Chapter 57: "My Condolences"

December 12, 2020.
The ferry cut through the iron-blue surface of the lake.
Its destination was an island named "Dragon-Traced Island," the largest inland island in northern China, with a total area of about nine square kilometers. The only way to enter the island was by boat. The ferry did not even have a cabin; it consisted merely of a gigantic deck coated in green paint that had long since grown mottled and chipped.
Departures ran every twenty minutes, from eight in the morning until six in the evening. A one-way trip took a little over twenty minutes, and a standing ticket for pedestrians cost three yuan. These details came easily back to him, not only because he had spent four years of his life studying on this small island, but also because, just moments before, he had spent four whole days here.
That had been December 8, 2012, a Saturday, back in his junior high school days eight years ago.
And now...
He had returned once again.
He was standing by the railing at the front of the deck, the floorboards beneath his feet vibrating faintly from the drone of the engine. A fishy scent drifted through the cold, damp air. He silently parted his lips, feeling as though he had been drained of all his strength.
He still remembered the afternoon four days ago—no, given the current reality, it should be called eight years and four days ago—when he returned to his junior high classroom. On that day, he could see the snow blanketing the plastic sports field, classmates hunched over their desks studying, workbooks piled high, and the building-block castle resting on the bookshelf. They resembled an old photograph tucked deep within the memories of his heart. He had gazed around in disbelief at everything in his surroundings, and gradually, that photograph had bloomed into color. He had become a part of the picture. Thus, a normal life and the possibility of a do-over—longings he had buried deep in his chest for years, never daring to truly hope for—had transformed into reality at that very moment.
Reality...
Heh.
Today, the weather was calm with neither wind nor waves. The lake was an almost frozen iron-blue, disturbed only by the ferry slowly carving its path through the water, sending churning ripples along the vessel's hull that dissolved into fragile bubbles upon the slightest touch.
Zhang Shutong silently watched those churning, vanishing bubbles. Right now, he desperately wanted to sit down and rest. There was no specific reason or explanation; he merely sought a place to sit for a while—even just for a moment.
Yet the ferry possessed no cabin, let alone any seating. Being the dead of winter, this was hardly the tourist season. He was the sole passenger on the entire boat, clad in a black windbreaker. He looked down at his hands, clenching them into fists little by little, before slowly relaxing them.
Zhang Shutong was not foolish enough to believe that those four days of junior high school had merely been a dream. He could confirm with absolute certainty that late last Saturday night, the temporal regression had indeed been triggered.
Never in his wildest dreams, however, had he expected that once the crisis was resolved, he would be sent right back to the very starting point of time.
In the past, he had been tormented mercilessly by this ability, though it had always trapped him in endless loops within a fixed period of time.
The triggering mechanism of the regression was simple:
If something bad happened around him, he would be sent back to a crucial node prior to the incident.
Usually, this meant a few minutes or a few days before.
If time were compared to a cassette tape in a radio, his ability had always been the one to press the "rewind" button for him. But this time? Why had it pressed the "fast-forward" button instead?
Zhang Shutong had no answer.
He only knew that he had truly returned.
Yet why, of all times, had he returned precisely now—just as he had prepared to welcome a brand-new life?
He parted his lips once more, at a loss for words. He was the only person on the entire boat. Countless fragments of memory flashed through his mind: Qingyi, Ruoping, Dukang... The three of them chattering as they crowded around him. Going night fishing together, riding bicycles to the commercial street for meals, wandering aimlessly through the weekend supermarket pushing shopping carts—scenes of laughter and chatter felt so close at hand... No, not merely close at hand; they were vividly present.
He leaned numbly against the railing, tilting his head back to gaze at the sky.
Until the blast of the ship's horn shattered the silence.
Zhang Shutong slowly walked off the boat.
The ferry had reached the shore.
There was only one bus route on the island. He walked toward the bus stop almost by instinct, and shortly after, the vehicle arrived—a yellow electric bus designated as Route 121. He boarded and chose a seat.
It was slightly warmer inside the bus, but he pushed the window open a fraction, letting the biting winter wind lash against his face. The window glass reflected his twenty-four-year-old visage. The lines of his facial features had grown sharper and more resolute, showing little change from eight years ago.
The person in the reflection stared back at him with cold detachment, joyless and dull-eyed.
This was the true "Zhang Shutong."
He averted his gaze, refusing to look any longer. It had only been four days, yet he had almost forgotten what he was supposed to look like.
Zhang Shutong silently observed the scenery outside the window. It remained a bleak and desolate sight. The bus traveled along the newly paved road circling the lake, allowing him to catch glimpses of the reed beds along the shore.
