"It is already the fifth year."
The moment they sat inside the car, Ruoping spoke suddenly.
They had already been sitting inside the car for twenty minutes. Neither of them spoke, simply sitting in absolute silence.
"In fact, I buy some items and bring them up the mountain every winter and summer break. This year it just happened to coincide," Ruoping said calmly. "You should understand, right? The reason I called you along wasn't for moving houses at all; I just wanted to drag you along to go see her."
Zhang Shutong nodded.
By now, he could roughly guess that he hadn't come for the move either.
He also faintly guessed that the relationships among the four of them on this timeline weren't particularly great; otherwise, they should have gone together on this kind of occasion.
Perhaps it wasn't just himself; everyone harbored a secret in their hearts.
"So, did Qinglian end up telling you?" Ruoping asked. "Why does she have to stay in that temple?"
Zhang Shutong swallowed back the question at the tip of his tongue. He was just about to ask why Lu Qinglian still hadn't left the island, yet how could even Ruoping be unclear about it?
"No... What did she say to you?"
"Just the exact same reason from our fourth year of middle school."
"What?" Zhang Shutong asked almost instinctively.
"House arrest." Ruoping leaned over the steering wheel. "But I still don't understand. If it was back when everyone was still young, fine, she had to listen to whatever that old hag said. But we are all adults now, in our twenties. Why does her grandmother still possess this kind of binding power?"
Ruoping's emotions grew a bit volatile:
"Besides, the police station on the island isn't just for show. Why not just go directly to report it to the police? Isn't this restricting personal freedom?
"Every time I come, I ask her, but she merely shakes her head and says nothing. I don't know what's going on either, which was why I wanted to call you along to go together. But you... if you don't know either, then forget it."
Ruoping said dejectedly:
"Maybe it's just Qinglian's own persistence. After all this time, I still can't tell whether she is sad or happy sometimes. She's been like this since middle school, as if a layer of window paper separates us—a paper-thin layer, yet no matter how you poke it, you can't poke through."
"What about tomorrow?" Zhang Shutong asked. "There will always be times when the temple opens its doors?"
"But she said not to come look for her often, especially you," Ruoping added. "Otherwise, why do you think I gave you a hat?"
Zhang Shutong fell silent.
He couldn't figure out the reason behind it either. Was it house arrest, or the so-called duty of a shrine maiden? She had ultimately become a shrine maiden after all.
Zhang Shutong was equally unclear about the nature of their relationship. If it was great, she wouldn't have been this perfunctory when they met; but if it was terrible, just as that middle-aged man said, why look for her during the festival ritual every year?
Perhaps it was the same as Ruoping—simply wanting to find an answer. Yet the truth was already impossible to trace back to, and they could only rely on guesswork.
Of course, there was a way that didn't involve guessing.
Zhang Shutong stared at his phone. He had already opened Lu Qinglian's WeChat, his finger lingering on the call page. As long as his finger pressed down, he could ask about anything clearly.
But ultimately, Zhang Shutong didn't press the dial button. If what Ruoping said was true, then this phone call might end up harming her. Moreover, the two of them originally only made one phone call a year, so there must be a reason for it, whether for her or for himself.
Zhang Shutong even recalled their brief conversation from a short while ago, wondering if Lu Qinglian had faintly conveyed some message to him, only he hadn't discovered it at the time.
He could remember every single sentence exchanged between the two of them, but discovered that Lu Qinglian's words had been extremely brief all along. In fact, brevity of speech was secondary; it was already considered quite good if she managed to offer a single response.
Finally, Zhang Shutong opened the memo app.
He prepared to compose a message. This should be safer.
The car started up after all. Rolling down the window a crack, he felt for the first time that the daytime was so incredibly long. But the summer sunset was inherently very late, and the sweltering wind blowing against his face caused one's mood to grow irritable along with it. He suddenly missed the winter wind a bit—biting cold, but always capable of keeping the mind clear.
