Ch 1: Text Messages Across Time

【Yueyang Road Xingchen Internet Café, help me reserve two computers. I’ll be there at 10:30!】

【Didn’t Xingchen Internet Café shut down twenty years ago?】

【Oh? When did it shut down? How come I didn’t know?】

【Forwarded: September 5, 2004, 23:25 — A major fire broke out at Xingchen Internet Café in Xuhu City, causing 22 deaths and 39 injuries…】

……

On the evening of September 6, 2024, in a luxury hotel in downtown Xuhu, Lin Wu sat at the desk in his room, dressed in light brown pajamas, his expression serious.

In front of him were two electronic devices.

One was a black-and-white screen mobile phone produced in 2004, 11 centimeters long and 5 centimeters wide. A sticker was affixed to the back cover, and the phone looked almost brand new. The SMS interface was lit up, displaying a series of text messages exchanged the previous night.

Lin Wu studied it carefully for a while, then turned to the other device: a brand-new business laptop from 2024.

The search bar on the computer was open, showing a local news article:

[On August 26, the municipal government decided to demolish twelve internet cafés on Yueyang Road, including Changkong, Xingchen, and Feiyue. The former sites will be redeveloped into a food street…]

Ten photos accompanied the article. One of them showed a signboard photographed at the entrance by municipal workers. It had a distinctly old-fashioned design, and the two characters “Xingchen” were clearly visible.

Lin Wu closed his eyes.

He felt as if there were two separate memories in his mind.

The first: on September 5, 2004, a devastating fire broke out at Xingchen Internet Café, killing 22 people and injuring 39.

The second: no one died at Xingchen Internet Café. His memory of it was like a dream known only to himself…

……

Twenty days earlier.

Teacher Hao had committed suicide.

Lin Wu had just finished attending an academic seminar when he received the news. It was late August, the sunlight over Jianghe bright and clear. Around him were scholars and experts who had attended the conference, some discussing its content, others exchanging pleasantries and networking. Everyone wore the relaxed expression of having just completed something significant.

The atmosphere was so pleasant that when Lin Wu took the call, he felt momentarily disoriented.

It was as if his soul and body had separated. His soul was bewildered, while his body calmly asked, “When did it happen?”

“This morning at five. She jumped. They couldn’t save her. We’ve contacted the funeral home. They’ll send someone this afternoon.” Wang Manshan’s voice carried the exhaustion of someone utterly drained.

Lin Wu made a decisive choice. “I’m coming back now.”

“Will it affect your work?”

“No. I’ll check high-speed rail tickets. I can be there by seven at the latest.”

After hanging up, Lin Wu felt his right hand trembling. He didn’t bother with anything else. After briefly informing his colleagues of an emergency, he rushed back to the hotel to pack, then hurried to the train station.

Lin Wu was thirty-seven years old. His life had been full of twists and hardship.

His father was disabled, and his mother had moderate intellectual impairment. Compared to other families, his home life had always been somewhat abnormal. His father had worked at the Xuhu Steel Plant, supporting the family of three on a meager salary. Wang Manshan had been his father’s coworker, and Wang’s wife, Hao Shuqin, was a schoolteacher. The two families were closer than most.

When Lin Wu was in his first year of high school, his father died of illness. By then he was already half-grown, forced to attend school while caring for his mother. During that time, Wang Manshan’s family helped him greatly.

Though Lin Wu had not been good at expressing himself when he was young, he remembered everything.

Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin had one daughter, Wang Jiahui, two years younger than Lin Wu. Back then, she used to follow him around, calling him “Brother Lin.” In her senior year of high school, she became involved in a serial murder case. She survived, but fell into a vegetative state. A month later, Lin Wu’s mother was killed in a traffic accident while crossing the street.

These two events dealt devastating blows to both families.

At the time, Lin Wu was about to take the college entrance exam. He lived in a daze, day after day. Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin were overwhelmed with their daughter’s condition, yet they did not abandon Lin Wu. While caring for Wang Jiahui, they also paid close attention to Lin Wu’s mental state.

Under these successive blows, Lin Wu forced himself forward and ultimately became the top science student of his year.

Now he was a professor in the Department of Physics at Jianghe University. With age and experience came clarity, and he had come to deeply understand the kindness Wang Manshan’s family had shown him. Back then, he had been like someone standing lost at the edge of a cliff. It was that family who had pulled him back.

In recent years, he had come to regard them as his own family.

In a daze, Lin Wu thought of Wang Jiahui.

She had been a gentle and sensible girl, only in her first year of high school when the incident occurred. It was a series of murders targeting high school girls. Between 2004 and 2007, the killer committed five crimes. Of the five victims, only the second and third survived.

The second survivor moved quickly to another province. Wang Jiahui was the third victim. Though she survived, her brain suffered severe damage, leaving her in a vegetative state. Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin cared for her year after year, until six months ago, when she died from complications caused by her long-term condition.

“We were mentally prepared. Huihui endured for so many years. In a way, this was a release.” When Lin Wu received the news, he had returned to Xuhu. At the time, Hao Shuqin, her hair graying and eyes swollen, had instead comforted him.

