December 12, 2020.
The ferry cut through the dark blue lake.
Its destination was an island called "Yanlong Island," China's largest inland island, with a total area of about 9 square kilometers... and the only way to get to the island was by boat. The ferry didn't even have a cabin, just a huge deck painted green, and the paint was already peeling.
The ferry departed every 20 minutes, from 8 AM to 6 PM. The one-way trip took over twenty minutes, and a standing ticket cost three yuan... He could easily recall this information, not only because he had studied on this island for four years but also because he had just spent four days on the island in the previous moment.
That was December 8, 2012, a Saturday, eight years ago during his junior high school years.
And now...
He was back.
He stood by the railing at the front of the deck. The floor beneath his feet was faintly vibrating from the humming of the engine. A fishy smell wafted through the cold, damp air. He opened his mouth soundlessly, as if he had lost all his strength.
He still remembered four days ago—no, it should be called eight years and four days ago—in the afternoon. He returned to his junior high school classroom. On that day, he could see the snow covering the plastic track, his classmates studying with their heads down, the exercise books on the desks, the building block castle on the bookshelf... They were like an old photograph from the depths of his memory. He looked at everything around him in disbelief, and then the photograph gradually turned into color. He became a part of the photo, so a normal life, the possibility of starting over—that was a thought that had been buried in his heart for many years but he never dared to hope for. In that moment, it became real.
Real...
Heh.
Today, there was no wind or waves. The lake was a dark blue that seemed to be almost frozen. Only when the ferry slowly moved forward, cutting through the surface, did the water splash up on both sides of the hull, turning into bubbles that burst with a single touch.
Zhang Shutong silently watched the surging and disappearing bubbles. Now he really wanted to sit down and rest. There was no reason or explanation. He just wanted to find a place to sit for a while, just for a moment.
But there was no cabin or seats on the ferry. It was the middle of winter, not the tourist season. He was the only one on the entire boat, wearing a black trench coat. He looked at his hands, clenching them little by little and then letting go.
Zhang Shutong wasn't stupid enough to think that those four days in junior high were a dream. He could be sure that in the late night of the previous Saturday, the Rewind had indeed been triggered.
But what he never expected was that he would return to the original point in time after the incident was resolved.
Before, he had been tormented by this ability, but he only kept Rewinding in a fixed period of time;
The trigger mechanism for the Rewind was:
If something bad happened around him, he would return to the key point before the incident occurred.
Usually a few minutes or a few days before.
If he compared time to a cassette tape, this ability had always pressed the "Rewind" button for him. But what about this time? Why was it the "fast forward" button?
Zhang Shutong had no answer.
He only knew that he had indeed returned.
But why at this very moment, when he was ready to embrace a new life?
He opened his mouth again, not knowing what to say. He was the only one on the entire boat. Countless fragments of memories flashed through his mind. Qingyi, Ruoping, Du Kang... They were chattering around him. They went night fishing together, rode their bicycles to the commercial street for dinner, and pushed a cart around the supermarket on the weekend, talking and laughing. The scenes seemed to be right in front of him... No, not "seemed." They were right in front of him.
He leaned against the railing, his face expressionless, and looked up at the sky.
Until the horn sounded.
Zhang Shutong slowly walked off the boat.
The boat had arrived at the shore.
There was only one bus route on the island. He came to the bus stop almost instinctively. The bus soon arrived. It was a yellow electric bus with the number "121." He got on the bus and found a seat.
It was a little warmer inside the bus, but he pushed a window open a little, letting the cold wind sting his face. His twenty-four-year-old face was reflected in the bus window. The lines of his face were a bit more defined, but the change was not significant compared to eight years ago.
The person in the window was also looking at him coldly, unsmiling and with dull eyes.
This was the real "Zhang Shutong."
He looked away, no longer wanting to see it. In just four days, he had almost forgotten what he was supposed to look like.
Zhang Shutong silently watched the scene outside the bus window. It was still a desolate scene. The bus was driving on the newly built ring road around the lake, so he could see the reed beds on the shore.
Behind the reed beds was an abandoned drainage tunnel. The cement body of the tunnel was already full of cracks. Zhang Shutong knew that inside, there was a broken safe with fishing rods, helmets, and compressed biscuits. Not long ago, he had ridden a bicycle here with a girl. The two of them had stayed on the bank all afternoon. If he could, he really wanted to get off and see if the safe was still there.
