Words once spoken are like water spilled on the ground.
There’s a saying: spilled water cannot be gathered up again.
No matter how much Tan Jin wanted to take back what he’d just said, it was no use. He’d said he lied to her.
He didn’t cross over last year—he started crossing over this year.
After reading Chapter Four, Lin Shilan was in low spirits. Tan Jin hesitated to speak, wanting to comfort her multiple times, but he also knew that comfort wasn’t what she most desired.
She needed an ally.
The one who could empathize with her most was an accomplice.
He no longer belonged to the category of people she was willing to share her feelings with.
The two sat facing each other in silence.
She heard him beside her let out a deep sigh.
According to the original plan, after reading the book, Lin Shilan had planned to analyze with Tan Jin the information they currently had.
She’d already taken paper and pen from her schoolbag and placed them on the step beside her.
She wanted to leave.
Putting away the book, she also planned to put away the paper and pen.
“Lin Shilan! After reading the book, my mind is a complete mess. Let’s sort through this together.” Tan Jin didn’t look at her, quietly pulling away that stack of scratch paper.
Afraid she wouldn’t be willing to stay, he hastily uncapped the pen, propped the paper on his knee, and began scribbling on it.
【Reality = Spacetime 1 = Book Chapter 1
What Su Ge did: Cheated on exam; pushed Uncle Tang into well; confessed to Tan Jin.
Flood survivors: Lin Shilan, Tan Jin (?).】
“I’ll write it.” Lin Shilan extended her hand, and Tan Jin handed her the pen.
After “Flood survivors” on the last line followed by “Tan Jin,” she added a question mark beside his name.
A faint gray gloom covered his eyes: “You doubt me?”
“Mm.” She admitted.
Pulling some distance from him, Lin Shilan looked at him, her expression icy.
“Since you started crossing over this year, you can’t provide any useful information for the current organizing. I’ll write things down based on what I know, combined with the events written in Su Ge’s book.”
Tan Jin asked with an ambiguous smile: “Really? You trust Su Ge’s book more than you trust me?”
She neither confirmed nor denied.
How hurtful, Lin Shilan.
Left to the side, he watched her pick up the pen and continue writing:
【Lin Shilan’s First Year Crossing = Spacetime 2 = Book Chapter 2
What Su Ge did: Secret crush on Tan Jin.
Lin Shilan’s intervention: Advised everyone to flee town to escape disaster, a small portion listened.
Flood survivors: That portion of people who fled with Lin Shilan. But Lin Shilan died.】
【Lin Shilan’s Second Year Crossing = Spacetime 3 = Book Chapter 3
What Su Ge did: Pursued Tan Jin; robbed Lin Shilan’s supplies.
Lin Shilan’s intervention: No intervention.
Flood survivors: None.】
【Lin Shilan’s Third Year Crossing = Spacetime 4 = Book Chapter 4
What Su Ge did: Fled.
Lin Shilan’s intervention: Spread false information to make townspeople leave.
Flood survivors: None. Too many people left, the world changed drastically, spacetime collapsed.】
In the blink of an eye, Lin Shilan had filled a page of scratch paper, and she hadn’t conversed with him the entire time.
Tan Jin actively interjected, creating a role for himself.
“Lin Shilan, only the Tan Jin of ‘Spacetime 1’ is me! The ones in the 234 spacetimes afterward aren’t me. Do you want to add numbers? Don’t get them mixed up.”
She didn’t even raise her eyes: “No need for numbers, I won’t mix them up. Your situation is the same as Su Ge’s—you in each spacetime are different.”
He was about to refute when she blocked him with another sentence: “Oh, your only difference is that you have the memories of the first spacetime.”
Still not giving up on being in the same camp as her, Tan Jin obsequiously came over to add: “Alright then, I think we should also write down the spacetime we’re currently in.”
