Yifan grew up with his grandparents and it is only at the age of 21 that the name Wu Liqiang became attached to the title of father in his mind. Growing up in Guangzhou was easy, the house that he lived in was beautiful with an ever lingering scent of vanilla wood and summer.

Girlfriends came and went but those summers spent in Guangzhou remains in the back of his mind, hidden like a treasure chest, buried but never forgotten.

He was 14 when baby Huang Zitao was brought into the world. Zitao’s mother, Song Qian worked as a house-maid for his grandparents, he always loved her and often wished she was his mother instead of the woman who abandoned him right after his birth. He remembered Qian crying softly as she held onto the bundle in her arms, and he remembered thinking that on the day Zitao was born, his world of darkness became infiltrated with iridescent glows that were beyond anything he’s ever experienced. Call it a fascination if you will but there was not a single word that could explain the warmth Yifan felt hearing Zitao cry for the first time in his mother’s arms.

Baby Huang Zitao did not have a father, Song Qian’s husband having left them for another woman from the city. He knew of this from the faint whispers around the main house between the gardener and the cook. She became a live-in maid when her pregnancy started showing with grandma Wu refusing to let her live in the old shack that was her home at the time. Yifan's heart sunk at the thought of Zitao growing up without a fatherly figure, much like himself. It was then that he swore to protect Zitao, to make sure that he never has to feel the void his father left behind.

And so, days and nights were spent watching over Zitao and seeing him grow from a tiny human being into an adorable toddler. Baby Zitao gradually became the light in his life, Yifan held him close to his heart and loved him dearly, like a brother he never had, giving Zitao the love he never thought was capable of giving.

Despite the absence of his father, Zitao never lacked an ounce of love due to the endless adoration that was sent his way from his mother and Yifan. That is not to say that baby Zitao wasn't a favorite in the Wu's household.

In the blink of an eye, Zitao was already 7 years old. The mop of bouncy black hair sporting a very trendy bowl cut at the time and the endearing peachy pink color of his cheeks never failed to leave a permanent smile on Yifan's face.

After completing a college degree majoring in business at Guangzhou, Yifan was informed of the death of Wu Liqiang. A name that was so distant from his memory he had almost forgotten that it belonged to his father. The sadness that plagued him that night was not due to the lost of a family member but rather because of the guilt of being unable to feel the emptiness that was supposed to wash over him like the raging sea during a summer storm.

Yifan remembers his 22 year old self holding onto Zitao as they cried together, Zitao because of his mother's refusal of letting him have candy before bed time and Yifan because of how unfair the world is as separation draws near for the two of them.

It was a day before Zitao’s 8^th birthday when Yifan packed his bags and headed for Beijing. The luggage in his hands nowhere near as heavy as the weight in his chest. Like a thousand tones of bricks, he walked away from a sobbing Zitao with promises to visit as often as he could.

The weight in his heart multiplied by thousands as the sound of a child’s heart wrenching sob faded into the distance. 

He pushed away the thoughts of his dark haired angel, pushed away the emptiness he felt as he stepped into his late father’s mansion.

This is your home now, he’d reason every time the urge to run back to Guangzhou would resurface.

Time heals everything, he’d try to convince himself and it did. It almost did.