She was submerged by an overwhelming expanse of white.

Tan Jin’s mouth was moving, his voice stretched out infinitely long.

“Pocket…”

Lin Shilan barely made out these two words. She heard the wind roaring in her ears, her body plummeting at extreme speed, a powerful force pulling her in another direction.

An ominous premonition arose.

Her hand swiftly reached toward her own pocket.

Tan Jin’s treasured blue-trimmed pajamas—she was still wearing them. In the upper garment’s pocket was a piece of draft paper; she didn’t know when he had placed it there.

Lin Shilan pulled it out.

It was the paper integrating parallel spacetime information that she had previously torn to pieces.

He had carefully taped the paper back together, and on the reverse side, he had written a line of text.

Her eyes felt as if they had gone blind, the blinding white occupying her entire field of vision.

Her nose detected the scent of hospital disinfectant.

Even desperately widening her eyes, Lin Shilan could no longer read anything more.

The descent stopped.

She was like a piece of dead meat nailed to a board. Her entire body was powerless, unable to move, her limbs transmitting needle-like pain.

And her stomach—it had been hurting since earlier, hurting so much that cold sweat poured down her body.

This wasn’t Lin Shilan’s first time experiencing a similar scenario. After adjusting her breathing and taking several deep breaths, her ears gradually began to hear the surrounding voices and footsteps.

She laboriously raised her hand, wanting to look at the paper in her hand again.

That hand had just lifted when it immediately fell with a “smack” toward her face.

There was nothing in her hand.

Sunlight outside the window was blindingly bright.

In her spacetime, the rain had stopped.

Lin Shilan had returned to the reality that belonged to her.

Before losing consciousness, the weather forecast had said the rain would end after a week, but it had actually fallen for over a month.

The city had entered summer.

Her consciousness had been away for over a month.

When Lin Shilan rented the apartment, she had informed the landlady that she would “fall ill” during the rainy season. Last month, when the landlady came to collect rent and Lin Shilan didn’t answer the doorbell, according to their prior agreement, the landlady used the spare key to open the door. The room inside was messy like a garbage dump, with Lin Shilan sitting in the middle, disheveled, eating unconsciously. The old lady hurriedly called her family members, who helped send Lin Shilan to the hospital for a stomach pump.

She stayed in the hospital for two weeks.

It wasn’t until the rain stopped that she slowly regained consciousness.

Lin Shilan’s body had not yet recovered. While convalescing, she began handling the mess from that month: she had fallen far behind in her studies and might have to delay graduation; medical expenses, rent, and house cleaning fees had nearly depleted her savings. The place where she had been working part-time didn’t want her anymore because she hadn’t shown up for work. The landlady, having witnessed her illness, didn’t dare rent the apartment to her anymore, so she also had to find a new place to live…

These matters could only be considered minor; she had dealt with more troublesome situations before.

For Lin Shilan, the most significant problem was: she couldn’t contact Tan Jin.

The last time she returned to reality, he had been by her side, wandering with her around the university town.

They were like bound together, for a day and a night, unable to separate no matter how aimlessly they walked.

This time, he had disappeared.

Lin Shilan was astonished to discover that her phone in reality didn’t have his phone number saved.

Tan Jin had her number and had always been the one to call her. Lin Shilan tried calling back using the previous call records, but the other end was a public telephone booth.

—Why would he use a public phone to call her?

With doubts in her heart, she could only wait to find him before she could ask him this question.

Lin Shilan only remembered the phone number that Tan Jin used in the other spacetime, which she had often called before returning. That was his high school number.

She tried calling it, and as expected, the number was disconnected.

Thinking back, it seemed he was always the one who came to find her, while she waited in place.

At first, Lin Shilan consoled herself that Tan Jin would come looking for her.

In the hospital, whenever someone came to visit the ward, she would immediately crane her neck to look.

After leaving the hospital, she completely lost her composure.

Lin Shilan went to the entrance of the neighboring university, watching passersby, waiting desperately.

Unfortunately, after waiting several days and asking many people.

Tan Jin never appeared once, and no one recognized him.

It was truly absurd. They had been together every day before, yet the information Lin Shilan possessed about Tan Jin in reality was pitifully scarce.

The time they spent together in reality was during the initial period of their guarded reunion.

—Reuniting at the hospital, wandering the university town.

In total, she could only recall these two moments they had spent together.

He had actually never told her which department he was studying in or where he lived. Several times when Lin Shilan had asked about related topics, he had evaded them.

Detestable Tan Jin.

After repeated failed attempts at waiting, her heart grew increasingly anxious.

At her wit’s end, Lin Shilan even went to the psychiatric hospital to inquire with the psychologist who had examined her at the time.

She thought: Tan Jin had also been treated there; the hospital must have his information.

The psychologist, with rich experience, solemnly refused her request.

The reason for refusal wasn’t the official “the hospital cannot disclose patient privacy”… After hearing Lin Shilan’s description, the doctor pondered for a long time and seriously asked her a question.

“Do you believe that Tan Jin truly exists?”

Lin Shilan raised her head and looked at the doctor.

