Jing Mian returned to his hotel room.
He left the door open as he retrieved his bank card from his backpack. Without delay, he went downstairs and found the nearest ATM.
Before entering his PIN, Jing Mian checked the balance.
Forty thousand and three hundred.
This was the savings he had accumulated bit by bit from streaming over the past several months, along with the prize money from the last Cross-Server Competition and the provincial tournament.
Withdrawing it all at once would exceed the ATM’s maximum limit. After hesitating for a moment, Jing Mian finally withdrew ten thousand, neatly placing the cash into a black tote bag he had borrowed from a cleaning lady.
Jing Mian carried the ten thousand back to the hotel.
He found paper and a pen, then wrote a note labeled “National Tournament Fine” and stuck it on the opening of the black bag filled with cash.
Next, he placed the bank card, still holding the remaining balance on the other side, also attaching a note that read:
“The password is 1123, my Husband’s birthday. Please send it to Driver Li at 155 Liukou Alley, Linshui District.”
“Please tell Uncle Li that Jing Mian won’t be able to send money anymore. I’m sorry.”
“I hope he has a good life from now on.”
Jing Mian’s handwriting was somewhat messy, even shaky.
But it was still legible.
He wasn’t sure who would find it first.
It might be his ME. teammates, the hotel cleaning staff, or perhaps… Mr. Ren.
Speaking of Mr. Ren—
Jing Mian’s heart skipped a beat.
Trembling, he picked up his phone and opened the chat with his Husband.
His gaze lingered on the keyboard, his fingers hovering over the screen as he typed and deleted, unable to string together a complete sentence.
In the end, Jing Mian set the phone down.
He picked up the pen and paper again, bending over the edge of the bed as he wrote intermittently. Finally, at the bottom of the page, he signed his name.
The folded letter bore the inscription:
—To My Husband.
Beside the letter lay a brand-new, unused card.
The five million Mr. Ren had given him before their marriage, Jing Mian had never touched it, nor could he think of a use for it. Now, at least, he could return it to his Husband untouched.
At this moment, Jing Mian could think of no one else left to bid farewell to, nor anything else left to settle. It was as if he could no longer find any connection between himself and this world.
His world was too small.
His mother had abandoned him.
His father had started a new family and had a second child.
His Stepmother despised him.
He had no friends.
Even his Brother had cast him aside.
And Mr. Ren was a cold, distant moon.
He had plucked Jing Mian from the depths of an unfathomable tide, dried his tears, and warmed him in his palms. For a fleeting moment, it felt as if he had briefly returned to sixteen years ago, living out a shallow, transient dream.
His Husband was the first ray of light in his short, bleak life, a beam that had slipped through the cracks of rotting, blackened wood.
His world had been illuminated in that instant.
After so long, Jing Mian had once again touched the moon he had secretly hidden away.
It was a shame he hadn’t been able to give that little string of stars to the moon.
It was a shame he was already rotting.
Jing Mian stood up, put on his cap, and left his phone on the bedside table. He turned off the lights, leaving only a dim wall lamp casting a faint glow. The dim light enveloped him in the crisscrossing shadows of the hallway, as if he had melted into the night.
Memories were cruel.
Perhaps even more cruel were the memories he feared to touch, resurfacing repeatedly in his mind, frame by frame, word by word, painfully vivid. Just as the wounds began to scab over, they would be torn open again by sharp, raw fragments.
Jing Mian didn’t think fate was unfair.
What was truly unfair was that he could still pretend everything was normal—competing in tournaments, getting married, having children—while his mother’s bones lay buried deep in the earth, her grave long overgrown with grass.
This was the sin left for the living to atone for.
But the sin was his,
not Mr. Ren’s.
Jing Mian stood in place for a long time.
Then, he turned around.
The door closed softly behind him.
The items displayed by the bedside were bathed in the lingering glow of dusk, as everything sank into slumber, silent and still.
The night breeze carried a biting chill.
Early spring had arrived, but the city had yet to shed the lingering cold of late winter. People still bundled up in thick hoodies and coats, strolling leisurely in small groups along the tree-lined streets.
