The Devil's Temperature

Sweetheart

With great effort, Teacher Xiao Zhao finally soothed Chen Hu. When she turned around, she found Bei Yao gazing at her and the chubby boy with her big, dark, glistening eyes.

Teacher Xiao Zhao knelt down to inspect Bei Yao’s calves—they were badly red, even slightly scraped. Yet the little girl didn’t cry or fuss, remaining quiet and sensible. Just that month, when this youngest child in the class had first arrived at the kindergarten, she had been prone to tears.

Seeing that Bei Yao wasn’t crying, Teacher Xiao Zhao let out a sigh of relief. She didn’t expect two young children to explain clearly what had happened; she only hoped there would be no more trouble for the rest of the day.

As soon as Teacher Xiao Zhao left, Chen Hu—his eyes still red from crying—shot Bei Yao a glare. With a huff, the chubby boy turned and walked away.

In the afternoon, while the other children folded paper, Pei Chuan stood by the door, never once coming over. When Teacher Xiao Zhao tried to push his wheelchair closer, he pressed his lips tight and clung to the doorframe with his fingers, his grip so firm it whitened his knuckles. Fearing he might pinch his fingers, Teacher Xiao Zhao had no choice but to give up.

Bei Yao knew what he was watching for—his parents still hadn’t come to pick him up.

Vaguely, she remembered that in elementary school, Uncle Pei and Aunt Jiang Wenjuan had gotten divorced, and Pei Chuan had stayed with his father. But back then, she had paid him no attention, so she couldn’t even recall which grade that had happened in.

Bei Yao spent the entire afternoon in a daze.

She wasn’t a real child, so she couldn’t possibly feel the same excitement for these games as the other kids did. Moreover, she still had a fever; the high temperature left her groggy and listless.

Growing up with the memories and soul of an adult trapped in a child’s body was, in truth, quite agonizing.

When school ended, parents arrived one after another to pick up their children.

Chen Hu’s father was once again the first to come. The chubby boy stood up triumphantly from his small stool. As he passed Bei Yao, he cast her a sideways glance—but his real resentment was for Pei Chuan. On his way out, he shouted loudly at Pei Chuan: “Your dad’s never gonna come pick you up!”

Pei Chuan lifted his eyes, his dark, ink-black gaze fixing steadily on Chen Hu. His pale fingers silently tightened around the armrest of his wheelchair.

The chubby boy scampered away in a flash.

Bei Yao was furious!

What a naughty child!

Bei Yao’s mother, Zhao Zhilan, got off work a little late from the garment factory. Usually, Fang Minjun was picked up by her grandmother. In the end, only Bei Yao, Pei Chuan, and Teacher Xiao Zhao remained in the classroom.

While Teacher Xiao Zhao cleaned up the paper scraps left by the children, Bei Yao looked at Pei Chuan’s back, then waddled over to him, her short legs shuffling with effort.

The setting sun bathed the courtyard in golden light. She held a paper airplane in her chubby hand and gently placed it on his lap.

Pei Chuan’s wheelchair wasn’t tall, yet sitting in it, he was still a little higher than the four-year-old girl.

Pei Chuan looked at her.

She smiled, her almond-shaped eyes curving into crescents. In her soft, childlike voice, she said: “Here you go. My name’s Bei Yao. Our homes are really close—can we go home together?”

Pei Chuan’s face remained cold. Without warning, he tossed the airplane away.

Leave me alone. I don’t want you around.

Somehow, she read that message in his eyes.

But little Pei Chuan had forgotten it was a paper airplane. A light breeze caught it, carrying it far away, where it landed in front of the plum tree in the courtyard.

Bei Yao glanced at the paper airplane, then turned back to him.

In the next moment, she trotted over to retrieve it, her short legs hurrying. She ran back, carefully brushed the dust off the airplane, and placed it on his lap again—her eyes still shining as brightly as before.

A surge of anger welled up in Pei Chuan, though he couldn’t even explain why. Gritting his teeth, he tossed it away once more.

The little girl went to fetch it again. Every time she brought it back, she gently patted off the dust, set it on his lap, and looked up at him with a smile.

On the sixth attempt, she placed it on his lap with extreme care.

