The Seventh Lifetime

Her name now was Huo Zhi Xun, twenty-year-old blogger and undergraduate at a Chinese-founded arts university somewhere in the world. It had to be her seventh lifetime now.

She was strikingly beautiful, with big eyes, long eyelashes, double eyelids and cherry lips. These facial features had, to many, often contributed a successful career as a celebrity, but that wasn't the ending in this life that she was hoping for. In each lifetime that she had lived, she retained a small part of it in her memory. But she had clearly remembered in particular, her moments with a dashing winged man in black. She had lived a life of luxury, riches, poverty, joy, sorrow, and even been to hell and back, but despite being reborn for six lifetimes, she had missed the one thing that she was looking for: love.

What was love? Zhi Xun would often ask herself when she was alone.

She had encountered so much in all her lifetimes. From ancient times, she had been reborn until revolutionary times, until she finally arrived at her current lifetime, the twenty-first century. She watched the couples walk, hand in hand, in the corridors of the university, and questioned herself. If she was reincarnated to learn about love, where was her partner then?

When she was fifteen, Zhi Xun dreamt of him for the first time: a winged man in a black suit, wielding a long ceremonial sword. His voice was soft and gentle but also filled with a pain she could never imagine.

"Will you be marrying the Princess?" she asked in a low and miserable voice.

He did not answer, and they both continued to walk under the sunlight into open grassland. The greenish patches of grass would always hold a place in her heart. He offered her a tiny flower he had plucked, and then silently, they lay on the grass under the cloudy sky. He tugged on the band holding her hair, allowing her hair to slip down her back. Before she knew it, his lips were on hers, teasing her with his tongue, and causing her face to flush.

"This is my answer," he said after breaking the kiss between them, before drawing her into his embrace. The last she remembered was how she fell asleep, with her head on his chest. If what she had for the winged man was not love, what was it then?

The next dream she had of him was when she was twenty. She assumed that he hadn't married the Princess yet, and they were in an obscure and cold cave. The pattering of the rain outside had deterred their journey to somewhere unimportant.

"Shen Xiu, do you like me?" she asked.

He didn't answer but kissed her again, this time like a ferocious tiger. With her eyes closed, she sensed his fingers freely creeping through her clothing and depriving her of whatever layers of clothing she had on. She trembled at his touch, but he held her even tighter against him as waves of fiery passion engulfed her, until she sinfully submitted to passion.

"Stay with me tonight," he whispered, and she nodded weakly. Her heart was beating strongly for him. She questioned herself again if it was love. In the morning, however, she was gone, taking his place in war, and had died for him.

Seeing the spear pierce her abdomen in the dream, Zhi Xun woke up with a sudden jolt. She looked up to recognise her roommates Ye Runyu and Lu Qiyun looking up at her with comical looks on their faces.

"Having the dream again?" her roommates pressed her.

She nodded.

"Well, if you're dreaming about becoming a princess, now it's the time to wake up for university."

She groaned and pulled herself up from her bed. What classes did she have this morning? A closer look at her smartphone screen revealed that it was a prank by her roommates, and it was in fact, a Saturday morning. To add to that, it was a rainy Saturday morning. She decided to head to the university library to immerse herself in some books since she could not afford to buy books on her own. Before going to the library, she cleverly used the online library database for students to check if the books she had wanted were available, and wrote down on a piece of paper, their physical locations in the plentiful shelves of the library.

The books had been categorised and then arranged according to the names of their authors. As one such book had been placed on a high shelf out of her reach, she stood on tiptoe with her high heels to grab hold of the book, but slipped and fell backwards, landing neatly in the arms of a tall stranger.

With the height of her high heels, she was tall enough to reach the stranger's face. Her cheek brushed against the stranger's face with their lips at proximity. Her heart thumped wildly against her chest, but she quickly supported herself to stand up steadily and smiled meekly to avoid creating a commotion. Eyes followed them for a split second, and everyone then went back to doing their own things at the library, pretending as if nothing had happened. Gossip-mongers were common in their university library. They were like the paparazzi, and would not hesitate to take photographs of strangers with their mobile phones when given a chance.

"Be careful where you step; you might not be that lucky next time."

She froze, recognising that voice immediately. On a closer look, she realised that he had to be that winged man from her dreams and her past. She had even seen him in her past six lifetimes. At this point, she didn't know what to do, whether to stay or run. Why hadn't she recognised him earlier? His handsome looks had too absorbed her to realise who he was.

Just as quickly as he had made his appearance, he was gone, leaving the book in her hands. She saw a pretty petite-looking girl walking away with the stranger as he disappeared into the distance. Was the girl his girlfriend?

How could she even ask, when she herself had a boyfriend? She thought. She had been dating Herman for a few months now, but apart from being boyfriend and girlfriend in name, they hadn't progressed much in their relationship. The reason she was with Herman was apparent: she saw potential in him. But this didn't mean that she had loved him.

When she was 12 years old, her father had been killed in an accident. Not long after, her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So the young Zhi Xun had been brought up to be frugal by her childless aunt and uncle. Her aunt had brought her up with the mindset that she was to marry into a rich family to save them from financial burden, to relieve the heavy burden of her mother's medical and hospitalisation fees on their shoulders. As a teenager, she had to take up a few summer jobs to support her family.

When Herman arrived to pick her up from the library, she had her head in a pile of books, looking sleepy. After they left for dinner, unexpectedly Zhi Xun's mind was still on the man from the library earlier. He was undoubtedly captivating, but what she wished to know was if he indeed was the winged man in her dreams.

As a food blogger, Zhi Xun would normally take photographs of the food she ordered and post them on her blog after editing the photographs with emojis and filters to remedy the bad resolution of photographs taken with her phone camera. She could only look on when her classmates bought or received iPhones or Samsung Edge; she probably would never afford a good phone. Any money she brought back home had ultimately gone to household expenses or her mother's hospital bills.

In one year from now, she was going to graduate. If she and Herman managed to land a good job in the industry, perhaps she had a better chance for her mother and family to live in luxury. At the same time, it wasn't easy for fresh graduates with no experience to get a good-paying job due to the vast number of new graduates from the various universities each year. She was aware that her mother needed a lot of money for her medical fees and hospitalisation. But what if they didn't land a good job for themselves? She felt that she had so many expectations from her family to marry into a rich family. She had thought of it as her responsibility to provide them with a better life, as they had given up a lot to bring her up after her father's death. Her aunt and uncle had always seen her as their own.

How much money could she earn from blogging? She made some earnings from advertisements on her blog, but she didn't receive that many hits to yield substantial earnings from advertising. In short, it wasn't much. It was not even enough for her to buy call credits for her phone.

A sudden beep from her computer screen interrupted her thoughts. She had just received an email from the online payment service informing her that she had received a donation for a coffee. The donor's ID had been Gaotyu. She didn't know who that was, but she realised the very same person had left her a message on her blog.

It had said, "ZSyn, the photos look great. Wishing you happiness and good health." His sentiments had touched Zhi Xun. In her two years of blogging, she had yet to receive such a pleasant compliment or message from any visitors to her blog. Hopefully, it was a good omen that luck was coming her way, she hoped.