After I died, they cried in the live studio

That was their conversation twelve years ago on a stormy night. At that time, President Qi shielded the swearing assistant behind her, wrapped the soaking wet Sang Jiyue in his suit, and whispered in her ear: "A true actor never measures his value with decibels. Look at the moon in the sky. Even if it is missing a piece, it can still light up the whole night."

“Actually, I know everything.” Sang Jiyue suddenly leaned close to her reddened earlobe. “The malice you’ve shielded me from over the years is far more than the starlight you’ve shown me.” She pointed to the envelopes in the trash can. “But now I can open them myself. Just like you said, the cracks give the light shape.” When President Qi turned around, she saw her spreading those malicious letters out in the sunlight, drawing blue snowflakes on the back of each letter with a silver marker—the past hurts were turning into a starlight map they wove together.

As evening fell, Pojian delivered the newly completed theater model. In the palm-sized miniature landscape of the aurora observation station, at the very center of the stage made of sensor bricks, two silver ring models overlapped to form a complete blue snowflake, with the inscription "Where there is gap, starlight will come to mend it." Sang Jiyue touched the tundra texture on the model and suddenly remembered the old aurora hunter she had met in Iceland: "He said the brightest moment of the aurora was when the two bands of light met at the crack." She looked at President Qi, who was adjusting the lighting angle in front of the model, and suddenly understood that they had already woven a light network more eternal than the aurora in the cracks of each other's lives.

The phone vibrated; it was a video from the Finnish team: workers were installing the final pane of glass on the theater's exterior wall, etched with Sang Jiyue's lines—"Every day we don't dance is a day we betray the cracks in life." Watching the busy figures in the video, General Manager Qi suddenly pulled a yellowed piece of paper from his pocket. It was a dream list Sang Jiyue had written in her rented apartment in 2013; the last item was, "To own a theater where starlight can shine into the cracks."

"For next month's opening ceremony, how about inviting that assistant who used to scold you?" Sang Jiyue suddenly smiled as she took the note, her fingertips tracing her crooked handwriting from back then. "Let her see that a raspy voice can not only sing about the aurora borealis, but also make every crack bloom with blue snowflakes." President Qi looked at the light dancing in her eyes and suddenly remembered the first time he took her to an awards ceremony. Sang Jiyue was so nervous backstage that her fingertips trembled, but when she saw the fans holding up blue snowflake light signs in the audience, she suddenly turned to her and said, "So my cracks really can become someone else's starlight."

As night deepened, President Qi dozed off beside the hospital bed. By the light of the bedside lamp, Sang Jiyue sketched a simple drawing on a new page of President Qi's notebook: two overlapping figures, surrounded by aurora borealis and blue snowflakes. One of them wore a diamond brooch on his cuff, and the other wore a silver star trail ring on his wrist. Next to the drawing, she wrote: "April 13, 2025, I heard the sound of aurora growing in the cracks of life—that was the most moving miracle you taught me."

The ticking of the monitor and the distant city lights intertwined on the window. Sang Jiyue looked at President Qi's drooping eyelashes and suddenly understood that eternity is never about perfect brilliance, but rather about two souls meeting in a crack and being willing to use the tenderness of the rest of their lives to turn their gaps into starlight that illuminates the world.

As the first green rays of the aurora season swept across the Lapland snowfield, Sang Jiyue stood backstage at the new theater, gazing at the surging ribbons of light outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. President Qi personally pinned a blue snowflake brooch adorned with rhinestones onto her fingertips, his fingertips tracing the old scar below her collarbone—a mark left from a fall three years ago while suspended by wires, now gleaming like pearls under the stage spotlight, like a medal kissed by the aurora.

"Nervous?" President Qi's voice, carried on the crisp Nordic air, softened like spring water the moment it touched Sang Jiyue's wrist—there, on which she wore the smart bracelet they had designed together, monitoring the frequency of her vocal cord vibrations in real time. Sang Jiyue turned to look at their intertwined figures in the mirror. President Qi, dressed in a suit and tie, had a freeze-dried blue snowflake tucked into her hair—the very same specimen left over from the bouquet of flowers he had bought in the rain twelve years ago when she was rehearsing in the basement.

