Glass Heart

On stage, she was Bai Xing, a name that sparkled in lights and echoed in stadiums. With her ethereal voice and haunting gaze, she became a national obsession before her eighteenth birthday. In interviews, she laughed like sunlight. In songs, she wept like rain. To the world, she was a star in full bloom.

But to He Xin Yue, the girl behind the name, it was all borrowed light.

She lived with Bai Yan, the man who had adopted her at six years old. He was barely eighteen then, too young to be a father, too old to be her brother, but he had become both.

They lived quietly in a two-bedroom apartment above a fire station in Beijing. The boy who had taken her under his wing eleven years ago was now Captain Bai Yan, commanding one of the city's elite Fire and Rescue units. Brave, disciplined, and endlessly loyal. To his city. To his team. And most of all, to her.

She never had to ask him to guard her secret.

He always just did.

Because the truth was too complicated for the headlines: He Xin Yue's mother was the wife of a powerful business, Gu Xiao Tang, but he wasn't her father.

She bore her father's name, He, not the Gu family legacy. A reminder of a truth the Gu family rarely acknowledged aloud.

Her half-brothers, Gu Cheng and Gu Bai Yue, were stars in their own right, professional esports legends with millions of fans. Her cousins, Gu San, a rising tennis champion, and Gu Li, a music prodigy in college, completed the picture of a family painted in public perfection.

But she didn't live with them.

She hadn't in over a decade.

And no one in the public had any idea she was one of them.

Bai Xing was her name on stage. A mask. A boundary.

The world adored her, but they only adored what she let them see.

No one knew about the girl in the quiet apartment.

No one knew about the fire captain who raised her like his own.

No one knew how closely the past watched her... waiting.

But secrets, like embers, never die quietly.