The homeroom teacher of Class Two came to the hospital after school to visit Su Ge.

From the teacher, Su Ge learned what had happened that afternoon.

After the homeroom teacher left, Su Ge picked up the candy box Lin Shilan had given her from the table and clutched it, staring at it for a long time. At the slightest movement at the door, she would quickly turn her head to look—she was waiting for Lin Shilan to arrive.

Lin Shilan was expressionlessly racing down the street.

After leaving the tutoring center, she had originally planned to take transportation to the hospital.

Infuriated by the words of the middle-aged man and her mother, she hadn’t thought to take a vehicle and just kept walking frantically on sheer momentum.

This matter of resisting her mother—only Lin Shilan herself knew that she wasn’t as effortlessly composed as she appeared on the surface.

As she walked, she kept thinking about whether her mother might be so upset that her old illness would relapse, causing breathing difficulties. In her own real world, she no longer had a mother…

Thinking it over and over, Lin Shilan asked herself: did she regret saying what she had just said?

The conclusion was: she didn’t regret it.

Caring for her mother’s feelings and choosing to hide her own thoughts, to hide her true self—wasn’t that also a form of distance? If the number of times she could see her mother was limited, Lin Shilan still hoped that in those limited encounters, they could have heart-to-heart conversations.

The distance of eight bus stops, Lin Shilan walked all the way to the hospital by sheer willpower.

At the hospital entrance, Tan Jin called out to her.

He had just finished buying the fruit basket and dinner that Lin Shilan had asked for and was riding over when he happened to run into her. Logically, these two items weren’t difficult to buy, but the fruit baskets sold at the hospital entrance had fruit that had been sitting for a while and wasn’t very fresh. Tan Jin rode his bike quite far to find a fruit store where he could assemble a fruit basket himself. That’s what delayed him until now.

“I bought some extra fruit for you to eat. The oranges are really sweet—try one quickly.”

Tan Jin’s bicycle basket was packed full. Holding the handlebars with one hand, he handed her a sugar orange.

The orange was small, cool in her hand, effectively cooling the lingering irritation in her heart.

Lin Shilan was in charge of eating the small orange, while Tan Jin was in charge of parking the bicycle.

In no time, he returned carrying the dinner and fruit basket to find her.

“Open your mouth.” Lin Shilan suddenly said to him.

Tan Jin froze.

He closed his eyes and puckered his lips.

The anticipated kiss arrived on schedule.

Except, why did the sensation feel strange?

Opening his eyes, Tan Jin saw his lips pressed tightly against two petals of… a small orange?!

Lin Shilan said in surprise: “I told you to open your mouth, why did you pucker up?”

“I didn’t hear clearly!”

He ate the orange that had teased him in one bite, his face flushing bright red.

Lin Shilan burst out laughing.

The image of him reverently closing his eyes kept looping in her mind, and she was still laughing when she entered the elevator.

His face grew redder and redder.

“You can’t laugh at me anymore!”

“Okay.” Lin Shilan tried hard to suppress her laughter, her shoulders shaking.

Tan Jin could bear it no longer.

He turned around, lowered his head, and before she could react…

He left a gentle kiss on her cheek.

The elevator ascended.

Tan Jin smiled happily: “Today’s little orange is very sweet.”

Lin Shilan’s face turned red: “It is.”

After exiting the elevator.

Before they could reach the hospital room, the door had already opened.

Su Ge’s mental state had improved somewhat compared to the morning. She dragged her IV stand along, got out of bed herself, and moved chairs for them.

Given their previous relationship, none of them could have imagined that one day they would sit in a row together, eating dinner.

Tan Jin had packed a portion of rice porridge for Su Ge, while the two of them ate noodles.

All three were hungry, and even though the environment wasn’t great, they ate with relish. Su Ge was especially considerate and drank down the entire large bowl of rice porridge.

After the meal, Tan Jin went to throw away the trash.

Finally having time alone with Lin Shilan, Su Ge gripped the candy box with both hands and mustered her courage. Her opening statement was astonishing.

“Lin Shilan, can I be friends with you?”

Lin Shilan was drinking water and nearly choked.

Su Ge quickly found a tissue for her: “Sorry, sorry! Is it that you don’t want to? I know it’s normal if you’re not willing!”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that what you said was a little bit sudden.”

Lin Shilan wiped the water from her mouth. Su Ge’s flustered appearance made her nervous too.

“My timing is kind of weird, sorry!” Su Ge lowered her head, her voice becoming smaller: “I’ve never made friends before. I want to be friends with you, but I don’t know how to say it properly.”

“We’re the same—I don’t have friends either.”

