That slap sent Song Erya straight back.
Clutching her head, she opened her eyes to find a pale face with black-rimmed glasses less than ten centimeters from hers.
She reacted instinctively and slapped him.
Duan Xirui yelped and covered his face. "Song Erya, why do you hit people the moment you wake up?"
Knowing she had little strength—barely enough to swat a mosquito—Song Erya rolled her eyes at him. "What's wrong with you? Why were you hovering over my face?"
"You sleep like the dead. I called you forever and you didn't wake up. I thought you were dead." Duan Xirui muttered. "And why are you in the hospital again?"
Song Erya replied listlessly, "If you're sick and don't go to the hospital, should you go to the crematorium? And why aren't you at school?"
He flashed a grin, showing his teeth. "Please, the college entrance exam scores are already out. What school is there to go to?"
Duan Xirui was a friend three years younger than her.
After she was diagnosed with leukemia, she took two years off school and then repeated a year. She should have attended high school with Duan Xirui, but she couldn't fit in with minors and didn't go, instead hiring a private tutor.
The recent bouts of time travel had muddled her mind, and she had forgotten that her friend had already graduated from high school.
"My mom wants me to stay local for college," Duan Xirui said. "What about you? Where are you going?"
Song Erya frowned. "Look at me. Do I look like I can go to school?"
He sobered instantly. "Weren't you all better after the surgery? Is this serious?"
"It's just a fever. How serious can it be?" She put on a smile.
She was lying. This time, she probably wouldn't be able to go to college either.
"Then why do you have to be hospitalized?"
"Uncle Mingsong is just overly nervous. He insisted I stay for observation."
Duan Xirui raised his hand to touch her head. "That's not right—why did you shave your hair again?"
She pushed his hand away. "Don't touch."
"It's fine. You still look good bald," he said, finding her look novel. He even pulled out his phone to take a photo. When she refused, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and raised the phone anyway, pulling her into the frame.
As they struggled, the ward door opened again. Shen Mingsong walked in.
He was very tall—over 1.9 meters. His sharp phoenix eyes and high brow ridge gave him a cold, intimidating air. A pair of silver-rimmed glasses rested on his nose, as if he had just stepped out of a negotiation room. Even without anger, he radiated authority.
Duan Xirui grew more nervous than if he were facing his own father and immediately stood at attention. "Hello, Uncle Shen."
Shen Mingsong walked over and said coldly, "Delete it."
Duan Xirui didn't dare utter a word. He deleted the ugly photo at once, then heard Shen Mingsong add, "Get out."
Duan Xirui's parents were long-time friends of Shen Mingsong. After their divorce, they barely looked after him, and Shen Mingsong often disciplined him on their behalf. As a result, Duan Xirui was terrified of him.
He shot Song Erya a look that said, "I'll come back later," then obediently left.
After the assistant closed the door, only Song Erya and Shen Mingsong remained. The chill around him softened.
It was midsummer in Haidu as well. Outside the window, greenery flourished, cicadas chirping endlessly.
The ward was warmly decorated; from the inside, it hardly looked like a hospital.
Shen Mingsong pulled over a chair and sat beside the bed, carrying the scent of disinfectant.
"How are you feeling today, Erya?"
Her waist still hurt, but she didn't say it. She only looked at him expectantly. "Uncle, do you remember what I said last night?"
She said "last night," but for her it had been many days. Time flowed differently between the two worlds.
He answered without hesitation. "Song Yao."
"You said Song Yao died. Did she really die?" Song Erya had thought about it a lot. She had gone back and lived on in Song Yao's body. To outsiders, Song Yao should have survived.
At the very least, she hadn't drowned. Song Erya had lived in her place—surely she could change something.
Shen Mingsong studied her face for a moment, then took out his phone and showed her a photo from his album: an old photograph of a death certificate.
Name: Song Yao.
Cause of death: Accident.
Date of death: July 17, 1995.
The first time Song Erya traveled back, she had seen the date at the police station—July 17, 1995.
So Song Yao had still drowned.
But why?
Hadn't she gone back?
Song Erya thought of the nebulous theory of parallel universes—different branches forming within a quantum multiverse, each branch a separate world. Perhaps her crossing had created a parallel world where things diverged.
She subconsciously bit her finger, but Shen Mingsong moved her hand away. He briefly touched her wrist, then withdrew. "Erya, don't you have anything you want to say?"
"Say what?" Her mind was a mess. What could she possibly say?
He watched her for a while. "When you're ready to say it, tell Uncle."
She was completely baffled.
Shen Mingsong got up to wash his hands and brought her a bowl of washed blueberries.
After eating one, Song Erya realized what she wanted to ask. "Why do you have my aunt's death certificate?"
The document looked like something retrieved from an archive—old, handwritten, yet well preserved.
Why would Shen Mingsong have gone to find it? It couldn't have been because of a single question from her, prompting him to rush out overnight. Even a domineering CEO wouldn't work that fast.
She guessed at a reason. "Was Song Yao important to you?"
So important that he had kept this certificate all these years.
But when she had traveled back, Shen Mingsong's attitude toward her—toward Song Yao—had been terrible. He had even tied her to a tree. Who ties up someone they care about?
Shen Mingsong lowered his eyes to the image on his phone. "Uncle doesn't remember her very well."
