Author: Shi Wu Cha
Volume: 1
Age Rating: Mature
Translator: Heather Wang
Editor: suzimo

Synopsis

After my boyfriend’s funeral, I woke up in the past, back when he was secretly in love with me, and I didn’t even know he existed…

Product Info

Book Photos

Preview

When the news came that Li Chishu had jumped, I was still working late at the office.

It was 10:30 at night. Darkness swallowed the entire floor. Only the light of my little corner cut a thin, stubborn slit through it, like a pocket of light burrowed into the trunk of something long dead.

My phone buzzed. It was Luo Ke. Her voice trembled with panic. Words broke apart in her throat. “Shen… Shen Baoshan… Li Chishu… jumped… He jumped.”

That single light stayed on, glowing uselessly in the empty building, while I tore through the streets toward the city hospital.
Just kidding. Life’s too damn precious for reckless driving. I knew that better than anyone, especially in that moment.

Still, I ran two red lights.

By the time I reached the ER, Li Chishu hadn’t pulled through. Luo Ke pulled me into a chair, and I sat there, stiff. My brain was so numb it had forgotten how to talk to my limbs. I could hear Luo Ke’s voice, but my toes didn’t even twitch.

“It was the sixth floor… I don’t know how he got up there… They said he hit something on the way down, and it broke the fall… But he wasn’t conscious when they brought him in…”

I can’t tell you how long I waited outside the OR. I couldn’t say when the light above the door changed color or what it changed to. Hell, I don’t even remember what his face looked like when they rolled him out.

Scratch that. I never even saw it. His whole head was wrapped up like a damn bowling ball.

What I do remember is watching the sun rise and fall over that hospital bed, day after day. It all blurs into a blank stretch. I wondered if anyone ever went back to the office to turn off the lights. I’d think about it for half a second, then glance over at Li Chishu in that bed and think, screw the lights. I’ve got money. Shut the sun down if you want. Just don’t cut the oxygen. Not even the Grim Reaper gets to do that.

In the end, though, it wasn’t the Grim Reaper. It was Li Chishu himself who ripped off his own oxygen mask.

I swear to God, that guy drives me insane.

It wasn’t his first attempt, either. He’d swallowed pills, slit his wrists, even tried to choke himself with a belt tied to a doorknob. Honestly, if I’d had one less camera installed around the house, that bastard might’ve actually pulled one of those attempts off.

This time he outsmarted me. He found a rooftop. Like, what the hell? What was I supposed to do, put cameras in the fucking sky?

Asshole.

One of these days, I’ll call whoever designs aircraft carriers and see if they can rig something up for me. I never needed it before, but he’s given me a reason to. To get ready for the next round.

Oh, who am I kidding? If I could stop him, he wouldn’t be lying in that bed to begin with.

There was one night, though. Just once, he woke up, or at least I think he did. Honestly, I’m still not sure if it was real or just a dream.

I remember his eyelashes twitching first.

Li Chishu’s lashes were unbelievably long and thick, like something out of a dollhouse. He had pretty eyes, too. Barbie pretty. When he got shy, he’d lower them just enough to block his gaze, and I’d have to lean down to catch his expression. The second I looked, he’d pull away. When his ears went red, I’d realize, oh, he’s embarrassed again.

That’s how it’s always been between Li Chishu and me, and I’ve always caught on too late.

Too late to notice he’d liked me for years. Too late to realize he was sick. Too late to see the meds. Too late to understand how sick he really was. Too late to know he’d wanted to die for a long, long time.

People have all kinds of names for this kind of illness. Some call it the “rich man’s flu.” Some say it’s a “boredom disease.” Others call it an artist’s thing. The proper name is depression.

And don’t get me wrong: for Li Chishu, it wasn’t a phase. He wasn’t trying to be trendy. That guy would wear a white tee until the seams gave out; he didn’t care about fads.

He didn’t choose this. He didn’t even know when it started. One day, he was just sitting on the couch, waiting for me to come home. He looked at the fruit knife on the table, and suddenly… he wanted to try it.

He only admitted it after the third time I caught him trying to kill himself.

Anyway, back to that night. That single minute when he might’ve been awake, I remember every damn second. It’s the sharpest memory in months of fog. I could count each breath he drew through that mask.

