The city beneath the tower was a geometry of white light. From this height, the streets looked orderly, every motion predictable. Jinyue stood before the window with a cup of coffee cooling in his hand, watching the horizon dull to grey. The reflection of his office hung behind the glass: rows of monitors, the quiet hum of air conditioning, the faint perfume that meant Ming Yin had been here recently.
He turned. The desk was neat, precise. Files stacked with surgical alignment, his pen lying parallel to the edge. Control was an art form; he practised it like devotion.
The door chimed once.
"President Lan?" A soft voice—A'yuan's—half hesitant, half too casual. The young assistant stepped inside, carrying a folder. His tie was crooked. Jinyue's eyes flicked to it and away.
"Leave it on the desk," Jinyue said.
"Yes, sir." The paper touched the wood, and for an instant the sound was wrong—hollow, metallic, like striking tin. Jinyue's gaze sharpened, but A'yuan was already retreating. The door closed. The room was silent again, yet the air tasted faintly of dust, dry and sharp.
He blinked, and for a breath the skyline outside shimmered—glass turning to dull metal heaps under a thin sun. Then the light snapped back.
He exhaled. His coffee had gone cold.
******
The gala was a sea of glass and music. Chandeliers hung like inverted constellations, scattering light across the polished floor. Jinyue held Ming Yin close as they moved in rhythm—one measured step, one practised turn. Her perfume was faint, almost floral, nearly lost beneath the scent of champagne and lacquered wood.
"Smile," she whispered, the curve of her lips perfect for the cameras.
"I am smiling," he said, lips quirking a bit.
She laughed softly; a sound rehearsed for society's eyes. Around them glittered faces that mattered—board members, diplomats, predators in silk. Jinyue kept his gaze steady on her, on the illusion of intimacy.
A brush of motion caught the corner of his vision. A'yuan approached, dark suit too crisp, expression earnest. The orchestra swelled, strings rising.
"President Lan," A'yuan said, bowing slightly. "Madam Min, you look radiant tonight."
Min Yin's smile brightened as if touched by real warmth. "A'yuan. I didn't know you were invited."
"An unexpected honour," he replied, tone light. "Your husband's company was generous."
The music shifted; the dance ended. Applause scattered like falling rain. A'yuan offered Min Yin a glass of wine, and she accepted with a small nod. Her fingers brushed his for a heartbeat too long.
Jinyue thanked someone nearby, some faceless investor, but his eyes had gone to the reflection on the mirrored wall; three figures blurred into one. He told himself he was imagining it. The mind plays tricks when tired. He turned back, and for an instant, the chandelier light flickered to desert sunlight, gold and blinding.
A child's voice whispered through the violins: Father, the wind's changing again.
He blinked, and the sound was gone. Min Yin and A'yuan stood side by side now, laughing at something he hadn't heard.
He adjusted his cufflink, composure perfect. "I'll find our seats," he said, though no one had asked. The champagne in his glass trembled, catching a reflection that wasn't his own, dust and metal dunes under a colourless sky.
Wind howled. The floor vanished. He was standing in dust up to his knees, a small hand tugging his sleeve, no, not his, someone else's. A boy's voice, "Father?"
The wind answered with static. He gasped, and the scene shattered. The room returned, cold and silent. He could still taste sand.
******
Days folded into each other. Work devoured him. He stayed late, the glow of the monitors staining his skin pale. Each deal, each plan, each number became a barrier against something unnamed.
Ming Yin visited less. When she did, her eyes darted toward her phone and the desks outside. "You work too much," she said one evening.
"I work for us," he replied.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "For you, maybe."
The door closed behind her. He sat staring at the blank screen, heartbeat syncing with the hum of the lights. Somewhere beyond the glass, the city blurred, headlights trailing like molten lines. He rubbed his temples, and the surface under his hand was no longer the desk but rough stone.
He looked down. His hands were smaller, paler. The hum of lights had become wind across a barren plain. No, not mine.
The boy—Jin'ar—stood beside a figure bent with exhaustion, carrying him through dust. "Rest," the man murmured, voice breaking. "We follow the signal tomorrow."
The boy's fingers clutched a black sphere, pulsing faintly.
Jinyue tried to speak, but the words tore in two. The world flickered again. He was back in the office, breathing too fast.
******
Rain slid down the windows in thin vertical lines. The reflection of two figures moved beyond the glass of the adjoining restaurant booth, Ming Yin and A'yuan. They were laughing, faces close. The sound did not reach him; the glass swallowed it whole.
He turned away, deliberate, the motion smooth as if rehearsed. Lies. Always the lies. He went back to the office. His pulse kept time with the storm outside. But when he lifted a file, water dripped from the pages, staining the ink into shapes that looked like footprints.
He blinked and stood on wet soil, kneeling beside a mound of stones. The air was thin, the wind sharp enough to cut. A small boy's voice whispered, "I did as you taught me." The stones were hand-sized, each one placed with careful order. Beneath them lay the shape of a man.
