The light was too white to be morning.

It pooled on the ceiling like a curtain someone had forgotten to lower, and somewhere a machine counted time with a tiny, stubborn metronome. Between one beep and the next, a baby exhaled the smallest sigh Lin Yue had ever heard. It lifted and broke her heart in the same second.

She opened her eyes.

White walls. A curtain on a rail. A vase of chrysanthemums too formal for such a private hour. Then the bassinet: a pink knit hat, wrinkled fists, the softest mouth in the world.

“An-An,” she said before the name had permission to exist.

He didn’t cry. He simply breathed, as if he were practicing how to stay.

Pain returned as a memory returns: not all at once, but in bright, true pieces. Stitches tugged. Throat dry. Skin salted by the work finished only yesterday. She found the phone face-down on the tray. Warm plastic. Swipe. The date rose like a verdict.

June 2. Ten years ago.

Silence sharpened. The room went detailed—scuffs on the bedrail, the nowhere smell of hospital air, the solemn chrysanthemums. She could have called it a dream except her body refused the lie: the ache was honest, the weight of the baby was honest, and the note that rang through her chest when she said his name was honest enough to crack stone.

Photos showed a belly she half remembered, a hand not hers resting possessively on it. A screenshot of a pregnancy app celebrating week forty. No little girl with sugar on her nose. No beach wedding where a young man five years her junior laughed into her hair and told her she was braver than the tide.

A tear tickled into the curve of her ear. She almost laughed. The universe could be excessive.

The bassinet rustled. She laid a fingertip along the baby’s cheek and watched instinct—mouth turning, seeking, trusting. It felt like a miracle that required witnesses, even if the only witness was the long white room and the metronome that refused to speed up for anyone.

“Hi,” she whispered, because first greetings should be simple. “It’s Mama.”

In the other life she had said those words through a fog of humiliation—half woman, half apology, in a house that demanded she balance gratitude on a split tongue. She had worn compliance like a dress a size too small and called it love. She had stayed until staying made a ruin of her.

Not this time.

The curtain swished. A nurse slid in with a tray and a smile frayed by overuse. “You’re awake. Pain?”

“Manageable.” Her voice surprised her; it sounded like someone who had made a plan. “Could I have warm water?”

“Of course.” The nurse nodded toward the bassinet. “He’s an easy one. Name decided?”

“Zhou An,” Lin Yue said, and the surname pricked like a thorn from a rose she hadn’t chosen. The nurse printed the characters—周安—on the card that would live in drawers and files. In another decade, that card would feel like a chain.

Not this time, she told the part of herself that could hear quiet instructions. Not yet. Chains can be address labels before they learn to bind.

“Your husband stepped out,” the nurse added, as if reading a stage direction. “Your mother-in-law asked. We’re limiting visitors.”

“Good policy,” Lin Yue said.

The room grew bigger when she left. Morning outside the window was undecided. Something rattled down a hallway; a woman laughed and apologized for laughing. Lin Yue opened the notes app because the distance between terror and order is sometimes a line of text.

Project Light

Reality check: June 2, ten years earlier. Postpartum day one.

Duties: Rest. Feed. Water.

Goal: Leave with dignity. Protect An-An. Build independence.

Do not: Beg. Explain. Perform.

Do: Record. Save quietly. Learn law quietly.

Remember: Kindness comes with a cracked-strap watch; do not fear joy.

A name rose from the bottom of memory like a diver breaking the surface: Shen Rui. Not a photograph. A collage—flour on his cheek; the way he listened as if listening were a profession; hands warming hers inside his pockets on a winter street; a hospital corridor later, hair wet with snow.

If she cut free earlier, would those corridors still intersect? If she changed the angle of one ordinary day, would she erase a person who was never ordinary? And if the price of keeping him was walking back into the fire that forged him, could she make herself do it on purpose?

The curtain lifted again. Perfume arrived before the woman who wore it; impatience arrived with both. Mother Zhou carried a handbag the way soldiers carry a flag. Zhou Han followed, polishing his phone screen as if shine could solve things.

“Finally,” the older woman said. “You look pale.”

“I had a baby yesterday,” Lin Yue said politely.

“That’s what women are for.” A glance at the infant. “Nurse said he latched badly. If you don’t have milk, don’t be stubborn. We’ll hire a nanny.”

The next weeks unspooled—her body treated as a problem, her feelings as weather to be waited out, her usefulness measured in silence per hour. Once, she had learned to be small enough to fit into the hollow others made for her and called that love, too.

“I’m breastfeeding,” Lin Yue said evenly. “The latch is better. The nurse will help again later.”

“We are not peasants. Formula is faster. Han has a dinner Friday. You will come. I bought a dress.”

“I won’t,” Lin Yue said.

Zhou Han looked up as if woken. “What?”

“I won’t go to a dinner two days after labor.” She kept gentleness in her mouth because gentleness is not surrender when chosen. “It’s bad manners to the baby and to my body.”

