A Car Accident and Reversed Time

Hiss.

It hurt so much.

Was he going to die?

The faint stench of blood drifted from his nose and mouth. Dong Xuebin, surrounded by darkness, tried moving his fingers—no response. He tried twisting his neck—still no response. Finally, he used every ounce of strength in his body to slowly pry his eyelids open a sliver. In his blurry vision was a massive truck overloaded with sand and gravel. Beside it, an old man in his seventies or eighties and a beautiful woman under thirty lay motionless in pools of blood. Quite a few bystanders had gathered on both sides of the road, their mouths moving as they shouted something beside the old man and woman's bodies. Yet Dong Xuebin could not hear a single sound.

The old man was dead. Aunt Xuan was dead. With injuries this severe... he was surely not going to survive either.

Looking at Qu Yunxuan's beautiful face, smeared with blood, Dong Xuebin felt as though needles were piercing his heart.

His neighbor, Qu Yunxuan, was an exceptionally kind woman. At the intersection, she had seen that the old man had trouble walking and voluntarily helped him cross the street. But even though the light was red, the truck driver approaching from the side—whether drunk or exhausted—had charged straight ahead. Dong Xuebin had spotted Aunt Xuan in danger from afar and rushed over to pull Qu Yunxuan away, but he had not made it in time. He had lost his life along with them.

Regret.

He had never regretted anything so deeply.

If Dong Xuebin had noticed the out-of-control truck and run over to save them just a moment earlier, perhaps none of the three would have died.

But now... it was too late to say anything.

Dong Xuebin's eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Unable to bear looking at Qu Yunxuan and the old man's bodies, distorted from the collision, he closed his eyes and waited for death to come.

Rumble.

It sounded like thunder, a peal so violent it seemed capable of shattering his soul.

The next moment, Dong Xuebin's vision blurred, and he abruptly leaped out of the endless darkness.

Strength returned to his body. His hearing and vision recovered in an instant. Dong Xuebin froze, blinking in confusion as he looked around. He found himself standing there perfectly fine, back at the traffic lights of that same intersection. Around him was the Capital City's distinctive endless sea of vehicles. Cars, trucks, and taxis sped past one after another. Under the dim evening streetlights, pedestrians hurried along.

"Sir, let me help you cross the street."

"No need, thank you, young lady. You go on ahead."

"My home is right across the street, so it's not out of my way. Come on, I'll help you."

Stunned, Dong Xuebin followed the voices with his eyes. Qu Yunxuan, wearing a gentle smile, was standing at the crosswalk not far away. She saw him too and smiled brightly with pursed lips. "Xiao Bin, you just got back? Went out to see your classmates?" Beside her stood the old man who had just died. The old man glanced at Dong Xuebin, then hunched over and covered his mouth as he coughed repeatedly, looking sickly.

"Ah, yeah, I just got back." Looking from one to the other, Dong Xuebin answered instinctively, unable to react for a long while.

What was going on? He had not died? Aunt Xuan had not died? The old man had not died either?

Dong Xuebin blankly raised his hand into the air, opened it, clenched it, then opened it again. There was no blood and no injury.

Had that just been a dream? There had been no car accident? It had all been an illusion?

As the red light went out, the yellow light came on. After a brief pause, the green light appeared across the intersection. The pedestrians waiting for the light began crossing the road along the crosswalk. The old man was the slowest among them, leaning on his cane as he shuffled forward. Qu Yunxuan carefully supported him, accompanying him across the street.

It looked so familiar.

So familiar.

Suddenly, a loud engine roar came from beside him. Dong Xuebin reflexively looked over and saw a large truck coming down the right-turn lane to his left. Its rear was packed full of sand and gravel, bulging outward in places. The truck was not going particularly fast, at most around thirty miles per hour, as it rumbled toward the intersection.

Dong Xuebin rubbed his eyes, his heart lurching in shock. Wasn't this exactly the scene before Aunt Xuan and the old man got into the accident?

How could this be? Had time gone backward? It had not been an illusion?

At that critical moment, he had no time to think. He shouted at the top of his lungs, "Get out of the way! There's a car!"

Everyone nearby froze and quickly looked around.

"What car?"

"Where is there a car?"

Qu Yunxuan saw the truck and turned to Dong Xuebin strangely. "Why are you shouting? The light over there is red."

The old man did not think much of it either. The truck was in the right-turn lane; turning would not affect them.

But Dong Xuebin knew that the truck that had taken all three of their lives would not stop. Running toward them, he shouted anxiously, "Aunt Xuan, move! Get out of there!"

The Black High Heels beneath Qu Yunxuan's feet paused. Amused, she said, "Xiao Bin, what's wrong with you today? That truck isn't..."

Before she could finish, the massive truck had already rolled over the stop line without slowing in the slightest.

Whoosh! Under everyone's horrified gazes, the truck ran the red light.

"Ah!"

"Run!"

"It's going to hit someone!"

Screams erupted all around.

Qu Yunxuan was completely stunned. Her face tightened, and the first thing she did after coming to her senses was yank hard on the old man. "Quick, run!"

"Young lady, you run! Leave me!" The old man panicked and shoved Qu Yunxuan.