Tucked behind the reeds was an abandoned drainage culvert, its concrete body webbed with cracks. Zhang Shutong knew that inside it lay a broken-up safe, containing a fishing rod, a helmet, and compressed food rations. Not long ago, he had ridden a bike here with a girl, spending an entire afternoon by the water's edge. If possible, he truly wished to go down there and check whether the safe was still there.
However, his "base" was merely his base; the bus route did not include a stop beside a drainage culvert.
In the end, Zhang Shutong sighed and rolled the window shut.
It was about time to accept reality.
If the price of "saving" others was "sacrificing" yourself, what were you supposed to do?
His mind was in a bit of chaos right now. To take a random example, he wondered: if Gu Qiumian's life had not been altered, would he still have returned from eight years ago?
Never mind.
Chasing after these unanswerable questions was meaningless.
At least it was better than leaving everything unresolved.
He thought fate could be remarkably fair at times. You saved someone, and as it turned out, the reward wasn't just two bags of snacks; it also came with a complimentary four-day childhood trial card. Now that the trial card had expired—and since this was something money couldn't buy—he naturally had to return to his original life trajectory.
People eventually had to learn to make peace with reality. Besides, he was long since accustomed to this.
...Yes, accustomed to it.
Yet what good was unaccustomedness? He felt that pondering these issues deeply at times was nothing more than looking for trouble. He simply closed his eyes and refused to think about it anymore. The bus rocked up and down along the road. He had no idea how much time had passed until a dignified female voice broadcasted from the speaker:
"Next stop, the funeral home. Passengers getting off, please prepare in advance and take your belongings with you..."
Zhang Shutong opened his weary eyes and stood up.
It was time to get off.
He didn't need to prepare in advance, nor did he have any belongings with him. He remembered leaving his house in a rush, forgetting to put on an extra layer of clothes to keep warm. Standing out in the open back then, he had frozen to the bone, prompting Dukang to tease him for trying to look cool.
Zhang Shutong steadied himself by the handrail. The moment the bus's rear door slid open, he stepped out with one foot.
Then, he suddenly froze.
Wait, why the funeral home?
Or to rephrase the question more bluntly—
Why on earth would his eight-years-older self return to the island?
...
Only then did a realization dawn belatedly upon Zhang Shutong:
If, in the original timeline, he hadn't returned to the island for eight years and only came back upon receiving the news of Lu Qinglian's death to attend her funeral, what was the reason for his return today?
He immediately checked the time: it was December 12, 2020. There was no mistake about that; his past self had also arrived on the island on this exact day.
"Are you getting off or not?"
The bus driver shouted back at him. Zhang Shutong leapt down from the bus, leaving him no time for further contemplation. He pulled out his phone, opened his call log, and searched for Lu Qinglian's missed call.
His memory had always been exceptional. He distinctly remembered that it happened a little past 11:00 PM on December 10, when his phone had been set to silent mode, which was why he missed her call... But what about now?
Zhang Shutong's call history was sparse, and he quickly found his answer. There was none.
None.
He felt an inexplicable wave of relief. There *shouldn't* have been one. It proved that history had truly been altered. If an identical missed call remained on his phone, that would have been the strange part; it would mean those four days spent back in junior high were genuinely nothing more than an illusion.
Then why had he come here today?
He scrolled to the most recent call record, remembering that his last phone call had been regarding work. The other party was an editor at a publishing house; he had been working from home as a translator for the past few years, and he had briefly discussed a brief delay due to attending a funeral. True to memory, the contact was indeed that same editor.
This discovery, however, brought him no comfort; instead, it chilled him to the bone.
Why was he still working from home as a translator?
Wait, wait, wait. He had been laboring under a misconception all along. After returning, he had subconsciously assumed that what awaited him was still that endless, regression-trapped life. But now he realized that since history had changed, his own life ought to have changed as well.
Yet it seemed almost entirely unchanged?
Did the regression still exist?
Zhang Shutong had once naively believed that as long as he stopped running up to that mountain, his life would completely change. But now that he had been sent back once more, it proved that his ability remained.
Yet the mechanism stating "if something bad happens around you, you will return to a crucial node of the event" had genuinely vanished.
Much like the time Gu Qiumian's building blocks were smashed: based on past experience, he should have been sent back to a moment before Li Pengyi took action, rather than rushing off to solve the mystery afterward.
Since that mechanism was gone, why was he still working from home as a translation freelancer and avoiding communication with strangers?
He simply opened his food delivery app to check his order history. One look almost choked the life out of him—why was he still ordering takeout every single day?!
His head felt heavy.
If a person wanted to verify their past, what was the best method?
Zhang Shutong rarely took photos, nor did he keep a diary. He checked his call log again and noticed he had made a call to an unfamiliar name last night.
"Su Yunzhi."
Who was this?
The name felt faintly familiar. He searched his memory, and it gradually overlapped with a senior student from his high school days.