However, the "base" was only his base. The bus route would not have a stop next to a drainage tunnel.
Finally, Zhang Shutong sighed and closed the window.
It was about time to accept reality.
If the price of "rescuing" others was to "sacrifice" yourself, what would you do?
His mind was a bit muddled now. He just wanted to give a random example. He was saying, if, if Gu Qiumian's life had not been changed, would he still have come back from eight years ago?
Never mind.
There was no point in tracing these things anymore.
It was better than solving nothing at all.
He thought that fate was truly fair. You saved a person, and your reward wasn't just two bags of snacks. It also came with a four-day childhood experience card. Now that the experience card had expired, and this was something money couldn't buy, he had to return to his original life path.
People always had to learn to reconcile with reality. Anyway, he was already used to this.
...Yes, he was used to it.
But what could he do if he wasn't? He felt that thinking about these things was just asking for trouble, so he simply closed his eyes and stopped thinking. The bus went up and down. He didn't know how long had passed until a dignified female voice came from the speaker:
"Next stop, the funeral home. Passengers getting off, please be prepared and take your belongings with you..."
Zhang Shutong wearily opened his eyes and stood up.
It was time to get off.
He didn't need to be prepared in advance, and he didn't have any belongings with him. He remembered leaving home in a hurry and forgetting to put on another layer of clothes to keep warm. He was freezing when he stood outside. Du Kang even said he was just trying to be cool.
Zhang Shutong held the railing. The moment the bus's back door opened, he took a step out.
Then he suddenly stopped.
Wait, why a funeral home?
Or, to put it more bluntly—
Why did his eight-years-older self return to the island?
...
Zhang Shutong then belatedly realized something:
If in the original timeline, he hadn't returned to the island for eight years and only came back after hearing the news of Lu Qinglian's death to attend her funeral, then why was he here today?
He immediately confirmed the time. It was December 12, 2020. There was no mistake. He had also come to the island on this day.
"Are you getting off or not?"
At this time, the bus driver turned around and shouted at him. Zhang Shutong jumped off the bus, without time for more thoughts. He then took out his phone, opened the call log, and looked for that missed call from Lu Qinglian.
He had always had a good memory. He remembered that it happened around 11 PM on the night of December 10. He had put his phone on silent, so he didn't receive her call... But what about now?
Zhang Shutong didn't have many calls in his history, so he quickly got the result, and the answer was "none."
None.
He was inexplicably relieved. There shouldn't be any. This meant that history had indeed been changed. If the exact same missed call was still on his phone, it would have been a strange thing, and those four days he returned to junior high school would probably have been a hallucination.
Then what was he here for today?
He scrolled to the most recent call. He remembered the last time he called was for work. The other person was an editor from a publishing house. He had been doing translation work at home for the past few years. He had to take a few days off for the funeral, so he had a short conversation with the editor. It was indeed the same editor now.
This discovery didn't reassure him. In fact, it was terrifying.
Why was he still doing translation work at home?
Wait a minute, wait a minute. He had been wrong about one thing. After he came back, he subconsciously thought that he was still facing the same life that was trapped by the Rewind, with no end in sight. But he just realized that since history had been changed, his own life should have changed as well.
But it didn't seem to have changed much?
Was the Rewind still there?
Zhang Shutong had naively thought that as long as he didn't go to that mountain again, he would completely change his life. But now he was sent back, which meant the ability was still there.
But the mechanism of "if something bad happens around you, you will return to the key point of the event" was indeed gone.
Just like the time Gu Qiumian's building blocks were broken. Based on his past experience, he would have returned to the moment before Li Yipeng acted, not gone to solve the case after the fact.
Since it was gone, why was he still doing translation work at home and avoiding interacting with strangers?
He simply opened his food delivery app to check the history. He almost suffocated when he saw it. Why was he still ordering food every day?
His head was starting to hurt.
If a person wanted to confirm their past, what was the best way?
Zhang Shutong basically didn't take photos or keep a diary. He looked at his call log again and found that he had called an unfamiliar name last night.
"Su Yunzhi."
Who was this?
It sounded a little familiar. He thought carefully, and his memory gradually overlapped with the senior he knew in high school.
