The earth exuded an earthy smell as the weather rapidly deteriorated.

Thunder roared deafeningly, and a sudden rainstorm struck.

The traffic light turned red, and people waiting to cross stood on both sides of the street.

A vendor with a pushcart hadn’t crossed over. He set up his stall in front of the waiting crowd, the old man’s voice thick with rural accent as he enthusiastically hawked his wares: “Hot roasted chestnuts, delicious roasted chestnuts!”

Urban dwellers wore similar expressions—wooden faces, weary eyes. While waiting for the light, some scrolled on their phones, some stared blankly, some gazed across the street.

A starting sedan sped forward and crashed into the old man’s stall, crushing from left to right.

Right behind it, several more cars whooshed past.

Yet the people waiting for the light faced this horrifying scene without so much as blinking—except for one person, whose body swayed, stumbling back two steps, so frightened she dropped her umbrella.

This sudden movement drew strange looks from several people. The little girl standing closest to her even tugged at her mother: “That sister looks so weird. What’s wrong with her?”

Her mother, knowing that just across this street was the city’s psychiatric hospital, quickly signaled her child with her eyes, whispering: “Don’t stare at her.”

Seeing ghosts in broad daylight.

On the road, traffic flowed endlessly, cars speeding past one after another, yet the old man and his stall remained completely unharmed in place… They didn’t belong to this world.

No one could see the roasted chestnut vendor, except for Lin Shilan.

Seeing her staring fixedly at him, the old man smiled warmly: “Young lady, would you like some roasted chestnuts?”

Roughly understanding the current situation, Lin Shilan picked up her umbrella and looked away, pretending not to see him.

The light turned green.

She hurriedly passed the stall, rushing toward the opposite street.

A pedestrian walking quickly passed by her side, their bag hooking her bracelet.

Misfortunes never come singly.

Lin Shilan felt her hand being tugged, and then her wrist loosened.

The beads she had worn for many years scattered across the ground.

The person apologized twice before instantly disappearing into the crowd. Lin Shilan had no mood to pursue the matter and bent down to pick up the beads.

The beads were so small, and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. After searching around on the ground, she only recovered one bead from the entire string. The traffic light had already entered countdown mode, so she had to cross the street first.

After waiting through another cycle of lights, Lin Shilan put on her glasses to search again, but by then she had no way to determine where the other beads had gone.

After staring blankly at the road for a while, she accepted her misfortune, tossed the bead into her bag, and gave up.

At this moment, if you could see what Lin Shilan saw, you would discover that rainwater rolled off the edge of her umbrella faster than others’, because a curtain of fine rain persistently clung to her like a shadow.

It patiently waited for a chance to drench her, like a drooling dog waiting for meat, following her step by step all the way to the hospital.

Lin Shilan held her umbrella and walked straight through the hospital lobby into the elevator area.

The woman who entered the elevator after her shot her a fierce glare.

“Is the elevator yours alone? Why are you holding an umbrella indoors? Mental case.”

Before she finished speaking, Lin Shilan’s arm reached past her and pressed the button: 2nd Floor, Psychiatry Ward A.

The woman fell silent.

Exiting the elevator, the rain disappeared, and Lin Shilan closed her umbrella.

After collecting her appointment number, she sat in a chair waiting for her turn.

Her wrist felt empty; she placed her right hand over her left, rubbing back and forth.

—Uncomfortable, physically and mentally.

Lin Shilan opened her bag, rummaged through it a few times, and found the only remaining bead from her bracelet. It lay in a corner at the bottom of her bag, in a hard-to-find crevice covered by medicine tablets and boxes.

She remembered the bracelet was originally gray-blue.

Now, it seemed only gray remained.

Her shoulders felt so heavy; she hunched her back, shrank her shoulders, and tucked both hands into her hoodie sleeves.

The LED screen in the waiting area refreshed, and a mechanical voice announced: “Patient number 119, Lin Shilan, please proceed to Consultation Room 1.”

Just as she was about to stand, someone shot up from the row behind her.

“Lin Shilan?” The person who stood up called her name.

The voice was somewhat familiar. Lin Shilan turned around, and his voice rose another pitch: “It really is you.”

She adjusted her glasses and looked at him.

The young man had single eyelids with a small red mole by his cheek; his hair wasn’t well-groomed, with a few strands sticking up messily, but his smile was brilliant.

She searched through her mind several times before finally matching this face to a name.

“Tan Jin?”

The troublesome kid Tan Jin who lived in the building across from hers. His older brother was an upperclassman she knew, academically excellent; this younger brother was also quite smart, but he was too rambunctious. They never got along since childhood and had little interaction.

“Your memory’s not bad.” Recognized by her, he immediately made himself at home and, his mind turning, started joking with her: “But you’re still wrong. Actually, my name is—Tan Xiaoming.”

This random, nonsensical joke didn’t amuse Lin Shilan. She looked at Tan Jin silently while the latter covered his mouth, giggling away.

“Is patient Lin Shilan here?” A nurse came to hurry things along.

“Here.”

Lin Shilan raised her medical card, efficiently ending this conversation with him: “I’ll go first.”

Today was her routine monthly consultation, totaling less than fifteen minutes before Lin Shilan emerged from the consultation room.

She planned to pick up medicine on the first floor.

Passing through the waiting area, she was caught by that voice again.

“Lin Shilan.”

Tan Jin strode over to her in a few large steps.

