That night, Lin Zhaoyuan barely slept.
It wasn't the restless kind of insomnia.
It was a quiet, unsettling clarity.
He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as it slowly emerged from the darkness, his thoughts refusing to slow down.
For reasons he couldn't explain, he began thinking about his younger self.
Not the version from recent years.
But much earlier than that.
In his early twenties, he used to speak loudly.
Not in volume—but in certainty.
He liked making bold statements, liked talking about the future, about plans, about what he would become "one day."
He believed that as long as he tried hard enough, things would eventually work out.
Failure?
That was a problem for later.
Back then, he felt a quiet disdain for the word stability.
To him, it sounded like something meant for people without courage.
Like surrendering in advance.
He clearly remembered saying this once—
at a late-night gathering, surrounded by people just as young as he was:
"I won't live an ordinary life forever."
He had said it without hesitation,
as if the world had already agreed.
When he was young, he wasn't afraid of losing.
Not because he was strong—
but because he could afford to lose.
He could change direction.
He could start over.
At worst, he would only lose some time.
Time, back then, felt endless.
Fail today, try again tomorrow.
He never seriously calculated the cost of failure.
Looking back now, he finally understood something:
Youthful bravery is often just ignorance of the price.
It wasn't that he had grown weaker.
It was that he had finally seen what one failure could take away.
Savings.
Options.
The chance to try again.
When he was young, the world felt wide.
Now, everything had a price tag.
Lin Zhaoyuan turned over, staring at the faint light outside the window.
He tried to remember when he had started becoming cautious.
It wasn't one specific failure.
Not a single turning point.
It was the accumulation of countless "maybe later," "better not," and "let's be safe."
Bit by bit, he had folded away his sharp edges.
He learned to avoid risks in advance.
To leave sentences unfinished.
To always keep himself a way back.
By the time he realized it,
he hadn't spoken with conviction in years.
What troubled him wasn't his current life.
It was the fact that he had stopped questioning it.
Not because he was satisfied—
but because he had accepted it.
Accepted that this was what middle age looked like.
Accepted that he no longer had the right to "try again."
A harsh realization settled in:
The world hadn't become harder—
he simply couldn't afford to lose anymore.
It wasn't shameful.
It wasn't a mistake.
But the moment he understood this,
the man who once spoke so loudly grew completely silent.
The alarm rang at 6:30 a.m.
It wasn't loud, but it was sharp.
Lin Zhaoyuan listened to it for a few seconds before turning it off.
When he sat up, he felt strangely calm.
He understood something clearly now—
Some people aren't defeated by life.
They slowly put themselves away.
As the night ended,
the version of himself he hadn't seen in years
felt even farther away.