“Happy birthday!”

“Happy birthday, boss.”

“Old Bai, happy birthday!”

“Darling, happy birthday!”

Warm, earnest blessings rippled through the private room like lanterns lifting into a summer night.

The room wasn’t small or grand, just enough for six round tables. A prosperity tree stood in the center like a jade-green flame. At the front, a small stage stretched three meters wide, one meter deep, waiting like a quiet shore. Overhead, draped strings of golden, translucent glass caught the light and bent it. It fell like liquid sunlight onto clean white tiles, painting the floor with gilded currents and giving everyone a thin wash of luxury.

Bai Rong held the mic in a tailored suit, standing like a pillar lit by dawn. Joy warmed his face; his eyes shone like polished stone.

Bathed in gold, he looked down. In his pupils, smiles flickered like lantern reflections on water. Below sat his beloved wife, his cherished son, old friends who had fought through life and death beside him, and the staff who had followed him since the startup days, seeing him as a spirit idol and captain in stormy seas.

They rose together, faces turned, glasses lifted like a forest of crystal. Blessings poured like spring rain.

Every wish fell into his ears. His smile burned brighter, like a flame fed fresh oil.

Forty-nine. He was forty-nine now. This city had held him for more than a decade. He no longer recalled the exact hour he first stepped into its glittering, unfamiliar, ruthless streets. Yet he still remembered crossing mountains and rivers to break from a poor, broken village, carrying a giant dream like a banner—and the crash, when reality ground that banner into dust.

Time had sanded that memory, like wind polishing a scar smooth. He was no longer the man who bowed and scraped, who forced a smile to survive. That boss who made him drink and grin for a signature—he’d seen him at a recent banquet. The balance had flipped like a coin tossed on a new dawn.

No regrets left. The pain he’d taken, the wrongs he’d made—had all found their proper resting place.

—Is that so?

Someone inside his deepest self laughed, soft and crooked, like a cat at night.

For a breath, a little girl’s silhouette flashed through his mind. It cut him, then faded like smoke.

—No. Don’t hesitate. You were right.

His gaze softened and settled on the small boy walking up, cheeks flushed like ripe apples. The doubt he’d felt vanished—along with that shadow.

—His life had become something else.

—A man shouldn’t cling to the past.

“Son, louder.”

His wife, in a light-blue qipao that flowed like river silk, nudged their boy forward.

The boy stepped up through a forest of gazes, courage beating in his chest like a drum. He reached behind his back, offered a gift with both hands.

“Dad, happy birthday!”

It was an airplane model, silver wings catching the light like dragonfly glass. Bai Rong accepted it, palm warm on the boy’s hair like a blessing.

“Thank you, my son.”

His wife climbed the stage, her steps soft as petals landing.

“Honey, it’s time.”

They’d planned the whole party together; he knew her cue. He smiled and nodded, left hand closing around her fingers like two vines twining. His right arm held their boy close, a small star against his side.

Happiness wrote bright characters across Bai Rong’s face. He lifted the mic and let his voice carry like a bell:

“Here, I, Bai Rong, thank every friend and family member for coming. These years, my business wasn’t all smooth sailing, but as a person I owned what I did and stood where I should. You’ve all seen that. That’s why I’m lucky to have so much support tonight.”

He paused. She clapped softly, a signal to the servers, like sparrows beating wings.

The hall’s gold dimmed at once, like sunset lowering its fan. A ring of soft silver breathing lights pulsed around the walls, gentle as tide. “Happy Birthday” on piano flowed in like a stream, faint at first, then swelling. Guests couldn’t help themselves; palms met like rain on leaves, voices joined in under their breath.

“Happy birthday.”

“Happy birthday to you.”

In the tender dark, his eyes grew damp, a river brimming behind a calm bank. His smile turned truer, pure as a clear sky—filled with Happiness.

Click-click-click.

At the chorus’s crest, the breathing lights at the door flared like sudden stars, and both panels swung open like a gate in wind.

