LanWangji always woke before dawn, but on most mornings, he at least remembered lying down.
Today, he woke standing—body rigid, breath unsteady, fingers curled into the shape of a grip he had not used in years. Cold moonlight spilled across the wooden floor, and beneath the pale glow, he saw sweat dripping down his wrist, sliding silently to the floor like evidence of a pain he refused to acknowledge.
The nightmare had come again. Not as fragmented flashes or distant whispers, but as a full, suffocating vision that left his lungs burning as though he had been screaming into the wind.
He could still feel the storm, hear the cliff groaning under their weight, see the shattered rocks tumbling past him and the boy clutching his hand, hanging between life and death, still with an undeniable calm.
Wei Ying.
He didn't know him, yet his heart repeated it with the familiarity of a prayer he had once memorized.
In the nightmare, he was always kneeling on the edge of that collapsing cliff, rain lashing his face, eyes burning from smoke and terror. Wei Ying hung below him, fingers digging desperately into Lan Wangji's palm while the ground crumbled away.
Behind them, the world was covered in red—violence, chaos, betrayal, sounds he didn't understand.
He always tried to pull him up in his every nightmare and every single night yet,
He watched his hands slipping away from his when the stone above him cracked, split open, and threatened to crush them both.
He remembered the moment Wei Ying looked up at him, not with fear for himself, but fear for his fall.
Lan Wangji's voice, raw and torn, called his name—a name he should not know, a voice he did not recognize as his own.
At every night, he saved Lan Wangji by sacrificing himself and he watched him fall into an endless darkness—peacefully, with tearful eyes yet a beautiful smile on his bleeding lips.
That was also the most painful moment his body couldn't endure and he always woke up screaming his name, with his empty trembling hands and heart clawing at his ribcage in frantic denial.
Tonight was no different except for one terrible truth:
He had never lived this memory in his life.
Yet his body remembered it like a scar.
...
When he descended the stairs of 'The Lans' Estate', the morning was still dark, the air heavy with the dignified silence that generations of wealth had carved into these walls. The servants greeted him with perfect politeness, but their eyes flickered with concern—everyone in this household had noticed the change in him these past 7 years.
His mother appeared from the dining room, her usually stern expression softening the moment she saw the exhausted stiffness in his posture.
"Wangji," she said quietly.
"Good morning, Mom. You're up early." Wangji said quietly while accepting the herbal tea, her Mom offered. She specially preferred to prepare the tea herself for his good health.
"I knew you would be awake..... nightmare again?"
Lan Wangji gave the smallest inclination of his head. Not quite a yes, not a no—just an acknowledgment that it existed, nothing more.
His mother's shoulders tightened with helplessness. She had tried everything—doctors, therapists, spiritual healers, routine adjustments but nothing touched the wound that didn't exist on his body yet lived permanently in his gaze.
His brother, LanXichen, approached from behind her, dressed for an early schedule but carrying the warmth of someone who would drop anything if Lan Wangji asked.
"Wangji," Xichen said gently, "Did you sleep at all these days? Let's go for a new doc—"
Lan Wangji poured tea into a porcelain cup, watching the steam rise with a calmness he did not feel. His hands trembled just enough for the tea surface to ripple—a betrayal he hid immediately by placing the cup down.
"No need Ge. It was less severe than yesterday," he lied.
Xichen's eyes softened with worry.
"You've said that every day for a week. You should come with me."
Lan Wangji's jaw tightened, a barely perceptible shift, but Xichen noticed. Their mother did too. This house was trained to read silence better than words.
"It is only a dream, Chen Ge," Lan Wangji said finally, forcing the statement through lips that felt too cold.
"A trauma response. Nothing more."
Xichen exhaled, as though that explanation hurt him more than it comforted.
"Dreams do not carve themselves into a person for seven years without reason."
Lan Wangji wanted to close his eyes, not in exhaustion, but to escape the truth that lingered like smoke around him.
He did not believe a dream could haunt someone this long but he also did not believe that a dream could feel so real, as if it belonged to a life he no longer remembered but had lived.
Before anyone could press further, he rose from his seat.
"Work awaits, we will talk about it later." He said, his voice as precise and cold as the frost outside the window.
His mother reached forward, as if to hold his arm, but she stopped halfway. Even she knew he could not bear touches anymore. To be more precise, his youngest son hated skinship after surviving the dangerous incident seven years ago.
"Wangji," she whispered, voice trembling with a rare vulnerability,
"If there is ever a day you cannot bear it alone… allow us to be your strength. I believe this is curable, trust me."
Lan Wangji looked at her for a single breath and nodded lightly before walking away.
Curable?
His inner self wanted to laugh out loud.
....
His day unfolded with mechanical perfection.
Back-to-back meetings, contracts reviewed with a precision that could left no mistakes and cold decisions made without hesitation.
Lan Wangji, the world-famous heir of the Wang conglomerate, the flawless CEO who never cracked, never faltered, never breathed any way but steady.
His colleagues admired him, investors feared him and the general public worshipped him like he was a celebrity, a star. Some were after his wealth, some after his handsome face and others because of his generosity.
But no one knew the truth that how every night, he screamed awake with a unfamiliar yet familiar name of a dying man he had never met.
