Chapter 21

Chapter 21

This time, An Jiujing's hypersomnia episode came completely without warning. In previous years, she would have at most two episodes a year, with at least four to five months in between. This was the first time an episode happened again in less than half a month.

And this time, it lasted very long—fifteen full days. Apart from eating and going to the bathroom, An Jiujing spent all her time asleep. She became irritable, her memory was fuzzy, she couldn't distinguish dreams from reality, and she refused to communicate with the outside world.

Wang Shanshan was terrified. She called an ambulance and had the snoring An Jiujing sent to the hospital. After a full-body examination from top to bottom, they found absolutely nothing. From neurology to psychiatry, the conclusion was the same: adolescent hypersomnia combined with stress-induced depression and anxiety.

The doctor prescribed some anti-anxiety medication. Since there was no clear diagnosis and the hospital fees were high, Wang Shanshan took An Jiujing home again.

So when An Jiujing finally regained full consciousness, she was in her own bedroom. The items her parents had smashed during the fight had either been repaired or thrown away. At first glance, nothing in the room looked out of place.

The hazy memories from the past days of sleep hadn’t fully returned, or rather, she hadn’t had time to sort out whether the scenes of being examined in the hospital were real or just dreams. When she opened her eyes, her first instinct was to think she had simply slept through the night after being exhausted from her parents’ fight.

But the day hadn’t come.

Outside, it was pitch black.

An Jiujing reached for her phone, usually kept by her pillow to check the time—only to grab empty air.

She sat up and saw the six toy geese that should’ve been at the foot of her bed were now neatly lined up on the desk. That wasn’t her doing—she wasn’t that compulsive. Her mother, Wang Shanshan, was the one who would twist all the geese's necks to the same angle like that.

Goose goose goose!! The goose goose goose she’d lost contact with before she fell asleep!!

Her memories from before she fell asleep finally began to return.

She’d fallen asleep again? For how long? What about the contract? The training? Chi Tuo?

She rolled off the bed in a scramble, fighting through the dizziness and sore muscles from sleeping too long, and staggered out of her room.

No one was outside.

With a hoarse voice, she called for her mom twice—no answer. Her mother’s bedroom door was open, and it was pitch dark inside.

The living room clock showed it was four in the morning.

An Jiujing felt along the wall, turning on every light in the house, then collapsed against the wall to catch her breath.

A sheet of stationery covered in dense writing was taped to the dented refrigerator door—left there by Wang Shanshan, as usual, in case her daughter was still asleep when she left.

Her phone must’ve been moved elsewhere by Wang Shanshan too—she always said keeping it by the pillow emitted radiation and would move it to charge on the desk.

Once her breathing settled, An Jiujing first grabbed the densely-written letter from the fridge, then her phone from the desk.

The phone was powered off. While it was booting up, she began to read Wang Shanshan’s letter.

Wang Shanshan had left around dusk, said there was food in the fridge, and if An Jiujing woke up, she should make something to eat herself. If not, she’d be back before noon the next day.

The rest of the letter laid out a long list of instructions, most of which were on separate pieces of paper taped on, with just a small portion handwritten on this main sheet.

An Jiujing frowned. Judging from the length of instructions and the amount of taped-on notes, she’d likely been asleep for at least ten days. And in those ten days, Wang Shanshan had clearly been overwhelmingly busy.

The contract wasn’t signed yet. Just this issue alone came with four patch notes. Wang Shanshan had started off using her usual excuse for school absences—“had a fever, needs a couple days to rest.” After two days, she said the body hadn’t fully recovered. That dragged out for three days. Eventually, when the time stretched too long and the excuse wore thin, she finally told Assistant Liu—who had flown back to Wangcheng again—the truth: it wasn’t that the parents didn’t approve of acting or that the family ran into trouble, it was that An Jiujing had suddenly relapsed.

Maybe it was because her audition had left such a deep impression, or maybe it was because Director Yang Zhengyi had directly rejected the capital’s pick and insisted on casting An Jiujing—either way, changing the actor now would be awkward and hard to explain. So, after hearing the situation, Assistant Liu flew in again and even brought in a psychiatry specialist for a consultation, which yielded roughly the same diagnosis.

After that, Wang Shanshan’s tone in the letter clearly brightened. She wrote that Director Yang had told her to let An Jiujing rest well. Once fully recovered, they could notify Assistant Liu. The Baigang City training had already started—if An Jiujing recovered, she could jump in after preparing, and a teacher would help her catch up on the missed lessons.

