WC ⋆ Chapter 23

Qi Lin pushed open the front door. The apartment was cold and quiet. He stood in the doorway for a moment, took out his phone, and found no new unread messages.

He felt uneasy. After a moment’s hesitation, he called Jiang Yishen back, but the other end was busy and couldn’t pick up.

He wandered around holding his phone, walked to the refrigerator, and pulled it open. It had been packed full, stocked by Jiang Yishen at some point he couldn’t quite place.

Quite domesticated of him. Qi Lin idly sorted through the contents. Everything in there, food and drink alike, was something he liked.

Maybe he shouldn’t have lied to Jiang Yishen.

He sent a WeChat message, deliberated over it for a long time, and ended up only asking what time he’d be home and what he was thinking of eating tonight.

Once sent, the message sank like a stone into the sea. Jiang Yishen didn’t reply. There wasn’t even a “typing” indicator.

After dinner, Jiang Yishen was still nowhere to be heard from. Qi Lin finally realized something was off.

Between the two of them, the silent treatment was rare. When they fought, they fought face to face. Hot-blooded conflict was basically their default mode. Cold war, as a form, was limited to the in-person variety. Once they stepped out the door, it reverted to the face-pulling type of hostility, meaning they’d trade barbs and fire volleys at each other over WeChat.

Since when had he developed this terrible habit of not picking up calls and not replying to messages?

Qi Lin waited until nine in the evening. Jiang Yishen still hadn’t made a sound. He messaged his roommates and learned that Jiang Yishen had taken his exam normally during the day and wasn’t in the dormitory now either.

He made one last call to Fan Zi, and finally understood why Jiang Yishen had lost his temper. It turned out his lie had been seen through on the spot. Jiang Yishen had simply chosen not to call him out on it.

Now Qi Lin couldn’t tell whether this person had actually run into trouble or was just throwing a tantrum at him. After all, they had once made a pact: deception was the line that could not be crossed.

But surely it wasn’t a capital offense? Qi Lin hadn’t actually intended to keep the lie going forever. It was just that when Jiang Yishen called, he had been too aggressive, asking all sorts of questions about him and his family. Qi Lin had wanted to say those things in person, to tell him over the phone only that they’d talk more when he got back.

At that moment everything had been piling up at once. If he’d mentioned being with Yin Yu, he would have had to spend time explaining who Yin Yu was and what had been said, which would have inevitably led to bringing up the wish he’d made at the temple.

Just thinking about it gave Qi Lin a headache. He’d panicked and told a lie.

He sat cross-legged on the bed hugging his phone, and after waiting so long he’d worked himself into his own bad mood. He simply tidied up the bedding, lay down, and got ready to sleep.

Anyway, there had been no kiss today. Once midnight passed, the loop would reset again. Everything would be wiped clean. Jiang Yishen would appear on this bed, with nowhere left to run.

They could sort it out properly then.

Qi Lin didn’t sleep. He lay there with his eyes open until 11:59. He lay on one side of the bed, waiting for the time to reset, to send him back to midnight on January 4th, to refresh Jiang Yishen back to his side.

The second hand ticked forward one notch at a time toward the top. All three hands converged. Midnight arrived. The clock let out a very faint click.

Qi Lin threw back the covers and sat bolt upright. He even reached out and patted the pillow beside him. No one.

Jiang Yishen had not reappeared with the loop.

Not only that, but this particular midnight passed with unusual clarity. There was none of the dissociation that had accompanied previous loop resets.

He broke out in a cold sweat instantly. The familiar, heart-clenching panic from those earlier solo loops swept over him again. Qi Lin grabbed his phone and lit up the screen.

00:00

Qi Lin stared hard at the date below it, barely able to breathe.

January 5th.

The loop was gone. And so was Jiang Yishen.

—

Jiang Yishen was completely bewildered, standing in the middle of an empty gymnasium. Sunlight poured in through the windows, casting long shadows from the basketballs left in the corner. In the distance, a few Student Council members were arranging cases of bottled water. The noise of a crowd drifted in from outside the gym, moving from near to far.

