Ch 10: Text Messages Across Time

On September 5, a fire broke out at Xingchen Internet Café, and Lin Wu received the first strange text message.

On September 6, the outcome of the fire changed, Lin Wu gained a new set of memories, and he received the second message.

During this period, Lin Wu kept sending messages to the unknown number. After repeated testing, he discovered that messages could be sent successfully only between 10:12 p.m. and 10:27 p.m., but the other side never replied.

Over the past few days, Lin Wu noticed that his memories from when he was seventeen had become clearer.

For example, on September 7, his life consisted of going to school, getting out of school, answering teachers’ questions, and picking Luo Xiaorong up to go home. These things would appear at night as vividly as if they had happened earlier that very day. After carefully analyzing it, Lin Wu guessed that his present and his past existed on two parallel timelines, both moving forward, with the past able to affect the present.

From September 7 to September 8, there had been nothing particularly unusual in his memories, nor had he met anyone unusual.

Today, the 9th, just when he thought nothing would happen again, the memories changed.

The bus stop, Xinwen Bookstore, the alley after getting off the bus…

A boy with a bandaged arm appeared in his memory.

【Someone asked me to find you and pass along a few words.】

【At 8 p.m. on November 19, Xiao Hulu will be in a car accident. At 10 p.m. on December 15, Luo Xiaorong will be in a car accident.】

The boy looked him over as he spoke, completely without reserve.

The moment the boy appeared, Lin Wu knew this was the unknown number he had been texting.

“So he really did say it…” Lin Wu felt dazed. He thought back to three days earlier, when he had urgently begged the unknown number to carry the message for him. At the time he had been too anxious. Looking back afterward, everything he said would have sounded absurd to any normal person. He had never expected the other side to truly pass it on.

Lin Wu recalled the boy’s appearance.

He was very tall, probably around 1.89 meters, handsome, with the sort of looks and bearing that made it obvious he had grown up in a well-off family, raised with care. Translated on Hololo novels. Back in high school, Lin Wu had disliked interacting with people like that. It was not that such people were bad, but that they were too good in every respect. Being around them made him feel cramped and awkward, as if they belonged to entirely different worlds.

He tried to recall how he himself had felt at seventeen. Angry, irritated, indignant…

The boy had faithfully conveyed the text message, but the whole thing had been too irrational. His seventeen-year-old self had not believed it.

Lin Wu frowned. He could not judge his younger self with his current mindset. In that situation, it would indeed have been hard for anyone to believe. He had thought that conversation had amounted to nothing. But then many more scenes began surfacing in his mind.

They flashed forward like a movie, until November 19—

On November 19, seventeen-year-old Lin Wu suddenly thought of the conversation in the alley as he was leaving the house. The two “car accidents” the boy had warned about sounded like a vicious prank, but Lin Wu was narrow-hearted, and both supposed pranks involved the people he cared about most. After thinking it over, he turned away after stepping outside and went to Wang Jiahui’s building.

“Brother Lin Wu!” Wang Jiahui had just started high school. Like Hao Shuqin, she had a round face. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, and she had a piece of bread in her mouth, ready to ride her bike to school.

“What time do you get out tonight?” Wang Jiahui had not gotten into No. 1 High and was attending Lide instead. Lin Wu asked about her schedule.

“Around 6:30. After school I usually grab something to eat with classmates, so I get home around 8.” She looked at him curiously. “What’s wrong?”

“I checked my horoscope today. It said things looked bad. When you cross the street, you need to watch carefully, especially around 8 p.m. tonight. Make sure it’s safe before you cross.” Lin Wu chose his words carefully. He did not mention the prank directly and could only pin it on a horoscope.

“Haha, you read horoscopes?” Wang Jiahui burst out laughing. Lin Wu seemed completely mismatched with anything to do with horoscopes.

“Do you understand?” Lin Wu asked seriously.

“I do.” Wang Jiahui did not really take it to heart.

“Around 8 p.m., you absolutely must watch the road carefully!” Lin Wu reminded her again.

“Okay, Brother Lin Wu, after school I’ll definitely pay attention to the road and make sure there aren’t any cars around before crossing.” She could only promise once more.

Wang Jiahui rode off to school on her bike, while Lin Wu took the bus. After they finished speaking, she pedaled away cheerfully.

At 7:50 that evening, Lin Wu still felt uneasy. Wang Jiahui had no phone, and neither did he. During a break between classes, he used the school’s public telephone to call Wang Manshan.

“Has Huihui gotten out of school yet?” Lin Wu asked.

“Not yet. Should be soon. She usually gets back after 8.” In the residential compound, Wang Manshan was lying on the sofa watching television.

“Could you go meet Huihui at the bus stop? It gets dark early now, and I’m worried it isn’t safe for her.” Lin Wu reminded him.

“Not safe?…” Wang Manshan was surprised by the suggestion, but one of the streetlights between the bus stop and the residential compound was broken. After thinking it over, he got up. “Alright, I’ll head down.”