“Do you remember the first time you took me to see the aurora?” Sang Jiyue suddenly grasped her hand, letting the silver ring cast overlapping star trails on the glass. “I had just been replaced by the film crew then, and you lied to me, saying there were hot springs in Northern Europe that could cure hoarseness. But on the night the aurora erupted, you pointed to the bands of light and said, ‘Look, even the sky is holding a celebration for the shattered stars.’” She looked at the faint tattoo behind President Qi’s ear—the small blue snowflake they had gotten in Iceland last year, hidden below the ear cartilage, only visible when they were close to each other. “Now we have really built a theater where the shattered starlight celebrates.”

Whispers came from backstage from the Breaking Cocoon team. Xiao Zhou was leading a delegation from a Finnish environmental organization on a tour. Around their necks hung badges for renewable energy projects funded by the proceeds from Sang Jiyue's charity auction. Suddenly, General Manager Qi pulled a velvet pouch from her suit pocket and poured out two sensor bricks inlaid with rhinestones—two specially reserved from the theater floor, engraved with the seal script characters "Ji" and "Cheng" respectively. "Later, during the opening ceremony, we'll step on these two bricks to light up the stage." Her thumb traced the engraved patterns on the bricks. "Just like back then on the last bus, you stepped on my worn-out shoes to memorize your lines, each step casting my shadow."

Sang Jiyue suddenly laughed, recalling that torrential rainy night when President Qi wrapped her feet in his own wool scarf, while he himself stomped his feet at the bus stop in his soaked shoes and socks. Now, gazing at the shimmering diamonds on the sensor tiles, she suddenly understood that all the hardships they had overcome had already been transformed into starlight trails.

The moment the curtain rose, the aurora borealis fell precisely on the theater's dome. Sang Jiyue took her first step on a sensor-activated tile engraved with the character "霁" (Ji), and an image immediately appeared on the stage floor showing her practicing in the basement in 2013: a seventeen-year-old girl screaming in front of a mirror, her voice trembling with youthful awkwardness, yet under President Qi's guidance, every broken note was corrected into a unique vibrato. As she walked to the center of the stage, President Qi walked in on a tile with the character "承" (Cheng), and the two images merged under the star trail device, transforming into the classic monologue of the adult Sang Jiyue in "The Crack": "I was once afraid that I was an incomplete moon, until someone told me that the shadow at the missing corner is the riverbed where starlight flows."

A gasp came from the audience—in the front row sat her former assistant, who had once called her "a raspy voice," now recording on her phone, the camera frequently focusing on the two figures crossing paths on the stage. Suddenly, President Qi turned around and made a tiny gesture toward the diamond star trails on the dome. Sang Jiyue smiled knowingly—it was their secret code for twelve years, meaning "all is well."

As the sensor bricks pieced together the complete blue snowflake pattern, the glass curtain wall of the theater's exterior lit up simultaneously, projecting the aurora and stage images onto the snowfield. In the distance, the aurora hunter's hut lit up, and the old hunter's words echoed in Sang Jiyue's ears: "Humans always think the aurora is the tears of the sky, but in fact, it's the stars mending the cracks in the earth." She looked at President Qi, whose eyes reflected flowing green light. Suddenly, he reached out and brushed the snowflakes from her shoulder—blue snowflakes made of biodegradable materials that had fallen from the dome's special effects installation.

"Next, we will launch the 'Crack Starlight' charity project." Mr. Qi's voice entered Sang Jiyue's ears through the bone conduction microphone, with a tremor that only the two of them could perceive. "For every performance ticket sold, a voice training classroom will be built for children in mountainous areas - because we believe that every child's voice deserves to be heard by the aurora."

As thunderous applause erupted from the audience, Sang Jiyue suddenly spotted a familiar figure standing in the back row: it was the cleaning lady who had handed her tissues in the audition room twelve years ago, now wiping away tears, a blue snowflake-shaped volunteer badge pinned to her chest. She suddenly remembered what General Qi had said to her when she was hospitalized: "True starlight is never solitary in the sky, but rather like moss taking root in cracks, illuminating passersby with its tiny light."