He should have cut off contact with her long ago, but this time... He checked the time of the call: it had been last night, lasting a full ten minutes.
He continued scrolling, wanting to check on Qingyi, Dukang, and Ruoping. He remembered that in the original timeline, although everyone had contact information during junior high, they had all changed their numbers and phones afterward, leaving him with none of their phone numbers.
Among the three of them, contact with Ruoping had been entirely severed, but he still had the WeChat accounts of Qingyi and Dukang. With the former, interaction was minimal—consisting merely of liking each other's Moments posts—yet it was the longest-lasting connection.
As for the latter, they occasionally chatted. Dukang was the one who had informed him of Lu Qinglian's death, and he was also the first old classmate Zhang Shutong had run into upon returning to the island, his enthusiasm unchanged from the old days.
What about this time?
He searched by the initials of their pinyin names. This time, everyone was there: Feng Ruoping, Meng Qingyi, Dukang... He even managed to dig up Gu Qiumian and Lu Qinglian. Checking their individual call histories, however, he discovered that only Ruoping's log appeared, dating back just a few days ago.
What on earth had happened in between?
The chat history of Dukang notifying him of the death was gone from WeChat as well.
Standing by the bus stop, he snapped back to reality and realized how freezing the weather was. Zhang Shutong tightened his windbreaker and noticed another detail: why was this outfit identical to the original one?
Zhang Shutong wasn't someone given to overthinking. After pondering briefly, he decided to return Ruoping's call first. He waited patiently for a moment, only for the prompt to inform him that the other party was currently on another call.
He instinctively thrust his hand into his pocket, only to brush against a hard paper box. Pulling it out, he saw it was actually a pack of cigarettes... He had smoked for a period when he graduated from university before quitting. Ordinarily, he shouldn't have been carrying a pack of cigarettes on him. Making a simple deduction, he sniffed his fingers and discovered that his current self hadn't quit.
It was all genuinely bewildering. Back when he returned to eight years ago, although many memories were hazy, it had merely been reliving the past, leaving traceable footsteps. But now, in a sense, he had traveled to the future, yet the future itself had been altered—simultaneously familiar and alien.
Returning to the initial question: what on earth had he come back here to do?
A class reunion?
He now half-regretted getting off the bus; perhaps riding it in a loop around the island could have provided him with some clues. Even mere contemplation would have been better than standing in the freezing wind.
However, the island's bus schedule was sparse. Refusing to stand around stupidly waiting, he decided to find a shelter from the wind. If only there were a convenience store nearby where he could buy a hot drink—besides, he felt rather sleepy. The regression had been triggered in his sleep late Saturday night, and he hadn't expected the mental exhaustion to tag along with him. But this area was utterly desolate; this wasn't some bustling city—where on earth would one find a convenience store?
The closest place... Zhang Shutong thought for a moment. It turned out to be the funeral home. The funeral home should still be there, otherwise its name wouldn't have been announced on the bus. Trusting his memory, he set off walking. His hands were stiff with cold, yet he couldn't help continuing to scroll through his phone records.
He opened QQ, an application he had used most frequently eight years ago, but upon entering university, everyone around him had switched to WeChat. He hadn't held much hope, and reality proved him right—there was no chat history with anyone. The latest messages consisted of random clutter like "Friend's Birthday Reminder" and "Channel Notifications." He found the four-person group chat tucked away in his group list, and just like before, it was completely blank.
Zhang Shutong exhaled a breath into his cupped hands and noticed Gu Qiumian's profile. True to form, she adored sheep; after all these years, her avatar remained that pattern resembling a sheep or a cloud.
At this thought, Zhang Shutong couldn't help raising his head. In the distance, the outline of the funeral home had come into view. But its tall brick chimney was gone—on Saturday morning, when he and Gu Qiumian had ridden in their head teacher's car toward the shopping mall, his gaze had lingered on the smoke rising from that chimney for a long time.
To Zhang Shutong's immediate astonishment, however, he spotted several people standing in front of the funeral home's entrance.
Such a place would ordinarily be devoid of people; if any were present, it could only mean someone had passed away. Theoretically, it was none of his concern. The island's population was over eight thousand, and the people connected to him numbered fewer than ten... Yet his pace involuntarily quickened, and through the gates, the strains of funeral music drifted to his ears.
Zhang Shutong's heart sank inexplicably. He pushed open the gates of the funeral home, strode past the wreaths lining both sides, and rushed into the mourning hall in a few strides, his gaze instantly locking onto the owner of this funeral:
It was a black-and-white portrait.
In the photograph was a strikingly beautiful woman. She wore her hair long, her brows slightly furrowed, while her eyes remained as still as an ancient, unrippled well.
At that moment, someone suddenly patted Zhang Shutong on the shoulder and said:
"Condolences."