He organized his phrasing in his mind, laying out the questions as clearly and methodically as possible. Zhang Shutong typed and deleted, deleted and typed within the memo app. Ruoping didn't seem to notice his actions—or perhaps she did notice, but chose to say nothing.
She simply stared at the road ahead:
"You still remember, right? Back in middle school, Teacher Song would drive his car to take us out for a spin, and we would frequently take this exact road."
Zhang Shutong raised his head, just catching sight of the reeds by the roadside. He thought silently to himself, Of course I remember. To you guys, it's something from five years ago, but to me, it was five days ago.
"That car was really small," Ruoping recalled. "Back then, we thought it was exceptionally large. Later, on one occasion, I saw a Ford Focus on the road and was astonished by how it could be that small. How could the four of us manage to squeeze inside? No matter how I think about it, it feels incredible."
"Maybe it's because everyone was also very small back then," Zhang Shutong said abstractedly, his fingers tapping away on the keyboard. "You've grown taller too."
To say something a bit impolite, his mind wasn't actually on the memories of the past. If it were another time, he would be more than happy to chat with Ruoping about what interesting things had happened over these years, but right now, his heart held nothing but that single WeChat message.
Zhang Shutong was currently typing out the final sentence.
"Shutong, what do you think growing up means?"
As she said this, Ruoping tapped her fingernails against the steering wheel. Her nails were their original natural color, rather than the multi-colored manicures she used to paint back then.
The car speed slowed down, as if the driver was also agonizing over something. This woman wearing the long red dress suddenly said:
"Actually, if you had rushed over back then to pull Qinglian over, I would have accompanied you. But you just had to shout for her instead."
Zhang Shutong froze for a moment.
It wasn't that he felt Ruoping was speaking with the benefit of hindsight, but he was wondering why he hadn't gone to pull Lu Qinglian back then.
Perhaps it was because right up until now, he didn't know what Lu Qinglian meant. To Zhang Shutong, a single glance from her was all it took, without even needing to say much, yet she had failed to offer even a glance.
Late was late. Missing a step meant missing the opportunity to meet her and ask for clarification. But at the very least, there was still the phone. Zhang Shutong had already typed that WeChat message exactly into the memo app and cut it. With just one more step of operation, this message would transform into a data stream, plunge into the server, and then be delivered to Lu Qinglian's phone along the network.
"I'm not blaming you, I just feel..."
This wasn't the first time Ruoping had brought up this matter. Zhang Shutong had initially assumed she was complaining about him being emotional, that he shouldn't have shouted loudly behind Lu Qinglian's back, as doing so might get discovered by her grandmother.
He had thought this way when she brought it up the first time, and still thought this way when she brought it up the second time. But she had already brought it up a third time, causing Zhang Shutong to feel that the matters the two of them were talking about weren't on the same wavelength at all. But what exactly was Ruoping referring to?
"Sorry... I was impulsive back then."
He faintly felt like he had caught onto something, yet it also felt just a hair short.
The phone suddenly chimed. Zhang Shutong shifted his gaze instantly, staring in utter disbelief at the new message that popped up—it actually came from "Qinglian."
In other words, before he could send her that message, she had already sent a message over.
Zhang Shutong suddenly felt a surge of impulse. Even though he hadn't clicked open the message yet, he desperately wanted to tell Ruoping directly to turn the car around right now, return to the foot of the mountain, rush up to the summit together, and then push open the temple doors to ask for clarification...
But before he could speak, Ruoping's words had already left her mouth. Everything occurred in a mere split second, as if ordained by fate. By the time he realized this fact, Ruoping's voice had already resounded clearly by his ears, carrying a faint sorrow:
"You should know that no matter how much you shout, it's no use."
She choked up slightly:
"She can barely hear anything anymore."
Zhang Shutong froze.
