Never Before

“Hey, not bad, Best Song Award.”

Everyone teased Fang Jun.

A group of people were walking down the street—Lin Mo and the others.

Tomorrow was Sunday, a day off. Some students were dead set on pulling an all-nighter, but Lin Mo and his friends only planned to grab a late-night snack and call it a night.

Although it was technically winter already, the night breeze wasn’t cold at all—quite pleasant, actually.

Jiang Yunlu and Chu Miaomiao were tagging along, too. The three girls walked together, chatting and laughing. Ever since that incident, the relationship between the three of them had subtly grown closer.

No one had spelled it out, but everyone knew in their hearts.

Fang Jun walked ahead and patted Luo Ruiyu on the arm: “This place.”

“Huh?”

A barbecue stall in an alley.

There were already people sitting inside, but there were empty tables.

As soon as they sat down, Jian Peipei walked over holding a menu.

“Peipei?!”

“Big Yu?!”

Jian Peipei and Luo Ruiyu locked eyes, their eyes going wide.

“When did you get back?”

“What are you doing here?”

They spoke at the same time, paused for a beat, and then both said again:

“Couldn’t keep up with school back home, so I came back.”

“Dropped out—went straight to business.”

After saying that, they both laughed, a kind of relief in their voices. Jian Peipei slapped the menu down on the table and turned to glare at Fang Jun.

“Why didn’t you tell me Big Yu was back?”

Fang Jun looked innocent, pointing at himself, then at Luo Ruiyu:

“And who exactly are you looking at right now? I brought her straight here—doesn’t that count as telling you?”

“Hmph!” Jian Peipei ignored him, pushed the menu over to Lin Mo, and said, “As punishment, you don’t get any pork belly today.”

Lin Mo: “...”

“Fine then, let’s start with ten pairs of chicken wings.” Fang Jun didn’t care; he picked up the menu and flipped it open.

Jian Peipei turned and snapped, “Go take a dump! Who told you to order?”

“Aren’t you punishing me by saying I can’t eat pork belly? That doesn’t mean I can’t eat chicken wings,” Fang Jun argued confidently.

“You’re paying tonight.” Jian Peipei dropped that line and turned to leave.

“Pfft, that was already the plan.”

Tonight’s late-night snack was on Young Master Fang.

But he was also the one ordering, and he ordered quite a lot.

As the barbecue came out, the conversation naturally drifted back to middle school days.

With Jian Peipei and Luo Ruiyu both there, the embarrassing stories of Fang Jun, An Yuexin, and the other two became the hot topic.

Luo Ruiyu bit into a chicken wing and laughed so hard she was shaking: “On that spring outing in eighth grade, did you throw up three times, Fang Jun?”

“Twice.” Fang Jun corrected her very seriously. “The third time was dry heaving—nothing left.”

An Yuexin added the finishing touch: “Yeah, because the first two times took care of all his breakfast.”

“Good thing he didn’t have eight-treasure porridge; that would’ve been a nightmare.”

The table burst into laughter.

Everyone knows that primary and middle school students always brought a can of Taichi eight-treasure porridge on their spring and autumn outings.

Fang Jun took a sip of his drink and started retaliating, bringing up the time An Yuexin ripped his pants during a flag-raising ceremony in seventh grade.

An Yuexin hurriedly put down his chopsticks: “The seam just split! It wasn’t ripped!”

“Same result.” Fang Jun was unmoved.

After several rounds of roasting old embarrassments, the atmosphere was heated.

The topics shifted a few times.

Then suddenly, An Yuexin put down the skewer in his hand and said something out of left field.

“Actually, you know, I’ve always thought parallel universes aren’t out of the question.”

The table went quiet for two seconds.

Everyone stared at him.

“That was way too abrupt a transition,” Fang Jun jabbed.

An Yuexin wasn’t joking. He sat up straight.

“I have a cousin and her husband who run a business in Shangxiajiu area. During summer after seventh grade, I stayed there for a month. You remember that, Bro Fang, don’t you?”

Fang Jun nodded: “Yeah, you invited me, but I had to go to tutoring classes then, so I didn’t go.”

“Mm.” An Yuexin picked up his cup, took a sip, and set it down, his voice dropping a little.

“Everyone knows the most famous thing in Shangxiajiu isn’t the pedestrian street—it’s Lilin Plaza.”

Xie Yuling’s hand, holding a grilled shrimp, froze mid-air.

That image in her memory came back.

That day above the plaza, the massive black qi she had seen.

Endless, shrouding the entire building in its darkness.

Under the table, Lin Mo gently touched her arm, sending a telepathic message.

“It’s fine. Just listen.”

Xie Yuling put the grilled shrimp back in her bowl and didn’t eat any more.

Jiang Yunlu was sharp enough to catch the change in Xie Yuling.

As for the legend of Lilin Plaza, some at the table knew it, some didn’t.

Those who knew didn’t say anything; those who didn’t know didn’t ask either, because An Yuexin’s expression made it clear this wasn’t a topic to pursue.

He just kept talking about his own story.

“Bro Fang, you’ve been to Lilin Plaza before, haven’t you?”

Fang Jun nodded: “Yeah, went there to eat. I remember the air conditioning was freezing cold.”

Luo Ruiyu chimed in: “I heard it was built by a merchant from Hong Kong. They really crank up the AC over there—same tradition, I guess.”

Fang Jun said, “No wonder. I thought they were getting their electricity for free.”

An Yuexin didn’t follow that line of chatter. His focus wasn’t on the air conditioning.

“When I was staying there that month, I went to an arcade on the top floor of Lilin Plaza at least a dozen times.”

He used his chopsticks to draw a route on the table.

“Take the escalator to the top floor—it opens up to an open-air terrace. Cement floor, with iron railings on both sides. Walk about thirty meters, go through, and you get to the arcade across the building. Rolling gate, all arcade machines inside—dim lights, hardly any smoke, and really cheap: three tokens for a buck.”

He paused and looked at the people around him.

“After more than ten days following the same route, I could have walked it blindfolded. There were ads taped to the iron railings—some men’s health clinic—I remembered every detail.”

Chu Miaomiao timidly hugged Lin Mo’s arm: “I’m getting goosebumps.”

An Yuexin ignored her.

“A while back, I took my younger cousins back, wanting to hit up the arcade and relive the old days. Went to the top floor...”

He paused.

“No open-air terrace. No iron railings. No arcade.”

The table was completely silent.

“I thought I had the wrong floor—ran up and down twice. Still couldn’t find it. I went down and asked the security guard if the arcade had moved.”

An Yuexin’s voice was so flat by now it didn’t sound like he was telling his own story.

“The guard looked at me and said Lilin Plaza never had an arcade—it only sells jade.”

A gust of night wind swept in from the entrance of the shop, brushing across everyone’s backs.

No one spoke.

Jiang Yunlu moved her stool a little closer to Xie Yuling.

Fang Jun stopped chewing the chicken in his mouth, forgetting to swallow.

An Yuexin looked down at his cola, the foam long gone.

“I checked—no major renovations were done to that building after 2003. The structure never changed.”

He looked up. “But the place I’d been to—it just wasn’t there. Not demolished, not relocated—it had never existed.”

Lin Mo’s expression didn’t change.