“Her tone,” Mother Zhou clicked. “Pregnancy makes them dramatic. Han.”

He sighed. Handsome when he smiled; he wasn’t smiling. “Don’t make this difficult. Mom’s right about the nanny. It’s 202X, not the dark ages.”

“It’s also 202X,” she said, catching herself in the black TV screen—hair a mess, eyes bruised by sleeplessness, the kind of woman movies don’t bother to light. “When women can say no. I appreciate your concern. I’ll handle the baby.”

“Handle?” the older woman narrowed her eyes. “With what money? You haven’t worked in a year. The Zhou family didn’t raise a daughter-in-law to contradict elders.”

“The hospital has visiting hours,” Lin Yue said pleasantly. “If you’d like to hold him, please wash your hands. Otherwise I need rest.”

The silence that followed had weight. Her heart beat hard enough to make the light flicker. She relaxed her shoulders one vertebra at a time, as if alignment could be an answer.

Zhou Han broke first. “Mom, we’ll talk later.”

Mother Zhou dropped a plastic canister on the tray where it rattled like a threat. “Waste the formula then. When he screams tonight, don’t call me.” She marched out under her perfume. Zhou Han lingered.

“You’ve become… different,” he said, searching for a diagnosis.

“I’ve become a mother,” Lin Yue said. “That changes people.”

“I’ll transfer money. Buy what you need. And stop being childish with my mother. She means well.”

“Of course,” she said, because agreement is sometimes the most efficient tool.

When he left, the room remembered how to hum. The chrysanthemums looked overdressed for a kitchen supper. Lin Yue unscrewed the formula and poured the powder into the trash. It wasn’t a war against formula. It was a border she could draw with her own hand.

She washed those hands like a rite and lifted her son. He latched. It hurt, then it didn’t.

“You and me,” she whispered into hair that smelled like milk and beginning. “We’ll learn each other again.”

Evening arrived by degrees. A nurse taught her how not to ruin her shoulders. She wrote everything down in sentences that looked like scaffolding. When the baby slept, she deleted contacts that loved gossip more than her. She created a new one with no name, only a title: Project Light.

By nine, visitors were leaving in clusters; the TV next door applauded something no one meant. Lin Yue edged to the window and let the city tell her the hour—patient taillights, a bus sighing, a streetlamp shivering on. Somewhere, a man five years younger was alive and unremarkable, closing a store or washing mugs, unaware that a woman who had already loved him was counting the beats between them like a secret.

If I change too much, will we miss each other?

The thought fogged the glass and disappeared. In the reflection she almost saw a second silhouette—warm, practical—the way his voice had been: You don’t owe fate a performance, Yue. Live honestly. I’ll find you.

She turned away before longing could become a mistake. Water. Kiss the baby’s forehead. Sleep a little. Wake when he woke and make a harbor of herself. Midnight flattened the hospital into a hush where nurses walked soft and machines forgot to pretend they were not clocks.

Near dawn the sky bruised toward light. She slipped from the bed for the bathroom, too proud to press the call button again. The floor tilted. A cart rattled by like a joke. Her hand missed the rail. Another hand found her elbow.

“Careful.”

The voice was young and clear. A face she didn’t know and somehow knew: straight nose with a soft scar like a comma; eyes that smiled before the mouth did; hair damp, as if the weather had chased him indoors. Scrubs under a courier jacket. A name badge swung, letters flashing and hiding.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

He kept hold until her fingers were sure of metal. “You will be,” he said, as though the future could be promised if you said it quietly enough. He offered a thermos. “Ginger water. Nurses had extra. New moms should drink warm things.”

“Thank you.” Warmth traveled from her palms inward. She wanted his name the way a person wants land after days at sea. It felt greedy to ask, superstitious to know before the story offered it. “Be careful on your rounds.”

He tapped two fingers against his temple and jogged away. The badge flashed once more. She caught three letters. R—u—i? She almost laughed at herself. How like a girl. How like a woman who had earned a superstition.

Back in bed, she watched her son sleep as if sleep were a job he had to learn. The room smelled of disinfectant, chrysanthemums, and the kind of milk that makes the world forgive you. Beyond the glass, the city remembered its to-do list. Somewhere, decisions sharpened and softened like knives used on butter.

She touched the place on her chest where fear had sat like a stone and found it lighter. Not because the road was smoother, but because she had finally put on shoes.

She unlocked Project Light and added a new section before courage could be talked out of itself.

Find-Him Protocol

draft

Clues: cracked leather watch strap; runs without a coat; voice warms before words.

Places: hospital corridor canteen; bus stop by pediatrics; any small bookstore within walking distance.

Rules: Notice but don’t summon. Be kind to everyone. Leave ginger where ginger might be found. Keep anchors green.

An-An sighed in his sleep—a sound like yes. Dawn thinned the shadows. The machine kept time. The flowers did their best to be beautiful. Lin Yue—mother, witness, conspirator with her own future—began.