After the two washed their hands clean, there was no time left for idle chat.

Tan Jin’s number was called, and he went in to see the doctor first.

Lin Shilan sat outside waiting for him.

Alone, the jumble of thoughts filling her mind finally had time to settle.

Her gaze fell upon the basketball hoop at the entrance to the public restroom, standing there incongruously. A man passed by, his body overlapping with the metal frame for an instant without colliding—instead passing right through it. The man’s steps didn’t pause as he walked straight into the restroom.

The small vendor stall in the middle of the crosswalk, the basketball court at the hospital consultation area—they appeared eerily in places they shouldn’t be, as if thrown indiscriminately into her life by some force from another dimensional space…

This was merely the beginning of the rainy season. Next, based on past years’ experience, even more bizarre things would happen.

Her eyes caught sight of the basketball Tan Jin had thrown earlier, and Lin Shilan’s mind gradually became occupied by one thought. She realized she had encountered a heaven-sent turning point.

—Someone else could see what she saw.

This belated surge of excitement made her heart race. Staring at the tightly closed consultation room door, the chair suddenly felt unbearably hard, making it impossible to sit still.

Lin Shilan shot up from her seat, craning her neck to look inside.

She saw nothing.

She couldn’t help thinking: Wasn’t he taking too long?

Lin Shilan instinctively wanted to touch the bracelet on her left wrist, but touching nothing, she remembered it had broken earlier.

“Creak—” The glass door made a sound.

The door was pushed outward with considerable force, and the person running out from inside seemed as urgent as if their backside were on fire.

It was Tan Jin.

He took three steps as two, rushed up to Lin Shilan, and his first words were:

“Thank goodness you didn’t leave.”

Shoulders tense, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, the medical card clenched in his fist—Tan Jin might as well have written “I’m anxious” in large characters across his forehead.

“The doctor questioned me for so long. If you’d left by the time I came out, where would I find you?”

Watching him in such a fluster, her own restlessness was subtly relieved, and she could even comfort him in return.

“Catch your breath and speak slowly.”

Tan Jin, bursting with things to say, couldn’t wait to share his doctor visit experience with her.

“The doctor did a brain CT first—nothing wrong after that. Then he started chatting with me, practically interrogating me, going through my entire life history including what age I was weaned. He wanted me to honestly tell him everything, so I didn’t hide anything. The more I said, the more he asked, writing furiously in the medical records as he questioned me. Finally, I refused to say more. The doctor strongly recommended I stay for observation. I wasn’t willing, but he still insisted I come for weekly checkups.”

He opened his fist—sure enough, the medical card was densely covered with writing.

“Is it that serious? I came to the hospital hoping someone could prove I’m not sick.”

—Clearly, that hope had fallen through.

Lin Shilan asked him the question he’d asked her not long ago.

“His diagnosis—what’s your condition?”

“Look at this, there’s a long string here,” Tan Jin handed her the medical card: “He mentioned that I have PTSB.”

“Don’t you mean PTSD?” Lin Shilan couldn’t help but laugh: “No matter what, the doctor can’t call you an idiot.”

“…”

Tan Jin hadn’t expected Lin Shilan to curse, and she’d caught him squarely with it.

This profanity also closed the distance between them.

Lin Shilan took out her own diagnostic card from her bag.

“Here, let me show you mine.”

Tan Jin took it and began reading.

As he read, he sensed something was off.

Placing his diagnostic card side by side with hers, he understood what was strange: their cards were like copy-paste—symptoms he had, she also had.

—What did this mean?

Tan Jin looked up, gazing at Lin Shilan in bewilderment.

“Your three-pointer didn’t even hit the rim.”

She said to him: “From four years ago until now, Yan County haunts me relentlessly. It entangles me the same way.”

“We can see the same things.”

Tan Jin’s eyes lit up, like a splendid fire igniting in the silent night.

They found another secluded waiting area and sat down in a corner.

The conversation pulled their memories back to four years ago, that July of torrential rain.

July 17, 2018—Nanyu City suffered a catastrophic flood. Among the affected areas, Yan County experienced a rare massive landslide, with the entire county flooded on a large scale. The torrential rain didn’t stop for ten days. The entire county lost power and food supplies, bridges and roads were completely destroyed, making rescue operations difficult. The county suffered heavy casualties, with large numbers of people missing.

Lin Shilan was a rare disaster survivor.

Therefore, in their previous conversation, she had assumed Tan Jin hadn’t experienced this disaster.

So the question she most wanted to ask him was: “Back then, how did you survive?”

“Me?” Tan Jin rolled up his sleeves, preparing to recreate the scene for her.

Lin Shilan quickly stopped him: “Just tell me—no need for physical demonstrations.”

“Oh.” He obediently placed his hands back on his legs: “In the rolling flood waters, I relied on my excellent arm strength to grab onto a tree. But my body was too heavy and kept sliding down. That’s when I had a flash of inspiration—images of cavemen’s wilderness survival floated through my mind. While imagining how they climbed trees, I wriggled upward. And I managed to embrace the tree.”

Even without hand gestures, he still spoke vividly.

After telling his own story, Tan Jin asked: “What about you? How did you survive?”