That mass of things that had remained completely chaotic finally exploded within his mind. Stricken as if by lightning, Zhang Shutong suddenly understood why Lu Qinglian had entered the main hall without turning her head back once, why she always turned her face sideways when speaking with her, why she always focused her stare on his lips, and why she appeared a bit blank and dazed, her reactions always a beat slow...
Zhang Shutong even recalled her small habits during the video call.
She brought the phone's speaker close to the side of her ear. It turned out it wasn't because the surroundings were too noisy, but because if she didn't do so, she simply couldn't hear clearly what he was saying at all.
He had initially assumed it was because by the time there were words he wanted to say, it was already too late.
Only now did Zhang Shutong wake up to reality: it wasn't that it was too late.
You expected her to be able to offer a response, but she simply hadn't heard you at all.
From the very beginning, there was never a chance.
No, that wasn't right. There was still a chance.
Zhang Shutong tapped the screen fiercely, his force so great he nearly failed to hold the phone securely. He clicked open the message, and then his eyes widened, as if all the answers were hidden within this message.
Yet there was only a single line of text:
Student Zhang Shutong, help me go see what the outside world looks like.
Only this single, simple sentence, without any explanation.
Zhang Shutong sent out the message he had prepared long ago, and then gripped the phone tightly, expecting another chat box to pop up. After all, the previous message had only passed a few seconds ago.
She should know that I underwent a regression through time and space. Zhang Shutong thought suddenly.
The moment he entered the side hall, he had asked Lu Qinglian if she wanted to go get dinner together tonight. It was precisely after he said this sentence that she had asked him with a touch of thoughtfulness if he was dreaming again.
She had clearly detected the anomaly.
But even so, why was she still unwilling to clear things up?
That message was like a stone plunging into the vast ocean. One second, two seconds, three seconds... One minute passed. Zhang Shutong swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and when he raised his head again, the afterglow of the setting sun had already risen.
A conjecture also rose within his heart. Zhang Shutong mechanically tapped his phone, directly opening the dial page.
Her phone number wasn't saved in this phone, but that didn't mean he didn't remember it. The number possessed a very lucky tail number. He keyed it in, dialed, and placed the receiver by his ear.
"Sorry, the subscriber you dialed is powered off."
The sweet female voice rang out by his ear.
Zhang Shutong hung up the phone expressionlessly.
Ruoping watched all of this from the side. After a long pause, she spoke softly:
"You used to tell me that growing up means not being allowed to cry, not being allowed to throw tantrums, not being allowed to secretly miss someone, and not being allowed to look back—only moving forward on your own. What do you think now?"
Zhang Shutong was left utterly speechless.
He had no time to ponder when exactly he had spoken these words.
Who exactly was this talking about, or rather, who wasn't like this? The clear sensation of the passage of time wasn't because of the temperature, nor the cicadas' cries by the ear, nor the long-melted snow, but because every single person—including himself—had grown up. Zhang Shutong recalled the annual call logs on WeChat, and the scratches on the wishing rack one by one... Every single one of you wasn't allowed to cry, wasn't allowed to throw tantrums, wasn't allowed to secretly miss someone, and wasn't allowed to look back—only moving forward on your own.
The only thing left was to help her take a look at what the outside world looked like.
But that was also something he had fabricated out of thin air—the non-existent chili peppers, the non-existent butterflies. Only because the outside world was countless times larger than her own, even if it was fake, she still found it very interesting.
She was very sharp, seeing through his disguise with a single glance. Yet even so, she hadn't questioned which point in time he had come from, nor did she even know whether he could return.
Perhaps she felt he couldn't.
Ruoping's voice carried no discernible emotion:
"Qinglian's left ear has already gone completely deaf, and her right ear can only hear very faint sounds. Previously when I spoke to her, it was fine as long as I got a bit closer. But today... I practically needed to lean against her ear to shout. Most of the time, she is working hard to discern people's lip movements."
"...What did the doctor say?"
"If it was back then, you were always the one who took her during our fourth year of middle school, so you should be clearest about the situation. As for these years... I've also consulted some people, and everyone says her situation is irreversible; it has already been dragged out for too long."
