Chapter 1.1 - Abnormal Death
『 Translator – Divinity 』
After a long eight years, Zhang Shutong once again returned to the small island where he grew up.
—To attend the funeral of a junior high classmate.
……
The funeral home was located in the southern part of the small island, next to the newly built road that circled the lake.
Leaning on the roadside guardrail and looking into the distance, on a clear day, the limpid sky was reflected on the lake's surface, like a sapphire gem. When the wind blew, the clouds would ripple along with it, a refreshing and delightful sight.
Today, however, the lake's surface was ashen-gray.
The sky was overcast. The moment he stepped out of the funeral home's main entrance, Zhang Shutong immediately tightened his windbreaker.
It was quite cold. He had left in a hurry and forgotten to add another layer of clothing. It was warmer inside the hall, but the sound of the dirge was dizzying. After staying for a while, he decided he would rather come out to endure the cold.
The proceedings were almost over, but they had all been classmates, a rather special relationship, so it wasn't good to leave immediately.
In his boredom, he glanced at his phone. It was a little after two in the afternoon. The funeral was not yet over, and there were still people arriving sporadically from all over.
Just like now, Zhang Shutong saw two old ladies pass by, whispering about something.
"What a pity. Such a pretty girl. I watched her grow up since she was little."
"Yes, so young, why couldn't she think things through? This time, her family line is truly finished."
"Who knows? And what about that little boyfriend of hers? Didn't they say he called to break up with her just the day before? He's also a heartless bastard who isn't fit to be human..."
Hearing this, Zhang Shutong sighed softly and bit the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek—a small habit of his when he was speechless.
He had no idea how many similar rumors he had heard today, to the point where he didn't even have the heart to refute them.
Of the two parties in the conversation, one was naturally the deceased classmate;
And the other, that "little boyfriend who isn't fit to be human," if he wasn't mistaken, was referring to none other than himself.
And for this very reason, he hadn't dared to reveal his identity throughout the entire funeral, constantly avoiding the crowd. Otherwise, even with ten more mouths, he wouldn't be able to explain himself clearly.
But the reason for this completely unfounded misunderstanding was actually a bit convoluted.
It probably had to start from a few days ago:
He had received the obituary of that female classmate the afternoon before yesterday.
The incident was sudden. By the time he had hastily booked his tickets, transferred through several vehicles from the city where he lived, and rushed to the island by boat, it was already this morning.
But now the funeral was almost over, yet his brain was still processing this piece of information.
The shock outweighed the sorrow.
Zhang Shutong was 24 years old this year.
At this age, the intersection he had imagined having with his classmates would be attending someone's wedding. If he ran into an eager one, perhaps he'd have to eat a celebratory meal and exchange a few jokes.
But he never would have imagined that the first classmate gathering he attended after graduation would actually be a funeral.
Zhang Shutong had never been a nostalgic person; otherwise, he wouldn't have gone eight years without returning to the island even once.
Even so, after learning of the girl's passing, a faint sense of regret still arose in his heart.
In truth, describing her as a "girl" wasn't quite accurate, but his memories of junior high were all stuck eight years in the past;
Junior high was a four-year system. He came to the island with his parents for their work transfer when he was 13, and then moved to the neighboring city after graduation, only 16 years old when he left.
Naturally, his impression of his peers was one of young faces.
In his memory, she was a very beautiful girl. Her personality was cool and distant, she always wore her hair in a high ponytail, and her grades were good too;
But she was not the stereotypical image of a "good girl."
The young girl spoke very little, was used to coming and going alone, and her whereabouts were unpredictable.
Their school was built on the outskirts of the small island. Outside the school gate were two roads: one led to the town further in, and one led to the mountain behind.
Every day after school, the young girl would take the second road.
It was unclear if the road up the mountain led to her home. All that was known was that while everyone else was also going home to do homework, she would crisply sling her schoolbag on her back, yet always gave off a dashing air of someone running off to save the world after school.
It was this sense of mystery that made many of the boys in the class like her;
But she always had an aura that kept others at a great distance, so very few could strike up a conversation with her, and she didn't even have any friends of the same sex.
To use a popular phrase from today, even if she wasn't the "white moonlight" in their hearts, she was at least the kind of existence that, many years later, when one recalled those dim and hazy youthful years, would make the memories themselves brighten.
But the reason his memory of her was so deep was not just because she was beautiful, but because she was much more "special" than the rest of them, who were also junior high students.
Just as every "white moonlight" girl has a legend behind her, the island named Yanlong Island was not without its own ancient legends.
The island was surrounded by water on three sides and backed by a mountain on one.
On the mountain, there was a shrine called the Green Snake Shrine, its origins no longer traceable. He only remembered that the locals were great believers, and the incense offerings never ceased all year round.
