look like they were fine. Tears flooded down her face and dragged the mascara with them, smearing black and red into streaks. She must have looked like a ruined opera mask—painted grief, melted.
A night market never lacked passersby. A young woman crying in public drew attention to the way blood draws flies.
People slowed. Glanced. Whispered.
Someone sighed.
Lin Wan cried too hard to see them clearly, too lost to hear anything except the sound of her own collapse—breath, ragged and broken; tears, endless and humiliating.
And after the first curiosity burned out, the bystanders drifted away. Someone else's story was still someone else's story. A stranger's tragedy wasn't worth delaying your own hurried steps.
Lin Wan didn't know how long she'd been there.
However long it was, it still wasn't enough.
If she could have—if time were merciful—she would have cried until the end of it, right here, in the place they'd walked hand in hand a hundred times. The place where she'd picked out keychains while he fed her lamb skewers. The place that held their laughter, their small quarrels, their warmth.
The place where he'd slid a ring onto her finger and promised he would walk with her for a lifetime.
A tissue appeared in front of her.
Lin Wan lifted her face, soaked and swollen, and saw a short-haired girl in a high school uniform. The girl held the tissue out timidly, voice careful as if loudness might break her.
"Big sister… did you get dumped too?"
Lin Wan's breath caught.
For a second she almost laughed—not because it was funny, but because the question was so heartbreakingly innocent it hurt. She swallowed, hard.
After a moment, she let out a low, broken exhale.
"Do you know what's worse than heartbreak?" she asked.
The girl shook her head. Her eyes were clear in that way only a teenager's could be—clear because they hadn't been forced to look at certain things yet.
Lin Wan thought, absurdly: She's lucky.
She stood, took the tissue, and wiped her face. "Thank you," she said, and meant it. Then she turned to leave.
But the girl followed, stubborn with curiosity. "What is it?"
Lin Wan looked back and gave a bitter smile that didn't reach anywhere real.
"Loss."
The girl blinked. "Isn't that the same?"
Lin Wan froze. Then she answered as if she were speaking to herself—slowly, hollowly.
"If you break up… you can still see him. You can still know if he's doing okay."
Her smile cracked.
"But if you lose him…" Her voice dropped. "You'll never see him again."
The girl seemed to half-understand, half-not. She didn't ask anything else.
Lin Wan turned away and walked off.
Her right hand rose to her chest instinctively—because it hurt there, sharply. She had just said aloud the cruelest truth.
The one she'd been avoiding.
She had lost Wang Xiao.
In this lifetime, she would never see him again.
A barrier between life and death.
Maybe that was the most brutal kind of helplessness there was.
When Lin Wan got home, her almond-shaped eyes had swollen into something like bruised fruit.
Before she could even wash her face, her phone buzzed violently.
Wang Xiao's mother.
Lin Wan's heart lurched.
Was Uncle's condition worse? Had something happened at the hospital?
She answered immediately, hearing the older woman's anxious voice.
"Wanwan, where are you?"
"I'm home. Auntie… is Uncle—"
"Where did you go just now?" Wang's mother cut in, voice trembling. "Wanwan, can you promise me something…? Stop investigating."
Lin Wan went still.
The request tightened around her throat like a hand.
"Auntie," she said carefully, "please don't worry. This is my decision. You don't need to do anything. But I can't just stand here and watch them twist the truth and let the killer walk free…"
Her voice broke on the last word. She hated that weakness. She hated how grief could still reach in and grab her at any moment.
"I really can't," she whispered.
Wang's mother let out a long, exhausted sigh, as if she'd been carrying this conversation for days.
"Even if you get evidence," she said, "it won't be accepted. It won't be heard."
"I know." Lin Wan swallowed hard, forcing herself steady. "That's why—since they played dirty first, I won't stick to the usual methods either."
She took a breath. Each word sharpened itself on her resolve.
"I have an audio recording. I can put it online. If it gets big enough—if public pressure builds—someone will have to respond. I don't believe they can cover the sky with one hand forever."