“Honey, look.”

“Dad, that cake is huge!”

Their gentle voices fell into his ear like feathers.

He looked. A half-height cake rolled in on a cart, settled on the table like a moon coming to rest. Forty-plus candles crowded its top like a small forest, flickering with charming fire. His mouth curled wider, a full harvest smile.

In his laughter, he didn’t notice the closed door… whisper open again like a quiet tide.

The cake reached him. The servers withdrew, footsteps fading like dust.

He glanced over the mountainous cake and saw the two standing in the doorway—and his smile froze, hardened, then shattered like glass dropped on stone.

“How—?”

He tried to cover it. But everyone felt the crack in the music. His face twitched, bent wrong, like a bloom caught mid-flower suddenly withering.

What had he seen?

Heads turned, curiosity like wind sweeping a field.

In the soft, misty light, two figures stood at the door:

A rumpled middle-aged man, unkempt like a bramble.

A tall girl in a plain shirt and washed jeans, ponytail high like a horse-tail plume.

…

…

Five minutes earlier.

“Happy—birthday to you!”

The crowd’s roar surged, hot enough to lift a roof, and spilled through the wooden doors like floodwater. It slammed into Shaohan like a wave.

Her face blanched; she staggered back, a leaf in a storm. She nearly hit the floor.

Ye Weibai stood behind her, watching the sway and the near miss against a table corner. He didn’t lift a hand. He stayed still, like a shadow folded on a wall.

“Scared, Shaohan?”

“—No—”

“Then why are you shaking?”

She stared at the doors. Lips pressed tight. Fists clenched, her whole body trembled like a spiderweb in wind—she couldn’t stop it.

She could hear him.

She heard that man’s voice.

Through the mic, it swelled, broke through the cheap soundproofing like a hawk through paper. It whistled into her ears and magnified without mercy.

She stood at the threshold. Inside, joy and harmony glowed like a hearth. Yet her entire world went black, petrified, collapsing like cliffs into the sea.

Memories snapped into still frames, then cycled on repeat like a projector stuck on a loop.

It was a film labeled: Loner. Extra. Trash. Useless. Every thread a negative word, stitched into grief.

It was a family sitcom with one extra actor too many.

It was a rotten, wrecked movie.

She’d almost forgotten.

She was about to forget. With Ye Weibai’s Promise in her pocket, after days of laughter bright as festival lanterns, feeling her own worth like a flame relit, she had nearly tossed those old pains away. They were useless, extra, impurities to be cut off and burned clean.

She thought she’d done it—thanks to Ye Weibai.

But right now she understood—no. Not even close. She couldn’t.

Those tragic years, those self-denying days, were bombs left cold after a war, buried in her heart’s soil. One spark—and they’d blow to the sky.

Shatter to dust.

Pale, drenched in sweat, Shaohan felt her soul float outside her body, thrashing like a swimmer under black water while far-off laughter kept echoing.

“Hey.”

A voice came like a beam from five hundred billion light-years away, thin and lethal, piercing her chest.

It carried the same old fatigue and laziness, like a cat stretched in afternoon shade.

“Shaohan, quit zoning out.

Push the door, and I’ll tell you the secret of that last Promise.

But—I won’t help you. If you can’t do it, say so, and I’ll turn around and leave.”

“Promise?”

Buzz.

The word struck her heart like lightning. Her vision flashed open; color rushed back like dawn breaking.

“Well? Can you do it?” Ye Weibai leaned against the wall, lazy as smoke.

“You just don’t—” She panted, chest heaving as if hauled from a river, clothes clinging, fingers still shaking. Yet her pupils held steel, a mountain line at horizon.

“You just don’t—forget what you said.”

She stepped hard, teeth clenched. She threw the doors wide.

Boom!

Five-colored lights. Streaming glow. Boiling voices. A noisy air like a typhoon at sea. They crashed into her whole world and thundered through her bones.