Boom—!

Five-colored glare, streaming lights, boiling voices, a riot of noise—like a typhoon-tide, it slammed into the girl’s whole world.

Every jubilant scene inside the private box broke into ribbons of light, spinning like knife-edges, howling, impatient to stab into Shaohan’s pupils. In that kaleidoscope of a world, the frozen tableau on the faraway stage—a family leaning into happiness—was the sharpest, coldest, most flawless blade.

The three stood there. Their joy stitched a perfect circle—a ring that keeps all within, and shuts all without.

It wasn’t the first time—

Shaohan stood outside that circle, like a stranger at a window.

“Okay…”

Cold washed her. An icehouse swallowed her bones. She clutched her chest—onstage, the man finally noticed her. His smile shattered, a face twisting toward fear, and that broken look reflected in Shaohan’s eyes, clear to the last tremor.

Those weren’t the eyes of a father seeing a long-lost daughter. Those were the eyes of a man who just saw a knife-wielding robber crash into his home, wrecking his neat, warm life.

“Okay—”

Her tongue went dry. Her breath snagged. Her chest felt packed with iron. Cold sweat crawled down her spine. She was drowning in this sea of joy—drowning in overflowing Happiness.

That choking feeling had visited her a thousand times. She always seemed to be the one holding the knife—even though the one most cut open was her.

Trauma gives no immunity. The body makes no antibody. Even if you taste it a thousand, ten thousand times, one more sip and the black tar called Despair still coats your tongue.

“O—okay… it hurts.”

Hand over her mouth, voice breaking, Shaohan finally choked up.

She could act tough and self-reliant all she wanted… but she was not yet twelve. Under that hard shell lived a heart pitted like weathered stone. Her so-called strength, her so-called indifference, were armor hammered from blood to hide and protect.

That armor bristled with thorns, cutting others and herself. Under Dabai’s gentle hand once, those barbs had withdrawn. The plate had softened. Maybe one day, without anyone noticing, it would fall away. Or maybe it would thin to a film, light as breath against her heart, and if she moved carefully, no blood would seep.

But in this moment, Ye Weibai tore it before it could relent. Riip— The wound, still wet with blood, met the air again.

Ye Weibai lowered his gaze. Outsiders would call him cruel. He didn’t care. Only he knew the thought blooming in the dark behind his eyes—

If a wound crusts into a thick scab, medicine comes too late, and healing turns slow.

No matter how strong the salve, it reaches only the Mask.

You have to rip off the Mask. Let the flesh taste wind and sting, so the medicine can sink into the body.

It hurts. It may fester. It may wring out a cry. But that’s the tax you pay to grow when there’s nowhere left to run.

Now, under a light push from Ye and a hard cut from Bai Rong, the wound she had buried so well lay naked and raw.

But—

“But it’s not enough. We’re one step short.”

He watched the tears tremble at the rim of the girl’s eyes. Ye Weibai murmured, still waiting—waiting for Shaohan’s key words.

People can only save themselves. That was Ye Weibai’s rule. The world might not get it. Some might even hate it. He held it anyway, gladly, and would to the end.

A person can be good or bad, kind or wicked, saint or ordinary. But they can’t lose their principles—no matter what the crowd declares right.

So—

“So, say it.”

“S—say it?” Tears pooled. Pain clamped her chest. The girl looked at Ye Weibai, lost.

“Yes.”

He studied her profile and spoke low. “Shaohan, if you can’t even say it to me now, who will you ever say it to later?”

“Uncle… it hurts so much…” Silver light washed her, sorrow carved her face. Shaohan stared at Ye Weibai, eyes brimming.

“Yeah. I get it.” He just looked at her. He didn’t do more. His voice stayed soft. “When the one you love most stabs you again and again, then pins the blame on you as the culprit—it hurts, doesn’t it?”

“It hurts— it really hurts—” Her right hand balled to a fist and pressed into her left heart. Her body curled without permission. She bent and shook. “—It feels like it’ll explode! Like someone ground it to dust, picked it up, and ground it again…”

“I know.” Ye Weibai watched the little girl about to collapse. His hands behind his back trembled too. But—he held. He couldn’t reach out. Not yet.

He wore a quiet mask, but his shaking eyes betrayed the storm. “You’re at your limit. I know. You’ve done great, Shaohan, so it’s enough… At this point, no one gets to call you ‘extra’ anymore.”

“I… I’ve done great?”

“Yes. Most adults wouldn’t manage what you did—even—” He paused. His voice carried a distant drift, as if touching an old shore. “Even I wouldn’t match you. So—”

“So…?”

“Even adults beg life for mercy sometimes. So it’s okay to be a kid once in a while—to not be so strong and independent.”