The moment she said it, Wang's mother panicked.
"No—Wanwan, you can't do that!"
Lin Wan's body went cold.
Why?
The question had been circling her for days, but she hadn't dared voice it. Wang's parents had been too passive. Too resigned. Almost abnormal.
How could parents who loved their son react like this?
"Auntie," Lin Wan said slowly, "tell me the truth."
Silence.
Then, in a voice that sounded like it had been scraped raw:
"Come here."
Half an hour later, Lin Wan took a taxi to the Army General Hospital.
Wang Xiao's father was being treated there.
As she approached the inpatient building, she spotted Wang's mother pacing downstairs, restless and drained. The older woman's shoulders looked smaller than Lin Wan remembered. As if grief had taken inches from her.
The moment she saw Lin Wan, she exhaled again and again—like she'd been holding something poisonous in her lungs.
Then she finally spoke.
Years ago, Wang's father worked in the city's construction and planning department.
Eight years ago, he had been dragged into a major engineering-quality incident.
He hadn't been the mastermind—just a small figure caught between superiors and subordinates.
But the blame wasn't imaginary.
His signature was on every document.
In the end, someone higher up had suppressed the case. He avoided prison, but he was punished—demoted and transferred back to B City. He carried it like a stain that never fully washed out.
"A few days ago," Wang's mother said, voice shaking, "at Central City Hospital… Chen Jin's secretary came."
Lin Wan's stomach sank.
The older woman continued, words spilling faster now as if delay would kill her.
"She brought a copied testimony from that old incident. Even after all these years, it's still hard evidence. The moment your uncle saw it… he went blank. Like he'd been struck."
Lin Wan felt as if something heavy had slammed down on her chest.
"And then?" she asked, though her mouth already tasted like ash.
Wang's mother's eyes filled with tears. "Then the secretary said—very politely—that if we kept pushing, they couldn't guarantee the past would stay buried."
Lin Wan's fingers curled.
So that was it.
The truth wasn't that Wang's parents didn't love their son.
The truth was that the other side had put a knife to the last thing his family had left and smiled while doing it.
Wang's mother choked on her next words.
"If we fight for justice for our son… your uncle will be forced to take the fall for that old disaster."
At his age, it wouldn't just mean prison. It would drag in names they couldn't even bear to speak aloud—people with power far beyond what they could touch.
"And even if we sacrifice everything," she whispered, "it still might not bring the truth back."
Lin Wan stood there, unmoving.
The heat of summer pressed against her skin, but her hands and feet went cold.
She had been treating the recording like a weapon.
A precious storage card like treasure.
But in the face of this—this kind of leverage—her weapon suddenly looked small.
Not useless.
But small.
She remembered Chen Jin's calmness.
His voice on the phone.
His controlled silences.
His certainty.
Of course, he could be patient.
Only someone holding an absolute advantage could afford to say, I'll be waiting.
All her effort—every sleepless night, every clenched decision—
Had become a joke in someone else's hands.
The strength in her body leaked out thread by thread. Her breath tightened. For a second she thought she might faint.
Wang Xiao would never rest.
And she could only watch.
Just like she'd watched him swallowed by the crematorium door, reduced to ash, while she could do nothing.
It wasn't disappointment anymore.
It was despair.
Real despair—heavy, blunt, and suffocating.
Wang's mother was crying openly now, voice shredded.
Lin Wan stood in front of her, silent, the way people became silent when there was no language left that could change anything.
Then, slowly, she lifted her gaze.
Not to the older woman.
Past her.
Toward the hospital doors.
Toward the idea of Chen Jin.
Her recording was still in her possession.
And now she understood what he had done.
He hadn't just rewritten a report.
He had rewritten the boundaries of what she was allowed to fight.
He hadn't simply buried the truth.
He had buried her options.
Lin Wan inhaled once, shallow.
And in that breath, something inside her hardened.
Despair wasn't the end.
It was a line.
If she crossed it, she couldn't pretend she was still playing by ordinary rules.