"Okay!"
Zhu Shijiu let out a quiet sigh of relief in his heart. If he'd been stopped by the security guard at the school gate, everything he'd done so far would have been for nothing.
He sprinted all the way into the teaching building, panting heavily as he charged toward his sister's classroom.
From inside the classroom came the faint voice of the math teacher lecturing—
"…Here we establish a coordinate system and calculate the positions of each point based on the function graph…"
BAM!
The classroom door was slammed open!
The math teacher, who had been speaking passionately at the podium, froze. Dozens of students' eyes instantly turned toward the young man who had burst in.
"Bro?!"
Zhu Shiya shot up from her seat in shock.
"Xiaoya, come with me—quick!"
Zhu Shijiu's voice was trembling with urgency. "Mom and Dad had an accident! They fell down the stairs just now!"
"Ah?!"
Zhu Shiya's face went pale with fright. "How could that happen?!"
Without thinking, she panicked and rushed out of the classroom, forgetting even to excuse herself from the teacher.
The sudden disruption caused an uproar in the class. Students whispered among themselves until the math teacher raised his voice and scolded them. Only then did the room quiet down again.
"Ahem… Alright. Whatever is going on with Zhu Shiya's family is none of your business. Stop gossiping. Let's continue the lesson."
…
"Bro!"
While jogging to keep up, she pressed him, "How are Mom and Dad? Have they been taken to the hospital? Are they badly hurt?"
"I called a taxi at the school gate. We're going to the hospital together!"
Zhu Shijiu didn't look back.
The two of them ran all the way to the school entrance.
Inside the taxi that had been waiting anxiously, their mother happened to glance out the window. That one glance made her freeze: "Isn't that… Xiaoya running beside our son?"
Their father also stared in shock at the two figures sprinting toward them: "They don't look like they fell down the stairs at all. They're running like the wind—no crutches needed…"
Zhu Shijiu pushed his sister into the taxi.
Zhu Shiya was completely dumbfounded: "Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?"
Their parents wore equally baffled expressions: "We were about to ask you the same thing! Didn't you say Xiaoya cracked her head open and was bleeding?"
"What? Bro clearly told me it was you two who fell!"
The four of them stared at one another inside the car.
Finally, they realized something was very wrong.
Click.
Zhu Shijiu locked the doors and said gravely to the driver, "Sir, to Wucheng Airport."
"The airport?!"
All three—father, mother, and sister—cried out in unison.
"Ah-Jiu, what the hell are you doing?" Their father's face darkened. "Tricking your sister out of school by saying she cracked her head open—this kind of joke isn't funny!"
Zhu Shiya also looked at him in disbelief: "Bro, you've really gone too far this time!"
But Zhu Shijiu said nothing. He just lowered his head to check the time on his phone, letting his family's complaints wash over him.
There was no way to explain this. If he tried, they'd think he'd gone insane.
The only way was to forcibly take them away—he couldn't afford to waste even a single minute.
Seeing the heavy, almost despairing expression on Zhu Shijiu's face, the anger in Zhu Shiya's heart subsided a little. She probed carefully, "Bro… what on earth is going on?"
The car was small; her soft voice couldn't be hidden. Their parents, who had been about to tell the driver to pull over, quietly pricked up their ears.
Zhu Shijiu looked at his parents and sister, his Adam's apple bobbing. "If I tell you… will you believe me?"
"How would we know if we believe you or not if you don't say it?" his sister retorted confidently.
Zhu Shijiu was speechless for a moment, then gave a bitter smile and shook his head. "Sorry. I wish you would believe me. But I don't dare gamble even once."
Death resets everything? Infinite retries?
What a joke—
For him, it was countless playthroughs of life.
For everyone else in this loop, they only had one life.
The last words Li Hua said before dying in the previous loop were branded into his mind. He would never again gamble with his family's lives.
…
November 6, 2045, 18:00.
Zhu Shijiu finally "escorted" his family to the airport.
Li Hua was there too, sitting a few rows behind them.
"Can you talk now?"
Zhu Shiya glared at him, barely containing her anger. "If you keep stringing me along, I'm really going to explode."
"After we board…" Zhu Shijiu mumbled.
"Are you done?!" His sister finally lost it. "There's a limit to how far you can take a joke!"
Zhu Shijiu turned to look at their unusually quiet parents. After hesitating a moment, he lowered his voice and said, "Promise me first—after I finish speaking, you won't leave."
Zhu Shiya threw up her hands. "We've already bought tickets, the plane is about to take off—where could I even go? Bro, I really don't understand you anymore!"
Zhu Shijiu leaned back in the airport seat, closed his eyes, and slowly began:
"If I told you—at 10:00 tomorrow morning, both Jiangcheng and Wucheng will be destroyed by an ultra-powerful energy surge…
Would you believe me?
Jiangcheng will be physically erased.
Wucheng will be killed by radiation.
Not a single person will survive."
Silence.
When no answer came from his sister, he opened his eyes.
Zhu Shiya was staring at him with an expression that said, Are you even speaking human words right now?—as if looking at a lunatic.
If she hadn't promised earlier to trust her brother, she probably would have started cursing by now.
Zhu Shijiu asked calmly, "Do you believe me?"
"I…"
Zhu Shiya clenched her teeth. "I believe you! Of course I believe you! You're my brother! If you told me the world ends tomorrow, I'd believe that too!"
"How convenient," Zhu Shijiu said flatly. "Because tomorrow might really be the end of the world. I'm just not sure whether it's only Jiangcheng and Wucheng… or the entire planet."
"You've lost your mind."
His sister finally couldn't hold it in.
"Maybe," Zhu Shijiu murmured. "Maybe I was crazy the last two times too—just had an extremely vivid dream."
But the sensation of death… was still etched into his bones.
It couldn't possibly have been a dream.
"This is the third time," Zhu Shijiu said softly. "Even if I'm going to die, I want to die having done everything I could, with no regrets."
"If you're willing to trust me… come with me and fly north. As far away as we can get."
"…"
Zhu Shiya took a deep breath. She couldn't keep up anymore.
This wasn't some sci-fi movie, and everything Zhu Shijiu was saying sounded like a third-rate cliché from a bad web novel.
"This is ridiculous."
She shot up from her seat. "Mom, Dad, let's go. We're taking him to get his head checked. Something's really wrong with his brain."
Zhu Shijiu gave a bitter smile.
He turned his head toward the back—toward Li Hua.
Their eyes met.
In Li Hua's gaze there was a heavy, bitter understanding.
The kind only two people who have died together multiple times could share.