Chapter Text
Have you ever realized how one thing could change your whole life?
Not slowly. Not in a way you can prepare for.
Just—gone. Like a match that ends before you even understand where it went wrong.
I did.
And I realized it far too late.
-
Mornings here don’t start with alarms or notifications.
They start with roosters, with the low hum of wind brushing through crops, with the distant chatter of old neighbors who have known each other longer than I’ve been alive. The air smells like soil and water, not the stale chill of air conditioning and stage lights.
I wake up before the sun fully rises.
Not because I have to.
But because there’s nothing else pulling me back to sleep.
I slip on a worn jacket, step outside, and the ground greets me with that familiar uneven firmness—real, solid. Not like the polished floors of a training room, not like the stage that used to vibrate faintly under my feet when the crowd got loud.
Here, there’s no crowd.
Only people.
“Yiheng-ah! Come here, help me with this!”
It’s one of the grandpas again, waving me over with a grin that’s missing more teeth than it has.
I walk over without hesitation. “Coming.”
The work is simple. Carrying sacks. Fixing fences. Helping harvest. Sometimes just sitting and listening while they talk about things that happened decades ago, stories looping and repeating like old recordings.
They laugh easily.
And somehow, they laugh even more when I’m around.
“You’re a good kid,” one of the grannies tells me, patting my arm. “City boy, but not useless.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “That’s… reassuring.”
She cackles, clearly pleased with herself.
They don’t know who I was.
Not my name.
Not my ID.
Not the fact that I used to sit under blinding lights with a phone in my hands, fingers flying across the screen while thousands watched every move I made in Honor of Kings.
They don’t know about the King Pro League, or how loud it could get when the crowd started chanting.
They don’t know how quiet it became afterward.
And I don’t tell them.
Sometimes, during breaks, I still take out my phone.
Old habits don’t disappear. They just…fade.
The screen lights up under my fingers.
For a second—just one—I almost open the game.
My thumb hovers.
I remember the weight of it. Not the phone—the pressure. The expectations. The instinct of knowing exactly where to tap, when to move, how to outplay someone before they even realize they’ve made a mistake.
Two years is a long time.
But muscle memory is longer.
I could probably still do it.
Probably.
The thought lingers longer than it should.
Then I lock the screen.
There’s no reason to open it.
No team waiting.
No coach calling.
No stage to step onto.
Chen Yiheng is just…me now.
And Nailong—
Nailong is gone.
-
“Yiheng! Stop daydreaming!”
A basket gets shoved into my hands, snapping me back.
“Take this to the back, careful, ah!”
“Got it,” I reply, shifting the weight onto my shoulder.
Work fills the hours easily. It’s tiring, but it’s the kind of tired that settles into your bones in a good way. Honest. Straightforward. No hidden meanings, no pressure behind it.
No one’s watching to judge.
No one’s waiting for you to mess up.
By the time the sun starts to dip, painting everything gold, I’m sitting on a low stool outside one of the houses, wiping sweat from my neck.
The grandpas are arguing about something trivial again.
The grannies are laughing at them.
Someone hands me a cup of water.
“You should stay here,” one of them says suddenly. “Find a nice girl. Live properly.”
I nearly choke on the water. “That escalated fast.”
More laughter.
“You’re young! Strong! Helpful! Good husband material!”
“Please don’t sell me like vegetables,” I mutter, but I can’t stop the small smile tugging at my lips.
It’s easy to smile here.
Too easy.
When night falls, the village quiets down quickly.
No neon lights.
No endless traffic.
Just darkness, scattered with warm yellow lamps and a sky full of stars I never used to notice.
I sit outside my small house, phone in hand again.
The screen reflects my face.
For a moment, I don’t recognize it.
Or maybe—I do.
Just not the version people used to know.
My thumb drifts again, almost unlocking it, almost opening the game.
Almost.
I stop.
There’s no point.
That life ended two years ago.
And this one—
This one is simple.
Quiet.
Enough.
…Right?
I lean back slightly, exhaling into the cool night air.
This is fine.
Right?