Standing in 2022, in her own home, Li Weiyi’s feeling was both real and unreal. But she didn’t want to come back so soon.

Li Weiyi’s heartbeat quickened because she discovered there was an additional memory—during the winter of her second year of high school, she had fallen into water and been in a coma at the hospital for three days. Her mother had kept mentioning Achan who saved her at the time, but that person never appeared again, and her parents were quite disappointed about it.

She clearly remembered that this event hadn’t happened before—there was only the drowning, no coma, and certainly no Achan. But now, she remembered this incident very clearly. This was a very eerie feeling—having two sets of memories for one event, with the latter gradually overwriting the former.

Memories related to her sister hadn’t changed: her sister married Zhou Zhihao, had children, argued, domestic violence… Li Weiyi’s heart sank. She glanced at the time—6:40 in the morning. She stared at her phone for a while before dialing.

Her sister’s phone was off.

If nothing had changed, then her sister had already jumped from a building yesterday. Dead people’s phones don’t turn on.

Li Weiyi choked up as she continued calling her parents. No one answered. She figured they must be exhaustedly busy with funeral arrangements. She immediately grabbed her ID card and rushed to the bus station.

She remembered that yesterday she had bought an 8 a.m. ticket home.

——

It was already Spring Festival travel season, and the bus station was very crowded. Li Weiyi swiped her ID card at the automatic ticket machine several times, but it kept showing no booking record. She ran to the window to ask. The ticket seller definitively said there was no booking. Li Weiyi clearly remembered paying for and buying the ticket yesterday. Thinking it might be a system malfunction, and having no time to argue with the ticket seller, she requested to buy another ticket.

But the 8 o’clock tickets had already sold out—only 9:30 was available.

Li Weiyi found a step in a corner of the station to sit on, silently waiting until 9:30. Midway, Sister Zhou called asking why she hadn’t come to work. She claimed she wasn’t feeling well and took sick leave.

The journey home took two hours. She quietly looked out the window the entire time. At 11 o’clock, her father’s call came back: “Weiyi, you called your mother and me so early in the morning—what’s the matter? We went out for morning exercise without our phones, then went shopping for groceries and to the supermarket. Dad just saw it now.”

Li Weiyi: “Morning exercise?”

“Yes, don’t your mother and I do morning exercise every day?”

Li Weiyi felt something was very wrong. A truth that she had been overlooking was about to become crystal clear. She asked, “What about… my sister?”

“Xiaoyi dropped Niuniu off very early this morning. She even brought a suitcase, saying she needed to go out of town with Zhihao for a few days for something. Come here, Niuniu, talk to your auntie.”

Li Weiyi’s mind went “boom.” She blurted out, “Call the police immediately! Go to my sister’s house right away! She’s going to kill Zhou Zhihao, she’s going to commit suicide!”

“What?”

“Go quickly! It’ll be too late if you’re late!”

After hanging up the phone, everyone on the bus was looking at Li Weiyi, but she stared vacantly ahead into empty space. When she had woken up, it was morning. She subconsciously assumed she had returned to the day after her sister’s death—that is, the second day after her time travel. Therefore, even though she had looked at the calendar early that morning, she hadn’t reacted.

She had returned to the same day, the repeating same day. In other words, nothing had happened yet—her sister hadn’t died, she hadn’t been laid off, there was no booking record for her at the station. She was originally supposed to stay in Xiangcheng tonight and encounter Zhang Jingchan by the rainy riverside.

It was like an eerie light flashing through Li Weiyi’s heart.

She looked down at her phone. There was still half an hour before she could reach her hometown of Chenshi.

——

January 14, 2014.

The early morning at Chenshi People’s Hospital was still very quiet. On a certain hospital bed, a young girl had a rosy complexion and steady breathing, completely opposite to the patients in other beds.

The girl slowly opened her eyes, looked at her surroundings, sat up in confusion, and saw her sister slumped over at the head of the bed.

“Sis? Sis?”

Li Xiaoyi looked up, delighted. “Weiyi, you’re finally awake?”

The seventeen-year-old Li Weiyi was completely confused. “Why am I in the hospital?”

Li Xiaoyi immediately called for a nurse and phoned their parents. Soon, after completing a physical examination, they confirmed that Li Weiyi really had nothing wrong with her—she could completely go downstairs and run ten laps.

The whole family extravagantly took a taxi home. The doctor still couldn’t explain why the child had been in a coma for exactly three days. The final conclusion was that it might be because she had been too tired from studying beforehand, her body was depleted, and then she fell into water and got a fever—this was the body’s self-compensating reaction.

“Zhang… Jingchan?” Li Weiyi bit the milk straw. “I don’t know him. I’ve never even heard of him.”

The whole family found it very strange. Li Xiaoyi touched her sister’s arm and said in a lowered voice, “He said he’s your good friend. He sent me at least ten text messages a day asking if you’d woken up.”

Li Weiyi’s face flushed as she whispered to her sister, “I really don’t know him.” She did have some admirers at school—could this person be one of them? But this person seemed way too obsessive. She suddenly felt a bit scared.

Mother Li said with a smile, “He’s our family’s benefactor. When he comes again, you need to thank him properly.”

“Oh…”

But then the Li family didn’t expect that for a long time afterward, Zhang Jingchan never appeared again, completely disappearing from their lives.

At the same time, at the Zhang family villa.

The nineteen-year-old Zhang Jingchan woke up rubbing his head, feeling like he’d been beaten up—his head hurt badly. With a cold expression, he washed up, changed his clothes, and looked down at the calendar and class schedule. Today was Tuesday. He vaguely felt he had forgotten something, but his head was dizzy and he couldn’t remember.

He went downstairs with a sullen face.

Housekeeper Sister Liu smiled like a flower, calling out in an unprecedentedly warm tone, “Achan, Achan, the bird’s nest soup is ready. Today I also added red dates and rose petals. Try it and see if you like it?”

Zhang Jingchan looked at her like she was mentally ill. “For me? Bird’s nest soup?”

Sister Liu: “Ah…”

“Who wants to eat swallow saliva? Don’t make it again in the future.”

“…” Sister Liu was about to cry. Achan, you clearly licked the bowl clean yesterday.

Zhang Jingchan looked again at the exquisite, light breakfast on the table, felt nothing but revulsion, and turned to leave.

When he got to the courtyard, he did smile. So the car his dad promised had arrived. He remembered just glancing at Ferrari keys on the shoe cabinet by the entrance earlier. He went to get the keys, started the car, and whistled.

Just as he drove out the villa gate, he saw Li Yunmo standing by the road, waving at him. “Achan.”

Li Yunmo asked hesitantly, “Achan, your head isn’t dizzy anymore? You can drive now?”

Zhang Jingchan rested one hand on the steering wheel and pressed his temple with the other. “Still a bit dizzy.” He glanced at him sideways. “How did you know my head was dizzy?” Had they drunk last night and he’d blacked out?

Li Yunmo’s eyes lit up. “Oh my, if your head is dizzy, you shouldn’t drive. How about I do it?”

Zhang Jingchan looked at him like he was looking at an idiot. “My car’s first time, I’d give it to you? How thick is your face?”

Li Yunmo was frozen as if by ice. “Ah…”

“Are you getting in or not? If not, move.”