There was nothing around her.
No sound. No ground beneath her feet. No sky above her head.
Just white.
Endless white.
Lu Qingyan floated through it like a feather suspended in time.
She didn't know where she was—or what she had become.
She felt no pain. No weight. Just... emptiness. A silence so absolute it rang.
'Is this what death feels like?' she wondered.
She didn't know if minutes passed. Or hours. Or days.
But slowly—softly, like a ripple across still water—memories began to rise.
Not her last moments. Not the accident. Not even her mother's arms or her father's voice.
But him.
Her brother.
The first vivid memory Lu Qingyan had wasn't of being cradled by her parents or hand-fed her favorite fruit. It was of chubby little fingers fumbling with wooden letter blocks on the playroom floor—and a patient boy's hand guiding hers.
She was three years old. He was five.
Lu Mingxun, five years old, trying to teach a three-year-old how to write her own name on a magnetic drawing board.
"Here," his little finger guided hers, steady and warm. "That's 'Qing.' The lines go like this. Try again—no rush."
She remembered how he celebrated when she finally got it right.
"Not 'eh,' it's 'Ayy,'"he corrected gently, tapping the alphabet card with a pencil. "Try again."
"...Ayy," she mumbled.
"That's my little sister." He beamed, the gap between his front teeth making him look even younger than he was. "You're gonna be the smartest girl in the whole class."
Mingxun taught her everything after that. How to hold a pencil. How to pronounce "library" properly. How to read road signs, how to count in twos. He even made little flashcards when she had trouble reading compound words.
At six, he was teaching her how to write letters. At eight, he helped her memorize poems. When she had a stutter at age five, it was Mingxun who gently corrected her, day after day, until she spoke smoothly.
And he never—not once—lost his patience.
So really, it wasn't a surprise how much she depended on him.
And just like that, he rewrote the definition of family for her.
Lu Mingxun didn't just play with her—he raised her.
Even though they had nannies and housekeepers and enough money to hire a dozen tutors, Lu Qingyan clung to Mingxun. Because while everyone else worked on schedules and salaries, Mingxun loved her just because.
He was only two years older. Barely a child himself.
While their nanny cleaned the living room and the maids prepared dinner, it was Mingxun who helped her tie her shoelaces, who remembered she liked the giraffe plate for breakfast, who stood guard by the bathroom door because she was scared of the mirror ghost stories their cousins told her.
He taught her how to read, how to write, how to pronounce February properly—"not Febu-ary, dummy, Feb-ru-ary!" he'd scold with a smile.
He tied her shoelaces when she couldn't bend down in her puffy skirts. He made sure her juice box straw didn't get stuck. He buttoned the back of her school uniform when her tiny arms couldn't reach.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that someone so young had to grow up so fast.
He even taught her how to greet their grandparents in dialect so she wouldn't embarrass herself during New Year dinners.
Their parents were rarely around.
Their parents were always busy.
Her mother immersed in designing for her grandfather's fashion empire.
Her father consumed by meetings and investor calls for the real estate company he ran.
Lu Qingyan knew now they had loved her—in their way—but their love had been distant, wrapped in timezones and scheduled calls and missed birthdays.
But with Mingxun, it was always immediate. Warm. There.
Lu Qingyan didn't grow up feeling empty or abandoned.
Because Lu Mingxun made sure she never noticed their absence.
He walked her to her classroom every morning—sometimes carrying both their schoolbags because she complained hers was "too heavy."
He would gently warn her teachers if she seemed too quiet, chased away boys who confessed to her in middle school, and told her, dead serious, that any future boyfriend had to pass a written test and an interview.
She never missed her parents because he was there. She didn't even envy kids who had their mothers drop them off, because her brother did all that and more.
Every bedtime, she'd crawl into his room with a storybook and pout until he made space on the bed.
He never refused.
He read Cinderella so many times that he once recited it backwards just to make her laugh.
He had been her safe place. Her constant.
When she made mistakes in homework, he never shouted—just gently corrected her until she got it right.
"Gege, can we go to the aquarium this weekend?"
He never said no.
"If you want to go to the aquarium this weekend," he'd say, "I'll ask Nanny Zhang to come with us."
And on Saturday, they'd go.
He'd walk beside her slowly so her tiny legs could keep up, point out fishes through the glass, and tell her their names like he was a marine biologist.
"That's a lionfish. See the fins? Like spikes."
"Why's it called a lionfish?"
"Because it's proud. Like me."
She giggled and believed every word.
Lu Mingxun was only two years older, but he carried himself like he was decades ahead—steady, quiet, dependable.
So dependable, in fact, that Lu Qingyan forgot he was still a kid too.
She forgot that while he held the umbrella over her head, shielding her from the storms of childhood, no one held an umbrella over him.
Every Chinese New Year when he returned from boarding school or university, relatives would swarm him like he was a prodigy.
"Top of your class again, Mingxun?"
"So mature for his age!"
"You'll be the pillar of the Lu family someday."
Lu Qingyan had always admired him for it. She used to feel proud, walking beside him—that's my big brother.
But floating here now, in the void, she saw the memory differently.
When had she ever asked him—"Are you okay?"
Were you really okay, gege?
She had been so busy basking in his light that she never wondered how much darkness he was hiding behind it.
She used to think she knew everything about him. But now she realized—
Lu Mingxun had been proficient in loving her. And in dying quietly.
Suicide didn't come to someone in a single night. It seeped in over years, hollowing someone out, bit by bit.
He was proficient in suicide.
Which meant… it wasn't a sudden thought.
He must've entertained it before.
She was sixteen when he died.
When she was sixteen, she had him.
But when he was sixteen… who did he have?
When she was five, he read her fairy tales. But when he was five—who read him to sleep?
When she was scared of walking into school alone, he held her hand. But who held his when their parents were busy and the halls felt too big?
Who celebrated his first proper handwriting?
Who tucked him in when he cried at night?
She hadn't thought to ask. Because he always smiled. Always came home. Always answered.
She had been so selfish. So blind.
He was always the umbrella. Always shielding me.
And she? She never thought to hold it for him.
Not even once.
Tears should've fallen.
But her eyes didn't work anymore.
Her throat couldn't sob. Her body was gone.
So she just felt—a grief so wide and deep it could have swallowed the white void around her.
'I'm so sorry, gege.'
The loneliness must have been unbearable. Looking around and seeing classmates walking with their parents, being hugged, being scolded. And him, always ahead, always the older brother, always the one carrying the umbrella.
His love had been that umbrella. Sturdy and always there, shielding her from every storm.
And she—she had never thought to tilt it back toward him.
Even once.
I should've known. I should've asked. I should've tipped the umbrella… just a little. Let you rest in the shade for once.
Her voice echoed through the nothingness, unheard.
You deserved more than praises at dinner tables.
You deserved someone to ask you if you were tired.
You deserved someone to stay beside you when the night got heavy.
Lu Qingyan wanted to scream.
"Gege, please don't leave me."
"I'll do better. I swear. I'll love you like you loved me."
But it was too late.
She was dead.
And maybe that was the price of not asking the right questions. Of thinking someone so capable didn't need help. Of believing love didn't need to be returned in equal measure.
Gege, I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.