When Lin Mo drew his final breath, only one thought remained in his mind.
‘If I’d known that truck was going to run the red light, I should have called out of work and stayed home to play games today.’
It was his twenty-eighth birthday. On a night of torrential rain, his phone screen was still lit up with overtime notifications from his work group.
Blood swirled into the rainwater on the asphalt, looking exactly like the design draft his client had rejected last week — messy and devoid of any beauty.
Through his blurring vision, he saw Su Ran rushing toward him from across the street.
The woman he had avoided for ten years had kicked off her high heels and was now running barefoot over shards of broken glass. Her long black dress was soaked through by the rain, clinging tightly to her body.
She collapsed to her knees beside him, her hands trembling as she pressed down on the wound in his chest, but blood still poured through the gaps between her fingers.
“Ambulance! Call an ambulance!” Her screams tore through the curtain of rain.
‘That’s a first,’ Lin Mo thought as his consciousness faded.
In two lifetimes combined, this was the first time he had ever heard Su Ran speak with such a voice, as if her entire world were collapsing before her eyes.
Then he saw the tears on her face.
They weren’t the kind that slid down silently; they were tears mixed with rain, blood, and a certain kind of desperation.
She grabbed her phone, but her fingers shook so violently that she couldn’t press the right buttons.
“Hold on, Lin Mo, you better fucking hold on — “
‘Ah, she’s even cursing.’
Lin Mo wanted to smile. So this was what the “Ice Beauty” looked like when she was angry.
A second before his vision went completely black, he saw Su Ran pull a small silver flash drive from her bag and smash it onto the ground. The drive popped open, revealing an old red hair tie inside.
It was the one he had casually given her back in middle school.
She grabbed his hand and pressed the hair tie into his palm, her fingers as cold as a corpse’s.
“Ten years. I’ve watched over you for ten years…”
Su Ran’s voice was as low as a curse, yet as fervent as a prayer. “How dare you leave first? I won’t let you leave me…”
The moment the world faded into silence, Lin Mo’s eyes snapped open.
He used a bit too much force, nearly lunging out of his chair.
Above him was a familiar yet distant old fan, churning the muggy September air. On the blackboard, “287 Days Until the Gaokao” was written in colored chalk, accompanied by a hideously drawn stick figure representing “Hard Work.”
“Lin Mo, you okay?”
His desk-mate, Chen Yu, asked in a low voice while nudging him with an elbow.
Lin Mo turned his head stiffly.
The eighteen-year-old Chen Yu had a buzz cut, tanned skin, and a crooked school uniform collar. Tucked under the math textbook on his desk was half of a basketball magazine — the standard setup for him during high school.
“I…” Lin Mo spoke, his voice terrifyingly raspy.
“Had a nightmare?” Chen Yu grinned. “You were sleeping like you were dead.”
‘Like I was dead?’
Lin Mo looked down at his hands.
They were slender, clean, and free of blood. There was no faded red hair tie. He touched his chest; his school shirt was smooth, and his heartbeat was strong. There was no hole, and there was no pain.
On the podium, the physics teacher was mid-lecture, spittle flying as he explained Newton’s Second Law. Outside the window, the cicadas were deafening. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the curtains, slicing the desks into alternating bands of light and shadow.
Everything he could see was terrifyingly real.
‘It wasn’t a dream?’
‘Did I…?’ Lin Mo took a trembling breath and then gave his thigh a hard pinch.
“Ow!” he yelped.
The entire class’s attention instantly focused on him.
The physics teacher pushed up his glasses. “Student Lin Mo, do you have some objection to my explanation?”
“No, no, no!”
Lin Mo scrambled to his feet. “Your teaching is just so good, Teacher, that I couldn’t help but… clap!”
As he spoke, he actually started to applaud.
The classroom fell silent for two seconds before erupting into boisterous laughter.
“Alright, alright, sit down,” the teacher said, caught between a laugh and a sigh. “I appreciate the sentiment, but please express it in a quieter way next time.”
Lin Mo sat back down stiffly, his heart hammering against his ribs as if it wanted to shatter them.
It really wasn’t a dream!
He had really come back!
