The next morning, Gu Ye woke to the sound of quiet panic.
The sunlight that had felt so warm yesterday now seemed harsh, slicing through his bedroom window in thin, bright lines. He rubbed his eyes and called for Luo Bingyuan as he always did.
"Bingyuan? Are you awake?" His voice bounced off the walls of the empty house. No reply.
Shrugging off the lingering sleep, he ran down the wooden steps, heart light with the memory of yesterday. She was usually the first to appear, hair messy from sleep, voice sharp with mock scolding for him waking too early.
The courtyard, however, was empty.
That's when he noticed the movement at her house. Her parents were running from the front gate, calling her name. Their faces were pale, tight with worry. One of the neighbors, Mrs. Tian, a woman who always seemed to be everywhere at once, shook her head as she waved him over.
"Gu Ye… you haven't seen her?" Her voice was low, hesitant.
"I… I don't know. She was here yesterday!" He started to panic, his chest tightening. "Where is she?"
The courtyard, the alley behind her house, the pond—it was all empty. No sign of her footprints, no small muddy handprints that always marked her path when they had played outside. Nothing.
Her father's hands shook as he held the gate, eyes scanning the horizon. "We looked everywhere last night… the village… the fields… she's gone. Gu Ye…" His voice broke slightly. "We don't know where she went."
Gu Ye's stomach sank, a cold weight replacing the warmth of the previous day. Gone? But how could she be… gone? He ran toward the pond, the same one where only yesterday they had played, laughing until their throats hurt, until their fingers were coated in mud and water.
The pond was still. The water reflected the morning sun in cold glints. Not a single ripple disturbed the surface. No dragonflies skimming, no laughter carried across the reeds. Just silence.
"Bingyuan?" His voice was small now, almost afraid to break the quiet.
He stepped closer to the water, knees sinking slightly into the soft mud. The memory of her promise yesterday pressed against his chest, heavy and urgent. She had said she'd be with him. How could she leave now, before anything had even begun?
He ran back toward the village, calling her name, stumbling over uneven stones, ignoring the shouts of adults trying to stop him. Villagers began to gather, looking at him strangely, their eyes shifting from him to her empty home, to the pond, to the open fields beyond.
By the time her parents found him, sitting on the edge of the pond with his head in his hands, Gu Ye had stopped crying but his chest ached as if it were hollow.
Her mother knelt beside him, hands trembling as they rested on his shoulders.
"She… she's not here," she whispered. "We've searched everywhere…"
Gu Ye didn't reply. He couldn't. The world felt impossibly quiet, stretched too wide, as if it had swallowed her whole.
And the promise they had made yesterday—their childish vow, a small truth that had seemed so large in that pond—hung in the air, meaningless against the emptiness of her disappearance.
He didn't know then that the girl he waited for had never truly belonged to his world. That the laughter, the splashes, the shy promise—they had been hers to give for only a fleeting moment.
All he knew was that she was gone. And somewhere inside him, a single thought grew heavier than the fear or the panic:
I have to find her. Somehow.