During intermission, Mr. Qi led her to the tundra path outside the theater. The walkway, paved with sensor-activated bricks, lit up with each step, each brick engraved with messages from audience members and fans: "During my recovery from bulimia, it was your monologue in 'The Crack' that helped me through it," "The first ticket I bought with my part-time job money made me believe that vocational high school students can also study drama." Sang Jiyue squatted down and touched the raised engravings, suddenly noticing Mr. Qi's handwriting on the last brick: "In the winter of 2013, I found a shining star on the last bus; in its crack, the gentleness of the entire universe was hidden."

The aurora burst forth like a green waterfall. Sang Jiyue suddenly turned and, amidst the swirling light, kissed the puncture mark on Qi Zong's ring finger—the bandage from the blood draw that morning still clung there. Salty tears mingled with the snowy air of Northern Europe, spreading across her lips, hotter than any vow. Qi Zong wrapped his arms around her waist, feeling the vibrations in her chest resonating with the aurora, and suddenly understood that they had already completed the most moving impromptu performance in each other's lives: not perfect protagonists, but each other's stage, making every crack an entrance and exit of light.

At the celebratory banquet late at night, Sang Jiyue received a gift from the Finnish team: aurora fragments in a glass bottle—actually fluorescent moss made with a special process, which emits a faint glow similar to the aurora in the dark. The label on the bottle read: "Dedicated to the two people who made the cracks shine, may your starlight always have each other's trajectory to follow."

President Qi leaned back on the sofa, flipping through the guestbook, when he suddenly noticed a sketch Sang Jiyue had drawn on the last page: two silhouettes in suits, hand in hand, stepping on sensor-activated bricks, with the aurora borealis and blue snowflakes in the background. Below it read: "During the aurora season of 2025, we finally understood that what we call eternity is not starlight that never falls, but when you look at me, your eyes reflect all my imperfections, yet you still feel that it is the most perfect constellation."

The aurora outside the window gradually faded, but the sensor tiles in the theater continued to glow gently. Sang Jiyue looked at the snowflakes falling on President Qi's hair and suddenly remembered the advertising line from their first collaboration: "Every day you don't dance is a day you betray life." And now, she finally understood that dancing is never about spinning alone under the spotlight, but about two souls meeting in the cracks of life, willing to hold hands and dance every scar into a path of starlight.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Blue Snowflake Theater, light April snow was falling. Sang Jiyue was curled up on the sofa, flipping through the script. Her fingertips suddenly stopped at the stage directions for Act 7: "[Dark scene, the only light source is an old-fashioned desk lamp. Cheng Cheng (Qi's original name) practices his agent's rhetoric in front of a mirror. His tie clip repeatedly catches the frayed edge of his collar, revealing a burn scar below his collarbone—a mark he got when he was twelve, shielding his alcoholic father from a spilled soup pot.]"

The script cover was printed with the two small gold-embossed characters "Inheritance of Deficiency," with the subtitle "To Those Cracks That Made Me Light." She remembered that when she delivered this mysterious script three days ago, President Qi was in Finland adjusting the acoustic equipment of the theater. In the video, she saw her holding the script in a daze, her ears instantly turning red: "Actually... it's a fragment I wrote five years ago. I originally wanted to wait until you retired to show it to you."

Sang Jiyue ran her fingers over the yellowed pages and saw a note tucked inside Act 8, written in President Qi's handwriting: "In the winter of 2012, I met a girl practicing her lines downstairs at the agency. She was bundled up in her down jacket, but when she recited Ruan Lingyu's monologue, her eyes shone brighter than a crystal chandelier in a shop window. I stared at her worn-out cuffs and thought, 'So there really are people who can wear scars like star trails.'"

Memories suddenly drifted back to the deep winter of 2013. She had just turned seventeen then, secretly practicing "Ruan Lingyu" in an alley outside her agency, her breath mingling with the lines and condensing in the cold air. Suddenly, Mr. Qi, dressed in a bespoke suit, squatted down in front of her, handing her a hand warmer. A scar was visible on the cuff, exactly where it was written in the script: "Want to be an actress? I can help you, but first—" She tapped Sang Jiyue's frostbitten nose with her fingertip, "Don't hide your dreams in a down jacket. Let them be like the aurora borealis, visible even through wind and snow."