Jing Mian walked until he suddenly crouched down.
His fingers brushed against the roots of a tree by the roadside.
Once his knees hit the ground, uncontrollable dry heaves wracked his body, accompanied by violent coughs. His stomach churned violently, yet nothing came up.
Tears streamed freely down his cheeks.
Wiping his mouth, Jing Mian gasped for breath, struggling to stand.
But his legs gave way.
…
Never had an episode been this severe.
His chest felt suffocated by an overwhelming tide of grief and despair, as if silently drowning in the depths of the sea. Every sensation in his mind was erased, leaving only fragmented flashes of the car accident that day, accompanied by eerily realistic sounds, looping endlessly.
The most classic symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder was ‘flashbacks.’
From the ten-minute countdown on the competition clock until now,
his will and body
could no longer hold on.
This was also the longest Jing Mian had endured without medication to ease the symptoms.
He faintly remembered the last time an episode had been this overwhelming, two years ago, when he was eighteen.
That night, on the anniversary of his mother’s death, Jing Guozhen had dragged him to some grand birthday banquet for an important figure. He had broken down in an unnoticed corner, only to be calmed by a disabled Brother.
Even now, he still couldn’t recall who that person was.
Regrettably, he would never get the chance to thank them.
Jing Mian’s lips were parched.
After standing up, he managed a few steps before his legs buckled again, sending him crashing down. He forced himself up once more.
“Mom…”
“Mom…”
Jing Mian didn’t wipe his tears. He simply kept walking, murmuring softly, “I can finally see you again.”
He repeated it over and over.
A twenty-year-old young man, yet at this moment, he was like an abandoned child, wandering helplessly and aimlessly down the street, calling out for his mother again and again.
…
“Freak.”
A passing man muttered under his breath, cursing quietly.
The girl beside him, arm linked with his, smacked him lightly. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”
The man shrugged. “Listen to what he’s saying.”
The girl strained to hear. “Mom?”
The man scoffed. “Yeah, a grown man crying for his mom, and he doesn’t even smell like alcohol. Clearly something’s wrong with his head.”
The girl frowned, uneasy. “Doesn’t he have any family to look after him?”
“He’s wearing an e-sports jersey, looks like a pro player.”
…
“Oh dear, what’s wrong with him?”
An elderly man passing by noticed Jing Mian and bent down, offering his bottle of mineral water to the young man. “Here, young man, have some water.”
When the youth showed no reaction, the old man muttered worriedly, “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
He helped Jing Mian up, but the young man seemed not to hear him, or perhaps didn’t even register his presence.
He simply continued walking.
The old man scratched his head in confusion, still holding the bottle of water.
He vaguely noticed that the direction the young man was heading seemed to be… the nearest stretch of coastline to the market.
With few recreational facilities, this stretch of coast near the outskirts of the city was open to the public. The sea was turbulent, its dark waves blending into the night sky, though the shimmering reflection of the moon still glimmered faintly at the tide’s edge.
At this hour, there were almost no tourists or passersby drawn to the scenery.
The coastal wind was harsh.
The closer he got to the shoreline, the more the fine gusts seeped into his pores, as if embracing him with cold.
Come to think of it, it was on this very stretch of sea that Husband had proposed to him.
Only now, the waves no longer carried that faint blue glow, just darkness and silence.
The moon’s reflection rippled.
Soaking the sand over and over, it painted the shore in heavy ink before receding, leaving only traces behind.
Ending one’s life here wouldn’t trouble anyone.
But he had caused Mr. Ren so much trouble.
Jing Mian took a step forward.
He lowered his gaze, watching as his shoe sank into the soft, damp sand. In the next moment, a wave surged forward, wrapping around his laced shoe and rising past his calf in an instant.
So cold.
Soon, he would be as cold as the seawater.
The waves swirled into a small vortex around his unmoving left foot before scattering in retreat.
Jing Mian lifted his other foot.
…
…
“MianMian.”
Jing Mian’s heart jolted violently.
Turning toward the voice, he saw a tall, dark figure standing not far behind him, facing the shore.
His breathing faintly audible.
At some point—
Husband had appeared behind him.