This good friend of mine was my classmate in middle school. He’s a person with dreams, and he persisted in repeating a year to get into the directing department. At that time, I was already idling away my days in college. When he came to Beijing for the entrance exam, we made time to meet up. I was happy to see that he wasn’t as anxious or resentful as I had worried he might be. That was already his second time repeating a year, but when we talked about the future, he was still full of confidence, without a trace of complaint or hesitation.

Compared to many muddled college students who, after entering university, became obsessed with the internet, novels, and On-line Games (online games)—people like me, for example—his eyes were much brighter.

I’m digressing.

For his freshman assignment, he had to make a five-minute short film, which wasn’t easy to shoot. At the time, I was an exchange student in Tokyo, Japan. Later, we met on MSN, and he asked if I could help him write a short script.

No theme, just free play.

So-called “no restrictions” is actually the biggest restriction. I sat on the floor of my apartment, holding my head, thinking for a long time, my mind completely blank. When I looked up, I accidentally caught sight of my roommate’s Rain poster hanging on the wall (she was an American who loved watching Korean dramas and Taiwanese idol dramas—who would’ve thought), and I remembered how she looked all starry-eyed when talking about those Korean pretty boys, which made me laugh.

Then my mind drifted off, lost in memories of my own fangirl days as a child.

I remember in fourth or fifth grade, the boys and girls in class were all restless with puberty, and those childish rumors like “Zhang San likes Li Si, Li Si likes Wang Wu” made everyone uneasy, yet spread with great enthusiasm. Back then, I was a self-righteous little class monitor, full of what I thought was a sense of justice and collective honor—you know, those so-called “little adults” favored by teachers are often the most naive and innocent. Even so, I was still cornered by a group of little girls, clutching a chalkboard eraser in my hand, facing their relentless interrogation: “Come on, tell us, who do you like?” I was at a loss.

I can still remember how my blood seemed to flow backward and my face turned bright red in embarrassment.

Finally, risking being despised by everyone, I told the truth, using all my courage.

“Tuxedo Mask.”

The male lead in the Japanese anime Sailor Warriors, a handsome man in a black tuxedo and a white mask.

Even now, if I close my eyes, I can still see the look on my friends’ faces as if they’d swallowed a fly—not that it was Tuxedo Mask’s fault, it’s just that no one thought I could actually like a fictional character from a cartoon. As my best friend put it, “A two-dimensional guy, just a piece of paper if you pull him out—are you out of your mind?”

Maybe I was.

Growing up can be a lonely process. The heroes (or beauties) in the cartoons, novels, and TV dramas I watched, as well as the dazzlingly outstanding seniors I met in real life, all became characters I played. Those little injustices I couldn’t wash away on my own, the sadness and anger I couldn’t shake, and the small glories and compliments—all of them were clarified, soothed, and chewed over again and again in my fantasy world. Looking back now, those were all trivial things, but back then, my world was small and my vision short, so even a sesame seed seemed huge.

The experience of the “Tuxedo Mask Incident” made me always think “only I am like this,” and the delusions that have popped up throughout my childhood, adolescence, and even now, might just be my own secret “mental illness.”

...How did I get off topic again...

Anyway, after snapping out of my daydream, I went back to my desk and started typing. Very quickly, a very simple little script took shape. The script was so simple it only had three scenes.

Scene one: A little girl in her own room, draped in sheets and pillowcases as “silks and satins,” completely absorbed in role-playing. She plays the martial arts leader who is ultimately betrayed by a villain (of course, she plays the villain too...), falls in a pool of blood, spits out a mouthful of blood (plain water), then collapses on the bed, her arm naturally hanging off the edge, even imitating the slow-motion shots from TV dramas, flicking her fingers twice (orz)... then gets dragged off by her mom by the ear to take a bath.

Scene two: The grown-up girl, wearing a white shirt, is busy in a cubicle office, has her achievements stolen by a coworker, and gets scolded harshly by her boss...