Only later did he learn that, aside from being a student, the girl's other identity was that of the temple keeper of the Green Snake Shrine.
There was only her and her grandmother in the temple. Whenever there was a major festival, she would have to ask for leave from class. At these times, her ponytail would be undone into long hair that fell past her shoulders, and she would return to the temple to help out for several days.
But the term "temple keeper" was truly a bit foreign to modern life.
He and a few of his close buddies had even argued about it several times:
Someone said a temple keeper was a Daoist priest, someone said it was a Buddhist nun, and still another said it was a Christian nun. Then someone else would retort with what kind of nonsense is that, nuns are a foreign thing, she's clearly a shrine maiden...
In short, for a long time, his impression of this female classmate was one he would mentally picture as the image of a celestial maiden, with fluttering robes and unbound black silk hair.
One time, she came to class without changing her clothes, wearing a long, cyan-colored robe;
She didn't care about the looks from others, sitting in the classroom like a girl who had just returned from cultivating immortality.
It couldn't be called a secret crush, but putting himself in their shoes, it should have been a scenario where, many years later, someone would find her wedding photo on their social media feed, followed by a group of people wailing about their bygone youth.
But what Zhang Shutong saw was a black-and-white memorial portrait.
Beyond that, there were no more memories.
Perhaps they had other interactions back then, but time is enough to wash away many things one thought were unforgettable, let alone a classmate who was merely a nodding acquaintance.
Adults and children view problems differently. Many questions that were once impossible to figure out can now be met with a nod of sudden understanding.
Yet, when it came to this young girl, she would always surface in his mind these past few days. Like a puzzle that had arrived eight years too late.
The two of them weren't that close. What he could never figure out wasn't her death—
—but why she had called him late at night on the day before her death, which was to say, three days ago.
Zhang Shutong had not been able to answer that call.
He had a habit of silencing his phone before bed. When he got up and discovered the missed call from the contact labeled "Lu Qinglian," he mulled it over for quite a while.
A wrong number?
An ordinary person's first reaction would definitely be this.
Eight years had passed; it was uncertain if she even remembered him. But based on his good impression of her, he still called back, but the call didn't go through.
He didn't dwell on the matter for long. And then, not until the afternoon of the next day;
Zhang Shutong received the news of Lu Qinglian's death.
In fact, he didn't usually go out much. To put it a bit coldly, with this level of friendship, he normally wouldn't have gone at all, at most asking a familiar classmate to deliver a gift on his behalf.
But because of that phone call, a matter that should have had little to do with him had suddenly become immensely connected to him.
Especially yesterday, when he received an inquiry from the police and only then learned that she basically never used a tool like a cell phone;
She was the young temple keeper who lived on the mountain. In the past, he only thought she was like a celestial maiden. Perhaps after so many years, the young girl had grown up and truly started living like a celestial maiden who did not partake of the mortal world.
All these years she had been guarding that mountain, and the only call she had made the day before her passing was to Zhang Shutong.
To be honest, he really couldn't stand this. It made him feel stifled.
He figured the police must have asked people on the island about the relationship between the two of them. Then, the information must have leaked from somewhere, and all sorts of rumors spread uncontrollably:
Some said her boyfriend had called her to break up, complaining that her personality was too cold, that her family's financial situation was poor, and so on;
Some said it was a call for help;
Others said it was a homicide, that she had sensed something was wrong in advance and was trying to reveal the murderer's information to him.
There were also superstitious ones, dragging ghosts and gods into it.
Anyway, Zhang Shutong had heard no less than five versions, but he didn't know many inside details either. He had only heard that she had lost her footing and fallen into the lake, that it had already been classified, and was considered an accident.
...Let's just treat it as an accident for now.
Actually, Zhang Shutong didn't care that much about the truth. He came here just to see if there was any possibility of saving her.
An accident that happened on the island eight years ago had given him this ability.
And for this very reason, if not for this funeral, he probably would never have come back in this lifetime.
It was probably a story of "Lord Ye's love of dragons." Unfortunately, the protagonist of the story was himself:
He remembered it was the summer vacation after the high school entrance exams. Every year at this time, the Green Snake Shrine would always hold a festival.
That day, he and a few close buddies went to join in on the fun. The place was packed with a sea of people, and they couldn't squeeze their way in.
Boys are wild by nature. He went around to the back of the shrine by himself to climb the wall, but he was careless, stepped on some loose gravel, and rolled straight down the mountain, losing consciousness.
When he woke up again, the sky was already dark, and he was lying on a bed in a clinic.
Later, he heard from his friends that he had been unconscious on the mountainside behind the shrine, had cut his head open, and an old grandmother had found him.
