Chapter 2: The Crown of the Long Family
"The world cheered, but he longed for the quiet between two heartbeats."
He learned to walk at seven months.
Not wobble , walk. Like a dancer who had studied form and balance in another lifetime. One moment he was crawling toward a spinning gear that Crystal had left on the floor, and the next, he was upright, taking his first steps with quiet, unwavering grace.
By the time he was a year old, the legend of Long Haochen had already begun to spread.
Pearl's Grace
"Come here, little star," Pearl would call from the library window, her voice gentle as spring.
She was always the first to notice the way his mind moved. She didn't treat him like a child—but like a scholar in a smaller body. On quiet mornings, she would set scrolls before him, ancient philosophy, war strategies, poetry and he'd trace the characters with his fingers, eyes narrowed, absorbing the meaning.
"He doesn't read," she whispered once to their father. "He remembers."
And she was right.
By age two, he could recite the Tao Te Ching and identify each dynasty by its founding emperor and collapse. But to Haochen, Pearl was not a sister of politics and power. She was warmth.
A quiet breeze in halls too wide.
Crystal's Fire
Where Pearl watched, Crystal tested.
She built a mechanical bird for him and said, "Take it apart."
He did—without instructions.
And then rebuilt it—improving the wing span.
At three years old.
"He bypasses thought," Crystal muttered, watching him code. "He understands the end result and works backward."
She should've been proud. And she was.
But sometimes she stared at him too long, brow furrowed.
He noticed.
So he built a machine to imitate her voice, and used it to make the mechanical bird sing:
"I'm proud of you, Haochen."
She cried when she heard it, though she denied it.
To Haochen, she was not just logic and blueprints. She was fire pretending to be ice.
Jade's Dance
Jade taught him rhythm—not in music, but in breath.
She would place his hands on her waist as she danced and say,
"Feel the timing between movement and stillness."
When Haochen moved, it was like the world adjusted its tempo to match his.
By four, he had performed in two orchestras and composed three instrumental pieces.
But none of them sounded right to him.
"Why?" Jade asked once.
"Because… I don't feel anything when I play."
Her smile faded. She took his hands.
"Then stop creating for the world. Create for yourself."
He tried again. The next composition brought tears to Pearl, made Crystal's hands stop working, and left Emerald quietly staring at the rain.
Emerald's Eyes
She was the only one who never taught him anything.
Because she said he didn't need to be taught.
While the others gifted him books, code, or melodies, Emerald gave him a journal—blank pages, no instructions. He looked at her curiously.
"I don't want to give you answers," she said. "Just a place to bleed."
Sometimes, Haochen would sit with her in the garden while she read novels under a magnolia tree. She never spoke unless he did.
And he liked that.
To him, Emerald was the silence between thunder and rain.
The Beauty of the Impossible
Haochen's appearance began to change subtly as he aged. While his sisters each had long, snowy white hair that shimmered under sunlight, he was different.
His hair was pitch-black, but from his forehead fell two thin, white strands that framed his pale, delicate face. They looked like falling light—same color as his eyes, which were neither silver nor blue, but some unspeakable starlight in between.
These strands were the only inheritance of his mother's divine bloodline—a mark not of beauty, but of destiny.
People called him "Heaven's Favorite."
And yet…
Alone Among Applause
At age four, Haochen was invited to perform a symphonic piece before the International Assembly of Youth Prodigies in Vienna.
The hall was vast, filled with kings, presidents, and press.
He walked alone to the piano—no sheet music, no guide—and when he sat, a single breath passed before he played.
By the end, the audience wept.
People whispered, "This boy… he's beyond human."
That night, in the hotel room, his sisters congratulated him. Gifts poured in. News agencies flooded his guardians with requests.
But after everyone slept, Haochen stood at the window alone, watching the stars.
And quietly said to himself,
"They love what I do. But do they know who I am?"
The following week, the nomination arrived:
"Long Haochen – Winner of the Children's International Music Festival Awards."
His parents were supposed to attend his award ceremony flying from Shanghai to surprise him.
They never made it.