The script is turned to Act Thirteen, set in a hospital ward after vocal cord repair surgery in 2014. In her diary, Ms. Qi wrote: "While under anesthesia, she grabbed my hand and shouted, 'Don't let them take my voice away.' Only then did I remember that when we first met, she always covered her neck with a scarf, as if protecting the most fragile string of a musical instrument. Actually, I should have told her long ago that her voice was not a string, but the tundra of Iceland—even if buried by wind and snow, new green can grow from the cracks."

Sang Jiyue suddenly heard the sound of a key turning. President Qi, bringing with him the chill of Scandinavia, pushed open the door, his hair still adorned with unmelted snowflakes. Seeing the script in her hand, the usually composed agent suddenly panicked and took off his coat, revealing half an envelope in his suit pocket—the seal bore a postmark from November 2012, just a month before their meeting.

"You found it in Finland?" Sang Jiyue pointed to the envelope, noticing her fingertips unconsciously tracing the scar on her collarbone. President Qi turned her face away to hang up her coat, her voice as soft as snow: "I found it while tidying up old things. I was going to burn it..." Before she could finish, the envelope was gently pulled out. Sang Jiyue saw the yellowed letter paper, written in the handwriting of President Qi at twenty-three, addressed to her future self:

“Cheng Cheng, if you really become an agent, remember not to touch those flawless ‘star prospects’. Go find those children with cracks, like the little girl you saw in the orphanage. She always hid the holes in her dolls behind her back, unaware that sunlight was leaking through the cracks, turning her shadow into a little sun.”

At the end of the letter was a crooked blue snowflake, with a note next to it: "I passed by the drama academy today and saw a girl practicing a crying scene behind a holly bush. Her tears soaked her scarf with salt stains, which reminded me of when I was twelve years old. You were hiding in the fire escape with your burned arm, and you heard the line from Jane Eyre on stage: 'Our souls are equal'—it turns out that scars really can become windows to the soul."

Sang Jiyue suddenly remembered that President Qi had once said that he entered the industry because he "wanted every imperfect voice to be heard," but he had never asked about the reasons behind it. Looking at the "cracks" and "sunshine" that appeared repeatedly in the letter, she finally understood that this woman who always regarded her scars as treasures had already planted starlight that illuminated others in her own cracks long before she met her.

“Actually, three months before I met you, I almost gave up being a talent agent.” President Qi suddenly sat down next to her, her fingertips tracing the burn marks on the letter. “That day at the agency, I saw my boss slam a newcomer’s resume on the table and say, ‘A useless person with vocal cord nodules doesn’t deserve to chase dreams.’ I touched the anti-anxiety pills in my pocket and suddenly remembered the glass window of the orphanage—sunlight shone through the crack onto my burned arm, turning the scar into a golden river.”

She turned to look at Sang Jiyue, her eyes reflecting the other's damp eyelashes: "Then I met you, in an alley at minus ten degrees, facing a frosty shop window, reciting 'I've been here, I've been good.' Do you know? The ice flowers on your eyelashes were brighter than any star, and suddenly I had courage—it turns out that fate didn't make me heal my own cracks, but made me, with my scars, to catch you, who was also shining in the wind and snow."

Sang Jiyue suddenly hugged her trembling shoulders, feeling the prominent shoulder blades on the other's back—the stubborn curve left by years of wearing suits. She remembered what was written in the script: "Every scar on Cheng Cheng's body is a star map, guiding equally lost stars to find each other." It turned out that long before they met, President Qi had already woven a net of light to catch her in his own cracks.

Late at night, Sang Jiyue wrote a note in the blank space of the script: "So you were the earliest pursuer of light, carving a crack in your own darkness so that every lost soul could follow your starlight and find its own stage." She turned her head and saw President Qi revising the theater charity plan under the desk lamp. The eyelashes behind his glasses cast butterfly-wing-like shadows. Suddenly she understood that the so-called encounter was never accidental—it was two souls growing in the cracks who, at the right moment, let their respective starlight converge into the aurora that illuminated each other.