When Shen Mingsong didn't want to say something, he simply avoided it. He didn't lie for the sake of it.
"Uncle, were you wild when you were young?"
"Wild?" He looked over.
She thought for a moment, then made a throat-slitting gesture with her hand. "Like a street thug—fighting all over the place like in the movies?"
He replied seriously, "No. When I was young, I studied properly."
"You're lying."
She had seen him take on three people alone—almost crushed flat by Song Guoliang.
Having witnessed his dark history with her own eyes, Song Erya smiled, her eyes curving. Her talent for talking nonsense clearly came from him.
Shen Mingsong stayed to have lunch with her before leaving. She still wasn't well enough to move around. While bored, she noticed an iPad by the bed and casually unlocked it.
He had forgotten to take it with him. It was synced to his phone. She opened the photo album, wanting to look again at Song Yao's death certificate.
There wasn't much in the album—some photos of the sky and a few selfies of herself she had taken while playing with his phone. She knew exactly what was in there.
The most recently saved image was the death certificate. Finding nothing else of note, she scrolled further and saw photos of old newspaper articles and a detention notice.
"Our bureau detained Fang Wenbin at 23:00 on June 24, 1997, on suspicion of illegal detention and rape. He is currently held at Coconut City Detention Center."
She didn't recognize the name. The news articles seemed irrelevant. She skimmed through them and found nothing else, then set the iPad aside and messaged Duan Xirui on her phone before planning to take a nap and wait for him to return.
She felt as though she had forgotten something.
The hospital bed rocked slightly, making her dizzy.
With a jolt, she remembered—she still hadn't checked what opportunities existed in 1995, or which lottery tickets might win.
She clapped her hands, and her surroundings turned into a small grove.
Huh?
All right. She had crossed again.
Song Erya was in Shen Mingsong's arms. Her face burned, and the gap in her gums ached.
He was moving fast, jostling her so much that she had to wrap both arms around his neck. She whispered by his ear, "Brother, I'm dizzy."
He patted the back of her head. "Hold on a bit."
She wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand and explained gloomily, "My molar fell out."
When Song Guoliang had hit her, she'd had a sudden idea and deliberately mixed blood with saliva to spit it out, pretending to be dead to scare them. Who knew she'd actually lose consciousness and get sent back?
Had she scared them to death?
Shen Mingsong didn't slow down.
Thinking he hadn't heard her, she leaned closer to his ear. "Brother, I said my molar fell out."
Her warm breath brushed his ear. Every hair on Shen Mingsong's body stood on end. He almost threw her off.
He carefully set her down, bending halfway to meet her gaze. With long fingers, he gently but firmly tilted her chin and pried her mouth open to examine it.
One of the molars in her lower left jaw was missing, leaving a bloody hollow.
She pushed him away, rubbed her jaw, and said indistinctly, "I was pretending."
She could clearly feel his tense body relax. His thin lips pressed together. The air turned strangely silent.
When she tried to laugh to ease the awkwardness, her face suddenly hurt. Without a word, Shen Mingsong pinched her cheek between two fingers and pulled, showing no mercy.
Every emotion was written plainly on the boy's face. "Didn't I tell you to go home? Why did you butt in?"
Her face had suffered enough—pinched, slapped—and now even Shen Mingsong was bullying her. If she got disfigured, it would be unforgivable.
She slapped his hand away, aggrieved. "I saw you getting beaten!"
"Meddlesome."
"You're biting the hand that helps you."
He noticed the red mark on her cheek from Shen Luhua's pinch, then turned her face to examine the slap mark left by Song Guoliang—red, swollen, already starting to puff up.
A truly disaster-prone face.
He took her by the hand and continued forward. The wind billowed his shirt, revealing a glimpse of his lower back. Song Erya noticed a wrench tucked into his waistband.
He hadn't taken it out during the fight.
Shen Mingsong still took her to the nearest clinic. The bleeding from her tooth had already stopped on its own, and the doctor prescribed some medicine to reduce swelling.
Song Erya also asked for medicine for bruises and sprains.
Shen Mingsong's beautiful phoenix eyes bore a clear bruise where he'd taken a punch. His lip was split too—who knew how badly the rest of him was hurt?
Song Guoliang weighed at least two hundred pounds. Being crushed under him was no different from being buried by a collapsing wall.
"No need," Shen Mingsong said, stopping the doctor from fetching more medicine.
The doctor looked at the two, who seemed like siblings, unsure who had the final say. "So—do you want it or not?"
"Buy it!" Song Erya said firmly, silently despising Shen Mingsong's habit of toughing things out. Being sturdy didn't mean he should endure everything.
"I don't have money."
"I'll pay."
He stared at her with dark eyes. "You have money?"
She was dirt-poor, but thick-skinned. She cupped her hands like a begging puppy, eyes bright. "Then lend it to me for now. I'll pay you back later."
He was so exasperated he almost laughed and swatted her hands away.
As she watched him pull out a wad of crumpled bills to pay, she suddenly remembered something. "Your tricycle!"
Her treasures were still on it.
He pulled her out of the clinic. "It won't get lost."
She was still troubled. She'd just seen him pay four yuan and thirty cents for medicine. How much could those seafood catches sell for? And he had caught them all himself.
No money earned, beaten up, and now owing medical fees—could she demand compensation from Song Guoliang?
***
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