Tagore once said,
"The greatest distance in the world is the distance between the fish and the bird—one soars through the heavens, the other sinks deep beneath the sea."
In the world of Liu Yang and Ying Ying, he was the bird, and she the fish.
He flew freely across the sky,
while she sank quietly into the depths.
The attic was dim, its air heavy with dust and silence. The light that slipped through the cracks was pale, faint, and trembling.
Ying Ying steadied herself against the old furniture as she took one small step after another toward the window. Her body had grown weak; she ate little and rarely on time. Even a few steps left her breathless, her thin shoulders trembling under the weight of effort.
The window was tightly sealed with iron bars.
When she had first been brought here, she had broken the glass, desperate to leap from the third floor—to run to the man who had promised to find her. Her family, terrified, had nailed the window shut that very night.
She still remembered the hammering sound, each strike cutting into her heart. Huddled in the corner, she had covered her face and wept until her tears turned dry.
That night, they did not only seal the window. They sealed away her hope.
It was the year 2007.
She was seventeen then.
Liu Yang had said to her, his voice calm and certain:
"Ying Ying, go back to America first. At most six months, I'll come for you. Wait for me."
She had believed him.
She had waited.
But the later days blurred into one another.
She forgot what came after.
That same year, in America, a car accident left her in illness for six long years. Her mind drifted in and out of consciousness, yet one thought never faded—his name.
She whispered it again and again,
as if repeating it could make him appear.
People called her mad.
At first, she had tried to defend herself softly, "I'm not crazy."
But the world only replied with cold eyes:
"Every madwoman says she's not mad."
Their indifference hollowed her. She began to look out the window, letting all sorrow and joy drown in silence.
Time blurred again. Her mind broke and drifted.
For years, she lived between lucidity and confusion. Only recently had she begun to wake from the fog.
Everything before seventeen, she remembered.
Everything after, she had forgotten.
She stopped taking her medicine—afraid that in forgetting her pain, she would also forget him.
Her family let her be. She was quiet now, no longer violent or loud.
They had their own lives to live.
No one had time to care about a madwoman's heart.
It was late spring in Seattle.
Sunlight fell through the iron bars, turning into trembling golden beams that scattered across the wooden floor.
Ying Ying raised her thin hand toward the light.
It poured into her palm, warm and fleeting.
She closed her fingers gently, then opened them again.
She smiled faintly.
Still warm, she thought. The warmth is still here.
She had not spoken for a long time.
She simply sat there each day, lost in her quiet world.
Sometimes she would imagine his return.
Perhaps he would come through the door, and she would look up and smile softly, saying:
"Hi, Liu Yang. It's been a long time."
But then she would laugh to herself, the smile fading quickly.
Six years had passed.
Her family had moved from San Francisco to Seattle.
Could he still find her?
Would he even remember her name?
Maybe not.
Maybe he had already forgotten.
From the floor below came the sound of a television. She listened quietly—commentators shouting, the rhythm of the crowd.
An NBA game.
She remembered how much he loved basketball.
Was he watching somewhere too?
In New York, he was.
But not on a television. He sat at the stadium, surrounded by lights and cameras.
That night, the newspapers wrote:
"Chinese business magnate Liu Yang and model Karl seen watching NBA game together—intimate interaction sparks romance rumors."