Chapter 1 Prologue 　　The summer after the high school entrance exam, there was little rain...

　　The summer after the high school entrance exam, there was little rain. The sky was a quiet, white heat, burning without flames.

　　That summer, Brian Clark ended up at the police station. At that time, she was still a month away from her fifteenth birthday.

　　It all started simply. She was taking a shortcut home on her bike and saw a group of boys fighting in a small alley. Strictly speaking, it was a tall boy being ganged up on.

　　Brian Clark immediately thought of when she was very young, at her grandfather’s old house, seeing a pack of stray dogs tearing at a single one.

　　The boy kicked out fiercely, and when someone tried to sneak up from behind, he slammed his elbow back hard, knocking the person to the ground

　　But a group is a group, and they gradually gained the upper hand. Brian Clark watched, her face pale, as one of them raised half a brick to smash it down on his head. He turned his head slightly, the brick grazed his forehead, and the blood was so red. Brian Clark didn’t know where she found the courage, but she shouted, “The police are coming!”

　　If a story must have a beginning, then it’s not the blooming cloud in the sky, nor the whirring of someone’s electric fan, nor the cars on the street each heading to their own destination. The real beginning of everything was just that sentence: “The police are coming.”

　　The trouble was, this lie only made the fighting boys pause for a moment. Brian Clark didn’t know how they realized she was lying, but this mess ended up dragging her in. Her headband was knocked off, her bike basket got dented, and she was so scared that even her crying sounded different than usual.

　　Later, the police really did come, and everyone was taken away.

　　At the police station, the boys were giving statements, and from time to time, the stern voices of the police could be heard scolding them. The boy who had been beaten still had blood on his face. He tilted his head back, his voice floating in the summer heat, untouched by any emotion.

　　“You’re just a young girl. Even if you want to do the right thing, you have to know your limits, don’t you?” The police officer looked at Brian Clark, who seemed so quiet and delicate, and his tone turned helpless.

　　She was too embarrassed to keep crying. With tears in her eyes, she bit her lip, and out of the corner of her eye, she caught a pair of eyes that showed no gratitude at all.

　　The boys who did the beating were vocational school students, suspected of extortion.

　　Later, they needed to call the parents.

　　When asked about her parents, Brian Clark shyly and softly pleaded with the police officer, saying she could go home by herself—please, please, don’t call her grandparents.

　　Outside the window, a kind man was already helping her fix her broken bike.

　　By the pool in the yard, the boy was washing the wound on his forehead with tap water, bent over in a slender arc.

　　Brian Clark watched him through the glass, as if looking into another, clearer world. When the boy looked up, he saw her too. Neither said a word. Brian Clark immediately looked away, her palm burning—actually, the scrape on her own hand hurt quite a bit.

　　She took a pack of tissues from her skirt pocket.

　　The tissues were slightly damp from being squeezed. As Brian Clark walked over, the boy happened to straighten up. He was very tall, his hair dripping with water, and below that, a sharply defined face.

　　Caught off guard, their eyes met—summer burned into the heart.

　　“For you.” She handed him the tissues, her voice soft, like a handful of tender grass in spring.

　　The boy didn’t take them. He lifted the hem of his shirt and roughly wiped his face, his gaze passing right over her to look at the figure coming in through the door.

　　Water slid down his throat, glinting in the sunlight. The boy’s expression was restrained as he stood still, with beads of water still clinging to his dark eyebrows.

　　Brian Clark pressed her lips together, her ears burning as she put the tissues away and stepped aside. Only when the equally tall man and the boy entered the police office together did she slowly lift her face and glance over a few times.

　　What happened next was completely beyond Brian Clark’s expectations.

　　After leaving the police station, she squatted down and slowly pedaled her bike, feeling like the chain wasn’t quite right.

　　It was during this brief pause that she saw the man who had come to pick up the boy. He turned his head, his face changing instantly, losing all the politeness he’d shown the police. With a slap, the boy staggered from the blow, and Brian Clark froze.

　　The beating didn’t stop at that slap. The man’s violence came down like a storm, and in the end, the boy, mouth full of blood and clutching his stomach, was shoved into a black sedan. It looked far more serious than the earlier group fight.

　　Brian Clark was speechless, a look of indescribable shock and fear flashing across her face.

　　But before the boy got in the car, he clearly glanced her way—just once. She couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not.

　　In that instant when their eyes met, the boy’s gaze was indifferent and clear. He was in a sorry state, but he seemed not to care, as if being beaten was only natural—no resistance, no pain, as natural as breathing.