Rain trickled down the windows of a small apartment in Chengdu. The clock ticked quietly but cruelly as Yao Peizhi sat hunched over his desk. His textbooks—chemistry, physics, history—were open, but none of them could drown out the laughter echoing in his mind.
"Freak."
"Try hard."
"Why don't you just disappear?"
He had heard those words so often that they began to lose their meaning. He let out a soft, breathy laugh, tinged with tears. "Disappear...? Maybe I should." That was when he noticed the book, half-buried under a pile of old family belongings. It was his mother's ritual journal, its leather cover cracked and faintly smelling of dust and sandalwood.