As dawn broke, President Qi opened Sang Jiyue's notebook and saw a drawing on the latest page depicting two little girls: one holding a rag doll with a hole in it, the other covering a burn scar on her arm. Their shadows overlapped in the sunlight, transforming into fluttering blue snowflakes. Below, it read: "April 14, 2025, I finally understood the tenderness you hid in every detail—you never protected me from all the storms, but taught me how to make my cracks become the light that illuminates the world."

The fine snow outside the window had somehow turned into sunlight. The sensor tiles of the Blue Snowflake Theater lit up in the morning light, reflecting children running around the ski resort in the distance, holding homemade blue snowflake lights. President Qi watched Sang Jiyue's last stroke in her notebook, suddenly recalling the decision she made twelve years ago: "From the first moment I saw her, I knew that our rift wasn't a flaw, but a gap the universe had left for us—allowing us to pass through each other's darkness and become each other's eternal starlight." The full-length mirror in the rehearsal room reflected two overlapping figures. Sang Jiyue was instructing President Qi on how to act out her twelve-year-old monologue when she suddenly noticed a small medicine bottle slip out of her sleeve as she raised her hand—the familiar packaging of anti-anxiety medication, the label still showing the production date of 2012. "So you've kept it all this time." Sang Jiyue's fingertips traced the frosted glass bottle, remembering seeing the same medicine box at the bottom of President Qi's suitcase last year when she was packing in Iceland. At the time, he said, "It expired a long time ago, I forgot to throw it away."

Ms. Qi's ears instantly burned. She turned her face away to adjust her tie clip: "Back then, when I first started out, I needed this to fall asleep every night." She looked at her unnatural smile in the mirror, then suddenly pointed to the prop soup pot in the corner: "The script described a burn scene... but actually, my father didn't accidentally push it that day. He deliberately pushed the soup pot over." Her voice was as soft as moonlight shattering on the mirror, "He said, 'Scars help you remember, and poor people don't deserve to daydream.'"

Sang Jiyue suddenly grasped her cold hand and pressed it against the old scar below her collarbone: "But look, our scars have all become star shapes." She pointed to the letters from children in the mountains that were pasted all over the rehearsal room wall. One of them was a crayon drawing of an older sister wearing a bow tie and an aunt in a theatrical costume. "That girl with damaged vocal cords, Xiaotai, grew blue snowflakes on a pottery jar with moss. She said that the veins of each leaf were like our scars, but they could catch the sunlight and sing."

The props team delivered newly made sensor bricks, with moss specimens sent by Xiaotai embedded on the surface, which shimmered with the luster of mother-of-pearl under the light.

As Ms. Qi touched the uneven texture of the brick, she suddenly remembered what the old director of the orphanage had once said: "Every child is like an apple that God has bitten into, and the crack hides a special fragrance." She turned her head and saw Sang Jiyue writing a reply to Xiaotai, the nib of her pen drawing a smooth arc on the letter: "Your moss will become a star on the dome of the theater, letting everyone who passes by know that the green that grows from the crack is more powerful than a whole flower."

Rehearsals went on late into the night. Ms. Qi dozed off against the prop box. When Sang Jiyue covered her with a coat, she noticed a yellowed photograph tucked inside the script—a winter day twenty years ago at an orphanage. A little girl in an old sweater sat hugging her knees in the fire escape, sunlight streaming in through a crack in the vent, casting a golden net across the burn scars on her arm. On the back of the photograph were the old director's words: "Cheng Cheng said today that scars are marks kissed by angels, and that in the future, all children with scars will be able to sing in the light."

"So you planted your dream in the crack all along," Sang Jiyue said softly, placing the photo back in President Qi's palm. The other man frowned slightly in his sleep, but quickly relaxed under her touch, like a snowflake finally settling on warm earth. The footsteps of the night security guard patrolling could be heard in the distance. The lamplight in the rehearsal room cast overlapping shadows above their heads, as if on that snowy night twelve years ago, when they were in...

The hands that first clasped on the bus are now piercing through the cracks of time, weaving each other's starlight into an everlasting galaxy.