He raised his head. His gaze passed over the basketball hoops. A banner hung across the top of the gymnasium: “10th Campus Basketball Friendship Tournament, Sunshine Sports, Play Out Your Youth.”

Jiang Yishen had absolutely no idea how he had ended up here. He’d been determined to throw a tantrum at Qi Lin today. But somehow that afternoon his messages wouldn’t send and his return calls wouldn’t go through. He hadn’t been willing to swallow his pride and go home, so he’d figured he’d wait for the loop to reset and let it send him back automatically, which would save everyone from too much embarrassment.

But he hadn’t expected that when midnight came, a filmstrip-like reel of images flashed past, and instead of waking up on that familiar bed, he had materialized out of thin air in this gymnasium.

He knew this gymnasium, of course. And it was precisely because he knew it that he felt even more alarmed.

This was their school’s gymnasium. He used to come here with his roommates to check out basketballs. Sometimes the equipment room door would be locked, and they’d have to wait inside the gym for the attendant to come and open it.

Jiang Yishen patted his pocket. His phone had turned into a useless brick; the screen wouldn’t light up. Going by memory, he calculated that the 10th Basketball Tournament should have been in September of his second year.

He wasn’t sure whether this was a dream within a dream, but he walked forward a few steps toward the group of Student Council members, and suddenly felt a chill run through him. Among them, he spotted a familiar figure.

He froze completely on the spot, as if he’d been frozen solid from his feet to the top of his head.

It was Qi Lin from his third year. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a hoodie over it, the cuffs pushed up slightly to reveal his slender wrists. He held a paper roster in his hands and was slowly flipping through it.

Jiang Yishen wanted to call out to him, but then he suddenly sensed something was wrong.

He had moved very close, yet not a single person spared him a glance, as though they couldn’t see him at all.

This was absurd. Jiang Yishen was wrapped in a nameless dread, his head spinning from the sheer weight of unanswered questions crashing down on him.

Where was this? Why was he here?

He looked around in a daze. Oh, right. This was the school from two years ago.

Was it because he had made a wish that day to expand the loop’s cycle, and that had brought him here?

No, this wasn’t the loop.

Jiang Yishen stood less than ten centimeters in front of Qi Lin and another person, yet everyone around him was going about their own business. They couldn’t see him.

If this wasn’t the loop, then what was it? Was it a rewind? Did the world two years in the future still exist? Was the Qi Lin two years in the future still waiting for him?

Jiang Yishen grew anxious. He thought of all those WeChat messages and calls that had never gone through.

“Can anyone hear me?”

His voice couldn’t even produce an echo. It dissolved into the vacuum without leaving so much as a ripple.

Jiang Yishen was frantic. He turned and spotted the nearest chair, which had several backpacks piled on top of it. He swung his arm and knocked the chair over.

He made solid, real contact with it. It was wooden, and heavy. Knocked over by an outside force, it hit the ground with a dull thud. The backpacks tumbled down with it. Loose items spilled out of the open bags and scattered across the floor with a clatter: a power bank, some tissues, a fountain pen.

The group of people nearby finally turned to look. They assumed the load had simply been too heavy and unstable. Three of them ran over to clean it up, scrambling around picking things up and stuffing the odds and ends back into their own bags.

“The camera didn’t break, did it?” someone asked.

“No!” One of the people crouching down unzipped a bag and checked. “The camera’s in the camera case!”

Jiang Yishen stood in the middle of the mess, staring directly at Qi Lin.

Qi Lin glanced over in the same direction, blinked quietly, then lowered his head and went back to flipping through the roster.

“Alright, the opening ceremony is about to start. Xiao Wu, you need to photograph the officials’ speeches, go ahead. We’ll head straight to set up the venue and hand out supplies in a bit.”

“Got it.” The person called Xiao Wu grabbed his bag haphazardly, glanced at his watch, turned, and walked away quickly.