With a grand flourish of the pen, he wrote: 【Lin Shilan & Tan Jin’s Fourth Year Crossing = Spacetime 5 = Fellow Townspeople Alliance = Seeing Doctor Together = Crossing Together = Solving Mysteries Together = Playing Together】
“You’re writing nonsense,” she unhappily picked up the crumpled scratch paper. “That’s not how you write it. You’ve messed up my whole format.”
Tan Jin drooped his eyes, maintaining his pen-holding posture, feeling wronged.
His handwriting was ugly, and that last line was written especially large. Beside her neat and elegant characters, it looked like an ugly centipede crawling.
“I want to help you.” He knew he’d made her angry again.
Tearing off that page of scratch paper, Lin Shilan ripped it up in front of him.
“Don’t…” Tan Jin quietly tried to dissuade her, hurriedly picking up the pieces she’d thrown down.
“It’s meaningless.” Lin Shilan said.
“My four years have been meaningless.”
Her distinct black and white eyes were like two glass marbles, so clear yet so hollow.
“This is a parallel world. The people I save can’t reach my reality; moreover, saving too many people will destroy the entire spacetime. Saving people is meaningless. Parallel spacetimes are meaningless to me. Here, no matter what I do, it won’t affect my future.”
“So why organize the stories of parallel spacetimes? I don’t need to understand them at all anymore.”
The midday sun beat down, making people dizzy.
She sat on the step while he had to tilt his head slightly to look at her.
Tan Jin clutched the scraps of paper, his palms sweating.
In such hot weather, Lin Shilan’s voice was terrifyingly cold. Falling into his ears, it made him feel hollow inside again and again.
She said: “What’s important to me is: how can I return to my reality now; how can I escape being forced to cross into the rainy season of parallel spacetimes every year.”
She paused.
Lin Shilan showed him a faint smile: “And I do have a way. When the rain in reality stops, after I go back, I’ll go to a place without rain and can leave here forever.”
Word by word, sentence by sentence, she only said “I,” never “we.”
Tan Jin felt this ice-cold version of her was so familiar.
Just like that day when they met at the hospital.
Lin Shilan’s face distant, her words sparing as gold.
He watched helplessly as she walked back into walls of concrete on all four sides, sealing up her heart again.
She was alone again.
Tan Jin swallowed the emotions surging in his chest.
His gaze shifted away from her, fixing on a patch of light on the ground.
“Mm, when the time comes, I’ll take you out.”
“Lin Shilan, we’ll leave together.”
He secretly struggled with the words she used, imperceptibly correcting them back, as if this way they could be together.
“I’m leaving now.”
Lin Shilan stood up.
She shouldered her schoolbag and dusted off her pants.
“Where are you going?”
Tan Jin still hadn’t figured out the situation, busy stuffing all the paper scraps into his schoolbag.
She didn’t wait for him, descending the steps in a few strides and stepping into the sunlight: “I’m going to my mom’s school. Jing Jing was taken away by her this morning. I need to bring her home.”
As if guessing he wanted to follow, Lin Shilan deliberately left one sentence.
“I don’t need anyone’s help. I can handle it myself.”
She walked off on her own.
After walking some distance.
She turned back and discovered a small figure following her from far away.
Caught tailing her, his expression was like a child who’d done something wrong. Lin Shilan was looking at him, so he didn’t dare follow anymore. Lowering his head, he walked off in a different direction.
Lin Shilan, hands in pockets, walked very quickly, passing a street corner.
No footsteps chased after her from behind.
She took her hands out of her pockets and turned back again.
He really wasn’t following anymore.
Lin Shilan stopped in place.
Treating him this way, deliberately provoking him, she only hoped he could tell her why he’d lied to her.
He wasn’t willing to say.
Kicking a small stone by the roadside, Lin Shilan held back the tears welling in her eyes.
The small stone flew to the corner of a wall and shattered.
When she raised her head again, her expression became cold and hard once more.
She straightened her back and walked forward alone.