He was back.
He was really back.
Zhang Shutong stared blankly at the hospital room's ceiling, thinking.
In this Rewind, he had gone to eight years later for no clear reason and had returned for no clear reason.
But he didn't have time to ponder the reason now. The corridor was getting noisy. Zhang Shutong tried to keep his mind clear. He looked at the electronic calendar on the wall again.
It was the early morning of Sunday, after the avalanche.
Four o'clock sharp.
The long-haired woman had been taken away by Lu Qinglian.
He had been brought to the hospital in Ruoping's father's car.
It wasn't dawn yet.
Why did he come back at this moment?
The ability to regress could no longer be deduced by its usual rules, but one thing remained unchanged: he would return to an "important node" before an event occurred.
So where was this node?
Before, he had woken up on a Monday and stayed in a hospital off the island for a week. Now he was a full day ahead of that.
What did he miss in this one day?
Zhang Shutong anxiously tried to get up, but the moment the thought arose, he realized his body was not obeying him. All he could do was move his eyeballs. His arms were connected to various tubes, half his face was covered by an oxygen mask, and an instrument was placed by his bed, with unreadable waves jumping on it.
Only then did he realize that he was in his most fragile state, having just been out of danger. It was a fool's dream to try to do anything. He lay on the bed helplessly, letting out a heavy sigh.
What was that matter?
Soon a doctor ran over. He saw the person take out a flashlight and roughly pull open his eyelids. He subconsciously wanted to close his eyes, but the doctor held his eyelids firmly, and a beam of light shot into his eyes.
"Can you hear me? If you can, open your mouth a little."
Zhang Shutong moved his lips.
Then the other person pressed on his upper eye socket. The pain made him frown. After that, his hand was lifted... After a series of checks, Zhang Shutong was so exhausted he was on the verge of fainting again. The doctor then instructed the nurse behind him:
"Everything is normal. He's finally out of danger. The boy is just too weak and needs to rest quietly. Don't let his classmates get close. Just notify his family."
"Okay."
The doctor left, and the nurse came to the bed.
It was that young nurse.
The young nurse blinked:
"Do you still remember your name?"
"Zhan..."
"Good, as long as you remember."
I didn't even finish... Zhang Shutong thought weakly. What if I said my name was Zhang Jiahui?
He couldn't believe he was still in the mood to make a joke, but for Zhang Shutong, nothing was more joyful than coming back from eight years later.
"Do you have anything else you want to say?" The young nurse saw that his eyes were still open.
"Qingyi..."
"Who? Your classmate? The girl you brought back?"
The young nurse was a chatterbox. Her asking didn't stop her from walking to the door of the hospital room:
"Who is Qingyi? Does your classmate want to see you?"
Zhang Shutong couldn't see what was happening at the door, but he could tell from the voices that there were many people there: Ruoping, Gu Qiumian, Qingyi. Ruoping seemed to be holding her phone on speaker, and a woman's anxious voice was coming from it.
All of his thoughts were a beat behind. By the time he realized it was a phone call to his mom, a boy had already walked to the bed.
The other person sighed and leaned his ear close to his mouth:
"I'm listening."
"Gu... Qiumian."
"You want to see her?"
"Take... her... back."
Qingyi thought for a moment:
"I see. You mean to take her back before her family finds out?
Zhang Shutong couldn't nod. He could only move his eyes.
"Is there anything else you want to say?"
"...Don't leave the island."
"You mean to stay here?"
"Mmm."
"Anything else?"
Zhang Shutong closed his eyes.
Qingyi seemed to have closed the door when he left.
This time, the hospital room became completely quiet.
He forced his eyelids open again and looked at the ceiling, wondering if there was anything he hadn't had time to say.
But Zhang Shutong racked his brains and could only think of these two things. Since it was four in the morning, it meant Gu Qiumian hadn't called her dad yet, and the people in the villa hadn't woken up. The other thing was not to leave the island. Even if he couldn't move in the hospital, he had to make sure he was on the island.
Zhang Shutong wanted to wait for Qingyi's reply. The reason he went to him first was because Ruoping and Gu Qiumian could sometimes be emotional.
He actually wanted to ask his mom for help, but over the phone, it might not be clear.
These two things were both difficult and simple to do. Zhang Shutong tried hard not to sleep, but his eyelids still closed a little bit.
His consciousness went blank.
The dark snowy night.
Zhang Shutong was back on that winding mountain road.
He twisted the throttle and drove into the road, but the avalanche didn't happen as expected.
Instead, he and the bike fell to the ground.
The long-haired woman approached him step by step.
But what was even worse was that the motorcycle had fallen on him. He tried to break free, but the motorcycle was so heavy, and he couldn't push it off. He gradually started to have difficulty breathing.
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
He used all his strength but still couldn't push the motorcycle away.
In the end, the long-haired woman walked up to him.
Zhang Shutong was startled awake.
He was breathing heavily. The first thing that came into his sight was an unfamiliar ceiling.
For a moment, he was in a trance.
Where was this?
The hospital?
That's right. He had come back from eight years later again, said a few things, and then fell unconscious. He was safe now.
This thought made him relax completely.
A ray of sunlight playfully peeked into his eyes.
He seemed to have finally said goodbye to that snowy night. His senses started to become clear. It was quiet everywhere. He sniffed the hospital room's disinfectant smell and found a hint of a familiar scent in it.
