Ban Xia leaned against the collapsed pillar of the corridor, sitting there until dawn. In the morning sunlight, wild grass grew everywhere, the breeze carried the scent of soil, and everything was awakening—except for this city, which hadn’t awakened and never would again.
The shovel and knife lay on the ground as the girl looked down at her hands, covered in soil, joints stinging with pain.
She tilted her head back, resting it against the rough concrete pillar, staring blankly at the sturdy framework above. The lattice formed by intersecting precast panels was open-worked and mounted on pillars to form a corridor. While it couldn’t block wind or rain, it was perfect for climbing vines. She imagined that in the years before the world’s destruction, this corridor must have been covered with a thick green blanket of dense plant vines and foliage.
But now everything was gone. Half the corridor had collapsed, burned black. While weeds grew everywhere in this world, this corridor alone remained bare.
Her hands hurt.
Waves of stabbing pain, the index and middle fingers of both hands swollen like steamed buns from forcefully hitting against stones.
She had dug too desperately, too hastily, too frantically last night, ignoring her injured hands.
She had dug from 3 AM until 6 AM, over three hours, turning over almost every floor tile. Towards the end, Ban Xia had become desperate. She even began to think she wasn’t really in 2040 Nanjing, but rather in an isolated parallel universe where nothing could be sent out except radio waves, and nothing could come in except radio waves.
Now that she had calmed down, she silently pondered what had gone wrong.
Where had that time capsule gone?
Had someone dug it up during the past twenty years?
The girl sat on the long bench, leaning sideways against the pillar, lost in thought, her legs together, eyelids lowered, thick eyelashes trembling slightly.
A sparrow appeared from somewhere, hopping on the ground, tilting its head to look at the girl, fluffy like a ball. Ban Xia mentally calculated the difficulty of catching it to take home for soup, then abandoned the plan—catching birds required a net, and it was too difficult barehanded.
Ban Xia had no concept of time delivery. In her imagination, it was a simple process—both parties agree on a location, one person buries the time capsule, and then the other digs it up.
Just that simple.
But reality proved this simple process had failed.
This meant time delivery wasn’t as simple as she had imagined.
Ah.
Ban Xia sighed.
She couldn’t figure it out.
She had never been a particularly clever person.
Better ask the teacher.
The teacher knew everything, maybe she could get some enlightenment?
The girl picked up the shovel and knife from the ground, got up, brushed off the dry soil and dust from her body, and disappeared into the grass.
That evening.
Bai Yang, fresh from his shower and hair still wet, sat down at his desk. With one hand rubbing his hair with a towel, he deftly turned on the radio.
The afternoon had been exhausting. After watching “The Captain” at Wanda Cinema, Yan-ge had insisted on visiting the cat café, so the three of them went looking for one—though it wasn’t just a cat café, it had dogs and even ducks. In the café, Bai Yang encountered a proud British Shorthair. While other cats were fighting over cans of tuna cat food, that British Shorthair sat on the cat tower, steady as a mountain, eyes fixed straight ahead. It was so proud that Bai Yang and the others felt it must be the shop manager. Yan-ge said these cat aliens might seem like pets kept to attract customers, but perhaps they were the real owners, holding big meetings after closing time to discuss the day’s business and which humans were most docile, with the British Shorthair sitting high on the cat tower announcing: “Let me briefly meow a few words…”
Before Yan Zhihan could finish speaking, that British Shorthair had leaped down and knocked over the lemonade the server had just brought.
Soaking He Leqin’s pants.
“BG4MSR, BG4MSR, this is BG4MXH, how are you? Did you receive the time capsule? OVER.”
Bai Yang called into the handmic.
“…What? Nothing? No time capsule?”
Bai Yang was stunned.
“Sister, are you sure you dug in the right place? OVER.”
“Yes, yes, under the corridor at the community plaza, beneath the floor tiles, OVER.”
“Nothing?”
“Still nothing after digging everything up?”
“BG4MSR, it’s a stainless steel container, about as long as a mineral water bottle, OVER.”
“Didn’t see it?”
Bai Yang sat dumbfounded in his chair, then pressed the hand mic and said: “BG4MSR, please wait a moment, OVER.”
Then he took off his headphones, put on his pants, and rushed out.
“Yang? Where are you going?”
“Be right back—!”
After changing shoes at the entrance, Bai Yang ran downstairs, hurrying to where he had buried the time capsule last night, not bothering with the lawn as he cut straight across the flower bed.
His feet stepped onto the corridor’s floor tiles as he crouched down, panting, to check. Everything was still as he had left it last night. After burying the time capsule, to prevent others from discovering it, he had very carefully replaced all the soil, restored the tiles to their original position, and even swept the ground clean… Bai Yang found no signs of disturbance, not even the faint scratches on the tiles had changed.
He sat on the long bench, catching his breath and wiping away sweat.
No one had touched it.
The time capsule was still there.
Why hadn’t she found it?
Bai Yang walked home step by step, pondering as he went.
Could it be that in the next twenty years, someone had intercepted this time capsule?
What were the chances of that happening?
He had already confirmed with BG4MSR that the community plaza hadn’t been destroyed, no large craters had been blown, and the ground hadn’t been turned over. So the time capsule couldn’t have been exposed to people’s eyes on its own—unless someone actively dug for it. But who would dig for it? Who could know there was a time capsule buried in the carefully chosen hidden spot?
Bai Yang entered the building, slowly climbing the stairs.
He thought of certain murder cases where killers had buried bodies and bones underground for decades without discovery.
So the probability of the time capsule being intercepted was very, very small.
Which meant the other possibility was very, very likely.
That is—she never went to dig at all.
Using Occam’s Razor to cut away all unreliable speculations, the final, most reasonable conclusion was obvious—Bai Yang had been played.
This was all nonsense.
Radio waves from shortwave radio couldn’t possibly travel through time and space (Einstein and Maxwell lay content in their graves). BG4MSR just lived in some building in the Meihua Mountain Villa community, and this drama queen sister just wanted to prank Bai Yang, so she made up a story and played him like a fool. Perhaps at this moment, she was leaning on her balcony, watching with interest as Bai Yang rushed about—what a twisted sense of humor.
Bai Yang felt quite annoyed.
Looking back at everything now, whether it was this time capsule or the meeting half a month ago, how obvious it was that she had been acting. How had he been so bewitched before?
He felt he had let down his physics teacher in the grave. As a high school senior who always passed his physics tests, how could he have believed such nonsense about super-temporal communication?
All these years of education might as well have been eaten by He Leqin.
Was it just hearing a girl’s clear voice that made him lose his bearings so completely?
To think he had even written her a letter so solemnly.
Too juvenile.
Too embarrassing.
Bai Yang covered his face.
Fortunately, no one else knew about this, or it would have been social suicide.
He sighed—this was the end. When he went back, that girl would probably reveal the truth, and if she didn’t, he would. There was no point in continuing this act.
He didn’t want to play along anymore.
What kind of skill was it to lurk in the shadows causing trouble? If you’ve got the guts, come out tomorrow and face off.
Goodbye!
73!
Farewell to you!