Lin Shilan was crying.

When she cried, she had a strange feeling—she felt like she was herself, yet not herself. Her ears could hear the sound of crying, but her mind didn’t quite understand why she was crying. Her vision and hearing had both grown dull, and half her body seemed to have lost all sensation.

While wiping away her tears, she pondered why things had become this way.

Then, when she caught sight of the semi-transparent wall in her home, she found her answer: detaching from the past and returning to reality also had premonitions.

It seemed the rain in the real world had stopped.

Her gaze pierced through the wall, and Lin Shilan saw a furtive figure crouching outside her home.

He held a bamboo fruit basket with both hands, his broad shoulders facing away from her, his large frame trying hard to squeeze into the tiny corner.

Completely unaware that he was exposed, Tan Jin remained perfectly still as he eavesdropped by the wall.

In this comical scene, Lu Xiaorong’s scolding voice gradually faded into the distance.

Lin Shilan felt herself being pulled up, viewing her high school self from a great height, the signals received by her five senses fluctuating wildly.

As if pushed from behind in a dream, the scene before her eyes froze, and she jolted awake instantly.

Opening her eyes again.

She appeared in the bustling university district.

Not far away stood Tan Jin.

Seeing Lin Shilan, he didn’t know where to put his hands and feet, frantically trying to hand her something he’d been clutching in his arms… he handed her air.

“Huh?”

Gasping, Tan Jin’s eyes widened like copper bells.

“We’re back again?!”

“Yes, you were really concentrating on your eavesdropping.”

Lin Shilan checked the time on her phone—a full day had passed.

She looked down at her clothes and pants—nothing unusual, except her legs were very sore. She guessed that while she was here, she and Tan Jin had walked around for a day and a night.

Opening her bag, Lin Shilan found the medication she needed to take. She was extremely skilled at taking pills now, able to swallow them directly without water.

When her consciousness returned to the past, she had no knowledge of what she’d done in reality during that elapsed time.

Based on others’ descriptions, there were roughly two situations: she’d fall into rigidity or unconsciousness until someone found her and sent her to the hospital; or sometimes, like today, she would sleepwalk, wandering around without awareness or consciousness.

The doctor told her that dissociative symptoms appearing in PTSD patients were very common.

Even so, Lin Shilan remained terrified by this feeling of “waking up not knowing where I am or what I’ve done.”

Beside her, Tan Jin chattered away.

She wasn’t paying attention; he’d been talking to himself for quite a while now.

“…If you want to study, I’ll study with you. However you want to do it, I’ll follow your lead.”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping at your door, I was delivering fruit… Now that you’re back to reality, won’t you talk to me either?”

“No,” Lin Shilan smiled at him. “Let’s talk while we walk. I want to find a restaurant to eat.”

Out of sync or not, you don’t slap a smiling face. Besides, this fellow patient truly shared her affliction to the core—it was rare that after a day and a night had passed, they’d wandered randomly yet still managed to stay together.

She took the lead, and the two found a stir-fry restaurant to sit in.

The dishes arrived quickly. Lin Shilan remained mostly silent, with Tan Jin doing most of the talking.

“Your thinking isn’t wrong—things from the past can’t be brought to the future.”

“Then how about we use information from the future to enjoy the past? Experience life we never experienced before.”

She could tell he desperately wanted to help, to make them both gain something from these repeated time travels.

Lin Shilan asked the restaurant for two bottles of beer and filled her glass.

After drinking three glasses, she spoke: “Do you want to live there as if it were real life?”

Her eyes harbored complex emotions as she looked straight at him and said, “The more realistic the hallucination, the harder it becomes to detach from it.”

Their disagreement lay here: Lin Shilan treated their time travel as an illness, but Tan Jin didn’t.

A phone call came in, causing the dining table to buzz and vibrate.

The phone rang incessantly.

She let it ring without answering.

Perhaps her question was too difficult, as he used the phone as an excuse to change the subject: “Not answering?”

Lin Shilan shook her head: “Unknown number.”

Annoying.

The rain had just stopped, and now it was starting again.

A few raindrops hit the plastic canopy extending from the restaurant, pattering like someone pouring beans on top, making quite a racket.

Tan Jin ultimately still answered her question.

“But. I can see it, and you can see it too.” He pointed toward the empty seat next door, where the rain outside made small yellow-white flowers bloom on the tabletop.

Lin Shilan picked up food and ate, not looking where he pointed.

“Just because most other people can’t see it, does that mean what we see isn’t real?”

Tan Jin’s voice wasn’t quiet, and his gestures were large, drawing curious looks from other customers.

She lowered her voice and beckoned him: “Alright, come over here to talk.”

He complied.

Lin Shilan actually admired Tan Jin—he truly didn’t care at all if others treated him as an outcast.

Feeling stifled inside, she sipped her drink in small mouthfuls, unknowingly finishing an entire bottle.

Her cheeks flushed pink, Lin Shilan exhaled a breath, tucking her scattered hair behind her ear.

Normally, her face was beautiful but emotionless, no anger, no expression, like something painted with only black and white brushes. After drinking, revealing a bit of her ear, even her expression softened considerably.

“Why can you be so optimistic about returning to the past?”

Her fingertip tapped the glass as Lin Shilan no longer concealed her confusion.

“Honestly, Tan Jin, I really don’t understand—how have you spent these four years?”

He was rarely silent.

After a long while, he still hadn’t figured out how to begin.

“Then I’ll tell you my story first.”