Although formally responding to this request was somewhat strange, if she didn’t answer, Su Ge would continue to feel anxious. Lin Shilan proactively placed her hand on Su Ge’s hand and said with a smile: “Sure, let’s be friends!”

Looking up, Su Ge smiled at her.

When she smiled, she was very cute, with a shallow dimple on her right cheek.

This dimple—it was the first time Lin Shilan had seen it.

“By the way,” Su Ge pulled something out from under her pillow: “You gave me something I like, and I want to give you something small too.”

Lin Shilan recognized it at once: it was the Chibi Maruko-chan charm that hung on her backpack, inseparable from her.

“It’s from my favorite cartoon when I was little, ‘Chibi Maruko-chan.’ Maruko is sincere and straightforward, has good friends, and has a harmonious family. Looking at it improves my mood, and I want to give you this feeling.”

“Wow! What a wonderful gift.”

It was a very precious gift. Lin Shilan carefully tucked it into her pocket.

The excitement in her heart was no less than Su Ge’s: so this is what having a friend feels like!

After putting away the small charm, Lin Shilan turned to look at Su Ge and noticed tears welling up in her eyes.

“Why are you crying?” She quickly moved her small stool to sit closer to the hospital bed.

Su Ge choked up: “I read ‘The Shining Multiverse,’ and I carefully looked at everything that happened in it. Today, I kept worrying that you wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore, since those were things you personally experienced…”

Lin Shilan touched her hand.

She had long since come to terms with this.

“You in other spacetimes are you in other spacetimes.”

“You haven’t experienced the spacetime I experienced. And all the Su Ges I encountered, good or bad, none of them are the you in front of me right now. You haven’t done anything bad to me.”

“Moreover, if we really want to settle accounts… the Su Ge of the third spacetime stole my supplies and got me killed once; the Su Ge of the fourth spacetime was killed by me once, and her spacetime collapsed. A life for a life—we’re already even.”

Lin Shilan’s tone was light, her smile unchanged.

Sensitively hearing the self-blame in her words, Su Ge said seriously: “Every version of you in each spacetime is trying to save people. Even if that spacetime collapsed, you shouldn’t take the blame upon yourself. Even if this place is soon submerged by floods again, the one killing people isn’t you—it’s the natural disaster.”

This topic was too heavy. Su Ge was still sick, and now wasn’t the time for depressing talk. Lin Shilan promptly changed the subject to encourage them both.

“Every spacetime I’ve experienced has subtle differences. Giving up now would be too early.”

“So you need to recover quickly. Before disaster strikes, we still need to live our lives well.”

Outside the window, the rain that hadn’t stopped for long began falling again.

The optimistic words contained somewhat insincere elements.

Having returned to the rainy season multiple times, Lin Shilan still couldn’t figure out the rules.

When multiple people escaped the village, causing too great a change in the world, it would lead to spacetime collapse.

What about when a small number of people escaped? Like the spacetime when she first returned to the rainy season—she, her mother, and some villagers successfully escaped. Did that spacetime collapse? Lin Shilan didn’t know.

As the rainfall increased, they drew closer and closer to disaster.

Currently, Lin Shilan’s only thought was: within the rule of “not causing too great a change in the world,” to keep those close to her alive.

At the very least, she wouldn’t let Tan Jin die from severe injuries trying to save her again.

A sudden vibration interrupted Lin Shilan’s wandering thoughts.

Her phone was ringing.

After telling Su Ge, Lin Shilan went to the corridor to answer.

It was her mother calling.

“Lin Shilan, where did you run off to now?”

Upon answering the phone, Lin Shilan immediately and skillfully lowered the earpiece volume.

“You’re about to take the college entrance exam, and even if you don’t want to attend the intensive class, you should at least come home. There are so many test papers piled on your desk—when are you going to start doing them?”

Her skill at contradicting her mother was steadily improving: “I’m someone about to take the college entrance exam—can you speak a little quieter to me? When you yell at me, it affects my exam preparation mood. When you yell at me and I feel bad, I want to go home and do practice problems even less.”

“You made me lose face at the tutoring center, I didn’t say anything about that, and you still dare to push your luck?”

Lu Xiaorong’s tone didn’t soften, but her voice definitely got quieter.

“Come home quickly. If you have time to wander around outside, you might as well do a few more practice sets at home.”

—The threat of not coming home to do practice problems was very effective.

In her mother’s eyes, college entrance exam scores were more important than everything else.

For the sake of the college entrance exam, her mother could even put her temper aside a bit.

Lin Shilan had a premonition: during this period before the college entrance exam, in order to make her obediently take the test, her mother wouldn’t pull any more stunts.