But it was too late. The roaring truck was already right in front of them.

Four meters...

Three meters...

Despair appeared on Qu Yunxuan and the old man's faces.

Just as everyone believed the two were about to die on the spot, Dong Xuebin, who had known the truck would run the red light, suddenly sprinted behind them. Using the momentum of his charge, he wrapped an arm around Aunt Xuan's waist and the old man's waist, one on each side, with all his strength. He continued charging forward with his original momentum, let out a roar, and violently flung both of them away at the waist.

"Ah, it's over!"

"Someone's dead!"

Many of the more timid people shut their eyes.

With a whoosh, the murderous truck sped past, nearly grazing Dong Xuebin's back.

The old man slid half a meter northward, one side of his body scraping against the ground.

Qu Yunxuan was also sent flying to the ground by Dong Xuebin's throw, rolling over and over.

Dong Xuebin took the hardest fall. He lay sprawled diagonally on the road, sucking in cold breaths through the pain in his waist and legs.

Time seemed to freeze at that moment. Then cheers broke out on the street.

"They're alive! They're all alive!"

"Good job, young man!"

"Clap, clap, clap." No one knew who started it, but the surrounding pedestrians began applauding Dong Xuebin.

Screech! The culprit truck finally slammed on its brakes more than ten meters away and stopped in the middle of the road. Its window rolled down partway, and a drunken head poked out. After hesitating for a few seconds, the truck's engine roared, and it sped off in a cloud of dust.

"That bastard ran!"

"Write down the license plate!"

"Right, call the police!"

A traffic assistant who had rushed over from across the street helped the old man up. Seeing Dong Xuebin lying there without moving, the old man called out anxiously, "Young man, how are you? How are you?"

Qu Yunxuan also climbed up while clutching her arm. She did not even bother putting on her fallen high heel, instead running barefoot to Dong Xuebin in a panic. Squatting down, she shook him. "Xiao Bin! Xiao Bin, what's wrong? Say something! Don't scare me, okay? Wake up! Sob... don't scare me!" Tears streamed uncontrollably from Qu Yunxuan's eyes. "It's my fault. I didn't listen to you and get out of the way sooner. Sob... wake up! If anything happens to you, how am I supposed to explain it to your mother? Wake up! Sob..."

Still shaken, Dong Xuebin let out a breath and painfully turned his head. "I'm fine... I just... fell pretty hard..."

Qu Yunxuan's arm froze. Crying with joy, she threw her arms around him. "You scared me to death! You scared me to death!"

Uh... Dong Xuebin's body immediately stiffened. He had never been this physically close to his beautiful neighbor before.

The old man's eyes reddened with emotion as well. "It's good that you're all right. Good that you're all right."

The three of them had only scraped their hands and legs. Fortunately, none was seriously hurt. Since the light was about to change on this side of the street, Dong Xuebin and the others supported one another to the service road across the street.

As soon as they were steady, the old man trembled as he grasped Dong Xuebin's hand, saying gratefully, "Thank you, thank you. We're neither family nor friends, yet you took such a great risk for us... I don't even know what to say. You're still young. You have a long road ahead of you. I'm nearly eighty, and I was just diagnosed with lung cancer recently. I don't have many days left. If you had sacrificed your life for an old man like me, my sin would have been far too great. Fortunately... fortunately, you're all right." From his accent, the old man was also from the Capital City. Judging by his manner and bearing, he was most likely a highly educated scholar.

Dong Xuebin rubbed his arm and panted. "Please don't mention it."

With reddened eyes, Qu Yunxuan straightened Dong Xuebin's crooked collar. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.

"My surname is Hu. You can call me Grandpa Hu. Young lady, young man, what are your names?"

"I'm Dong Xuebin. She's Qu Yunxuan."

Grandpa Hu said, "Leave me a way to contact you. I'll come by another day and properly thank you both."

Heartbroken, Qu Yunxuan wiped the dust from Dong Xuebin's face with her hand. "You don't need to thank me. The only reason we're still standing here talking is because of Xiao Bin."

"I must thank you both. I must."

Unable to withstand Grandpa Hu's repeated questioning, Dong Xuebin finally thought it over and pulled a ten-cent banknote from his jeans pocket. On its white edge, he wrote down a Global System for Mobile Communications number beginning with 139.

Not long after, the traffic police arrived. Qu Yunxuan and the old man told them what had just happened.

But Dong Xuebin's mind was not on any of that. His head was hazy, filled with question marks.

The three of them had clearly been killed by the truck. Why had they suddenly returned to the moment before, when they had been waiting at the traffic lights?

If their deaths had been an illusion, why had everything in that illusion been exactly the same as reality? The conversation before Qu Yunxuan helped the old man cross the street, the truck's reckless charge—except for the final outcome changing, everything had been identical. Was that an illusion too? But if it was not an illusion or delusion, how could he explain suddenly returning to an earlier point in time?

There was simply no way to explain it.

Could something this surreal truly exist in the world?

Dong Xuebin silently chanted, Go back. Rewind. Return. Back up. Back.

He tried several times without getting any result. He smiled helplessly. Of course, how could superpowers possibly exist?