Zhang Shutong smelled Gu Qiumian's scent.
He was a person who was slow to notice smells. He couldn't distinguish whether the so-called scent was from perfume, shower gel, or body lotion, but he remembered what Gu Qiumian's scent was like.
If sunlight had a scent, her scent was the warm and moist air of sunlight after a rain. It could be very vague, because who knows what sunlight smells like, other than the smell of dead dust mites. But it could also be very specific—the unique fragrance of soil, plants, and dust after a rain.
Zhang Shutong looked up. Gu Qiumian was leaning on the bed in a white striped blanket.
It was daytime. She seemed to be asleep, her eyelashes trembling with her breath, very lightly. Outside the window were trees. The wind blew, and the branches and leaves swayed. The sunlight danced on her hair through the gaps between the branches.
A four-leaf clover pendant was hanging from the tip of her hair.
Zhang Shutong also figured out where the motorcycle that had fallen on him came from.
It wasn't a motorcycle. It was actually Gu Qiumian.
Zhang Shutong moved his fingers, wanting to push Gu Qiumian's head away, but he couldn't. His left arm was in a splint. Oh, he remembered now. It was a bone fracture.
Could it be that he didn't die in the avalanche but was crushed to death by Gu Qiumian herself? That would be quite tragic.
He suddenly sighed, thinking, "You're so much trouble. Even my nightmares are because of you."
He didn't wake her up. He looked at the electronic calendar:
Sunday, December 9.
1:20 p.m.
It was Sunday afternoon.
Zhang Shutong breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes again in a deep sleep.
He was woken up for the third time by his mom.
The sunlight wasn't as bright as it was at noon.
Gu Qiumian was gone.
The time was now afternoon.
His mom's eyes were a little red when she saw him. She said it was all her fault for leaving him and going to play off the island. Zhang Shutong said, "It's fine, Mom. Look, I'm okay."
He lifted his hand, but it wasn't very convincing.
His mom was very heartbroken. In the end, his dad pulled her away and ruffled his hair:
"Get well soon."
Zhang Shutong saw many people that afternoon.
He truly felt that he was sick. It wasn't because his body was so uncomfortable, but because so many people came to visit him.
His friends came to see him together. He first saw Ruoping.
"We should have known not to go along with your nonsense," Ruoping said with a bitter tone. "We should have just let you stay in the hospital yesterday. Instead, we caused you harm."
He said, "Don't worry. I'll take my medicine and listen to the doctor's orders this time."
The doctor had said that his current condition was not suitable for disturbances, so everyone didn't talk much.
Du Kang was the second one. He said:
"How did you end up like this too, bro? Don't go alone next time. Call us if something happens."
Zhang Shutong said, "I know. I'll try to call you guys for help next time."
"Actually, outside the Second Ring Road isn't a good place," Zhang Shutong said after a long while.
"What do you mean?"
"But the rooftop is nice. You can drink beer and feel the breeze. Maybe there will be a chance in the future."
Du Kang muttered, "He's lost it. Shutong's gone crazy from sleeping," and left.
The last one was Qingyi.
Zhang Shutong earnestly told him to quickly get the right girl and not to be hung up on things like Kamen Rider and Ultraman.
"That's not something I need you to teach me, Shutong," Qingyi said with a sigh, sitting by the bed.
"I just thought of something. Gu Qiumian didn't go back? Why was she still here in the afternoon?"
"Oh, that's a long story. Ruoping's dad dropped her off. I went with him. She called her nanny. The bodyguards were asleep in the car, so she got home smoothly. It was around morning, I think. She then told her family that a classmate was in the hospital and she wanted to come see him. Ruoping and I stayed for a whole morning, and when we couldn't take it anymore, we went home to sleep. Gu Qiumian stayed for the whole afternoon. You didn't wake up, so she went back and said she'd come back in the afternoon. That's pretty much it."
"Thank you."
"No need to thank me. I didn't do much. I didn't even act as a mediator. I actually thought it would be very difficult, but when I walked out of the hospital room and said you had something to tell her, she seriously asked me what she could do. I told her you wanted her to go back, and she went back. You actually thought she was too impulsive."
Zhang Shutong nodded and said:
"I'm sorry. I damaged your motorcycle."
"It's not really damaged. Just the rearview mirror is broken."
"So resilient."
"You're pretty resilient, too," Qingyi paused. "You seem to be becoming a negative example."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone who rode a motorcycle out in the middle of the night to have fun and ended up getting buried in the snow. You'll probably be an example in this year's winter break safety manual, something like, 'Student Zhang from Class XX did something and this happened.'"
"Whatever. I'm definitely not writing a reflection." Zhang Shutong was a little tired.
Qingyi peeled an orange:
"But you ran into something really terrifying, didn't you?"
"Hey, big brother, are you a psychic chuunibyou?"
"I looked at the motorcycle's rearview mirror. It wasn't broken from a fall. It was more like... someone punched it." Qingyi ate the orange, lost in thought. "Actually, it's not just the motorcycle. You collapsed near the villa. We traced your path from the villa, the footprints of another person, the fragments of the mirror, and the location of the avalanche are all very far apart. Shutong, don't think you've kept it a secret."
"You all know?"
"Correction, we all know," Qingyi said. "I know Ruoping knows, Du Kang knows, your aunt and uncle know, Gu Qiumian knows, and even her dad knows. You can't be an anonymous hero this time."