Ye Weibai smiled. It was light and gentle. The silver glow made his face shine, and that softness poured into her eyes like moonlight on water.

Thump-thump-thump-thump—!

His words landed, and Shaohan’s heart kicked hard, harder than ever. But the pain melted. Warmth flooded in, and bone-deep cold fled like mist at dawn.

“D—Dabai…”

She caught herself on the cold wooden door, gasping, and slowly straightened.

The shattered shards of her world rose from the floor, as if time rewound. The world Bai Rong had twisted and torn knit back together, piece by piece.

Her ash-gray eyes took on color again, painted by an unseen hand. But those clear, beautiful pupils held only one figure—Dabai. He blurred in her sight as tears filled the rim.

“Mm. I’m here.”

“Dabai—wu—”

“Mm. I’m here,” Ye Weibai said again, patient as rain.

“H—wu-uh—help—wu-uuuu!—help me!”

“—Help me, aaah!”

At last, the girl said the words.

At last, the girl burst into loud sobs.

In the hall ringing with bright birthday music, under a canopy of happy party air, before guests frozen in shock, under the ugly looks of Bai Rong and his wife—Shaohan cried without fear, cried with her whole lungs.

“Ah, aaah—aaah-aaah-aaah! Wuuuu—aaah-aaah-aaah!”

The music cut. The crowd hushed.

The whole world went quiet, leaving one little girl’s crying like rain on stone.

Her voice tore at the heart, as if she could spit out every grain of despair and grit.

Tears fountained out, raced down her clean cheeks, pooled at her fine chin, ran over her long white neck, and wound to her chest, soaking fabric in a single breath.

“Aaah—help me—Dabai!”

Head thrown back, Shaohan wailed like a child. She was a child. She reached both arms toward Ye Weibai.

“Of course.”

Ye Weibai’s smile bloomed. He opened his arms and caught Shaohan as she stumbled into him.

She buried her face in his chest. Her tears soaked his shirt in an instant.

It was enough. A girl who can say “help me”—that’s enough. It’s not enough to learn strength. You must learn to ask for help. That’s what’s real.

Holding her, tender and steady, Ye Weibai stroked Shaohan’s hair. “Remember what I told you, Shaohan. I’d show you who the ‘weak’ really is.”

“From who you are now, look back with the eyes of your Past… You can see it clear, can’t you?”

Clinging like a little girl to her father, still crying, Shaohan turned her head a little. One tear-bright eye peered at the couple onstage.

Their faces were dark, twisted—ugly, even.

Anyone would rage if a carefully planned birthday party got wrecked.

But she could see more now.

She could see the man’s buried Truth—what he thought he hid well, even from himself, sunk thirty-five thousand li under the ground.

On that angry, startled face, two hidden characters wrote themselves—fear.

If it were before, Shaohan would’ve thought that Fear was of her. Now she knew—

The man feared himself more.

—The self who once achieved nothing.

—The self who once bowed and scraped.

—The self who once abandoned his family.

—The self who once was a Failure.

Her eyes held the man’s sweating forehead and twisted mouth.

Memories rose like smoke. Shaohan understood—Bai Rong, that man, her father, had dumped every pain and failure of his city-bound first half-life onto her. He treated her as the emblem of his loser days. He could tolerate her circling outside his life, but he feared her stepping in.

He feared her—or rather, he feared himself.

The one who first decided he was the Weak one, the Impurity, the “extra”—was Bai Rong.

“See it now?”

“Mm. I see it.” Somewhere in there, her tears stopped.

“If you want, you could make him a laughingstock right now, leave him in shambles. You wouldn’t even need to speak. Just walk to the foot of that stage, and he’d probably break.”

Shaohan knew Dabai was right. The man with the happy home and shiny career was brittle as sugar glass.

She watched him onstage, fists clenched, body trembling, back hunched.

For some reason, she remembered that morning when her mother left.

Her mother had crouched beside her bed and said words she had forgotten.

“Xiao Han, even so—”

“Your father will probably need your care later.”

“He looks tall, strong, independent.”

“But he’s very fragile. You could even call him weak.”

Weak. The word fit like a key—Mother had seen through everything from the start.

If she wanted, she could pay back every hurt a hundredfold. But what would that buy?

“No. It’s enough.”

She stared at the little boy beside the man—her younger brother.

Poor, clueless, reading the room like everyone else. He’d read it now, and his face had gone white.

Shaohan lowered her eyes and shook her head. She tucked herself deeper into Ye Weibai’s arms.

“Let’s go, Dabai.”

Ye Weibai smiled at that.

He said nothing. He lifted the girl, turned, and walked away.

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