His eyes were wise and calm; he didn’t buy her story.

She had spent so much effort telling him about the miraculous experience of “parallel spacetimes overlapping during the rainy season.” To him, it was all nonsense. He held her medical records in his hands; he only cared about the diagnostic notes written there.

“Tan Jin, he truly exists. I’m certain.”

Trying hard to appear composed and logical, Lin Shilan said to him with a straight face: “Doctor, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and experienced it personally, I couldn’t possibly fabricate such a complex story for you.”

“Actually, the human brain possesses infinite potential.”

“You harbor deep shame about having a psychological illness. Your family of origin had nearly harsh expectations of you, which led you to have extremely high demands of yourself as well. You find it difficult to accept the fact that you’re ill, and your intelligent brain is capable of fabricating a perfect fairy tale for you based on this. This story helps you transform from the identity of ‘mental patient’ to ‘experiencer of special events,’ allowing you to derive comfort from it.”

The doctor spoke earnestly and persuasively, also for her own good.

“But no matter how perfect a lie is, it’s still a lie. I hope you can understand that only by recognizing your identity as a patient can you receive timely treatment.”

Lin Shilan felt utterly helpless. She wanted to prove it, but she was indeed at a complete loss for words. Supporting her forehead with her hand, rubbing it repeatedly, her mood became painful.

“I can distinguish between fantasy and reality.”

“I’m telling the truth. Tan Jin is real.”

The doctor turned around and poured her a glass of water.

“Don’t be anxious. Calm down and carefully recall the scenes where you saw ‘Tan Jin’ in reality. Weren’t they all limited to times when ‘it was raining,’ ‘about to rain,’ or ‘shortly after it had rained’?”

Taking the water, Lin Shilan sipped it one mouthful at a time, murmuring to herself as she fell into recollection.

“At the beginning, I saw him at the hospital, it was raining. After returning from the crossing, wandering in the university town, it was raining on and off. During that following week, we didn’t meet…”

Seeing her condition improve, the doctor seized the opportunity to supplement some details for her.

“Exactly. That time in the university town, according to you, you both lost consciousness for a day and a night—how could you still be together?”

“When you reunited at the hospital, he was diagnosed with exactly the same symptoms as yours. Don’t you find that strange? Because he’s just a companion you imagined.”

Without finding out Tan Jin’s whereabouts, Lin Shilan left the psychiatric hospital in a daze, carrying the doctor’s last words and newly prescribed medication.

—Tan Jin was an imagined companion.

—And she was a patient?

Walking back to the cheap hostel where she was temporarily staying, Lin Shilan climbed onto her upper bunk bed and burrowed into the quilt without washing up.

Miserable.

The feeling of misery was like a collapse at the location of her heart, collapsing into a black hole.

All the fragments of thought and her body were falling into the black hole. There was no way to maintain the intact shape of her organs; they were all crumpled together like a wrung-out dishrag.

A large stone pressed on her chest; she couldn’t straighten her back, and breathing was difficult too.

Every time she swallowed saliva, it felt arduous, her throat so dry. Even with her body lying flat, her heart couldn’t relax; even pressing her hand forcefully on the collapsed area of her chest couldn’t smooth it out.

Lin Shilan turned over.

Behind her was a window.

She just stared blankly at the city’s neon lights outside the window.

The red signboard flickered in the night sky. So many lights were on; everyone in the city wasn’t sleeping. The road constantly had the noise of traffic, and the outdoor food stalls were filled with people talking loudly.

In the higher distance, the night sky looked so quiet, yet here it was so noisy.

The girls in the lower bunks were chatting.

“I really hate the rain.”

“Yeah, after a month of continuous rain, the walls are growing mold.”

“I’ve piled up so many clothes that haven’t been dried.”

“It’s okay. The weather app shows the next two or three weeks will all be sunny.”

“I really hope the rainy season will pass quickly.”

—Rain.

—That’s right, rain!!

Suddenly, Lin Shilan sat up, nimbly climbing down the bed in a few steps.

The girls looked at her curiously. She kept her head down, focused on her own business, making quite a bit of noise.

Pulling out her luggage, finding paper and pen at the fastest speed, Lin Shilan used her knee to support the paper, scribbling characters on it rapidly.

He had told her to look at the pocket!

That line of text—she had glimpsed it; it seemed to be…

Searching through her memory, Lin Shilan took only a few seconds to finish writing.

She picked up that piece of paper and pressed that line of lost and recovered text tightly against the collapsed area of her chest.

It was like a spiritual talisman, so effectively suppressing that crumpled feeling of misery.

Tan Jin was real.

No matter what others said, Lin Shilan still believed this.

She would find him.

After her mind calmed down, she rummaged for her phone, thinking there was still one person she could ask…

The girls exchanged glances with each other. Lin Shilan had gone to find her phone; they wanted to see what was written on the paper.

The characters written in red pen penetrated through the paper’s back.

It was a line of explanation he had left behind, as well as a confession.

【Wait for the rain to come, then we’ll meet again;

True heart unchanged, loyal unto death.】