That’s why I don’t think it was a dream. It felt too real.

He tried to open his eyes. His lashes fluttered, then he finally looked at me. The first thing he saw was me staring back.

He didn’t look surprised. He just gave me the same look he always did, calm and quiet, like he had some secret he’d never tell. He used to smile like that when I whispered nonsense in his ear; when I showed up with flowers behind my back; when I got his name tattooed on my arm; when I found the pills.

And now, even at the end, he still smiled the same way.

It was the kind of soft smile that started in his lashes, curved his eyes into little crescents, and finally tugged up the corners of his mouth under the bandages. Like he was saying, “Come on, Shen Baoshan. Don’t be mad. Just for today. Last time, okay?”

I looked up at the ceiling and let the tears come.

The doctors had already told me his organs were shot. No fixing them. A few days left at most.
When I looked back, his smile was even sweeter. He held it for a while. Maybe my face looked a little less pissed because then he mouthed something.

He couldn’t talk anymore, and even if he could, I wouldn’t have heard him. But I’d been teaching myself to read lips. I don’t remember exactly when I started, maybe after his second suicide attempt. One day, I just caught myself searching for classes online. The first time I clicked a link, I panicked and slammed the tab shut. I didn’t even know why I was doing it. But I went back. Did the research. Picked the course with the best reviews. Paid. Studied.

Some part of me must’ve known before the rest did, like Li Chishu had planted some sixth sense in me years ago, one that saw the ending long before I did.

He mouthed to me, “Shen Baoshan, go home.”

Sounds romantic, right? Like he was asking me to take him with me.

But he wasn’t. He meant I should go home. Alone.

I tilted my head and just stared at him. He smiled again, soft and shy, like he was trying to make it easier for me.

He still had the nerve to smile with his head cracked open?

That was the last thing I ever said to him—my last curse.

That night, I went home for the first time since everything happened. I sat on the living room floor and didn’t move. The gardenias he’d planted a month ago were still sitting on the windowsill. June was almost over. The flowers were already fading.

Around dawn, I finally drifted off.

Funny, isn’t it? I’d spent so many nights wide awake at the hospital, watching him breathe. But the first night I left… I finally slept.

That night, I dreamed someone was knocking on the door.

Not just anyone’s knock; it was Li Chishu’s. Slow, three taps, a pause, then three more.

I jolted awake. The living room light was still on. I kept my eyes on the door, waiting for the sound again, but it never came.

When I turned my head, a gardenia had fallen onto the windowsill. I stared at it for a long time before finally whispering, “Li Chishu, I’m not seeing you off.”

Li Chishu was the kind of guy the wind might knock over, all bones and pale skin, like sunlight had skipped over him his whole life. Quiet, overly polite, always holding himself back. Even when he snapped, the first word out of his mouth was “sorry.” He wore shame like a second skin. Teachers bragged about him in front of the class but rolled their eyes afterward. “Too much of a bookworm,” they’d say.

And me? I’m Shen Baoshan. I might sound like a punk most of the time, but I swear I’m not a bad guy.

I had it easy: a decent family, a stable home, and solid grades. In high school, he was always first in our year; I hovered right below him. Sometimes I slipped to third or fourth, depending on my mood. But I was the one people liked. Teachers smiled at me. Classmates wanted me around. I had that shine.

If I didn’t, why would Li Chishu spend all those years quietly in love with me?

It’s been more than a decade since we first crossed paths. Although “crossed paths” might be overstating it. Back then, to me, he was just a name on the honor roll. If he had brushed past me in the hall, I wouldn’t have noticed, because I was that kind of guy. Arrogant as hell. Too cool to care about anyone else. Was there space for him in my life? Not a chance.

But I knew how to play the part of being polite with teachers, easy with classmates, always fitting in. Deep down, though, I thought nobody could match me. I thought I was untouchable, one of a kind.

It turns out I was never actually the one who was one of a kind. It was always him,
Li Chishu.

Get over yourself, Shen Baoshan. Who the hell do you think you are?

***

Nobody showed up at Li Chishu’s funeral. 