“That was close. I was just thinking, while I went to buy juice, you might come out. I spilled the juice just now—lucky I didn’t wash my hands first, or you would have left.”

“…”

She distantly widened the gap between them: “Is there something you need?”

He looked at the prescription in her hand: “You finished your appointment?”

Lin Shilan nodded.

“What did the doctor say it was?”

Were they close enough for him to ask such questions? She wasn’t very willing to answer.

“A minor ailment,” she said.

He seemed completely oblivious to her subtle displeasure and brought up a sensitive topic yet again.

“What fate, running into you in a new city. Since I left, I’ve never encountered a fellow townsperson in real life. That flood was so terrifying back then—how did you survive?”

Lin Shilan told the truth: “I don’t remember.”

“I see. After the flood, have you ever gone back to Yan County?”

“No.”

Her emotions showed little fluctuation, her voice flat.

“Go back for what? My mother died. Everyone there died.”

“Ah.”

His single eyelids drooped down, his expression like a kicked puppy.

“My family, my friends—they’re all gone too.”

He was the one who initiated this topic, yet now it seemed as if she had wronged him somehow.

Lin Shilan pressed her lips together and, after struggling for a while, squeezed out some comforting words: “That was a natural disaster. Not experiencing that calamity, you were fortunate.”

“I did experience it.”

She froze.

He didn’t dwell on Lin Shilan’s misspoken words and instantly switched topics.

“If—I’m saying if—I could see your mother, your mother before the disaster happened, is there anything you’d want me to tell her?”

“No.”

Her response came as quick as a buzzer answer.

Tan Jin’s belly full of words was firmly blocked by those two words.

The conversation died just like that.

“Wait, hold on. Wait until I finish explaining my situation before you say no!”

“Actually, I’ll tell you secretly…” He lowered his voice with an air of mystery.

“I’m not here to see a doctor—I’m not sick. I have special abilities. Superpowers, understand?”

Lin Shilan didn’t know what he was getting at, but quietly listened to his performance.

“I speculate it’s related to that major flood in our hometown. During the months with the most rain, I can travel to the past,” saying such absurd things, Tan Jin’s expression was unusually serious: “And this traveling to the past isn’t like what you see on TV—people don’t just whoosh to another place. Let me think how to explain…”

She stared into his eyes and asked: “Which past did you travel to?”

“Four years ago,” he said: “Yan County, before it was flooded.”

Lin Shilan was inwardly shocked.

Before this sentence, she hadn’t taken his words seriously at all. But now, she unconsciously clenched her fists and moved closer to him.

Seeing she was listening seriously, Tan Jin became excited, his claims growing more fantastical: “I can communicate with people from the past. Everyone there is living well, unaware of the flood. I figure, having experienced one disaster and survived, I became the chosen one, able to see what others can’t see, hear what others can’t hear.”

While talking, he suddenly lifted both feet off the ground, raised one hand high, and struck a pose resembling a flying monkey.

Lin Shilan’s temples throbbed: “What are you doing?”

“Oh, you don’t know. This hospital occupies the same space as an indoor stadium in our city. A basketball just flew over, so I took a shot.”

Tan Jin pointed into the distance, laughing awkwardly: “Haha, made it—perfect three-pointer.”

Lin Shilan stiffly turned her head, looking where he pointed.

The basketball bounced on the ground, at least two meters away from the hoop.

—But that wasn’t the point.

She took a deep breath and steadied herself against the hospital wall, though her hand was colder than the wall itself.

The basketball youth returned to their conversation, racking his brain to say something more to make her believe him: “Oh right, Old Man Zhang who sold roasted chestnuts in the village—you’ve seen him, haven’t you? On my way here today, I saw him across from the hospital. So I’m not bragging—I really can do it, pass along a message to your mother, if you want…”

Lin Shilan’s expression looked so terrible that even the oblivious Tan Jin noticed.

He scratched his neck, finally realizing that this entire long spiel hadn’t considered whether others wanted to hear it.

He hadn’t meant to frighten her.

“Are you okay? The things I’m saying are too strange—hard to believe, right?”

Lin Shilan didn’t respond.

Tan Jin felt the situation was more serious now.

He smiled apologetically, instantly backing down: “I was just making it all up. Don’t take it to heart—just think of me as a mental case.”

“I believe you.”

Seeing he hadn’t reacted, she repeated it.

“Tan Jin, I believe you.”

This time he heard clearly.

Tan Jin’s mood was like an insurance salesman who called clients every day with no one willing to talk to him. Suddenly, unexpectedly, someone was actually interested in what he had to say—he found it hard to believe.

“Really?”

“Really.” Lin Shilan’s tone was certain.

Seeing her attitude didn’t seem like she was mocking him, Tan Jin slapped his thigh, overjoyed: “Wonderful! After all this time, I’ve finally met someone who understands!”

He proactively extended both hands, his eyes showing they’d met too late, and gave Lin Shilan a vigorous handshake.

Her mind was in utter chaos right now, so she didn’t dodge.

“Tan Jin.” Lin Shilan remembered something.

“Hm?”

He grasped her right hand, happily shaking it up and down.

“I remember you said you spilled juice and haven’t had time to wash your hands?”

The dirty hands stopped mid-air; he just remembered this too.

With an ingratiating smile, Tan Jin quietly returned her hand to its original position.

It was too late to stop him. The feeling in her palm was sticky, also stained with juice. Facing Tan Jin’s cheerful smile, Lin Shilan lost her words…

They really didn’t get along after all.