Submerged in despair, time seemed frozen, suffocating them. The future was sealed off, and the past became a prison they could not escape. When the River of Time began to flow, tributaries poured into the cracks in their hearts. Despair dissolved, and the scars on their bodies faded. Fragments of Gao Ming's consciousness scattered into those tributaries. He was outside time, and within it too.
He drifted with the current as the years changed. After an unknown stretch of time, he saw a child in a certain city's aquarium who looked almost exactly like Chen Ge. The child leaned against the exhibition glass, staring blankly at the fish swimming past. He had searched for a long time, but still had not seen that enormous figure.
"Xiang Nuan!" A woman's voice rang out in the distance. Wen Qing ran up to the boy with some aquarium merchandise in her hand. "Mom did her homework this time. I got all ten questions right and finally won this limited-edition key chain."
She brought the hand hidden behind her back forward and opened it in front of the boy. In her palm lay a whale leaping out of the water. The boy carefully cradled the whale, looking at it, then at Wen Qing, murmuring, "Mom."
The clouds and mist parted. In a school on the other side of the city, the bell rang for class, and Teacher Li stepped up to the podium.
"Quiet down, everyone. Let me introduce our new transfer student at Xicheng Private Academy. His name is Chen Ge. I hope you'll all get along and help one another."
The students looked curiously at the boy on the other side of the podium. This transfer student named Chen Ge carried a large schoolbag, with a handmade, ugly-cute cloth doll hanging from