The bag Sang Jiyue mentioned sat in the corner of the dressing table. The canvas, faded to light gray, had frayed edges, and the zipper pull still held a plastic star pendant given to her by children from the orphanage twelve years ago. As President Qi bent down to pick up her coat, she noticed half a letter peeking out of the bag's side pocket. It was the charity speech she had drafted for Sang Jiyue that morning—the opening line, "I waited for the light in the cracks of the fire escape until I discovered that I too could become a part of the light," was circled in red by Sang Jiyue, who added a smaller note next to it: "The old director's apples should be ripe by now."

"The sample room opens at ten," Ms. Qi turned off her phone alarm and casually slung her canvas bag over her shoulder. The familiar weight reminded her of the days when she followed Sang Jiyue to various events—her bag always contained throat lozenges, band-aids, and handwritten cards for fans. At the bottom of the bag lay half a piece of sesame candy, which the children at the orphanage had insisted on giving her yesterday. The wrapper was folded into the shape of a small spaceship, with the words "For Aunt Qi who can turn into stars" written crookedly on its hull.

Sang Jiyue adjusted her necklace in front of the mirror, the jade fragments on the silver pieces shimmering under the light: "Last time you said you wanted to put the children's handprints on the tour poster?" As she turned around, the morning light just happened to shine through the "moss" on her neck, casting the irregular shadows of the silver pieces onto the wall, much like the moss print painting they used as a backdrop in the rehearsal room.

President Qi nodded, his fingertips tracing the design draft on his phone—the poster featured countless overlapping handprints in the center, each line inlaid with fluorescent paint, illuminating tiny specks of light in the shadows, like stars scattered in cracks. In the lower right corner, the old director's words were printed in gold: "Every child is an apple bitten by God," except the words "bite" were designed as a hollowed-out crack shape, perfectly revealing the rainbow drawn by the children below.

"Have you found Xiaotai's reply address?" Sang Jiyue suddenly asked, pulling a fountain pen from her bag as she spoke—the very same one she had used to write to Xiaotai last night. The cap was engraved with the small characters "Cheng Cheng," something she had secretly carved for President Qi's twentieth birthday. The nib gleamed silver in the morning light, like a tiny knife that could slice through time, gently connecting the little girl in the fire escape years ago with her agent now standing on the edge of the spotlight.

“Found her,” Ms. Qi said, waving her phone. The screen showed the address of a children’s welfare organization. “She’s in a special school in the provincial capital now. Her art teacher said her starry sky drawing won an award—the background was all shades of gray, but the stars were painted in the brightest fluorescent yellow, like fire leaping out of a crack.” She paused, her voice softening. “Just like the light in the eyes of those children in wheelchairs when we first took our charity troupe to perform.”

As the two walked out of the rehearsal room, the night shift security guard was changing shifts. The uncle waved to them with a smile: "Staying up all night again? When I saw the light in your room yesterday, I thought the stars had fallen." Sang Jiyue smiled back, and suddenly remembered that last winter, the security guard had helped them move the cardboard box containing the moss lamp into the storage room. The cardboard box was written on it: "For all the children waiting for the light"—at that time, he did not know that the so-called starlight was never something unattainable hanging in the sky, but rather like the burn scars in their palm lines, the frayed edges on their canvas bags, and the red pen annotations in their speeches, it was a real warmth that was being warmed and that grew from the cracks.

The subway announcements drifted from afar. Looking at Sang Jiyue's hair ruffled by the morning breeze, President Qi suddenly recalled the last words the old director had spoken before his death: "Cheng Cheng, the cracks in an apple aren't for sadness, but for you to let the sweetness in your heart spill out to those who need it." At that moment, watching Sang Jiyue take out her phone and message her assistant, "Check the backup power supply for the moss device again," she suddenly understood. The realization of a dream is never about shining alone, but about people like them—one turning scars into starlight on stage, the other weaving a net of starlight behind the scenes, so that every child who passes by can reach out and catch their own ray of light.