Grief moved through him like a fever. Not me, he told himself. Not my father. But the boy's tears burned his own eyes. He closed his eyes to wipe away some tears. He reached forward, meaning to comfort, and the scene rippled like water.
The scene wavered. The grave became a reflection in glass again—except the glass was his office window, and behind it, A'yuan's hands caressed Min Yin's chest and waist.
Sound returned all at once. A chair scraped. Her laughter and soft gasps—soft, familiar—cut through the hum of machines.
Jinyue rose. The world tilted; light fractured into shards. The taste of dust filled his mouth. No. The thought came out as a whisper he couldn't place.
No, Father, don't go…don't leave me…please!
He froze. The voice was a child's, his own mouth forming it. Two lives slid together like overlapping film. The skyline outside twisted into dunes, skyscrapers into jagged wrecks. A'yuan's laughter turned into the shriek of wind.
Jinyue clutched the edge of the desk. The surface shuddered under his hands, turning from glass to cold metal. The black sphere rolled across it and came to rest by his palm, pulsing faintly, as if waiting for a signal.
He stared at it, unblinking. The reflection staring back was not his own.
Then everything went dark.
******
The earth gives easily, otherworldly and damp, smelling faintly of iron. Jin'ar digs without rhythm. His breath turns ragged in the cold air, but he doesn't stop. Each shovelful thuds with the soft finality of memory. Arin's body lies still beneath the shroud.
He tries to whisper a prayer, but the words crumble into dust before they leave his lips. The soil slides through his fingers—warm, then not. When he blinks, the shovel is gone. His hands are typing. The dirt turns to light, the sound of earth replaced by the mechanical rhythm of keys.
A document fills the screen. Letters march into place on their own. Marriage Certificate: Lan Jinyue and Ming Yin. The cursor pulses like a vein. He doesn't remember writing it.
The air changes. The world flattens into glass.
He is standing in his office—no, in the office, sleek and sterile. The faint scent of coffee clings to the polished surface of the desk. The hum of air conditioning sits heavy on his skin. The clock ticks faintly, too slow.
Someone laughs in the next room. The sound is too bright, too alive.
He turns toward it.
A'yuan stands by the window, hair mussed, tie undone. The boy's posture is half-guilt, half-youthful arrogance. Ming Yin is with him—soft silk, cold eyes. Her lipstick is smudged at one corner, a perfect imperfection. They don't see him yet.
Her hand slides up A'yuan's arm. They kiss. Lightly, like it's a secret rehearsed too long.
Jinyue doesn't move. He stands in the doorway as if rooted there. His reflection stares back from the polished glass—expression unreadable.
When she finally notices him, she startles in what might be regret.
"You saw."
Then, as if realising, she calms. "You knew,"
The words fall like a blade sliding home.
He can't answer. The air feels thin.
"I wanted you to," she says softly. Her tone is neither guilty nor cruel, in fact…it seemed eager. "You see everything. You always have. You just… prefer to let the world rot quietly around you."
A'yuan looks at her, startled. His hands twitch, uncertain what to do.
Jinyue's mind splits—the click of the shovel, the sound of the dirt, the memory of Arin's name carved into a stone that never existed.
Ming Yin steps forward. "You should know," she says, "he didn't start here because of me. He wanted to work for you. You were his first obsession. Weren't you, A'yuan?"
The young man's face drains of colour. "Ming Yin—"
"Tell him."
"I—admired you," A'yuan says finally, words falling like stones. "You were everything I wanted to become."
Jinyue looks at him, really looks, and sees the youth in his eyes, the naïve hunger. A child trying to wear a man's ambition.
Ming Yin smiles, triumphant, trembling slightly. "We could be happy, all of us. Don't you see? You, me, him. It can work! I get the satisfaction you don't give me. A'yuan gets to love the two of us equally, and you can get both of us and finally pay attention; you won't have to be alone like in your poor orphan days. At least you'll have a family that loves you!"
She always got talkative when in the wrong, never mind being offensive; she never cared. He was starting to see it now, when it was all too late. Her voice softens as if she's convincing herself. "It could be easier this way."
Jinyue steps back. The world fractures.
The soil under Jin'ar's knees turns black. Words begin to appear across it, scrawled in light. Divorce Agreement. Resignation Letter. Death Certificate. The documents overlap like reflections on water.
Jin'ar whispers, Don't look away.
But Jinyue does. He always does.
He shuts the door. The sound echoes like a closing grave.
******
Jin'ar kneels beside the broken ship. The hull is split open, edges curling like burnt paper. Cables spill out in tangled veins. The sand beneath is streaked with oil and ash. His fingers tremble as he tries to reconnect a wire. The spark bites deep. He jerks back, gasping.
He mutters to himself, voice thin and shaking. "Signal... come on, please…"
Nothing. Just the hum of dying circuits.
He's running on fumes. His heartbeat rattles inside his ribs, uneven. Every breath tastes of metal. He huffs.
"You always did love your papers more than me," she says. There's no triumph in it. Only a flat, pained honesty, and the patience of someone who has measured her revenge.