He stared at her expressionlessly and tore it to pieces.

Bei Yao’s slightly yellowish hair was soft, tied into two small topknots.

Pei Chuan was certain she would cry—cry as loudly and dramatically as Chen Hu had, then run to tell the teacher. All the children in the kindergarten disliked him. Even before he lost his legs, he had been quiet and withdrawn, with no friends. The other kids thought he was unsociable and hard to get along with.

Bei Yao understood, though. Everyone who had been deeply hurt was like a hedgehog—sharp on the outside, yet still soft at heart.

In the innocent tone of a four-year-old, she asked him: “If you don’t want to play with it, can we go home then? My mom hasn’t come to pick me up either. Can we go home by ourselves?”

He said nothing. But when Bei Yao reached out to touch his wheelchair, he suddenly raised his hand.

He didn’t hold back at all—the slap made a crisp “c***k” sound. Instantly, a red mark bloomed on her soft, plump hand.

Bei Yao instinctively pulled her hand back.

She lowered her head to look at her little hand, and Pei Chuan did the same—his eyes fixed on the hand he had hit.

Her chubby little hand was white and soft, with dimples on the back. As a child, Bei Yao had been afraid of pain; even a single injection would make her tremble all over. Pei Chuan was born with a “broken palm” (a palm line that runs straight across the palm), and the unrelenting slap was surprisingly painful.

Bei Yao sighed silently to herself.

He really was hard to get along with.

She was about to say something more when Zhao Zhilan’s figure appeared on the path outside the kindergarten.

Bei Yao’s brows furrowed slightly. Zhao Zhilan came over, picked her up, and exchanged a greeting with Teacher Xiao Zhao. When she passed Pei Chuan, her heart softened: “Pei Chuan, Aunt Zhao will take you home, okay?”

Pei Chuan lowered his head, his fingers clinging tightly to the doorframe once again.

Teacher Xiao Zhao smiled awkwardly: “Ms. Bei Yao, you should go first.”

Zhao Zhilan had no choice but to carry Bei Yao away.

Holding her soft little daughter, she sighed softly: “Alas, what kind of misfortune have that couple brought upon themselves… to let their child’s temperament become like this…”

After they had walked far away, Teacher Xiao Zhao gently patted Pei Chuan’s head with a smile.

Pei Chuan didn’t move an inch. Following his gaze, Teacher Xiao Zhao realized he was watching the mother and daughter at the end of the path.

Zhao Zhilan had plucked a small yellow wildflower and tucked it into one of the little girl’s topknots. The little girl in her arms smiled, her big eyes curving into crescent moons.

Innocent, happy, and utterly adorable.

Pei Chuan’s gaze lingered on Bei Yao.

After a long time, he opened his hand. In his palm lay a few hidden scraps of the paper airplane. Silently, he let them go.

The paper bits fluttered away in the wind.

He had known it all along—she had been lying to him. Her mother would come to take her home.

After dinner, Bei Yao opened her bedroom window. While Zhao Zhilan washed the dishes, she struggled to climb onto a stool and looked out.

The electric light in the fourth-floor apartment across the way turned on.

That was Pei Chuan’s home. If someone was there, it meant he must have been picked up. Only then did she let out a sigh of relief.

They lived in the same residential compound—Bei Yao’s family on the third floor, Pei Chuan’s on the fourth. Bei Yao had started sleeping in her own room early, separate from her parents. From her window, she could see into Pei Chuan’s home.

In the middle of the night, her fever returned. Zhao Zhilan, who was sleeping beside her, touched her daughter’s body and found it burning hot.

Leaning closer, she heard Bei Yao murmuring deliriously, her tears soaking the pillow. Zhao Zhilan was jolted awake from her drowsiness; she hurried to fetch alcohol to cool Bei Yao’s fever.

When Bei Yao opened her eyes just before dawn, her forehead was still burning. But what frightened her even more was this—her memories were starting to fade.

It was as if she had once seen the world through a clear, transparent sheet of glass. Gradually, though, that glass was being covered layer by layer, blurring her view until nothing was clear anymore.

In her confusion, she remembered that she had died at the age of twenty-three.

Her death had been quite cliché.

