short series

The Daughter's Chess Game

share time: 2026-02-27 06:23:12

Lin Wan, a retired chess champion and single mother, tried to make up for neglecting her daughter Xiaotang due to her career by forcing her to learn chess—only to face Xiaotang’s rebellion: the 16-year-old smashed her championship trophy in public, yelling, “I won’t be your shadow!” When Lin Wan is hospitalized with a sudden serious illness, Xiaotang finds a yellowed chess manual in old belongings: every page is marked with “Xiaotang’s first laugh” or “Xiaotang’s first day of primary school.” It turns out Lin Wan has hidden every moment of “growing up with you” in the chess scores since Xiaotang was born—those strict trainings were just her way of writing “I love you” in a language Xiaotang could understand. As Xiaotang sets up the unfinished “mother-daughter game” by the hospital bed, every move across the chessboard becomes the unspoken “I’ve always been here” from her mother.

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