The contract would also wait until she was fully awake and recovered. At that time, their lawyer would still go over it line by line, and they could bring in their own legal counsel too.The second item on the letter concerned An Huaimin.

During this time, Wang Shanshan had already gathered all the evidence of An Huaimin’s infidelity and his income records over the past ten years. Together with the indictment drafted by Lawyer Yu, she submitted everything, and now it was just a matter of waiting for the court to officially file the case.

That fight that night completely destroyed nearly twenty years of relationship between the two. Ever since An Jiujing exposed that An Huaimin had a mistress outside, he went from initially agreeing to split the assets fifty-fifty, to claiming the house wasn’t part of marital property, and eventually even wanting to include their daughter’s acting contract as marital assets. The mask of civility was ripped off layer by layer. Faced with such raw human nature, the nearly twenty years of getting to know each other, falling in love, and relying on one another between Wang Shanshan and An Huaimin became utterly worthless.

Wang Shanshan had left Wangcheng today to go to Baigang City to look at a rental house she found through an agency online. The house was close to the suburban resort where An Jiujing’s training was to be held. She said she would take a look, pick up the keys, and gradually move house. No matter how the final ruling went, they would no longer live in their current place in Wangcheng.

Wang Shanshan had even found time amidst the chaos to consult a fortune-teller to pick a stage name for An Jiujing. She said she originally wanted An Jiujing to take her surname after the divorce, but then remembered that the name “An Jiujing” had cost a hefty fee to be selected by a professional, claiming the name matched her birth chart and would bring great wealth and fortune. She couldn’t bear to give it up. In the end, she had the fortune-teller provide six name options, all written on the letter for An Jiujing to choose from.

An Jiujing skipped over that line of names. Her gaze settled directly on the very last line of the letter.

That line had clearly been written recently, judging by the more upbeat handwriting—it must have been written after Wang Shanshan’s mood improved.

It read: “Oh right, Aunt Zhang Rou and Chi Tuo went to Singapore. Chi Tuo said he’ll contact you once he’s settled in.”

An Jiujing stared blankly for a moment. The surreal feeling made her wonder if she was still dreaming—that the content on her mom’s note was all part of some dream—because everything up until that point was exactly what she wanted to hear. Only this last line, the one casually added with an “oh right” and brushed over like an afterthought, was the one thing she didn’t want to see at all.

Just how long had she been asleep?

Long enough for Chi Tuo—who, like her, had been born and raised in Wangcheng and had never gone farther than Baigang City—to leave the country?

Her phone, which she had been holding ever since powering it on, showed 46 new messages and 5 missed calls.

The time read 4:21 a.m. It had been 15 days since the day her mother smashed a chair over An Huaimin’s back.

Fifteen days.

It wasn’t her longest recorded hypersomnia episode—once during winter break she’d “hibernated” for a full 20 days.

But during those 20 days, nothing had happened aside from her not finishing her holiday homework. Not even her mobile game rank had dropped, because Chi Tuo helped her climb it back up.

But this time, these fifteen days—everything had changed.

All five missed calls were from Chi Tuo.

Of the 46 new messages, three were from her homeroom teacher, precisely sent every Friday afternoon with a link containing that week’s class content and homework.

Five more were from the class group chat. She had muted the group, but any time someone tagged her or pinged the whole class, it would still show up. All five were “@everyone” pings. Her absences from summer makeup classes were so frequent now that there was no longer anything worth tagging her directly for.

Even though the group had been so active during those fifteen days that it made her newly purchased second-hand phone lag for a few seconds upon opening it.

The remaining thirty-six messages—all from Chi Tuo.

Chi Tuo: [Something came up at home. My phone broke. Just got time to get a new one today.]

Chi Tuo: [Are you busy?]

Chi Tuo: [Still busy?]

Chi Tuo: [You’re not answering calls. I’ll come find you at your house after I leave the hospital.]

Chi Tuo: [Jiujing, can you please wake up? I’m kind of scared.]

Her finger stopped scrolling at that last message and didn’t move for a long time.

Among those messages, only the one where he said he was coming over had a multiple-of-three character count—the rest did not.

She had no idea what had happened at Chi Tuo’s home that his phone got broken. No idea how he managed to get a visa, handle a school transfer, and leave the country for Singapore all within these short fifteen days.She didn’t want to know what had happened that made Chi Tuo send a message saying he was a little scared.