He was lucky to be alive. If his luck had been a bit worse, who would have thought to look for someone there.
His parents wanted to go and thank her, but the person who saved him had simply disappeared.
This dangerous encounter allowed him to obtain an ability that was different from that of ordinary people.
And it was on this very day that the trajectory of his life was completely changed.
Zhang Shutong named this ability "Rewind."
The specific trigger mechanism was that if something bad happened around him, he would return to a critical point before the event occurred.
Usually, a few minutes, or a few days, prior.
It was as if someone was forcing him to prevent that bad thing from happening;
Whether he was willing or not, he would be forcibly swept into it.
And if he didn't resolve it, the rewind would trigger again, repeating in a loop.
If asked about his thoughts at the time, they were actually very simple. He was just consumed with excitement. After all, time reversal or whatever, it sounded like a superpower that could save the world—super awesome.
"—I alone am unique."
No boy of that age could resist such a thought.
In the beginning, Zhang Shutong did indeed do many "good deeds" in the worldly sense.
After starting high school, in the first year alone, he relied on the rewind to prevent several car accidents on his daily bike ride to school.
That was probably in 2013. It was when "The Amazing Spider-Man" was released. He came out of the movie theater after the midnight showing, the wind blowing against him. He walked all the way home in one go, not feeling the cold, as if he had received some great encouragement;
The friendly neighborhood Spider-Man might not be real, but at least in his residential complex, he was.
Although he never ran into any supervillains, that year he successfully stopped two incidents of domestic violence, one affair, and one home invasion robbery.
And then there was his brand new high school life:
There were those who couldn't get over a failed love confession;
those who wanted to jump off a building because the academic pressure was too great;
and those whose families were going through all sorts of situations...
He gradually became overwhelmingly busy, with the rewind often triggering every few days.
He was certainly happy to be able to help others. Although he was also exhausted every time.
At that time, he had a crush on a female upperclassman. It was summer. His social life had always been pretty decent. Once they got to know each other well, the two of them agreed to see a movie after the monthly exam. However, that day, Zhang Shutong stood her up.
It wasn't because he didn't care.
A young mother was sitting in the movie theater lobby. The woman was crying nonstop. Police officers in uniform had cordoned off the scene, and from the snippets of idle chatter, he learned that a child had gone missing.
Before he could react further, in the next moment, the rewind triggered.
That day, he rewound a full five times and finally found the abducted child, after which he collapsed at home, completely exhausted.
But that summer date seemed to have become a reality that could never be reached.
It was also on that day that Zhang Shutong discovered a terrifying fact.
He could help others escape their unbearable pasts.
But the one who ended up trapped in the past was himself.
The rewind kept triggering nonstop, impossible to control.
From Monday to Friday, for anyone else, it was a week's time, but for him, it was as long as a month.
Finally, in his third year of high school, he nearly collapsed under the ceaseless rewinds and was almost diagnosed by a doctor with a split personality, the reason being the many non-existent "memories" in his brain.
During the most severe period, he holed up alone in a rented apartment, not daring to have contact with the outside world. He could only rely on food delivery for his daily meals, and if he occasionally wanted to go out for a breath of fresh air, he had to choose the middle of the night.
Then he took a leave of absence from school. For the sake of medical treatment, he moved with his parents to a more distant city and transferred to a new school.
Something magical happened.
The frequency of the rewinds decreased significantly.
Those trivial, everyday matters no longer sent him back to the past.
But it only decreased. Just like an eternal nightmare, the ability he accidentally obtained at the age of 16 had completely changed his life. Unable to be normal, he could only strive to keep going.
Later, he endured until he graduated from university. Then, because he had to reduce the frequency of his contact with others, he moved out on his own and found a work-from-home job.
In these few years, he saved up some money, so it wasn't hard to support himself. But sometimes, in his deserted room, he would also think about the future.
Parents getting old, getting married and having children... Where was his future? For the time being, he still couldn't see it.
The him of today still didn't like to go out much, and his life wasn't all that great either. But at least he had finally broken free from the ceaseless rewinds.
In these days where he couldn't see an end in sight, two days ago, he received the obituary of his junior high classmate.
His experiences over the years had made him a person who was very afraid of trouble. In the past, he was always forced to get involved in all sorts of incidents, and the suffering was unbearable;
But this time, and this time only, Zhang Shutong wanted to proactively use his ability to hear the contents of that phone call.
Therefore, after a long eight years, he once again returned to this island that had changed his life.
It was just that two hours had already passed since he set foot on the island. A short while ago, he had gone to the memorial hall and stayed by the body for a long time, but the rewind still hadn't happened.
He shouldn't have held out hope in the first place.
Gazing at the distant lake surface, Zhang Shutong sighed.