THE SPACE BETWEEN

CHAPTER 1: IN ANOTHER BODY The world did not open up to me in a clear manner, but rather cracked like an egg that had too much pressure on its walls. I blink my eyes open to an unfamiliar ceiling, and the reason for the pressure in my chest is still unclear. It is white, bare, and utterly uninviting. It takes me a moment to remember why my heart feels as if it is trying to escape my ribcage, but the memories that come rushing back are not mine. I came to bed last night in my Shanghai apartment, reading on the couch with a cold cup of coffee at my side. Instead, I wake up in a dorm room with unfamiliar sheets, the scent of someone else's laundry detergent clinging to the air. I push myself up on my elbows, and the next wave of memories hits me. They are not mine, but they feel like they are, and the sensation is not pleasant. They are filled with an altogether too familiar sense of dread, and I feel my hands clenching the fabric of the bedsheet. No, no, this isn't- The memories continue regardless, flowing into my skull with unwavering persistence. A classroom, warm afternoon sun, a boy with an easy smile who seems to have his life together in a way that makes me ache. His name is Lin Ancheng, and the body I inhabit now aches for him. Loved him. Loves him? My mother's disappointed face, my father's voice in some stuffy boardroom, talking about alliances. Liu Mei wringing her hands, Xu Zhengyang checking his phone when he is supposed to be listening to her. A restaurant, cold and formal, with a man I do not know but somehow recognize, brown-grey eyes watching me with an expression like ice. His name is Lu Chenyao, and according to these memories, I am engaged to him. I stumble out of the bed, my feet finding the floor with unsteady motions. The dorm room is small and entirely too cramped, and I notice a framed picture on the desk, along with a few books. Business Administration, Third Year. There is a calendar on the wall with several marked dates, and a picture of me - or rather, the body I used to inhabit with my previous memories - with the easy-smiling boy in the middle of the room. I press my hands to my temples, trying to separate the memories that are not mine from the ones that are. The thing is, I read a novel. I read it voraciously and consumed it hungrily, staying up until three in the morning on my own couch, feeling the phantom ache of fictional characters in my chest. The protagonist was a charming and charismatic scholarship student, and the second lead was a drooling i***t who somehow managed to make me want to tear out his heart with my bare hands. The villain was a calculating CEO who had no idea how to have feelings, and I hated him for it. I wrote my angry thoughts all over the book's pages, and I was so very, very sure that no one else could have possibly understood what I felt. But apparently, I was wrong. I have somehow been placed in this body and this life, and now I see everything through the eyes of the drooling i***t. The one who cannot make his feelings known, who is doomed to pine in silence and have his heart shattered by the very man he holds dear. The dorm room door swings open with a sudden burst of energy, and a girl rushes inside, fully dressed and made up, already speaking on her phone as she scans the room with wide eyes. She freezes when her gaze lands on me, and her expression shifts from irritation to concern. "Xú Lán! Why aren't you ready? We're meeting Lin in twenty minutes—" she says, her voice a mix of exasperation and sympathy. "Are you okay? You look like someone shot you." Xú Lán. It is my name, or rather, the name of the body I am in now. "I'm not feeling well," I say, and the words come out wrong. My voice is too young, too familiar, not mine at all. She sighs, already turning away, and waves a hand in dismissal. "You always feel sick when you have to see him. It's stress." When you have to see him. The words hit me like a physical blow, and I feel my pulse quicken in my throat. She means Lin Ancheng, and she is right. Some part of me, buried deep inside, aches at the thought of seeing him. But it is not my body, and it is not my life. My phone vibrates on the nightstand, and I move to it instinctively. The message is from Lu Chenyao, and it says the following: Dinner with families tonight. 7 PM. Golden Dragon. Don't be late. It is all so formal, so impersonal, as if he is not even speaking to me but rather some random stranger. The words are not easy, as one might expect them to be if one is engaged to someone. I read the message three times, trying to will the words to change, but they do not. This is how he communicates with me, if one can even call it that. I look at my roommate, Zhou Wei, who is already texting someone about whether to get coffee first or have lunch with us, entirely unbothered by my condition. I feel something akin to dread in my chest, but it is not quite the same as before. I came into this life as the drooling i***t, the one who was always meant to pine and suffer. But I do not think that is how it is going to be now. I am not going to read about his life and feel sorry for him. I am going to live it, and I am going to change it. I look at my phone, at the message from Lu Chenyao, and my thumb hovers over the keyboard for a moment. For a moment, I think of the words that the previous inhabitant of this body would have written. Something that would allow me to see Lin Ancheng instead of his fiancée, something that would grant me a reprieve from this new and unwanted life. But I have already read that story, and I know how it ends. I type the following message: Looking forward to it. And then I delete it. It is too eager, too forward. I type another message: I'll be there. It is not much, but it is true in a way the other was not. I press send before I can second-guess myself, and the message appears as sent. My heart gives a strange little lurch in my chest. One step at a time, I suppose.