His parents had died before he ever got to be. His dad had been crushed under falling concrete at a job site, the kind of accident that disappears into paperwork before the week is over. Whatever held that family together collapsed with him. His mom raged at the world for a while, raising hell wherever she could, but in the end, she climbed a ledge and never came back down. From the time Li Chishu was seven, it was just him and the scraps of a pension check that barely kept the lights on. And two years ago, I stood with him to bury his grandmother, who’d been lost to dementia for so long that she barely remembered his name. 

I didn’t tell his coworkers about the funeral. And his friends? In all the years I knew him, I never heard him mention anyone besides Luo Ke.

I thought I was ready. I thought I’d braced myself for the silence. But I still didn’t expect it to feel this empty.

That’s when I realized I came too late.

No matter how big I thought I was, I was never going to fix how broken his life was.

I sat there in a suit beside his framed photo, staring at that black-and-white image, quietly counting all the times I’d looked away and every single glance that had slipped past me.

We were fifteen when we wound up in the same high school. Same campus, different classes. Three years slid by, and he barely registered with me.

Back then, I thought I was invincible. Sure, someone could beat me at one subject, but nobody could top me across the board. That’s what I believed. So the name Li Chishu never even made it onto my radar.

But according to him, he’d noticed me long before I even knew he existed. I asked him once, “So how long have you been watching me?” He just smiled and never answered.

The next time he came into focus was in college. I was the kind of guy who ran toward noise. The first thing I did after getting into the architecture program was jump into the hometown chat and sign up for orientation hangouts, off-campus dinners, and late-night drinks. That’s when someone mentioned a guy over from the same province. Said his name was Li Chishu. Supposedly good-looking but a loner. And he never joined the chat.

On a whim, I asked a guy from high school for his number and sent him a friend request on WeChat. Five minutes later, he accepted.

I didn’t even bother saying hello. I figured my name in the request was enough. No way he’d have accepted if he didn’t know who I was. So I just texted: Come eat.

A minute later, he replied: What?

By then, the rush had already worn off. I typed back: Group dinner from the hometown chat. Gate 3, Hotpot Palace. Come if you want.

He didn’t reply.

Half an hour later, he actually showed up.

The thing was, Li Chishu was the type who couldn’t warm up a room. He sat off to the side, head down, just eating. When people tried to talk to him, he froze. When they praised him, he just blushed and smiled. The only time he reacted to me was when I asked if he wanted a beer. He gave a tiny nod. He told me later it had been torture. Said he felt like he was killing the mood.

I asked if he regretted going. He thought for a second, looked down, and smiled. He said if he had the chance again, he’d probably still force himself to show.

That was the first time our paths truly crossed. By then, Li Chishu had already been in love with me for three years.

By sophomore year, I was what people these days would call a social shark. It didn’t matter which program you were from; I could always find a way to link you back to me.

One time, a buddy from engineering hit me up. His group had ticked off a few student council officers by skipping events, and now they needed paperwork approved. Those guys were petty as hell, holding grudges over nothing, so my friend asked if I could run interference.

I didn’t want the drama, so I asked who was in their group.

He listed the names. One of them was Li Chishu.

Something in my head snapped, and I said yes.

A few days later, after nearly two years of silence on WeChat, Li Chishu messaged me first. He said he wanted to buy me dinner to thank me.

I figured it was his group’s idea. We set a time and place. The next day, I showed up, and it was just him. He didn’t explain, and I didn’t ask.

The guy really came just to eat. Seriously eat. He ordered five dishes, skipped the booze, downed two glasses of water, and finished two bowls of rice. I sat across from him, watching. He kept his head down the whole time, chewing steadily, clumsy but focused, like finishing that meal was his only job for the night.

When it was over, he paid the bill all at once. He didn’t even raise a glass to me. Half an hour, that was it. And the words he said? You could count them on one hand, even if you included the “bye” at the end.

Years later, after we got together, he admitted he hadn’t slept that night. He said he was so stuffed he spent half the night awake, then dragged himself to buy antacids at one in the morning. He sat in his dorm until sunrise, and only then did he begin to feel better.

All because of one text he’d sent me: Got time this weekend? I’ll buy you dinner.
That single line had burned through every bit of courage he’d been saving for years. After that, there was nothing left. No way he had the guts to lift his head and talk to me.

