The Moon Upon My Heart - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Rebirth

A Dream Beyond One’s Ability

“Didn’t sleep well last night? Xiaoyue, squint your eyes and nap in the car for a bit. There are many things to handle after arriving at school; there won’t be time to rest.”

“Okay, Mom,” Shen Wangshu answered, then closed her eyes, leaning against the car window without another word. Her face appeared exceptionally pale under the shine of the intense sunlight.

“The sun is strong, lean on this side,” Li Ming glanced at her daughter and spoke again.

“Mhm.” Shen Wangshu did not refuse, submissively leaning on the woman’s shoulder. She endured a strong urge to vomit, her brows furrowing unconsciously.

Closing her eyes, Shen Wangshu could clearly perceive the humming vibration of the car engine, as well as the interior air filled with strange odors. The cold air from the air conditioner hit her hands and face, making her feel even more nauseous.

Since waking up startled in the middle of the night and discovering she had been reborn back into the past, Shen Wangshu had been unable to close her eyes, exhausted in both body and mind. Since childhood, she had a constitution prone to motion sickness, and at this moment, she felt particularly unwell.

Shen Wangshu felt that if she spoke one more word, she would truly throw up the noodles she had forced herself to swallow for breakfast.

However, this protest from her body gave Shen Wangshu a long-lost sense of the reality of being alive.

In Shen Wangshu’s memory, it had been a very, very long time since she had felt physical discomfort.

Perhaps, being reborn back to the past had only this one good thing about it.

The bumps of the journey made Shen Wangshu’s brain groggy. The strong sunlight filtered through her skin, casting a faint pink hue over what should have been a pitch-black field of vision. Shen Wangshu’s attention gradually drifted away as the black clusters in her vision slowly dispersed.

Shen Wangshu felt her body and thoughts being separated by something. She seemed to have returned to the time in her previous life when she lay on a hospital bed; her body was clearly very light, yet her brain was deathly heavy.

She desperately wanted to control her body; she wanted to get up and move, but she could no longer control even a single finger at will.

“…Xiaoyue, open your eyes, look at me.”

“Don’t close your eyes, okay…”

A female voice, straining to suppress sobs, reached her ears. Clearly, Shen Wangshu could only feel the coldness of her body, yet the sensation of tears hitting the back of her hand one by one was so vivid as if tears were the only thing that could make her feel a bit of warmth.

Clearly, a pair of hands with normal temperature was holding her hand; why couldn’t she feel them?

Ah, it was because of the car accident. She had long been unable to control her body.

The sensation of tears was probably just a hallucination produced by her brain.

Shen Wangshu felt that, perhaps because she had been so unlucky in her previous life that even God couldn’t bear to watch, after dying in the hospital, she was reborn back to the summer when she was still a young fifteen-year-old—specifically, the first day of going to high school.

High school life, for Shen Wangshu, was a rare period of relaxation. During those days lying on the hospital bed, what Shen Wangshu reminisced about most was high school life, at least eighty percent of which was related to her best friend, Ji Fengyue.

In truth, the two “bookworms” were not like their classmates who actively participated in extracurricular activities, sweated on the ball courts, skipped class to sneak to internet cafes to play games, or engaged in thrilling romances unapproved by teachers and parents.

At that time, the two were just friends preparing for the Gaokao (College Entrance Exam). They attended every class seriously, did practice problems during breaks, memorized texts, practiced English, and wrote exam papers. Even during short lunch breaks, after finishing their meals, they would coincidentally go to the classroom for self-study and then nap together leaning on the desks.

Outside of these times, Shen Wangshu and Ji Fengyue would slowly walk around the running track together, or after school at night, they would jog together on the track, chatting freely about anything and everything while exercising.

At these times, they wouldn’t talk about problems or exam papers. It was strange; even though the two were always inseparable, they still had so much endless small talk.

That should have been a life boring to the extreme, but when recalling it carefully, Shen Wangshu felt the three years of high school were filled with things that made her happy.

