"Achoo!"
Su Xin rubbed his nose, hugged himself, and asked, "Sister, do you have any tissues?"
The older sister opened the center console, casually took out a pack of tissues, handed it over, pressed a button on the steering wheel to close the convertible top, and considerately turned on the air conditioning for warmth.
"My name is Fang Mengzhu. I'm a few years older than you, so you can call me Sister Zhu or Sister Meng."
"I'm Su Xin."
Su Xin pulled out a few tissues, blew his nose, looked around, and seeing no trash bag, had to take out more tissues to wrap the paper ball in his hand before speaking.
Fang Mengzhu pointed to the center console again, "There are trash bags inside, take a look yourself."
"Okay."
Su Xin didn't stand on ceremony, turned sideways to rummage through the console, and quickly found a small roll of car trash bags among some clutter, tore one off, attached it to the glovebox in front, and threw the paper ball in.
At this point, the convertible top was completely closed.
With the strong wind from high-speed driving gone, the warm air from the air conditioner began to fill the car, and Su Xin felt much warmer.
But he still sneezed twice.
"Achoo!!"
"Achoo!!"
"You won't catch a cold, will you? You should change out of those wet clothes soon. I happen to have a spare dress in the car, it's clean..."
"No need, no need! Achoo!"
Su Xin waved his hand while sneezing.
"Then I'll drive faster and take you to a mall to buy some clothes. Otherwise, your cold will get worse this way."
"No need, no need! Safety first!"
Su Xin waved his hand again.
The other person had been drinking, and it was already bold of him to get in her car. Driving fast would be like he had a death wish.
"Then you should take off those wet clothes quickly. Wearing wet clothes is worse than not wearing any."
"Uh..."
Su Xin thought about it and agreed.
Even with a good body, he couldn't stand the torment. Being soaked to the skin, windblown, and keeping wet clothes on, he was bound to catch a cold.
Though a cold isn't a serious illness, it's quite unpleasant.
Despite awakening a mysterious power, his body was still like an ordinary person's, with no extra resistance to illness.
Thinking this, Su Xin hurriedly unbuckled the seat belt, took off his wet sneakers, and stripped off his sweatshirt and T-shirt, putting them into a trash bag by his feet. He also took out his wallet from his pant pocket and spread the money, bank cards, ID card, etc., on the floor mat to dry.
He began to miss the convenient mobile payments from his previous life. In this world, most scenarios still used cash or bank cards, requiring people to carry money with them.
Just now, he was drenched, and his wallet's contents were mostly soaked.
While recalling the vague memories of his past life, Su Xin silently pulled out a few more tissues to wipe the water off himself.
"You can take off your pants too. I mean the outer layer, don't take off the innermost one..."
Fang Mengzhu added with a playful tone, "Don't worry, I won't peek."
"Then I'll really take them off!"
Seeing Fang Mengzhu's expression and that she didn't object, Su Xin took off his pants, put them in a trash bag, and continued to wipe the water off his legs with tissues.
Fang Mengzhu seemed to have forgotten her promise, turned her head to look at Su Xin, and said, "I didn't expect you to have such a good body for your age, with chest and abdominal muscles."
"Of course, I work out every day."
After wiping his body, Su Xin took a pair of pants from a clean garbage bag, opened the car window, and held the pants out to wring them dry.
"What makes you so uneasy at your age?"
It was at this moment, Fang Mengzhu suddenly asked.
"Hmm?"
Su Xin turned to her with a puzzled look.
With a confident smile, Fang Mengzhu asserted, "You were also going to kill yourself, right?"
"..."
"Looks like I guessed right."
"...No, I wasn't..."
"The railings there are tens of meters away from the sea, so you couldn't have accidentally fallen in. And as I walked over, I didn't see any observation decks or anything nearby that you could have fallen into the sea from normally, so you couldn't have swum there by falling from somewhere else nearby either."
Even with most of her face covered by sunglasses, Fang Mengzhu's raised lips conveyed her confidence in her reasoning.
"This..."
Su Xin continued wringing his pants until no more water came out, pulled them back in through the window, took out a shirt from another garbage bag, and began squeezing it too, speaking slowly, "Isn't it possible..."
"You're thinking someone threw you into the sea, right?"
Fang Mengzhu confidently cut him off, "If someone threw you into the sea, you should have injuries or binding marks on your body, but you don't have any of those."
"Another possibility is that someone drugged you before throwing you into the sea. But if that were the case, you wouldn't have been able to swim to the shore alive; even if you did, you'd be weak, not energetic like this."
"So, any other explanations?"
Su Xin couldn't see Fang Mengzhu's expression.
But he could imagine the smug 'I've seen through everything' look on her face.
"Who's the detective anime fan here?"
"You're getting into character already..."
Su Xin mentally complained.
But he could see that her self-proclaimed, brilliant detective show had improved Fang Mengzhu's mood a lot. He didn't plan on refuting her and chose to play along with her guess.
He retrieved the clothes already wrung as dry as possible, placed them next to the pants at the air vent, then rolled the car window up again, and remembered to buckle the seat belt.
Then he leaned back against the seat.
He let out a heavy sigh.
Gazing skyward at a forty-five-degree angle, his eyes seemed to pierce through the sports car's roof, falling into the endless distant stars. His gaze full of remembrance and melancholy, as if recalling certain past events:
"You're right."
"I did jump into the sea myself."
"There's nothing much to hang onto in life."
"But, once I was in the sea, fear overwhelmed me; the despair of impending death was terrifying. Compared to that despair, all my prior worries seemed trivial."
"So, I swam back as hard as I could."
Speaking, Su Xin turned to Fang Mengzhu again, sincerely saying:
"Don't contemplate suicide lightly; it's terrifying."
"Not being able to breathe in the sea, unable to see anything, being tossed by waves, with seawater in your nose and mouth, breathing becomes strenuous, like watching your life ebb away with nothing you can do."
"It's more despairing and terrifying than imagined."
"Heard suicide by jumping is worse, the head shattering with a 'crack' into pieces."
"Not only is the process of dying scary, but also the postmortem state is horrifying. I've heard drowned bodies swell all over, their faces like pig heads, while jumpers end up as a mess of minced meat..."
Listening to his description, Fang Mengzhu's face grew darker, and when she heard the phrase 'minced meat,' she finally couldn't help but scream:
"Stop it!!"
"Ding! You earned 10 causality points!"
Su Xin showed a smile.
It seemed she thoroughly abandoned the idea of suicide.
But right at that moment, his expression suddenly changed, and pointing forward, he shouted in alarm:
"Look at the road! Look at the road!"