Scene three: The exhausted girl returns to her cramped apartment late at night, sits in a daze for a long time, then suddenly goes crazy and starts role-playing just like when she was a child. The villain’s face is replaced by her boss and the backstabbing coworker. She chops them down, the boss falls, and the girl righteously accepts the adoration of the masses—suddenly, the fantasy vanishes, and she collapses on the desk and starts to cry.

The story ends.

Thinking back now, it was a pretty silly script. But my classmate at the Central Academy of Drama didn’t get it (just like many readers who were confused by the first chapter of this novel)—he asked me, “What exactly is that little girl doing?”

Yeah, what is she doing? If you’ve never done it, you won’t understand.

Just like none of my friends back then understood why I liked Tuxedo Mask.

Even though he was just one of my many “men”...

That script was eventually shelved.

But I never forgot about it. Until I saw a post on Tianya Forum, where the original poster asked everyone, “Did you ever pretend to be Lady White when you were a kid?”

That was the first time I felt a desire to find others like me. I realized I’d finally grown to an age where I no longer blushed with shame over my childhood embarrassments, and could look back and laugh—so I decided to write it down.

The story was originally called “Mary Sue Case Report.” When it was published, to avoid scaring off readers who didn’t know what Mary Sue was and who didn’t like the word “Patient case,” it was renamed “Hello, Old Times.”

Honestly, I personally prefer the original title. The term Mary Sue, translated from “Mary Sue,” is notorious in the fanfiction world, but it perfectly sums up my childhood state.

You always think you’re the main character, you won’t be overlooked, you shine the brightest. Injustices are temporary, vindication is inevitable, desperate situations are just setups, and a comeback is necessary. Even if you jump off a cliff, don’t worry, you won’t die—there’s always a bearded immortal waiting at the bottom with a secret manual, waiting for you for years...

Of course, for many girls, there’s another important factor—all those handsome guys and talented men, they all love you.

You’re not pretty, not outstanding, not talented, no family background—don’t worry, in your world, love doesn’t need a reason.

Maybe Mary Sue delusions are just that kind of illness. Some people have had it, got woken up by reality, seem to have recovered, grown up, matured, become rational, but sometimes it secretly relapses.

Just like me. Walking down the street, I’m always daydreaming, imagining all sorts of silly scenarios—I don’t even dare write some of them in this afterword.

But sometimes, I see people on campus who, like me, walk along grinning to themselves, talking to themselves. In that moment, I suddenly feel like I know what they’re thinking.

I’ve known since I was a child.

I’m really glad I made this impulsive decision. Just like a reader with the ID “Passerby A” said to me in the comments, “Teddy, while you’re still young, while you still remember, write a bit more—you’ll soon lose the energy to recall, and all your memories and feelings will be worn away by age and experience.”

Before unstoppable time and inevitable maturity catch up, at least I managed to save a little bit of still-vivid memory.

Those people, those things, and the me who carried those feelings, all leap across these pages.

Actually, the flaws in this novel are obvious. Zoe Young’s background is too dramatic, she meets the too-perfect Andrew Lane, and experiences encounters and partings that are too much like a novel. If it were a bit more realistic—on the first day of school, Andrew Lane wouldn’t remember meeting Zoe Young in kindergarten, Benny from childhood would slowly fade from Zoe Young’s memory, never to be recalled, let alone reunited...

But even if I rewrote it, I’d still stick to these “impossible” plot points. Just like Zoe Young herself says, life isn’t always a happy ending, so let’s not let stories be broken too. It’s like memories—no matter how bitter they were at the time, once you turn the page, looking back, you can always taste a bit of sweetness. It’s our instinct, making us believe in more good than bad, more hope than despair, so we have a reason to keep moving forward, never stopping.

There’s a lot of fabrication in the novel, but all the made-up stories are built on emotional experiences I know well. Every time I wrote a scene, I had to dig up my own similar experiences, recall them in detail, and ask myself what I was really thinking at that moment.