He was back ten years in the past, on the Wednesday of the first week of senior year, during the fourth period of the morning!
If his memory served him right, there were seventeen minutes left in class, and ten whole years until his death!
“Did you catch a ghost or something?” Chen Yu leaned in, giving him an odd look.
Lin Mo ignored him, his gaze scanning the classroom like radar.
Third row, window side, second to last seat.
Found her.
Her waist-length black hair was tied into a low ponytail with a simple black hair tie, revealing her pale neck. Her school shirt was ironed without a single wrinkle, and her back was perfectly straight. She looked like a black narcissus blooming by the window — beautiful beyond words.
Su Ran.
The eighteen-year-old Su Ran.
The woman he had feared for ten years, avoided for ten years, and whose tears he hadn’t seen until the moment he died.
Right now, she was focused on her notes. Her fingers gripping the fountain pen were long and steady, her profile shimmering with the cold luster of white porcelain in the sunlight. A unique aura created a vacuum around her.
It had always been like this; few students ever dared to approach her.
Lin Mo’s breath hitched for several seconds.
Memories began to surge involuntarily in his mind.
She had put stomach medicine in his desk because he hadn’t eaten breakfast the day before. She had anonymously reported the senior who bullied him, forcing the boy to transfer schools. She had “coincidentally” appeared at the bottom of his office building with hot porridge when he was working until dawn… and at the time, he had only found it skin-crawling.
Yandere. Stalker. Control freak.
He had slapped countless labels on her, but he had never once asked the question: Why?
Not until he saw that hair tie she had kept for ten years and that flash drive. A police officer once told him the drive was filled with ten years’ worth of his photos, his itineraries, and even his health records.
There were also countless unsent diary entries.
‘He smiled at me today, even if it was just because I found his student ID…’
‘He has dark circles under his eyes; he must have stayed up late again. Should I anonymously send him some liver-protection pills tomorrow…?’
‘Zhang Wei was talking bad about him. Unforgivable!’
‘Lin Mo, when are you finally going to see me…?’
His heart felt as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand, the pain causing him to hunch his back.
“Hey, are you seriously okay?” Chen Yu was starting to panic.
Lin Mo waved him off, his eyes locked onto that silhouette.
Living this life again, what should he do?
Keep hiding? Like in his previous life, where he picked a college in the city furthest from her, chose an industry where she would never appear, moved, changed his number, and even considered emmigrating?
Was that really right?
‘She just liked me, didn’t she?’
The school bell suddenly rang out with a shrill tone.
Lin Mo didn’t move.
He watched as Su Ran closed her notebook and organized her stationery. Her movements were as meticulous as a precision instrument. When she stood up, she didn’t look at anyone and walked straight out of the classroom.
Her back looked thin and lonely.
“Let’s go eat!” Chen Yu tugged at him.
“Wait a second,” Lin Mo said, reaching into his desk.
The tactile sensation was wrong. His desk had always been a mess — a jumble of textbooks, test papers, and scratch paper. But now, the books were neatly arranged by subject and size, his pens were all tucked into his pencil case, and even his eraser was in a fixed spot.
Lin Mo pulled out his math notebook from the very bottom. He flipped it open, and a sticky note was tucked into the first page.
The text was printed: ‘Summary of Trigonometric Formulas — Compiled based on your frequent mistakes.’
On the edge of the second page, there were small notes in neat pencil handwriting: ‘Mo: Weak in the third type of solid geometry problems. Needs focused practice.’
Third page, fourth page… every page had similar annotations.
Lin Mo’s finger stopped on the final page.
There was a small star drawn in red pen, with a note beside it: ‘September 12, P.E. class. Remember to stay hydrated; you always forget.’
Today was September 12. P.E. was during the second period of the afternoon.
Lin Mo closed the notebook, something churning in his chest. It wasn’t fear or disgust, but a sour, delayed shock that had come ten years too late.
In this world, no other “creep” would do these things for him.
When did she even do all of this…?
“What are you looking at?” Chen Yu tried to peek.
“Nothing.” Lin Mo shoved the notebook back and stood up. “Let’s go. Time to eat.”