He passed right through Jiang Yishen’s shoulder, brushing against him lightly. Xiao Wu seemed to sense something, and turned back with a puzzled look. His gaze swept over where Jiang Yishen was standing but didn’t focus, and then he turned and left again.

Jiang Yishen looked down, staring absently at his own fingers. He spread his five fingers wide, and through the gaps between them he suddenly noticed a small black square lying on the ground, hidden in the shadow of the chair leg.

He guessed it had fallen out of Xiao Wu’s bag. He had left in such a hurry just now that he hadn’t had time to check whether everything was accounted for.

The Student Council members left one by one. Jiang Yishen followed behind them, watching Qi Lin’s back.

He knew that in less than fifteen minutes, Qi Lin would walk past the tail end of the opening ceremony procession carrying water, and run into his past self. This was their first meeting.

“Xiao Qi, I’m going to the venue to move chairs. You hand out the water in a bit.” The person walking at the front said.

Qi Lin nodded in agreement. The microphone in the distance had been connected to the entire basketball court, broadcasting the school official’s resounding speech. The basketball teams from each college were lined up below. The students at the front held their college banners, every one of them standing tall with their chests out, looking full of vitality.

The Student Council members were busy at the back. Jiang Yishen found Xiao Wu in the crowd, standing in the front row with his camera raised, photographing the official giving the speech.

He was also trying to spot whether a version of himself existed somewhere in the crowd, and was so lost in looking that he didn’t notice the person in front of him had stopped walking. He nearly walked straight into them.

That person looked like the head of the Student Council. He was frowning at his phone, typing a reply. Jiang Yishen leaned over and caught a glimpse: it was a message from someone saved as “Xiao Wu.”

[Brother, emergency emergency, my camera battery isn’t fully charged. I brought a spare battery but now I can’t find it! I’m worried it won’t last through the end of the opening ceremony, what do I do?]

Jiang Yishen immediately thought of the small black square in the shadow of the chair leg just now.

So that was the spare camera battery.

If he’d known it was that important, he would have made a scene and gotten Xiao Wu to pick it up.

The Student Council head typed fast: Don’t panic, use your phone to shoot first. I’ll get a few more people to shoot together, so there’s no risk of unusable photos if any turn out bad.

Then he quickly switched contacts and dialed a WeChat call to someone whose saved name Jiang Yishen hadn’t caught clearly.

Jiang Yishen wasn’t interested in any of this. He changed direction and caught up with Qi Lin, who was walking on the other side, only to see Qi Lin stop in his tracks in the next second, set down the water he was carrying, and take out his phone to hold it to his ear.

Jiang Yishen’s footsteps came to an abrupt halt. He spun around sharply, and all he saw was the back of the Student Council head, turned away, talking on the phone.

The official’s speech was very loud, nearly enough to make one’s eardrums ache. Jiang Yishen seemed to understand something. In an instant, all sensation left his body except for his heart, which was pounding violently, pounding so hard that everything from his nasal cavity to the back of his skull felt numb.

His throat was blocked by a lump of air. He stood stunned for less than two seconds, then quickly moved forward, his eyes locked onto Qi Lin. He watched Qi Lin hang up the phone, lower his head in thought for a moment, then look up and meet the eyes of a tall young man at the very back of the procession.

Jiang Yishen slowly, almost to the point of stillness, turned his gaze to follow Qi Lin’s. That person was wearing a college-issue team uniform, the color a bit ugly, with short spiky hair at the front, arms folded across his chest in a carefree slouch.

That was himself.

Jiang Yishen stood there dumbstruck, watching Qi Lin talk to his past self. He still had no clear understanding of his current situation, yet in some intangible way he caught hold of something that felt like a very important clue. Fate between the two of them seemed to be not a set of gears, but the pieces of a Möbius Strip. He had come from a distant future. The back side of the “January 5th” piece two years in the future happened to be the first meeting two years in the past. Without knowing it, he had filled in the missing piece, allowing Qi Lin and Jiang Yishen to meet.

—

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