“Okay!” Lin Wu finally let out a breath of relief.

After hanging up, he thought the matter had been taken care of. But when he got home after school, the residential compound was ablaze with lights. The main road was packed with police cars and ambulances. Many residents had rushed downstairs in their pajamas to watch. Not long after, medical staff carried a stretcher out of a distant alley and hurried it into an ambulance.

Lin Wu’s heart gave a violent jolt.

Then he saw Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin following behind, crying in utter anguish.

Wang Jiahui was dead.

Her throat had been slit, and her death was horrifying.

Lin Wu felt as if everything around him had frozen. A deep terror seized him, and at the same time he thought of the warning in the alley.

He wanted to find that boy, but he could not.

On December 15, Lin Wu stayed by Luo Xiaorong’s side every second. At 10 p.m., Luo Xiaorong never left the house. He thought her car accident had been prevented, but two days later, Luo Xiaorong was also found dead with her throat slit.

……

“That shouldn’t have happened…” A sharp pain shot through Lin Wu’s head.

In the original timeline, Wang Jiahui had survived the attack but been left in a vegetative state for twenty years. Luo Xiaorong had not been murdered by throat-slitting, but had died in a traffic accident.

After the timeline changed, both of them were murdered.

Lin Wu frantically searched through the memories involving Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin. After Wang Jiahui’s death, the two of them sank into a long period of despair. Lin Wu, consumed with guilt, told them about the warning from the alley.

“It’s alright. This isn’t your fault.”

The two of them comforted him instead. After Luo Xiaorong’s death, they cared for him just as they had in the original timeline. He got into university just as before, but in his sophomore year, Wang Manshan and Hao Shuqin still could not emerge from the shadow of their grief and ended their own lives.

Lin Wu searched the news: Xuhu serial murder case.

In the original version of the case, the killer had committed five attacks. The second and third victims survived. Wang Jiahui had been the third victim.

In the altered case, the killer committed six attacks. The second victim survived. Luo Xiaorong became the fourth victim.

Lin Wu thought of the butterfly effect.

Butterfly effect: a tiny change in the initial conditions eventually causes enormous changes throughout the entire system.

Working backward, he realized the difference in these two events lay here: on November 19, he had gone to find Wang Jiahui, and on December 15, he had stayed by Luo Xiaorong’s side without leaving. That was how Luo Xiaorong avoided the traffic accident, only to be murdered two days later.

Seventeen-year-old Lin Wu had none of thirty-seven-year-old Lin Wu’s memories. After everything happened, he blamed it all on his own carelessness. Translated on Hololo novels. Over these twenty years he had become gentle and courteous, tried hard to become a normal person, but Lin Wu could feel that “he” had long since been riddled with scars inside.

Mechanically, Lin Wu went to the sink.

There he saw the new version of himself:

In the mirror, his light brown sleepwear had become dark gray, and his frame was even thinner than before.

He was still a physics professor at Jianghe University, but aside from physics, there was no longer anything in life he cared about.

In a daze, Lin Wu heard a bell chime, and at the same time a strange passage of text appeared in his mind—

【It is a new road, and also an old road. So long as it has not yet happened, everything may still be changed. The moment a variable appears, everything heads into the unknown. Before the piece is placed, the variable cannot be foreseen. Only the outcome can be touched. Everything is changing. It may grow better, or it may grow worse. Once the piece is played, regret comes too late.】

The words appeared like an old yellow talisman, then slowly faded, but the meaning remained etched into his mind.

“Variables and outcomes…” Lin Wu was a physics professor. After only a brief moment of distraction, he immediately began scribbling on scratch paper.

He did not know why this passage had appeared, nor why his phone could connect to the past. But following the logic suggested by the passage, the present and the past had already become entangled.

On September 5, the fire at Xingchen Internet Café. Whether in 2004 or 2024, that event could no longer be changed. Therefore, it was a move already placed, and once placed, regret was useless.

On September 9, his seventeen-year-old self changed, and as a result warned Wang Jiahui of the car accident. Through the butterfly effect, Wang Jiahui and Luo Xiaorong were both murdered. These things happened in 2024, but had not yet occurred in 2004, so they were “outcomes.” Outcomes would continue changing with the choices made in 2004. They might grow better, or they might grow worse.

As for the variables…

The moment he changed the fire, he belonged both to the present and to the past. The two timelines had already become entangled. Only further changes in 2004 could generate new outcomes. He could not predict matters connected to the unknown number. Though the other person existed in the past, he also belonged to the present.

The two of them were changing simultaneously. Nothing about either of them could be known until the moment a move was made.

At that moment, Lin Wu desperately wanted to contact the unknown number again, or else hoped that person would meet his seventeen-year-old self once more, because only change could create new possibilities.

✧˖°.──⋆⭒˚.⋆💌⋆⭒˚.⋆──✧˖°.

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