Following a sigh, Ruoping ultimately didn't turn back, driving the car forward as her voice became barely audible:
"Some doctors also said it would be good if we knew how she sustained the injury back then, but she has never told the three of us."
By the time they returned beneath Ruoping's building once more, it was already past six o'clock.
That moving van was parked by the roadside.
The project of moving houses had come to a temporary close after all. Zhang Shutong silently went upstairs. Ruoping's father and mother were very hospitable toward him, and he could only force a smile to respond.
Ruoping went to help her mother cook. She had become a lot stronger, gathering her emotions to throw herself into the next task at hand.
There was no place to establish a footing in the living room, so Zhang Shutong went upstairs, sitting down inside Ruoping's room. He raised his head to gaze at the ceiling. The issue with this timeline was far from being as simple as it appeared on the surface; even more things lay submerged beneath the water, yet he had never managed to touch upon the core of the problem. Where exactly was the most critical variable of this timeline...
Zhang Shutong continued to flip through his phone, trying to uncover a few photos or a pattern similar to a tattoo, just like he had on the Cold-Blooded Line.
Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing.
Zhang Shutong noticed a stack of notebooks sitting on Ruoping's desk. He hesitated for a moment, before finally pulling the room door shut and opening those notebooks.
However, Ruoping didn't have a habit of keeping a diary, so Zhang Shutong sorted them back neatly.
Standing in the center of the room, he closed his eyes.
This place hadn't been used for four years.
If there were items, they shouldn't be kept here.
Something occurred to him suddenly, and he hurriedly exited the room. Next to the bedroom was a tiny utility room, where Ruoping had cut her hand earlier.
Zhang Shutong bent his waist to crawl inside, turning on the light by his hand. They had left for the hospital too urgently earlier, so they hadn't had time to clean up yet; the brown bloodstains were still coagulated on the floorboards.
Zhang Shutong looked at that wooden crate Ruoping had wanted to dismantle.
He grabbed the hammer on the floor, prying the nails out in a few strokes. They say every little girl has her own treasure chest, so Ruoping's treasure chest must be this crate. Zhang Shutong saw several plush toys, Barbie dolls, some cute hair accessories, and even wrapper paper from gold coin chocolates...
Ultimately, Zhang Shutong's gaze settled upon two wooden plaques.
His heart gave a thump.
Simply because he had just seen the style of the wooden plaques today—it was exactly the kind hanging on the wishing rack at the temple. Yet for some reason, they were hidden here. Zhang Shutong picked up the wooden plaques, reading the contents clearly.
The first one read:
Hope Qinglian's ears get better soon.
The second one was:
Sorry, sorry...
Zhang Shutong stared at the wishing plaques for a long while without uttering a word. Could it be that Lu Qinglian's ears had sustained the injury because of Ruoping? But that wasn't right either; the handwriting on these two wooden plaques was completely different, clearly appearing to stem from two different people's hands. So he could understand the first one, which was undoubtedly written by Ruoping, but what did the second one mean?
Theoretically, the identity of the owner could be discerned from the handwriting, but the words on the wooden plaques were carved on, completely different from one's usual writing habits. Zhang Shutong instinctively pulled out his keys to gesture against it.
Then he stopped his hand abruptly.
He stared at that key, and then stood up.
Zhang Shutong pulled the contents of his pockets out once more.
The phone, the ID card, and the cluster of keys.
This time when he arrived on the island, he had brought only these three items. Logically speaking, there was nothing strange about it; without the first two, you simply couldn't travel out, and without the last one, you wouldn't be able to return—
A journey always had a day of conclusion, and you would always need a key to open your own front door.
This key was so incredibly familiar.
To the point where he had actually overlooked it.
This was the key to his own home.
The one to the dormitory building.
But the problem was.
His family had already moved off the island last year.
Why did he still bring along the key to "his own home"?