She just didn’t know that once, when Mom took her to a factory dormitory to do massage work, she cuddled a stray cat from the factory and slept soundly by the boiler, while Mom watched her sleeping, feeling guilty for not being able to send her to a better kindergarten, and choked back tears for a long time.

Many years later, when she grew up, what she remembered was herself as a female warrior, fighting alongside her Holy Beast mount (that cat) at the Devil's Volcano (the boiler) against the Big Boss. All of it was joyful, with not a trace of hardship.

For young Zoe Young, life was never hard. The long journeys, wind and snow, blazing sun... all of these could be transformed into the backdrop of some god, and she had long since left the real world, living in another realm with a special identity.

Imagination was her protective barrier. She lived elsewhere, in a magnificent and wonderful “elsewhere,” where nothing could hurt her.

Even when she sometimes encountered looks of contempt or insult—like that time passing by a beautiful music store, when Mom pointed at a white piano and asked the price, and the saleswoman blatantly sized up the mother and daughter from head to toe, then sneered and quoted a frightening price—Zoe Young could remember the saleswoman’s face clearly, then imagine her face pasted onto the Dark Lord, and with the Sword of Xea, beat her soundly.

Then she would calmly sit at the table, imagine the table as a beautiful white grand piano, gently raise her hands, imitate Richard Clayderman from TV, and tap randomly on the table’s edge with the most elegant posture. Finally, she would stand up, pretend to lift the hem of a nonexistent skirt, curtsy slightly, and smile perfectly.

Zoe Young was very happy. Only occasionally did she feel lonely. Sometimes even Duke Gregory and Viscount Clark wouldn’t speak, Athena and Seiya would fall silent together, and even Three-Eyed Kid would have his mouth taped shut with a cross of tape. Her imagination could fail her at times. In those rare moments of loneliness, she was delighted to discover that you could see the moon in the afternoon. Every month, there were a few days when you could see a half-moon in the blue afternoon sky, its edges unclear, almost translucent, pale and blurry, as if a stroke of white watercolor had accidentally been brushed onto a pure blue canvas. “Benny, come look, there’s a streak of moon in the sky.” “A streak” was a measure invented by six-year-old Zoe Young, and later, in third grade, she used the phrase “a streak of moon” in an essay, only for the teacher to circle it and mark it as a mistake. When Zoe Young felt her childish loneliness, she would talk to Benny—though it was called a conversation, in reality only she spoke, while the timid Benny just listened quietly. She told Benny many, many stories, some adapted from cartoons, some simply made up. Those stories slipped out through a small hole in her heart, releasing her youthful melancholy.

Somehow, one day she suddenly started talking about that white piano. Benny, who had always been quietly silent, suddenly spoke: “I’ll ask my Mom to buy it for you.” “Your Mom?” But Benny didn’t know where she was. He thought, it doesn’t matter. He had never thought of searching for his Mom like in the cartoons Zoe Young described, but if it was for Zoe Young, he was willing to look for Mom, not to ask her to take him in, but just to ask her to buy Zoe Young a white piano.

Didn’t everyone say his Mom was rich? Zoe Young was moved and pinched Benny’s cheek, saying, “Mm, I believe you.” She thought, she and Benny really were in love: she could give up “Bluewater” for him, and he could go searching for a Mom he didn’t even know the whereabouts of, just for her. But even the “relationship” between her and Benny wasn’t without its crises.

By then it was already early spring of 1994. The February wind was like scissors—cold and stinging on the face, even colder than the winter’s north wind. But the children couldn’t wait any longer, after a long winter cooped up at home, they rushed outside to play in the still unmelted snow, playing all sorts of simple games: “glass wire electricity,” “red light, green light, little white light,” “two-sided city,” “real and fake landmines”... These games had them running in the cold wind until their faces were flushed, their laughter ringing out under the blue sky.