He said he was going to eat, but he didn’t go to the cafeteria. Instead, he detoured to the school store and stood in front of the shelves for five minutes.
In his memory, there was always a box of lemon candies in Su Ran’s office drawer. The brand was old, the packaging was tacky, and they were almost out of production. Once, a colleague had curiously asked her why she liked them.
She had been silent for a long time before saying it was because they were sweet.
It was a nonsensical answer. If she just liked sweets, why would she go to such lengths to have them custom-made?
Now, the memories of his past life were flipping past like pages in a book. Lin Mo remembered, and he understood.
One kind of sweetness was not like the other.
It was probably back in eighth grade; he had given her a lemon candy. In the nurse’s office, she had been crying her eyes out over a scraped knee, and he had searched his pockets only to find that single candy.
“Stop crying. Have some candy,” he had said at the time.
She had taken it blankly, peeled off the wrapper, and put it in her mouth. Then, she really did stop crying. Her eyes were just still red, making her look like a rabbit.
Lin Mo bought the last three boxes of lemon candies on the shelf and gripped one in his palm.
As he walked back toward the teaching building, he stopped at the stairwell landing like he was setting an ambush. Su Ran was coming down from the floor above, clutching a few music books. Her head was down, and her footsteps were light, as if she were afraid of disturbing something.
The two met at the turn.
Su Ran looked up and saw Lin Mo. Her footsteps halted, and her pupils shrunk slightly.
Now.
Lin Mo reached out, palm facing up. The lemon candy in its yellow wrapper lay quietly there.
“Su Ran.”
He found his voice trembling slightly. “You dropped your candy.”
Time seemed to freeze.
Su Ran stared at the candy for a full five seconds without reacting. Her expression was like the changing weather of summer — first blank, then full of disbelief, and finally becoming a panicked clumsiness.
The draft in the hallway blew the stray hairs on her forehead. The distant noise of the cafeteria drifted over.
Lin Mo’s hand remained suspended in mid-air, the candy wrapper reflecting a cheap golden luster in the sunlight.
Finally, Su Ran reached out with extreme slowness. When her slightly flushed fingertips touched the candy, they gave an imperceptible shudder.
She took the candy and gripped it in her palm, her knuckles turning white.
“…Thank, thank you.” Su Ran’s voice was so low it was almost inaudible.
She brushed past Lin Mo, her ponytail drawing a messy arc in the air.
Lin Mo turned around, watching her disappear at the end of the hallway. He looked down at his empty palm, where the rough texture of the candy wrapper still lingered.
For some reason, his heart suddenly became as calm as a lake after a rainstorm.
Lin Mo laughed softly, but a sense of determination sparked in his eyes.
“Thank you, and I’m sorry.”
He whispered to the air and to that receding figure, “This time, I won’t run anymore. It’s my turn… to step into your world.”
The warning bell for the end of lunch break rang.
When Lin Mo returned to the classroom, Su Ran was already in her seat. Her back was to him, straight as a pine tree as always, but Lin Mo keenly noticed that her right hand stayed inside her desk, tightly clutching something.
And the zipper of her pencil case wasn’t fully closed, revealing a corner of yellow candy wrapper.
Chen Yu leaned over, lowering his voice mysteriously. “Hey, I just saw Su Ran rushing down the stairs. Her face was as white as a ghost, and she was clutching something. Was it because of you…?”
“Shut up,” Lin Mo interrupted him, flipping open his physics book.
But his gaze involuntarily drifted toward the seat by the window in the third row.
The sunlight fell perfectly across Su Ran’s shoulders, gilding her in a soft, fuzzy golden glow. She was writing with her head down, her ponytail swaying slightly with her movements. She looked no different than usual.
Except… Lin Mo saw her feet under the desk.
The toes of her white canvas shoes were pointed exactly in his direction.
They were set at an incredibly stubborn, precise angle.
It was like a silent declaration, or like a hunter who had finally seen their prey step into the trap and was now raising their rifle with trembling excitement.
Lin Mo looked away, and the cicadas outside suddenly grew louder.
He knew the game had begun.
The game that had once made him feel terrified and suffocated.
But this time, he wouldn’t run.
***
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