Worried they might not withstand the pain of losing their only child, Lin Wu had called them every week over the past six months. Most of the calls were answered by Hao Shuqin. She would talk about what she had eaten, whether the fish at the market was fresh, her tone calm, betraying nothing unusual.

Lin Wu thought they had made it through.

He never expected Hao Shuqin to suddenly take her own life. It came like a violent storm, completely without warning.

Outside the train window, the scenery sped past. For the first time, Lin Wu felt time move unbearably slowly.

At 6:50, he arrived at the Xuhu Funeral Home.

Before retirement, Wang Manshan had been a steel factory worker, and Hao Shuqin a high school teacher. Both were well liked. When Lin Wu arrived, the farewell hall was filled with relatives, friends, and colleagues who had come to pay their respects.

Wang Manshan, wearing a black jacket, looked haggard as he received guests. Already short in stature, he seemed to have aged years in just six months.

“Uncle Wang!” Lin Wu stepped forward after steadying himself.

“You’re here?” Wang Manshan’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse. He looked at Lin Wu, as if wanting to say something, but in the end he simply pulled him into a tight embrace. “Your Aunt Hao is gone.”

“This morning she said she couldn’t sleep and wanted to go for a walk. Before she left, she asked what I wanted to eat. I said two scallion buns and some soy milk. She said the buns at the entrance of the neighborhood sell out quickly, and if they were gone, she’d get fennel ones instead. I never thought… after she left, she would never come back. I checked the surveillance. She went up there alone… stayed on the rooftop for half an hour…”

Wang Manshan kept replaying the moments before Hao Shuqin’s death. Not even he could accept that his wife was gone.

“Aunt Hao must have had a moment of despair. Please don’t dwell on it too much. You have to take care of your health…” Lin Wu’s eyes reddened. With Teacher Hao gone, he was deeply worried about Wang Manshan.

“Is this Lin Wu?”

“Lin Haiming’s son.”

“He’s grown up so much.”

………

As they spoke, quite a few workers from the steel factory recognized Lin Wu. Back when everyone lived in the same compound, their impression of him had been that he studied well, was small and skinny, gloomy, and kept to himself. In the little they remembered, Lin Wu was always carrying his schoolbag home with his head lowered. He had no real friends and was often out in the yard washing clothes for his family.

The young Lin Wu had been far too easy to overlook.

Now, though, he had come straight from the seminar venue and was still wearing the expensive suit he had worn for the conference. His hair was slightly disheveled from hurrying, but his skin was pale, his features sharp and well-formed, and his bearing calm and restrained. At a glance, he looked like an elite professional.

“Is that really Lin Haiming’s son?” Lin Haiming had been lame, and his wife had been mentally ill. No one had expected their child to grow up like this.

“I heard he’s a professor at Jianghe University…” someone said, sharing what they knew about Lin Wu.

“Jianghe!” the others murmured among themselves.

Jianghe University was one of the top two universities in the country. For Lin Wu to be a professor there, he had to be outstanding even among the outstanding. Once they learned what he did, some people wanted to go over and strike up a connection, but Lin Wu kept too much distance about him. From the moment he arrived, he had spoken only to Wang Manshan, and the occasion was not appropriate anyway. After thinking it over, none of them dared step forward.

Lin Wu paid no attention to what the others were thinking. He did his best to comfort Wang Manshan, and once the man had calmed somewhat, he went to the ice coffin in the farewell hall.

Hao Shuqin had died by jumping from a building. The mortician had arranged her appearance, but after such a fall, her features no longer had the vitality they had in life. Lin Wu took one look and could not bear to look again.

Hao Shuqin’s funeral was scheduled for a week later. During that week, Lin Wu stayed by Wang Manshan’s side as family and accompanied him through every step of the process. During that time, Wang Manshan went out alone twice. Lin Wu was worried, but despite his concern, he did not press the issue under Wang Manshan’s repeated insistence.

A week later, everyone went to the Dongshan Cemetery in Xuhu. Hao Shuqin’s grave was right beside Wang Jiahui’s. Both headstones used their ID photos from when they were alive. In the photographs, their brows and eyes were gentle. At a glance, they looked exactly like a mild and cultivated mother and daughter.

Standing before the gravestones, Lin Wu burned some spirit money and once again realized that Teacher Hao was truly gone.

At seven in the evening, Lin Wu escorted Wang Manshan back home.

Wang Manshan’s apartment had been obtained through relocation compensation after demolition. When they first moved there, it had been because the building had an elevator, which would make it easier to take Wang Jiahui up and down. Who could have expected that in less than two years, Wang Jiahui and Hao Shuqin would both die one after the other? The spacious new apartment looked bleak and empty.

After seeing everyone else off, Wang Manshan took out a bottle of baijiu and two small liquor cups. Pouring Lin Wu a drink, he asked, “What do you plan to do from here on?”