When they were tired, they would all sit on a concrete pipe just like in “Doraemon,” and listen obediently as Zoe Young told stories. Among this group of children of varying ages, Zoe Young had great authority. Even though she didn’t often play with them, and there were many different cliques and private rivalries among the kids, whenever Zoe Young appeared, they were all willing to gather around her and listen to her stories.

She told them stories of a little angel who secretly descended to earth to cut off her golden hair to save her beloved, and died in the end, and also Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Dream Under the Willow,” “The Little Fir Tree,” “The Little Mermaid”... Only, when she told these stories, she always changed the endings to happy reunions, misunderstandings resolved, the dead coming back to life.

She remembered Alan Carter saying that happy endings were boring. But Zoe Young liked happy endings. Life was already not a happy ending, so why should stories be broken too? After telling stories until her mouth was dry, the others still wanted more. Suddenly, Zoe Young had a flash of inspiration and excitedly said, “Let’s play the White Lady game!” Everyone fell silent in awe.

She pointed at two little girls and said, “Now you two are the White Lady and Xiao Qing.” Then she pointed at Benny, “You’re Xu Xian.” Then, pointing at the oldest and biggest boy, she said, “You’re Fa Hai!”

Besides the main characters, the others were “sister,” “brother-in-law,” “magistrate,” “servant,” “courtesan”... Zoe Young assigned them roles and wrote the plot. The kids quickly went wild, no longer needing her direction, and could act out the story with great energy. Zoe Young sat alone on the concrete pipe, resting her chin in her hands, watching them perform their illogical scenes with great excitement, even fighting for the spotlight, each talking over the other, unwilling to be left out.

Only she watched quietly, only she was most content with loneliness. In that moment, she suddenly realized that loneliness could give a person a sense of superiority. She suddenly felt different from the others, more clear-headed, more helpless, and in that clarity and helplessness was a sense of pride beyond her years, which she couldn’t resist.

The area around the concrete pipe seemed like an open-air mental hospital, with a chaotic stage play of dancing demons. As evening fell, the moon in the sky sank lower, but became even clearer. The parents got off work, and one by one passed by the “mental hospital” to pick up the “patients.” The stage gradually quieted down, until only Benny, Zoe Young, and a little girl named Daisy were left. “Zoe, come, I have something to tell you.” Daisy cozied up, linked arms with Zoe Young, and glared fiercely at Benny, “Stay away from Zoe, or I’ll curse you with rotten feet!” Zoe Young was dragged away by Daisy, not knowing what was going on, and looked back to see Benny blushing and standing alone. They walked to Daisy’s door, and Daisy looked around sneakily before whispering to Zoe Young, “Zoe, do you like Benny?” Zoe Young didn’t know whether to nod or shake her head: she wanted to say she liked him—she really did—but she also vaguely understood that the “like” these kids talked about wasn’t the same as her own. The “like” Daisy meant was the grown-up kind. Zoe Young knew Benny was good-looking, lots of little girls liked playing with him, and he was different from the other boys—he didn’t swear or bully people. But that made things harder for him—the girls, because they liked him, pretended to dislike him, and wouldn’t talk to him if others were around; the boys thought his politeness was sissy and didn’t think he deserved to play with them.

Zoe Young’s loneliness came from her imagination, but Benny’s loneliness was real. Daisy anxiously asked again, “Do you like Benny or not?” In the end, Zoe Young shook her head, “No.” Daisy let out a long sigh of relief, as if finally reassured, and continued, her eyes darting around, whispering, “I’ll tell you something, but you mustn’t tell anyone else.” Zoe Young thought, nonsense, everyone already knows, and everyone tells someone else, “Don’t tell anyone.” “One day I went to play with Luna, and guess what I saw?” “What?”

“Luna and Benny...” She paused, embarrassed, “The two of them were on the bed, with nothing on!” Zoe Young’s mouth fell open as she stared at the mysterious Daisy—even though none of these kids really understood “sex,”

Zoe Young didn’t even know what “kissing” was, and firmly believed the saying that “Dad and Mom picked you up from the garbage dump”—but they all vaguely knew that a boy and a girl being naked together was definitely something shameful, something very, very bad.