In the cafeteria, she and Ji Fengyue would share each other’s food; after class, they would exchange books they liked; during evening walks, they would point at the changing shapes of the clouds in the sky, guessing what they looked like, and then laugh out loud together…

Sometimes during the lunch break after self-study, Shen Wangshu would also quietly look through the gap in her arms at Ji Fengyue’s sleeping face after her glasses were removed, then silently close her eyes, sharing a dream that would never connect with Ji Fengyue in the quiet, empty classroom.

At that time, Shen Wangshu didn’t yet know why she liked being with Ji Fengyue so much. They were just classmates, roommates, and desk-mates, eventually becoming best friends during the high school stage.

“Best friends” even had to be added with the qualifier “high school stage.”

Afterward, the two went to the same university, but in her second year, Ji Fengyue went to the medical department campus. It was some distance from the main campus a twenty-minute school bus ride but that small distance, in the end, still caused the two to gradually grow apart.

Although their online contact never broke, and they would occasionally meet offline, they talked about realistic topics such as academic pressure, future development, and post-graduation plans.

After leaving the pyramid of high school, they both had to face the life tasks of reality. It wasn’t that Shen Wangshu hadn’t thought about talking about more lighthearted topics more suited for the status of “best friend,” but her life was very boring; she felt there weren’t that many interesting things in her life to talk about.

Furthermore, Shen Wangshu knew that all of Ji Fengyue’s energy was spent on improving her own life. She never proactively participated in unrelated entertainment activities, nor would she chase stars, watch TV, or variety shows like girls her age, and she certainly wouldn’t think about philosophical questions regarding the meaning of life.

Probably because when facing someone one likes, a person always develops various concerns. At that time, Shen Wangshu felt that chatting about these things with a shining person who was firmly chasing a goal would be a disturbance; she didn’t want to waste Ji Fengyue’s time, and even more, she didn’t want to become a burden in her life.

Shen Wangshu had known very early on that Ji Fengyue always had a clear plan for her future, and this was also what Shen Wangshu—who remained confused about her future life even until university graduation—liked most about her.

Everything had a priority in Ji Fengyue’s heart; she would never waste her time or energy on irrelevant people or things, and Shen Wangshu knew clearly that among these irrelevant people, she had once been included.

But as a “best friend” with a prefix, Shen Wangshu thought her ranking in Ji Fengyue’s heart shouldn’t be that low. After all, when Ji Fengyue was interning at the hospital, after a day of exhaustion, she was actually willing to run to the emergency room to stay by the bed and take care of her.

So later, Shen Wangshu wanted to remove that prefix and become Ji Fengyue’s best friend. Whenever friends were mentioned, the only person Ji Fengyue would think of first would be “Shen Wangshu,” and not anyone else.

She wouldn’t confess to Ji Fengyue, because Shen Wangshu understood that a same-sex romance had never entered into Ji Fengyue’s future plans, even if same-sex partners were already a legally recognized relationship at that time.

A confession known to fail was something Shen Wangshu would not do; she didn’t want to destroy her friendship with Ji Fengyue.

As long as she could be friends with Ji Fengyue to be the best of friends that was enough.

Shen Wangshu was a person with great perseverance and endurance. The things she wanted to do—whether it was getting into the best high school in the province or escaping her restrictive family through the Gaokao—Shen Wangshu had achieved them all.

Naturally, under Shen Wangshu’s efforts, she really did become Ji Fengyue’s most important friend.

Their interactions were relaxed and natural; she lived together with Ji Fengyue in the capacity of a best friend, imperceptibly permeating every corner of Ji Fengyue’s life; they could even share a wardrobe.

If things continued to develop, Shen Wangshu might have actually achieved her ultimate goal: if many years later neither had married, they could simply buy apartments in the same neighborhood or even the same building. During leisure time, they could drop by for meals, and in the future, they could grow old together.

This was the best ending for someone secretly in love with a friend. Shen Wangshu was quite satisfied; at least she couldn’t see Ji Fengyue having feelings for anyone else around her, and Ji Fengyue clearly didn’t want to share her living space with others.