Every morning, he lived with the feeling he had failed someone whose name his tongue knew without permission.
He told himself it was trauma from the car accident which he was not supposed to survive just like the 250+ passengers who lost their lives in the deadly road accident caused by a high magnitude earthquake, but somehow he did and everything changed afterwards.
Doctors insisted memory loss often created false imagery. Psychologists claimed dreams stitched themselves from subconscious shadows and many more advices and baseless explanation. But the question is,
Why did his chest ache with a grief that belonged to someone he should not remember?
Why did his hands tremble as if they had once let go of someone he loved more than life?
Why did the name "Wei Ying" feel like a wound every time he woke?
He swallowed the questions, crushing them into silence again. He had survived through stillness, lived through restraint and breathed through discipline. And he would live like this till the end.
No matter what, he never broke routine. He was never out of his character. Never acted recklessly. Never got his name trending for a bad reason, rumours or any kind of financial blunder.
Until that evening.
....
Lan Wangji left his final meeting with XueYang—one of the few people he tolerated, although tolerance was a generous word for a man like Xue Yang. The youngest son of the another top-tier elite family, XueHousehold, was brilliant, deranged, and unpredictable, with a grin sharp enough to cut through civility.
But for better or worse, they understood each other's unusual coldness and fake smile.
"Your face is darker than usual," Xue Yang commented casually as they exited the restaurant. "Bad night again?"
Lan Wangji didn't answer. He didn't need to buy he nodded. "Don't talk about it."
Xue Yang nodded with his usual grin, following Lan Wangji as he stepped onto the sidewalk, letting the evening breeze cool the tension simmering inside him, but his thoughts remained heavy, blurred with the nightmare he could no longer suppress.
Then he heard it for the first time in his seven years of troublesome life,
A voice.
Exactly from his nightmares. Familiar, light and unrestrained. It cut through the city noise like a bell—clear, warm, alive—drawing Lan Wangji's all attention.
Lan Wangji didn't know why his heart stopped. He turned and froze completely.
Across the street, under the flickering sign of a small, dusty café, stood a man laughing so openly that it seemed the world softened just to listen.
Tall and lean silhoutte, disheveled ponytail, bright eyes, lips curved in a reckless grin.
Wei Ying?!
There he was. The face from his nightmares. Alive, real and vivid. Same voice that begged him to let go and live, same person who had fallen because he feared for Lan Wangji's life more than his own. Everything about him was same,
Except this Wei Ying wasn't bleeding.
Wasn't terrified.
Wasn't dangling over a void.
He was laughing, laughing like life had never wronged him.
Lan Wangji couldn't breathe.
Because the impossible was standing across the road—breathing, smiling, existing.
Xue Yang followed his frozen gaze.
"What are you—?" he began but Wangji didn't hear the rest.
His feet were already carrying him forward—
across the road, through the noise, past traffic, past logic, past everything he had built to protect himself.
He reached the café door and pushed it open with a force that made the bell ring too sharply, attracting every pair of eyes around him.
Wei Ying turned at the sound, completely puzzled.
And for the first time in Lan Wangji's life, he made eye contact to a person he wasn't familiar yet at the same time, too familiar.
Latter's questioning eyes met his own starstruck gaze and in between the moment, he felt the world around him going silent.
Lan Wangji felt the nightmare surguging inside him like a tsunami. No, it was not fear, but recognition.
Intense, consuming, undeniable.
He stared at Wei Ying as if staring at a ghost resurrected, panic rising inside his lungs, snatching his all peace and breath.
Wei Ying blinked, startled, confused, then wary—like a street cat sensing danger in a stranger's shadow.
Lan Wangji's heartbeat felt like it was tearing through his ribs.
Seven years of nightmares, seven years of unanswered screams, seven years of searching for a face he convinced himself did not exist,
collapsed into this moment
Wei Ying stepped back slightly, defensive, alert, eyes narrowing in suspicion and a bit scared under the intense gaze of latter.
He had seen this face many times, whether on papers, news or tv. But certainly never up this close, so restless and panicking. He had no idea why a cold, untouchable heir—one whose face occupied magazines, news, and business articles daily—was staring at him like he had crawled out of his soul.
Lan Wangji took a step toward him and Wei Ying backed away few steps, scared to offend a high class profile like him. He couldn't take risk.
But it seemed like fate was not on his side as the elite man charged once again with hurried steps, giving him jumpscare. He quickly tried to retreat further with faltering steps when his wrist was seized, and before he could have processed what was happening, he felt himself being hugged.
Shock and anger rose inside him side by side. He was about to yell, when he heard a voice barely above a whisper—broken, disbelieving, and trembling yet with a kind of relief.
"Wei Ying?"
And the world of Wei Ying froze.
Lan Wangji was embracing him tightly, instinctively, as though afraid Wei Ying might vanish if he didn't anchor him immediately.
His entire world narrowed to that small space between them.
The nightmare met reality.
The screaming man left on the cliff finally get to hold the one who died protecting him again and again.
And Wei Ying felt his shoulders getting drenched with the same fragile tone,
"You're… real! You're here....finally."
.
.
.
To be continued....