After several drinks, Lin Shilan began recounting her experiences before meeting him.

“The first year’s rainy season was later than this year…”

May 2019, continuous rain.

The first time seeing a ghost was in the dormitory.

Water dripping on her face woke Lin Shilan. She felt the bed board above her head completely soaked. The bedroom was utterly quiet. She moved her body and shivered from the cold, suddenly discovering that half the bed was water, her lower body soaked in a drenched blanket. Most bizarre of all, a dark shadow stood motionless at the foot of her bed in a bent-over posture, as if examining something.

Lin Shilan woke everyone in the dormitory, but no one believed her description. The girl sleeping above her, hearing her say “the upper bunk is leaking,” indignantly pulled back her own bedding to show everyone.

From that moment, Lin Shilan realized that what she saw, others couldn’t see. Because the bed board above her head was damp, the blanket clutched in her hands was clearly wet. But after the other seven people in the dorm touched them, they all said they were dry, nothing abnormal.

After that, Lin Shilan saw ghosts increasingly often.

She saw deceased people from her hometown at school, smiling and greeting her. The grocery store she frequented as a child floated horizontally in mid-air on the route she had to take for her summer job… such occurrences were countless. Strange phenomena appeared regardless of day or night, randomly appearing and disappearing.

Lin Shilan’s summer plans were completely disrupted. Unable to work or study normally, she was distracted during the day and suffered insomnia at night. Wherever she went, strange things followed. Her roommates were also annoyed by her intermittent startling. Previously, when Lin Shilan studied well, they’d occasionally talk to her, but now they avoided her. The dorm leader had hinted to Lin Shilan several times, hoping she’d approach the counselor herself and request a room change.

One day, Lin Shilan returned to the dorm after work to find her belongings thrown outside the dormitory door—whether this was human doing or ghostly mischief, she didn’t know. To pick them up, she crouched on the ground, the distress in her heart keeping her from standing up again for a long while.

With no other choice, Lin Shilan sought help from Cao A’yi, an old friend of her mother’s from the same city, who kindly took her in temporarily. Cao A’yi was religious. After hearing what had happened to Lin Shilan, she began taking her along every day to burn incense and worship deities.

Late June, abundant rainfall. Bizarre spaces from the old days overlapped extensively with the real world. Lin Shilan wandered through them, beginning to lose the ability to distinguish whether her surroundings were human or ghost.

Wisps of divine incense rose toward the misty sky. Cao A’yi chanted prayers, teaching her to kowtow until her head thudded loudly. Lin Shilan clasped her hands together, staring blankly at the incense ash scattered around the prayer cushion.

On a certain day in the temple, the past completely devoured reality, and Lin Shilan returned to Yan County from a year ago.

That Yan County from the past was too vivid—she felt as if she’d been reborn. Occasionally returning from the old days to reality, she would describe it to Cao A’yi, and from Cao A’yi’s expression she knew she was making her uncomfortable.

Lin Shilan didn’t know what caused all this to appear or what the pattern was, but only she could time travel, only she knew the date of the disaster there.

Unable to watch everyone die before her eyes, Lin Shilan made every effort, persuading everyone she encountered to evacuate and seek refuge elsewhere.

She was cursed by many people, treated as mentally ill by relatives and friends. She embarrassed her mother and broke her mother’s heart.

However, in the end she did persuade some people, and she and her mother also escaped to another place before the disaster occurred.

Only, during the ten days of disaster, the rain in the real world stopped for one day.

Lin Shilan briefly returned to reality, and when it rained again, she was directly transported back to the already-stricken Yan County, powerless to resist as the floodwaters drowned her.

When she woke again, July 26, 2019, she returned to the real world.

In reality, nothing had changed.

Those Lin Shilan had persuaded, who had evacuated to seek refuge, had not survived in the real world. They died in last year’s flood, just as everyone knew.

Only in her experience had they died twice.

“That was the first year.”

The bottle wouldn’t pour any more alcohol. Her eyes hazy from drink, she prepared to have the restaurant bring another bottle.

“Next, the second year.”

Tan Jin stopped her: “Don’t drink anymore. Tell me next time.”

Lin Shilan gripped the bottle with both hands, shaking it vigorously.

Her eyes held a pool of tears that, with all this shaking, were about to spill over.

He seized her drink, telling her to stop making a fuss.

Lin Shilan was very unhappy: “Why? Why can’t the rainy season end?”

She huffed indignantly, her lips pouting to the sky, throwing a tantrum at him: “It keeps raining, it’s always raining!”

Her free hand flailed about randomly. Lin Shilan grabbed at random and caught hold of Tan Jin.

He didn’t even know to dodge.

She pinched the flesh of his cheek and pulled it like kneading dough, playing with it.

She swayed drunkenly and laughed, blooming like a flower.

“I know!” Recalling the silly thing he’d said before, Lin Shilan picked up a ready-made answer: “The rainy season can’t end because aliens have appeared!”

“It’s because of a vow.”

Tan Jin suddenly said this.

She propped her head up with one hand, dazed.

He didn’t know if she understood.

“The rainy season can’t end because there’s a vow that can’t be let go, but you’ve forgotten it.”

Her hand lost strength, and Lin Shilan’s heavy head drooped down as she worked hard to digest Tan Jin’s words.

He had a pair of clear black eyes, radiating soft, shimmering light; they held only her, nothing else existed in them.

Her waterfall-like long hair cascaded down.

Tan Jin smiled gently, raising his hand to smooth her hair for her.