This was the second time he’d asked her this question, and Lin Shilan’s answer was the same as before.

“I don’t remember.”

“Why not?”

“I was too severely traumatized. My attending physician said psychological defense mechanisms made me choose to forget that terrible memory.”

He stared at her, his gaze carrying some scrutiny, as if suspecting she was deliberately withholding information.

Lin Shilan sighed: “I’m not lying to you—that’s the truth. There were media reports about me at the time. You can still find them on your phone now. I’ll give you the headline to search: ‘Girl Trapped Ten Days in Massive County-Wide Flood Miraculously Survives.'”

Tan Jin looked thoughtful: “Have you tried to remember since then?”

“Yes, but it yielded nothing. After I was rescued, I remained unconscious in the hospital, lying there for weeks. According to the nurses who cared for me, I kept running a fever and talking deliriously—maybe my brain got damaged from the fever.”

He seized on a key point and asked: “Talking deliriously? What did you say?”

“The nurses said I kept repeating the words ‘swear an oath,’ but I have no memory of it.”

“Hmm.” Tan Jin scratched his neck and temporarily dropped the topic.

“You don’t remember how you survived. If we go back there again after a while, that’ll be quite troublesome. Never mind—when the time comes, I’ll lead the way.”

Lin Shilan understood what he meant.

Today was April 13th.

In their city, the rainy season lasted roughly from early April through the end of July each year.

During this period, the former Yan County would reappear in their world. When the rain in reality wasn’t heavy, they could see blurred phantoms of parts of the village. During the wettest period of the rainy season, they would completely return to the past, back into their high school selves’ bodies.

Within this time travel existed a special date—the day the disaster occurred four years ago: July 17th through 26th.

Every year during these ten days, if they were lucky and it didn’t rain in reality, they would pass through safely and happily. If unlucky and it rained heavily in reality during these ten days, they would be trapped in the village, reliving that year’s flood disaster.

Because she couldn’t remember how she had “miraculously survived” before, in the unlucky scenario, she would be trapped and experience death in the past.

The reason she knew this was because…

In the previous three years, Lin Shilan had already died twice during the rainy season.

Even though after dying she successfully returned to reality, the taste of drowning—no one would want to experience it, much less experience it repeatedly.

Taking a long breath, Lin Shilan looked down dejectedly.

The floor beneath her feet was light blue—the hospital’s plastic flooring.

No more than half a fist’s distance from her, the floor under Tan Jin’s seat was brownish-yellow. It had faint wood grain—that was basketball court flooring.

The abnormalities were spreading faster than in previous years.

This year had many rainy days with heavy rainfall—the rainy season would likely be very long.

Tan Jin noticed what she was looking at and spoke to pull Lin Shilan back.

“Two types of flooring pieced together—you have to admit, it actually has quite an artistic atmosphere.”

She didn’t respond.

He stretched lazily, his tone deliberately casual.

“What we’re seeing reminds me of playing computer games—there’s an operation called exploiting bugs. When the rain comes, I know I’ve found the game’s bug. Other players don’t understand what I’m doing moving around everywhere, and the game interface becomes increasingly chaotic and bizarre. Gradually, my character can see through walls, seeing things other players can’t see. We should just treat our current experience like playing a game—these weird, bizarre scenes are only temporary. Once we successfully exploit the bug, we’ll reach a new world.”

Tan Jin was truly optimistic. It was just that Lin Shilan had never played computer games.

“What we’re seeing could reasonably be explained as symptoms of mental illness.”

Lin Shilan’s voice was listless. Her face was pretty, but her expression utterly uninteresting.

“PTSD, also called post-traumatic stress disorder,” she recited the explanation that the people treating her over these years had given her: “Back then, the flood you experienced was the trauma that caused your mental illness. The trigger is rain. When it rains, you always experience hallucinations. The heavier the rain, the worse your hallucinations. The so-called returning to the past is merely a dissociative phenomenon—patients feel loss of sensation and touch, detached from their surroundings…”

“That’s not it.”

Tan Jin couldn’t help but interrupt her.

In his view, Lin Shilan was being far too pessimistic.

“We can both see the same things—how could hallucinations be identical? That’s enough to prove we’re not crazy.”

“But what if we’re both crazy?”

Their two medical cards lay beside them—she also wanted him to give her an answer.

Tan Jin stiffened his neck, holding back his energy.

He was stumped by the question.

They glared at each other like they were sulking, the situation at an impasse.

Dark clouds from another dimension drifted over, and a thunderclap exploded beside their ears.

The weather didn’t care about their mood—heavy rain suddenly fell indoors at the hospital.

Rainwater poured down, and Tan Jin instantly became a drowned rat.

The two frantically searched for something to shelter from the rain.

Lin Shilan hurriedly pulled the umbrella from her bag.

Tan Jin took it and opened it with practiced ease.

They were both under the umbrella.

He saw the small water stain on her shoulder where rainwater had soaked through.

She saw his wet black hair, his hairstyle flattened, particularly comical.

Then, neither of them thought anymore about how to answer the question she’d asked earlier.

Because.

It didn’t matter anymore.

After all, there was someone to share the same rain with you.