The room blurs again. He reaches, not for his phone this time, desparate. For anything that will keep him from folding down into the wooden floor.
The cup rests cold and sure in her hand. She swirls it; the liquid glints like a promise. Her voice drops, warm and final: "Drink. It'll be over soon."
He wants to spit, to overturn the lacquered table, to tear the cloth and reveal whatever truth lies folded beneath. His limbs do not obey. The heat inside him climbs, a live thing. Lanternlight buckles into streaks of flame. The taste in his mouth is iron and regret.
He draws in a wet, ragged breath. He forces his body up, reaching for the rim of the cup as if to knock it from her fingers, or to smash it, or to curse it. But strength collapses like a well cut off at the pump; his arms tremble and falter. The world tilts viciously, and he clings, nails biting lacquer.
The last coherent thought slices through the thunder in his ears—This is not how it ends. Then the thought unspools into white noise.
Heat blooms until every nerve sings. Pain sharpens into something luminous and absolute. He hears his own gasp spread—splintering into two breaths, into another chest somewhere else. Somewhere hot, metallic, sunless.
Jin'ar screams.
The two realities twist together, ship and office merging into one nightmare. The desk becomes a hull plate, the tea a pool of molten light spreading across sand. The air burns.
Jinyue convulses, hand gripping the table's edge. Jin'ar doubles over, chest spasming, his body rejecting air. Their pain synchronises, echoing through each other like a shared nerve.
"Stop—" Jin'ar gasps. "Please—"
But the voice that answers is Jinyue's own, disjointed, hollow. "You wanted to live."
The ship flickers again—half office, half desert. Every heartbeat slams like a hammer against steel. Jin'ar presses his forehead to the ground. Jinyue drops his pen. Both whisper the same word.
Enough.
But nothing stops. The poison keeps moving. The heat doesn't end.
******
Light splits open the dark.
The ground is gone. The air too. Jinyue stands—or floats—in a field of stars that pulse like slow heartbeats. They move, rearrange, forming towers, then crumbling into ruins. Skyscrapers rise from constellations; their windows glimmer like dying suns.
Across the void, Jin'ar stumbles into view. His face is pale, eyes wet with confusion.
"Where—" his voice trembles, "where is this?"
"I don't know," Jinyue says, though the answer beats in his veins.
The silence hums, full of static. When he moves, the stars flicker. The pain hasn't faded—it's only become light.
Jin'ar clutches his chest. "I thought I died."
"So did I."
Their words echo off invisible walls. The sound bends, looping back distorted. Each syllable lands half a second late.
"Why do I know your life?"
"I know your life too,"
"Are we the same?"
They stare at each other. Their outlines shimmer—Jinyue, composed and cold; Jin'ar, fragile, trembling, too alive. The difference between them begins to erode. The pain returns in a bigger wave. They both groan and fall simultaneously.
Jin'ar's voice cracks. "It hurts. Everything hurts."
"Stay still."
"Can't."
Their bodies flicker. Their reflections overlap, skin blurring into transparency. Jinyue feels his pulse hammering faster, heat crawling up his neck. Every nerve screams for air.
From nowhere, Arin's voice whispers: You are not alone.
Then Ming Yin's sneer, half-echo, half-memory: Pathetic.
The sound rips through both of them. Jinyue presses his palms to his temples. The stars scatter like glass shards.
Jin'ar reaches for him. "We're the same," he whispers, though his voice trembles. "You can take my life."
"I don't want your life," Jinyue says.
"I'll still give it anyways,"
Images flash in staccato bursts—Jin'ar soldering metal under a storm, Jinyue signing contracts under fluorescent light, Arin's laugh echoing in dust, Ming Yin's lipstick mark on porcelain. The memories collide and fracture, then rearrange into one another until no one knows whose life belonged to whom.
Jinyue sinks to his knees. "I can't keep this. You're young. You still—"
"Live," Jin'ar finishes. "That's why you have to."
Their eyes meet. For a moment, there's recognition. Understanding.
The field begins to shake. Heat surges. Every star flares at once, their light too bright to bear.
Jin'ar shouts something, but the words melt before they reach Jinyue's ears. The sound turns liquid, slides into him, and becomes a pulse instead of speech. His body convulses. His vision fractures into white and red and silver.
He feels Jin'ar's fingers gripping his arm. The touch burns.
"You have to live," Jin'ar gasps, eyes wild, voice breaking apart. "You have to take it—take me."
Jinyue's lips move. "No."
"Please."
The pain crests, violent, absolute.
Jinyue screams. The sound comes from both of them, one voice tearing through two throats. He tries to say something else, something vital, but the words disintegrate. He catches a glimpse of it—one final thought, one fragment of truth he's meant to remember…
Then it's gone.
The light folds inward. Heat devours form. For a heartbeat, they are both nothing but fire and breath.
Then darkness closes.
The dream ends not with silence but with a pulse, the shared heartbeat of two lives burning into one.
******************************
Did you like the chapter? Comment and let me know.
Fragmented memories and dreams are hard to do let me know if it works flows well, I'll tweak it later when I have the time.