A Thread That Never Broke
The first week of university slipped away before Han Rui could properly grasp it. Days bled into each other: the early shuffle of shoes across tiled dormitory floors, the clatter of trays in the cafeteria, the drone of professors lecturing in rooms too big to feel human.
For most students, it was a time of excitement. Everything was new—the freedom, the chance to reinvent oneself, the possibilities opening in every direction. For Han Rui, it all felt muted, as if he were walking through a fog.
Everywhere he turned, Li Wen was there.
Not in an intentional way. Han Rui never caught him following or lingering with purpose. It was simply that their paths overlapped too often. Too perfectly.
The second morning, Han Rui sat alone in the cafeteria, poking at a breakfast that was both too salty and too bland. He told himself he needed to memorize the campus map later, maybe find the library before his next class. Halfway through his tea, he felt it—the weight of someone's gaze. When he looked up, Li Wen was across the room, seated with two other students, his head bent over a steaming bowl of noodles. The light from the high windows caught in his hair, making it glow faintly. He laughed at something one of his companions said, the sound carrying even through the chatter of the hall.
Han Rui dropped his eyes too quickly, heart stumbling. He reminded himself that coincidence was normal. The campus wasn't small. Everyone ended up in the same few places eventually.
But by that afternoon, when he pushed open the heavy doors of the library, the sight of Li Wen already there—seated cross-legged on the floor between two shelves, surrounded by a precarious stack of history books—made his excuses feel thin.
Han Rui stopped at the end of the aisle, frozen.
Li Wen wasn't reading idly. His brow furrowed in concentration as he flipped through pages with quick, practiced motions, his lips pressed into a faint line. He looked like someone searching for something specific, something buried deep. When he finally sat back, exhaling slowly, his fingers lingered over a line of text as though trying to memorize it.
Han Rui turned away before he could be noticed, retreating to another section. He tried to focus on the book he picked up—something light, a novel to distract himself—but the words blurred on the page. The image of Li Wen sitting among those towers of books burned behind his eyes.
That night, the dreams returned.
The battlefield stretched wide, sky burning crimson. Ash fell like snow. Han Rui's body ached with phantom wounds as he watched himself collapse into the snow, blood seeping into white. Li Wen was there, just as always, shielding him with a trembling body, eyes dark with desperation. His lips moved, forming words Han Rui couldn't hear, and then the world dissolved into silence.
Han Rui woke gasping, his chest tight. The sheets tangled around his legs were damp with sweat. For a moment, he lay still, staring into the dark, the echo of that sorrow lodged deep in his ribs.
He didn't sleep again. Instead, he sat at the window, chin resting against his knees, watching the faint outlines of campus stir awake. Streetlamps flickered off one by one as dawn bled into the horizon. Students shuffled out for morning runs, their breath misting in the cool air. Han Rui pressed his forehead to the glass, his mind circling the same thought: if fate had brought Li Wen into this life, what debt had followed with him?
By the time his morning class arrived, he was hollow with exhaustion. He dragged himself across campus, eyes gritty, stomach unsettled. The lecture hall felt too bright, voices too sharp.
And Li Wen was there again.
Waiting by the classroom door, leaning lightly against the wall, as if he had been standing there for a while. He looked perfectly composed, dressed in the same casual style he always wore—simple clothes that somehow suited him too well. When his gaze lifted and found Han Rui, he smiled with a quiet ease, as though this meeting was inevitable.
Han Rui froze mid-step.
The boy in his dreams—the one drenched in blood, whispering promises through the ash—was the same as the boy standing in front of him now, alive, unscarred, and impossibly warm. The two images clashed in Han Rui's mind until he felt dizzy.
The rest of the day passed in fragments.
In the cafeteria at lunch, Li Wen sat two tables away, laughing softly at something his seatmate said, and Han Rui found his gaze drifting again and again. In the library that evening, Han Rui discovered him at the same spot, cross-legged among history texts, a faint crease between his brows. At night in the dormitory lounge, Li Wen had fallen asleep on the couch, a book still open on his chest, his breathing even, his lashes long against pale skin.
Ordinary moments. Perfectly normal.
Yet every time Han Rui saw him, the weight of déjà vu pressed heavier.
He told himself to stop looking. He told himself to focus on the present, on school, on anything else. But when Li Wen's gaze caught his across the room, when recognition flickered there—like someone trying to remember a name long forgotten—Han Rui's breath stalled in his throat.
It wasn't just him. Li Wen felt it too.
That night, the dream came again, crueler than before. The snow crunched beneath his boots. The metallic tang of blood filled the air. Li Wen's hand gripped his, trembling, warm and desperate. His lips moved—Han Rui could almost hear it this time, words like a promise, like a vow. Then the sharp crack of steel, the weight of loss, and silence.
Han Rui woke with a choked sound, clutching his chest. His heart hammered so hard it hurt.
When dawn arrived, he stumbled through the motions of the day in a fog, his mind split between reality and memory. In class, Li Wen sat nearby again, sunlight catching faintly in his hair, his smile warm and untroubled. Han Rui wanted to demand answers, to ask if he remembered too, but the words stuck in his throat.
Instead, he sat in silence, staring at the sunlight slanting across Li Wen's desk, the fragile thread of fate tightening around his chest.
The boy from his dreams was real. The boy who had once died for him, the boy he had lost, was alive again.
And the thread that bound them had never broken.
Han Rui did not yet know if it would save them—or destroy them once more.