The messages after that were long—so long that for the first time, An Jiujing saw a wall of text on her phone that still needed to be scrolled. She didn’t dare read them and quickly swiped down to the very bottom.

The last two messages—

One was from three days ago:

Chi Tuo: [I’m at the airport.]

The final one, from just a day ago:

Chi Tuo: [Jiujing, are you awake?]

It was 4:30 in the morning. Singapore had no time difference with China.

An Jiujing typed: [I’m awake.]

Almost the very next second, a video call popped up from Chi Tuo. She answered instantly—and was greeted with the sight of a buzz-cut head wrapped in gauze across the forehead.

An Jiujing leaned the phone back a little and couldn’t help saying, “What is that thing?”

“My head,” Chi Tuo replied softly, wearing headphones. “Got a haircut here.”

“…So ugly,” An Jiujing sighed. “Why does your skull look like a goose egg?”

Chi Tuo went silent, staring at her.

An Jiujing also went quiet, then yawned at him.

“Go change your clothes,” Chi Tuo finally said, his face full of helplessness. “You’re about to flash someone again.”

“Then don’t look,” An Jiujing said, tugging slightly at her camisole strap without moving otherwise. “I slept too long. My whole body feels like it was beaten with lemons. I don’t want to move.”

“Is Auntie not home?” Chi Tuo asked.

That was a long story. An Jiujing opened her mouth, then simply replied, “She went to Baigang City to check out a rental.”

It was a long tangent if she went into it, so Chi Tuo didn’t press further.

“I gave you that email address—did you try it?” he asked. “Just in case messages get delayed, we can use email to keep in touch.”

An Jiujing replied, “The messages you sent were too long. I just woke up and my brain’s not working yet, haven’t read them.”

He touched the gauze on his forehead and sighed, “Read them when you get the chance. You short-video-poisoned, brainwashed ignoramus. Before phones, humanity used to communicate by letters.”

An Jiujing: “……”

Amazing. Just two or three exchanges in, and she was already speechless.

“What happened to your head?” she finally asked. She had a feeling it was related to his broken phone.

If his phone hadn’t broken, they might’ve at least seen each other before he left.

But it’d been so long—fifteen days—and the wound still needed gauze?

“Chi Dingbang hit me,” Chi Tuo said. “He came home the day you had your audition. Saw the overseas paperwork on the table and totally lost it.”

An Jiujing froze. “Who hit you? You didn’t fight back?”

You couldn’t beat him?!“I didn’t realize he was at home. He hit me with a water bottle—needed a few stitches.” Chi Tuo lifted the gauze slightly to show her. Underneath was a wound that hadn’t fully healed yet. “It’s honestly not a big deal. It’s mainly… my mom…”

He didn’t finish the rest of the sentence, but An Jiujing could completely imagine how devastated Zhang Rou must’ve been when she saw the injury on her son’s forehead.

Besides, getting that many stitches on the forehead couldn’t really be called nothing.

“Are you… adjusting okay over there?” An Jiujing changed the subject.

“It’s alright,” Chi Tuo said. “The living conditions are better than back home. I’m still adjusting to the rest.”

An Jiujing glanced at the background in his video. “You’re at the hospital?”

She had originally thought he was at his uncle’s place, but something about the all-white decor felt off—until his phone shifted slightly when he showed her his injury, and she caught a glimpse of a long blue bench behind him.

“Yeah, my mom’s hospitalized,” Chi Tuo smiled. “Otherwise, I would’ve been asleep when you messaged me that late.”

The conversation, no matter how many circles it took, always seemed to loop back to something heavy. Chi Tuo stretched out on the bench and said, “You should read all those messages first, then send me an email.”

“Practice your expression skills. It’s good for acting.”

“Oh, and congrats on passing the audition. I bought a little gift for you—it’s with your mom. Don’t forget to ask her for it.”

He began to ramble again: “You’re not allowed phones during that training, right? But computers are okay, yeah? So emails really are the way to go…”

“Chi Tuo,” An Jiujing interrupted him.

Chi Tuo fell silent.

“Let’s meet once a year from now on,” An Jiujing said. “At least once.”

The pale-faced girl who’d just woken from a long sleep wore a gentle expression. “You can come back, or I’ll go find you.”

“I don’t have any other friends.”

“Before I fell asleep… I was really scared too…”

Chi Tuo stayed quiet for a long, long time before he finally said, “Okay.”

“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’m always here.”