The canvas bag swayed gently on his shoulder, the plastic star pendant clinking softly against the zipper. Mr. Qi touched the photo in his pocket; the yellowed edges rubbed against the lines of his palm. Suddenly, he felt that the sunlight of twenty years ago, the snow of twelve years ago, and the morning light of this moment all melted into the same warmth in this photograph. It turns out that all cracks eventually become channels of light—as long as someone is willing to spend a lifetime turning the fragrance from the gap into sugar that illuminates the world.

As the glass door to the sample room opened, warm yellow light wafted out, carrying the refreshing scent of moss. Xiao Chen, an art student in charge of the craftsmanship, came forward, his nose still smeared with silver paint, holding a half-person-high installation in his hands—a cross-section of a piece of driftwood carved into the shape of a heart, with soft, tangible moss embedded in the indentation, and fiber optic lights wrapped around the edges, like a flowing galaxy coating the "scar".

“Sister Qi, look,” Xiao Chen lifted the hidden clasp on the back of the device, revealing the inner magnetic patch, “each child can stick their scar sticker to the corresponding position, and the moss will change color according to the contact area, just like…” He suddenly blushed and scratched his head, “just like they are fertilizing the stars.”

Sang Jiyue crouched down and gently touched the moss. The fiber optic light lit up with a soft blue glow, flowing like a river from her fingertips. "The sticker on Xiaotai is butterfly-shaped, right? In the last video, she held up a band-aid and said, 'Let the wings grow on the scar.'" She turned to look at President Qi and found him staring at the metal nameplate at the bottom of the device—"Cheng Cheng·Sang Jiyue 2025." The font was an imitation of the old dean's penmanship, even the trembling at the pauses was exactly the same.

“We can do some roughening here,” Ms. Qi suddenly reached out and ran her hand over the cut surface of the deadwood. As her fingertips brushed against the bark’s texture, she remembered the burn scar on her arm in the photo. “It’s like a real crack, not a neat cut, but a painful crease.” When she looked up, she met Sang Jiyue’s gaze. The latter was using her phone to film the effect of the device under different lighting conditions. When the lens swept across the scar on her wrist, it deliberately lingered for two seconds—this scene would be included in a public service documentary, becoming the most authentic footnote to the “Starlight Carrier” project.

In the corner of the sample room, there were piles of handmade items sent by children. Glass jars contained star-shaped moss balls, each with a sticky note attached: "To my sister who can write letters, my star can breathe." "Aunt Qi's scar looks like the moon, so I drew a star to keep it company." Sang Jiyue flipped to a card with a drawing of two little figures holding hands. One of them had yellow light spots drawn on his arm, and next to it was written: "Mom said the scar is evidence that stars once lived there."

“We could set up a ‘Starlight Exchange Station’ backstage for the tour,” Ms. Qi suddenly suggested, pulling out an itinerary from her canvas bag and drawing a star next to the “Children’s Interactive Session.” “Let the children place their ‘starlight tokens’ on the moss installation and then take away the light left behind by others.” Her pen scratched across the pages, the soft rustling mingling with the gentle sound of Xiao Chen adjusting the fiber optic lights. “Just like how the old director turned our scars into stories back then, now we want every child to become a writer of those stories.”

My phone vibrated; it was a video from the welfare home's social worker. In the video, Xiao Tai was tiptoeing, sticking butterfly stickers onto a model installation, oblivious to the silver paint smearing onto her nose. Her bright voice came through the screen: "Aunt Qi, look! My wings are shining!" As she turned around, sunlight streamed in through the skylight of the activity room, flowing across the burn scar on the back of her neck, just like that moment in the photograph twenty years ago—only now the light was no longer a solitary golden thread, but a galaxy caught and passed on by countless little hands.

Sang Jiyue suddenly grasped President Qi's hand and pressed her fingertips onto the sensor area of ​​the device. The fiber optic light suddenly lit up with a warm gold, like melting honey covering the overlapping scars of the two of them. "Do you remember the first time we planned a charity performance?" she said softly. "You hid backstage and cried, saying that you were afraid you wouldn't do a good enough job, afraid that the old director's apples would rot in the cracks."