But he should have lost contact with her a long time ago. But this time... he confirmed the time of the call. It was last night, and they talked for a full ten minutes.
He continued to scroll, wanting to find Qingyi, Du Kang, and Ruoping. He remembered that in the original timeline, although they all had each other's contact information in junior high, they all changed their numbers and phones later, so there were no calls from the three of them.
Among the three of them, he had completely lost contact with Ruoping, but he still had Qingyi's and Du Kang's WeChat. The former didn't communicate much, only liking his posts on his moments, but it lasted the longest;
He would occasionally chat with the latter. Du Kang was the one who informed him of Lu Qinglian's death and was also the first old classmate he saw after returning to the island. His enthusiasm hadn't diminished at all.
What about this time?
He searched by the first letter of their Pinyin names. This time, all of them were there: Feng Ruoping, Meng Qingyi, Du Kang... and even Gu Qiumian and Lu Qinglian. He then went to check each person's call log but found that only Ruoping's was still there, and it was from a few days ago.
What had happened in between?
There was no record of Du Kang informing him of her death on WeChat;
He was now standing by the bus stop and came back to his senses, realizing that it was terribly cold. Zhang Shutong tightened his trench coat and noticed one more thing. Why were his clothes still the same as before?
Zhang Shutong wasn't a person who liked to fuss. After thinking for a moment, he called Ruoping back first. After waiting patiently for a moment, it showed that the other person was on a call.
He subconsciously put his hand in his pocket but felt a hard cardboard box. He took it out and saw that it was a pack of cigarettes... He had smoked for a while after graduating from university but had quit later. He shouldn't be carrying a pack of cigarettes with him. He made a simple judgment and sniffed his fingers, realizing that his current self had not quit.
He was truly at a loss. Before, when he returned to eight years ago, although many memories were blurry, it was just reliving the past, and there were traces to follow. But now, in a way, he had traveled to the future, and the future had also changed. It was both familiar and strange.
Returning to the original question, what was he here for?
A class reunion?
He now regretted getting off the bus. Maybe if he had just ridden the bus around the island, he would have found some clues. Even just thinking would be better than standing in the cold wind.
But the bus service on the island was very infrequent. He didn't want to just stand there and wait. He decided to find a place to hide from the wind. If there was a convenience store, he could buy a hot drink. And he was a bit tired now. The Rewind was triggered in his sleep on Saturday in the middle of the night, and he didn't expect the mental fatigue to follow. But this place was desolate, not a city. How could there be a convenience store?
The closest place... Zhang Shutong thought for a moment. It was the funeral home. The funeral home should still be there, otherwise, the name wouldn't have been on the bus announcement. He walked based on his memory. His hands were numb from the cold, but he couldn't help but continue to look through his phone.
He opened QQ. This was the app he used the most eight years ago. But after he went to university, everyone around him switched to WeChat. He didn't have high hopes, and indeed, there were no chat records with anyone. The latest messages were "friend's birthday reminder," "channel messages," and other random things. The group chat with the four of them was found in the group list and was as blank as before.
Zhang Shutong breathed into his palms and found Qiu Yu Mian Mian. She really liked sheep. After so many years, her profile picture was still that sheep-like, cloud-like pattern.
Thinking of this, Zhang Shutong couldn't help but look up. He could already see the outline of the funeral home in the distance. But the big chimney was gone—on Saturday morning, he and Gu Qiumian rode in the homeroom teacher's car to the mall, and his gaze had followed the smoke from the chimney for a long time.
He was then surprised to see that there were some people standing in front of the funeral home.
It was impossible for people to be here usually. If there were, it could only mean that someone had passed away. In theory, there was nothing to be concerned about. The population on the island was over eight thousand, and the people he was related to were no more than ten... But he couldn't help but quicken his pace. He could hear the sound of funeral music from inside the gate.
Zhang Shutong's heart sank inexplicably. He pushed open the funeral home gate, walked through the wreaths on both sides, and rushed into the mourning hall. His gaze instantly fixed on the owner of this funeral:
It was a black-and-white photo.
In the photo, there was a beautiful woman with long hair. She had a slight frown on her face, but her eyes were as calm as an ancient well.
At this time, someone suddenly patted Zhang Shutong's shoulder. He said:
"My condolences."