WC ⋆ Chapter 25

Jiang Yishen had no way to confirm the date or time, but based on his experience from the previous few loops, this was most likely the day Qi Lin came to make his wish after their breakup.

He had no idea when Qi Lin would appear, and he wandered around on the path like a headless fly, until suddenly a voice called out to him.

“Young man, are you lost?”

Jiang Yishen nearly fainted from fright. He turned around and looked carefully. It was the old man selling prayer beads nearby, sitting on a folding stool and watching him.

He hesitantly took two steps to the left. The old man’s gaze followed him and shifted left as well.

“You can see me?”

“Goodness, what kind of thing is that to say.” The old man chuckled. “You’ve been going in circles here for a while now. Looking for someone? Go down from here to the bottom and you’ll find the Tourist Service Center.”

Jiang Yishen’s shock was beyond words. He opened his mouth, and after a long moment finally said, “Sir, is there anyone around here who tells fortunes?”

The old man waved his hand and clicked his tongue a few times. “National Day just passed, they don’t allow fortune-telling anymore. Eliminating feudal superstition.”

“That won’t do!” Jiang Yishen felt like his head was about to explode. He crouched down to meet the old man at eye level and pressed further. “What about wish-granting? The kind where you pay some money, make a wish, and they give you something?”

“Isn’t that feudal superstition too?” The old man was baffled.

Jiang Yishen grew anxious. “Then isn’t the blessing prayer beads you’re selling also…”

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, young man, you can’t say that!” The old man nearly stood up, leaning forward with spit flying everywhere. “You can’t say ‘buy,’ you have to say ‘receive,’ receive a set of prayer beads! You, reverence! You must have reverence!”

Jiang Yishen stepped back two paces, his head spinning. He instinctively glanced toward the foot of the mountain, and what he saw nearly gave him a heart attack.

Wasn’t that Qi Lin walking down toward him? The distance was too great to make out his face clearly, but the build and the clothes were unmistakably familiar. There was absolutely no mistaking it.

“Sir!” Jiang Yishen quickly stopped him. “I want to make a deal with you. First put the prayer beads away, set up a temporary fortune-telling stall. Someone’s coming in a moment…”

The old man refused before he even finished speaking. “That won’t do! You can’t just tell fortunes casually. Better to believe it than not! You…”

“Five hundred yuan!” Jiang Yishen held up a palm. “What do you call it, a hexagram doesn’t go out for free, consider it payment, will that work?”

“Well, well, well…” The old man couldn’t quite process this.

Jiang Yishen went straight to work, gathering up the mat with the prayer beads on it and rolling it into a bundle. “Just one person. He might come here in a bit to make a wish with you. Whatever he says, you just go along with it. Five hundred yuan, deal?”

He tidied up the space and casually pulled out a large sheet of white paper, on which he wrote two large, neat characters in the center: Request Wish.

“Don’t you go back on your word! Give me half as a deposit first!” The old man grabbed Jiang Yishen’s clothes at the last moment and held on, refusing to let him leave.

Jiang Yishen was frantic. He could see Qi Lin getting closer and closer, but his phone absolutely would not turn on, and he didn’t have much cash on him.

“Here! Here! I’ll leave my phone with you as collateral!” Jiang Yishen haphazardly shoved his phone into the old man’s hands.

The old man was also thrown into a panic, pressing the screen a few times to no effect. “This isn’t broken and you’re trying to trick me, is it? You…”

“Please, please, just play along first. I’ll explain later, there’s no time!” Jiang Yishen was so anxious he was almost in tears. Fortunately he was strong enough, and after a few tugs he managed to free his clothes from the old man’s grip.

He could already see Qi Lin approaching in his peripheral vision. Jiang Yishen didn’t even dare to look back, and fled in a panic into the shadows at the side of the path.

“Hey!” The old man was still about to call after him when a new customer arrived. A slender young man came to a stop in front of his little stall.

His emotions hadn’t yet settled from the frantic excitement, and looking at this young man he was momentarily at a loss for words. He took off his sun hat, smoothed back his sparse hair, and then somehow produced a pair of sunglasses from somewhere and put them on.

The young man stared at him in a way that made him uneasy. After quite a long while, the young man finally said, “Can I make a request here?”

“Ah.” The old man responded.

The young man crouched down in front of him. “How does one make a request?”

“How…” The old man caught on at this point, unrolled the mat he had just bundled up, and picked out a few strings of prayer beads from inside. “Receiving a set of prayer beads is making a wish. I have ones for smooth studies, prosperous career, safe travels. These few are all cinnabar. Oh, the ones you’re looking at over here are beeswax, and there’s also yellow crystal. These are all earth-element gemstones. Which of the five elements are you lacking?”

The young man finally looked up at him. “Are you a Taoist priest?”

“Huh?” The old man froze.

“My date of birth is May 30th, five-thirty in the morning.” The young man said.

The old man looked at him for a long moment, then finally said, “How about you take a look at this one? Black obsidian. It strengthens water and nourishes wood, it also complements your complexion, and the meaning is good too.”

The young man looked down at the tag. “May your wishes come true.”

“Take one? On the mountain they sell it for three hundred and eighty, but I have a fair price here. A hundred takes it home. Everyone who comes is sincere, I don’t cheat people.”

The young man lowered his eyes, seemingly lost in thought. Just when the old man thought the deal had fallen through, he heard him ask, “How do I make a request?”

“Oh, you just make your wish to the prayer beads.” The old man said, casually moving his payment QR code to the front.