As Ms. Qi gazed at the flickering starlight on the installation, she recalled that stormy night—when they revised the stage design seven times backstage at the theater, Sang Jiyue suddenly pressed her hand on the curtain and said, "Look, the marks left by the rain on the curtain look just like fallen stars." At that moment, looking at the "Moss" necklace around Sang Jiyue's neck, she finally understood that true perfection is never about having no flaws, but about daring to let those flaws become entrances to light.

As they were leaving the sample room, Xiao Chen chased after them and handed them a bag of moss seedlings: "The children planted these at the rehabilitation center, saying they wanted to give them to 'the people who make scars bloom'." Sang Jiyue carefully took the bag. The dampness from the plastic bag seeped through her palm, reminding her of the roasted sweet potato Cheng Cheng had stuffed into her hand twelve years ago—the same warm, stinging feeling, the same sweetness that grew from scarcity.

The subway arrival announcement sounded. President Qi gazed at their reflections in the glass: Sang Jiyue's necklace swayed, her canvas bag swayed, the plastic bag filled with moss swayed, yet something more steadfast than starlight grew steadily within their overlapping shadows. Those places once thought to be gaps were now burning hot, like seeds carrying the seeds of spring. And what they had to do was carry these seeds, traversing the neon lights and shadows of the entertainment industry, planting starlight in every crack, so that all the children waiting for the light would know…

An apple bitten by God will never rot in the darkness. The fragrance from the bite will eventually follow the path of light, growing into a galaxy that supports each other.

The backstage area of ​​the first stop of the tour felt like it had been hit by stars. There were more than twenty glass jars piled up in front of the makeup mirror, each containing "starlight" sent by the children—there were moss balls covered with morning dew, stars cut from scabs, and even an X-ray film rolled into a paper tube with the words written in crayon on the back: "This is the moon when I broke my bone, and now I'm giving it to you as stars."

Mr. Qi was squatting on the ground arranging props for the interactive segment, his fingertips brushing against the butterfly stickers Xiao Tai had sent. Suddenly, he heard a suppressed gasp from behind the curtain. Sang Jiyue was standing beside the rising platform, holding the moss installation. Fiber optic lights flickered with her breath, casting dappled light spots on her skirt, like wearing the Milky Way on her body. "Do you think that when all the lights dim, these mosses will light up along with the children's eyes?" As she turned, the fiber optic cable at the edge of the installation brushed against Mr. Qi's wrist, and two scars overlapped in the cold light, forming a complete star trail.

The stage manager rushed over with the program sheet in hand, the frown lines between her brows deeper than ever before: "Sister Qi, there are suddenly three more in-depth reporting teams in the media area, as well as representatives from disability rights organizations..." Before she could finish speaking, President Qi raised her hand to interrupt her. She looked at the "Moss" necklace swaying around Sang Jiyue's neck and suddenly remembered the anonymous email she had received that morning—the attachment was a surveillance video. One evening, the aunt on duty at the welfare home was humming a song in the empty activity room, and the shadows of the moss lamps they had brought were projected onto the wall, like countless dancing stars.

“Let them film,” Ms. Qi said, pulling out a pen from behind her ear and drawing a crooked apple on the back of the schedule, with a few rays of light drawn from the gap. “Number the scar stickers the children put on the installations and make them into inserts in the tour booklet. Write: ‘Every starlight has its own shape, even if it was once a wound.’” When she looked up, Sang Jiyue was smiling at her phone, where a message from Xiaotai’s mother read: “Today was the first time she wore short sleeves on her own initiative, saying that the butterfly stickers would help her catch the stage lights.”

Forty minutes before the show started, a group of young volunteers in blue vests suddenly rushed into the backstage area—the children from the "Star Project." Eight-year-old Yangyang rushed towards Ms. Qi with a painting in hand. The painting depicted two people holding hands, one of whom had gold powder dots on his arm: "Aunt Qi, your scars glow!" He stood on tiptoe to touch Ms. Qi's wrist, but accidentally brushed against her old wound, looking flustered like a little animal with its fur standing on end.

Sang Jiyue knelt down and took Yangyang's hand, pressing his fingertips against the silver ornament around her neck: "Look, our scars are all the homes of the stars." As she spoke, the device suddenly emitted a soft beep—Little Moss had arrived. (End of Chapter)