Night of Brocade

Night of Brocade is the first full-length youth novel by Xiaoshi, editor-in-chief of the magazine Fireworks. It was serialized in Fireworks starting in 2009 and published by Chunfeng Wenyi Press in 2010. The story is threaded together by two diaries: one filled with love, whose warmth conceals careful calculation at every turn; the other filled with reality, whose cruelty yet pulls people back from the brink. Eighteen years earlier on Tonghua Street, a decision made by letting error stand planted the seeds of sin; eighteen years later, a tragedy at Chengjin Academy magnifies the outline of past events. Cheng Xingsuo and Cheng Yueguang are brothers who have drifted apart—Xingsuo longs for his parents' genuine attention but receives only lavish praise; Yueguang behaves wildly and without restraint, yet deep down hides the hurt of being undervalued by his family. After a violent incident, a family crisis pulls the two back onto the same track of life, and Hu Lanlan, the girl who tears this family apart, becomes an unbreakable bond between the brothers. Through dual narrative lines that shuttle between memory and present-day investigation, the novel carries both the atmosphere of campus youth and the tension of a suspense structure, writing in love, family, and the dark side of human nature a song of despair about boys and girls struggling against fate.