“The work on my end at the university is wrapped up, and I don’t have much going on lately. I plan to handle the demolition paperwork for the old house, and once that’s done, I’ll take you back to Jianghe with me.” Lin Wu and Wang Manshan had lived in the same steelworkers’ family compound, one in Section One and the other in Section Three. The houses in Section One had been demolished earlier, and now the policy had finally come down for Section Three as well. Lin Wu intended to finish the paperwork, then bring Wang Manshan back to Jianghe.

He had a 120-square-meter apartment there, enough room for the two of them. They had already discussed it over the past few days. Otherwise, Lin Wu could not rest easy leaving Wang Manshan here alone.

“There’s no rush about going to Jianghe.” Wang Manshan took a sip of baijiu, then, in a tone almost like casual heart-to-heart conversation, asked, “How have you been these past few years in Jianghe?”

“Pretty well. My colleagues and the university administration are both good to me. The teaching load isn’t heavy. The students there are eager to learn and very polite…” Lin Wu did not usually drink much, but he could drink, and as he sipped, he talked about work.

Hao Shuqin had been gentle; Wang Manshan steady and composed. When Hao Shuqin was still alive, the two of them rarely sat face-to-face like this and talked. Now they drank together and spoke openly, as though the baijiu might drive away the gloom that had hung over them for so long.

With the alcohol taking effect, Wang Manshan asked Lin Wu many questions about his work. At the end, he looked at him with aching pity. “You’ve suffered a lot all these years.” With Lin Wu’s family circumstances, it could not have been easy for him to achieve what he had.

“It wasn’t that hard. If it hadn’t been for you and Aunt Hao back then, I never would have been able to sit for the college entrance exam in peace.” Lin Wu’s memories of high school had already blurred, but one thing was clear: without Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin, he would never have been able to study in peace.

“We didn’t really do much. We only paid your first year’s tuition, and you paid it back in your second year.” Wang Manshan waved it off, then took out a bank card wrapped in a cloth pouch from his pocket. “This is all the money you’ve sent us over the years. We never used it. Your Aunt Hao saved it up for your wedding. Now she’s gone without a word. I thought it over, and it’s better if you take it back…”

After he had started working, Lin Wu had sent them money every year. Altogether, it had come to nearly three hundred thousand yuan.

“I don’t need it!” Lin Wu froze when he saw the bank card.

“If I’m telling you to take it, then take it. I have a pension. I don’t need this much money!” Wang Manshan stuffed the card directly into Lin Wu’s pocket, then clapped him hard on the shoulder. “What’s past is past. You’re still young. From now on, you have to live happily, truly live!”

“Not just me. You have to live happily too,” Lin Wu corrected him.

“Mhm. I’ll live happily too.” Wang Manshan gave a vague response, his mind already growing a little unfocused. As if recalling the past, he said, “Your Aunt Hao and I always regretted it. We kept thinking, if only we’d gone to pick Huihui up from school, or transferred her to another school, or never signed her up for evening study hall, maybe none of this would have happened…

“She was only fifteen when it happened. Your Aunt Hao and I always hoped Huihui would wake up, but twenty years passed, and even when she died, she never woke up… If we could choose again, it would have been fine for the two of us to trade our lives for hers. She was only fifteen when it happened. Only fifteen…”

By the end, Wang Manshan’s voice was thick with sobs.

Lin Wu drank his baijiu, his vision blurred by tears. He remembered that when Wang Jiahui had first become a victim, some people had urged them to have another child. They had refused. Many said they were foolish.

But were they really foolish?

They were only waiting for a miracle.

A miracle is called a miracle precisely because it is so hard for it to happen in real life. They had waited twenty years and never received theirs.

After Hao Shuqin’s sudden death, many of her personal belongings were still in the house, and it was inconvenient for Lin Wu to stay there. During this time, he had been living in a hotel. That day, he and Wang Manshan talked about many things. Lin Wu had already made up his mind to finish the housing demolition paperwork as soon as possible and take Wang Manshan to Jianghe at the earliest chance.

Wang Manshan also spoke of his hopes for the life ahead.

Just as Lin Wu began to think the two of them might finally emerge from the darkness, early the next morning he received a call from the police station.

Wang Manshan had killed himself.

He had jumped into the river at three in the morning, and this suicide had been planned well in advance.

Before his death, he had written a suicide note, notarized his estate, and even repaid all the ceremonial gift money he had received over the years…

Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin had both been wage earners, but Wang Jiahui’s medical treatment had left them struggling financially for years. Their most valuable asset was a ninety-square-meter apartment. They had no close relatives, so Wang Manshan left the apartment to Lin Wu, while the one hundred thousand yuan in his bank account was donated to a charitable organization for patients in vegetative states. The will had already been notarized.

Lin Wu looked at the notarization date.

August 19, the day after Hao Shuqin’s death.

Even while making funeral arrangements, Wang Manshan had never planned to keep living.

Lin Wu cried then, cried until his heart felt torn apart.

He saw the final words Wang Manshan had left for him:

Live well. Live happily.

Everyone knows they ought to live well.

But for someone trapped in the depths of despair, living well is far too hard.

✧˖°.──⋆⭒˚.⋆💌⋆⭒˚.⋆──✧˖°.