And now, even those deeply etched memories were becoming shrouded in a thick fog—as if the body of this four-year-old girl was rejecting them.

As soon as Zhao Zhilan stepped out, Bei Yao struggled out of bed. She rummaged through her things to find her grid-paper notebook and a pencil.

“Bei Yao, 2013: Married Huo Xu. Only after marriage did I learn he had someone he truly loved. I was just a pawn he used to defy his family and protect his real lover. Huo Xu was the descendant of a military officer and a businessman—rich and powerful. He never touched me. But when I finally realized what I was and tried to leave, Huo Xu refused to let me go.”

Bei Yao wrote these words from an onlooker’s perspective. By the time she finished, her forehead was covered in cold sweat—but she knew she had to keep going.

“2014: I managed to meet Huo Xu’s true love for the first time. But in the blink of an eye, Huo Xu chased me away—and for the first time, he slapped me. My mother, Zhao Zhilan, and my father, Bei Licai, were heartbroken. In their middle age, they still ran around, begging people to help me. In the end, my father had an accident and became a vegetable.”

Tears streamed down Bei Yao’s face as she wrote, mixing with the ink on the paper.

With unwavering determination, she continued: “In the end, my mother went to beg a man. He rescued me. That man’s name was Pei Chuan—a man the whole world saw as ‘evil.’ The programs he wrote were all designed to disrupt social stability. He was quiet and withdrawn, yet he protected me for two years. On the day I died, Pei Chuan told me, ‘She was the treasure he dared not love in his entire life.’”

“2015: I died in humiliation—still a pawn for that woman.”

The sound of Zhao Zhilan’s footsteps grew closer. Bei Yao didn’t have time to write more. In a hurry, she scribbled a message to her future self: “Treat Pei Chuan well.”

She finished the last stroke of the character “Chuan” (*) and quickly tucked the notebook into her drawer. Zhao Zhilan pushed open the door, glaring at her: “You’re still running around even with a fever!”

Bei Yao wiped away her tears and obediently lay back down on the bed.

She didn’t know until which day her memories would linger. Living with the memories of a past life was inherently against the laws of nature. To be given a second chance at life was already a blessing.

“Mom, can you sing me a song?”

Zhao Zhilan scolded her with a smile: “You’re so disobedient, yet you still want me to sing for you!”

But her love for her daughter won out in the end. After a moment’s thought, she began to sing in her clear, melodious voice:

“Gently wake the sleeping soul,Slowly open your eyes,Look at this busy world—Is it still spinning alone, lonely and unchanging?The spring breeze knows not the weight of feelings,Yet it stirs the hearts of young men…”

This song was from an album released in 1985. Bei Yao hadn’t heard such a familiar yet unfamiliar, gentle melody in years.

Vaguely, she remembered the song’s name—Tomorrow Will Be Better.

Lulled by Zhao Zhilan’s singing, she drifted off to sleep once more.

Before falling asleep, Bei Yao wondered: Did Pei Chuan go to kindergarten today?

In her past life, because of what had happened the day before, he had refused to go to kindergarten and stopped speaking altogether. What about today?

The sun shone brightly that day. The kindergarten children were watching a white butterfly resting in the grass.

Fang Minjun was surrounded by several children—all eager to catch the beautiful butterfly.

Chen Hu came charging over, making a racket: “Fang Minjun, do you want to play hide-and-seek?”

Fang Minjun turned around.

It was a face that had been called a “little jade beauty” back in 1996—for it already bore the faint resemblance to a certain Hong Kong actress. This made Fang Minjun’s mother, Zhao Xiu, extremely proud.

Unlike the chubby, round-cheeked children her age, Fang Minjun had little baby fat, which only accentuated her delicate, refined features.

She said: “Okay, but I don’t want to be the ‘cat.’”

Chen Hu agreed without hesitation.

He pointed to a little boy to be the cat. The boy pouted but had no choice but to agree.

With a cheer, the children scattered to hide.

They played joyfully. In the corner, Pei Chuan watched coldly.

Amid the tender sounds of laughter and chatter, his eyes drifted to the empty seat at the front—the seat that belonged to the little girl.

He had come to school. But she hadn’t.