Ji Fengyue hated others inserting themselves into her life, but she was willing to live together with Shen Wangshu temporarily, even making a possible future promise.

Shen Wangshu was very content and would not pray for more.

But the accident came very suddenly. A car accident changed Shen Wangshu’s life and also disrupted Ji Fengyue’s plans.

The rising star in the hospital, the friend most valued by Dr. Ji—who was trusted and liked by colleagues and patients—after the car accident, lay in bed like a vegetable, where almost only her eyes could move. That woman’s family never once went to the hospital; the responsibility of taking care of her all weighed on Ji Fengyue, who frequently performed surgeries and worked overtime late every day.

Shen Wangshu wanted to tell Ji Fengyue to stop caring about her, but she had no way to speak, and the stubborn friend didn’t even trust professional caregivers, doing everything personally.

Even though work was already so tiring, Ji Fengyue would still personally help wipe her body, massage her, and perform body maintenance… What little rest time Ji Fengyue had was all wasted at the front of Shen Wangshu’s bed.

Very occasionally, when Shen Wangshu could open her eyes, she could always see her friend growing more haggard day by day. But even so, Ji Fengyue still did her best to accompany a vegetable who could not give any response.

If she hadn’t selfishly approached Ji Fengyue and inserted herself into the life of the person she secretly loved, Ji Fengyue wouldn’t have been dragged down by her. Shen Wangshu thought this quite naturally; she knew how much Ji Fengyue valued emotions and how stubborn her personality was.

In high school, Ji Fengyue’s parents passed away, and her closest maternal grandmother held on until her Gaokao ended before also passing away. The solitary Ji Fengyue eventually applied to medical school; perhaps it was only to soothe the pain in the heart of the “self” who was once powerless.

This was a naive, somewhat laughable stubbornness, but Shen Wangshu just liked it.

Probably during high school, Shen Wangshu had already liked her very, very much.

Even though for a long time after high school graduation Ji Fengyue’s attitude toward her was so blunt it was somewhat hurtful, Shen Wangshu still contacted her often, so that she wouldn’t feel lonely.

At that time, Ji Fengyue who was forever firmly moving toward her future goals—already had no other intimate relationships.

Although Ji Fengyue might not have needed it, Shen Wangshu felt that having a familiar friend by one’s side would make things somewhat better.

But when Shen Wangshu became Ji Fengyue’s burden, she began to hate this naive stubbornness.

Because she knew Ji Fengyue would be willing to take care of her like this forever, even if it meant disregarding her future, even if it meant disrupting all plans, even if in the future no one could understand.

She clearly didn’t have to care for her; even her own parents didn’t want her anymore. They were just friends; there was absolutely no need to go to this extent…

Shen Wangshu truly felt deep regret. If she hadn’t indulged her own desires, proactively approached Ji Fengyue, and intentionally narrowed the distance in their relationship, the person she liked most would not have gained such an unshakeable burden.

Ji Fengyue would have forever followed the trajectory she had planned, like that unreachable moon in the sky.

Ji Fengyue also wouldn’t have been weeping uncontrollably by her hospital bed, kneeling on the ground and choking with sobs while begging her to continue to hold on.

But fortunately, Shen Wangshu did not drag Ji Fengyue down for too long. Her physical indicators dropped very quickly, and she finally died in the hospital.

Death drew a cruel final punctuation mark for this friendship. After being reborn, Shen Wangshu did not intend to continue being friends with Ji Fengyue as she did in the past.

Being willful only once is enough. The bitterness of a secret crush that cannot be attained tasting it once was enough for Shen Wangshu to never forget for a lifetime.

Shen Wangshu also didn’t want to affect Ji Fengyue’s future plans again because of her own willfulness; after all, she wasn’t originally on them anyway.

That was merely a dream beyond one’s ability.

After the dream woke, all that was left for Shen Wangshu was a state of wretchedness.