But the young man paid no attention to his little maneuver, and only said earnestly, “Doesn’t saying it out loud make it stop working?”

“You have to say it to the prayer beads. May your wishes come true. They’ll help you get what you want.” The old man said with great conviction, already preparing to wrap it up for him.

The young man asked, as if to himself, “Can you wish for something in love too?”

“Of course.” It was only at this moment that the old man noticed the young man’s low spirits. He didn’t look like someone who had been taken in by his patchwork spiel. It seemed more like he simply didn’t want to question it, his mind elsewhere.

“I want to wish for us to get back together.”

The old man was a good judge of people, and he knew that at a moment like this he couldn’t keep brushing things off. This kid was clearly paying money to buy peace of mind, looking for an emotional anchor. If he kept talking nonsense, the kid might just walk away.

“Be more specific. Just five words?”

The young man pressed his lips together and said, “Together no matter what, even through life and death.”

From the bushes behind came a dull thud of something heavy hitting the ground. The young man was just about to turn and look when the old man’s startled voice called him back. “Goodness! Don’t go putting life and death on your lips. You’re so young, why are you talking about living and dying? What obstacle could possibly be too great to get past?”

The young man took it to heart and added, “Once it’s begun, let it never end.”

“Good, good, good. May your wishes come true.” The old man handed him the small red pouch. “This prayer bead is yours once you receive it. I can’t touch it. Pack it up yourself.”

The young man picked up the black obsidian prayer beads and put them on his left wrist, raising them to eye level to examine them for a moment. “You really can’t tell fortunes?”

“Oh, we can’t deceive people, can we?” The deal was done, and the old man was willing to say something sincere. He tidied up his stall as he spoke. “But this kind of thing is mysterious, you know. If it’s in your fate, it’ll be there. If the affinity is enough, it can come to pass. Isn’t that right? We’re just buying a bit of peace of mind.”

Buying a bit of peace of mind.

Jiang Yishen had no idea what Qi Lin was thinking at that moment. He only knew that he himself could barely stand.

Hearing with his own ears the wish Qi Lin had never been willing to tell him, the grief and shock overwhelmed the excitement. He stood there in a daze for a long time, until his eyes were full enough that a single blink would send the tears falling.

He felt sorrow for this Qi Lin who looked so heartbroken in front of him, sorrow for the six months they had spent apart, sorrow for the fact that he had been the one to propose the breakup. And yet he still felt that all these reasons were only surface-level, that there were deeper, more elusive emotions pressed down underneath, rising in waves of sourness, clutching at his chest with an aching pain.

He felt an unconditional, bottomless love, something Qi Lin had never once spoken aloud during their relationship. It left him utterly defenseless.

The sun beat down on his back until it burned, but Jiang Yishen had no strength to move into the shade. He thought again of the ring he had given away so carelessly. He wanted to put it on right now, but when he felt his pockets they were empty. It had not come with him into this time reversal.

They had never seen each other’s love clearly, and had gone on to question whether this relationship was passionate enough, sincere enough, mistaking the other’s feelings for weariness, until they drifted further and further apart.

Qi Lin walked down the mountain with the prayer beads on his wrist. Jiang Yishen watched his retreating figure, and in his daze he finally understood the reason for the rewind.

It had all been because of this wish. Once it’s begun, let it never end.

Those words could be extended in two directions. If it’s begun, don’t let it end. If it never begins, there’s no ending to speak of.

Perhaps because he had developed a strong desire to remain within the single-day loop, the probability of “once begun, never ending” being realized had been lowered by him. Not because they hadn’t gotten back together, but because the loop could not continue.

In order for Qi Lin to have his wish come true and resolve this wish, he had been forced to fulfill “if it never begins, there is no ending.”

He had been brought back to several key turning points of their love, but Jiang Yishen had filled in the missing pieces at each of those turning points. “Never beginning” had also been declared a failure. He thought it was time for him to return to Qi Lin’s side.

The single-day loop might continue, but it didn’t matter. At least they would be by each other’s side, within reach.

Jiang Yishen saw the old man holding his brick of a phone, turning his head to look for him in the bushes. But his gaze drifted and swept right past his face without stopping for even a moment, full of confusion.

Jiang Yishen suddenly broke into a smile. He relaxed and fell backward, lying flat on his back in the bushes. The sun stung his eyes. He blocked it with the back of his hand, and warm liquid trickled down from the corners of his eyes.

The sunlight burst open all at once. He felt nothing but a blinding white brightness before his eyes, the ground beneath him spinning. After a moment of dizziness he was jolted awake by a cold wind that chilled him to the bone.

Jiang Yishen was standing at his front door. He came back to his senses. The tears hadn’t even been wiped away yet. His first instinct was to reach for his phone. This time the brick phone worked. The screen showed January 5th, 0:02 a.m.

The lock screen was packed with missed calls and WeChat messages. Almost the very next second, a new call notification popped up. It was Qi Lin calling.

Jiang Yishen’s fingers were trembling slightly. He pressed accept. The other end seemed to pause for a moment, then launched into a rapid-fire string of questions. “Where did you go? I called you and you didn’t pick up, didn’t reply to WeChat either. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours so I can’t even file a missing persons report. Were you kidnapped? Hello? Jiang Yishen?”

Jiang Yishen held it in and held it in, suppressed it and suppressed it, but in the end he couldn’t hold it back. The tears that had been hovering on the edge came pouring down, leaving nothing but a muffled sobbing sound on the line.

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