Afterward, things just… drifted. Through college, we kept it casual, talked here and there, nothing big. Then, after graduation, I landed a job and realized his office was nearby. We decided to split an apartment. We started eating together after work. Anytime I asked if he was free, he always was. And if he wasn’t sleeping, he was grinding to make money.

One night, he came back from a corporate dinner. His eyes were bloodshot when he knocked on my door. Slurring, he told me he had three million in savings and asked if I wanted to give us a shot.

Money was never the point for me. Three million didn’t mean much in my world. But for Li Chishu, who’d grown up with nothing, it was everything.

He always thought we were worlds apart, like he was down in the dirt while I was somewhere up in the clouds. And the only ladder he believed he could climb to reach me was earning more and more money.

By then, I had known him for over ten years. There were only three left before he was gone.

I never understood what finally tipped him over. Maybe it was me saying yes, agreeing to be with him. Maybe that one moment snapped whatever he’d been holding together. After that, it was like a dam broke. Everything he had buried came rushing out, hollowing him until there was nothing left.

At first, it just seemed like he was slowing down. He was tired all the time, had no appetite, no interest in going out, and some days he wouldn’t even get out of bed.

Every so often, he’d scroll through travel ads on his phone and say, “I really want to go to Puzhehei.”

While he said that, I’d be glued to my laptop, working on a deadline, and I’d nod without looking up. “Sure.” Then I’d forget all about it.

Months later, in the middle of winter, the memory came back to me. I asked, “Didn’t you say you wanted to go to Puzhehei?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Forget it.”

Not long after, he started talking about these strange aches. Sometimes his arm, sometimes his back, sometimes his leg. Maybe it wasn’t too bad yet because he still told me. I dragged him to the hospital. The tests came back clean.

I told him we’d try another hospital. He held my hand and said, “Forget it.”

After that, he began fearing the dark. He couldn’t sleep through the night and started wasting away. By the time I caught him secretly taking medication, Li Chishu had already dropped to 121 lbs. He was 5’8”, and there was barely anything left of him.

Eventually, one night, I held his urn in my arms and cried so hard I passed out. When I woke up, I was alone in the funeral hall. No one else came.

***

When the class bell rang, I thought I was dreaming, or maybe I was dying. Maybe this was what it felt like when your life flashed before your eyes. The classroom was loud, filled with people heading for the door. A few were already in gym clothes, so I figured this part of the dream must be a PE class.

It only took me two seconds to snap out of it before I rushed toward Class 25. By the time I got there, the room was almost empty. A guy walked out from the balcony, bouncing two basketballs. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember his name.

I asked, “Where’s Li Chishu?”

He looked surprised, though I couldn’t tell whether it was because I’d mentioned Li Chishu or because I was suddenly speaking to him.

I asked again, “Where is he?”

He blinked and said, “Downstairs… PE class, I think.”

Then I suddenly remembered back in the first semester of senior year, our two classes had PE together. I used to play ball with guys from his class all the time.

As soon as the memory hit, I ran. The guy behind me tossed a basketball at me, calling out, “Hey! Your ball!”

I caught it and bolted down the stairs, barely touching every third step. When I reached the field, I ran in wild circles, searching every corner. Just as I passed the basketball court, someone shouted my name. It wasn’t Li Chishu’s voice. Then another voice called out, louder this time: “Shen Baoshan! Come here! What are you doing?!”

I looked over. It was Jiang Chi, waving for me to join him. I ignored him, but he kept yelling anyway. Then he ran over and started dragging me toward the court.

That’s when I saw him, Li Chishu. He was on the far side of the tennis court, leaning against an empty ping-pong table, quietly memorizing English vocabulary. I shook off Jiang Chi and walked straight toward him, squinting against the harsh sunlight.

He looked exactly the same: a plain white T-shirt, spotless canvas shoes, fingernails neatly trimmed. His hair was thick and growing long. With his head bowed, his fringe nearly covered his eyes.

My pace slowed the closer I got. When I was just a few steps away, something made me toss the basketball in my hands. It rolled to a stop near his feet. He shifted slightly, then looked up.

I took a deep breath and met his gaze. “Hey, Li Chishu.”

…

_{Proofreader: Ambrose E., Pengie}

More information coming soon…