A Wish

"Me, me, me!"

Cheng Mengxue eagerly raised her hand.

Jiang Ran held up a palm to gesture for her to go ahead.

"What's your dream?"

"Hehe..."

Cheng Mengxue scratched her head sheepishly.

"Well, you know how I failed two classes last semester..."

"Didn't you take the makeup exams a week ago?" Qin Feng cut in.

"Come on! I'm still worried about them!"

Cheng Mengxue looked aggrieved.

"Advanced mathematics is just too hard! I think I'll be fine in the other class, but I'm still not sure about advanced math. I wish I could've gotten one more big question right!"

"Okay."

Jiang Ran interlaced his fingers and rested them on his abdomen.

He already understood what Cheng Mengxue meant.

All he had to do was send her the answer to one of the final questions before she took the advanced mathematics makeup exam a week ago, and she'd be sure to pass.

Cheng Mengxue wasn't stupid, either. If they gave her a heads-up about what to focus on and told her to review the example problems in a particular chapter of the textbook, she could raise her score.

"When will the makeup exam results come out?"

"The day after tomorrow."

Hmm, that worked out pretty well.

Jiang Ran considered it.

Changing the result before the final score was announced was much less risky than trying to fix things afterward.

"I have no objections."

He looked at Qin Feng.

"What about you?"

"None from me, either."

Qin Feng shrugged.

"Could there be anything smaller than this? I even think using the Spacetime Bulletin for something like this is... a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut."

"Still, the makeup exam was a week ago. What day exactly was the advanced math exam?"

Uh...

Cheng Mengxue took out her phone, checked the calendar, then looked up.

"Nine days ago."

Qin Feng glanced at the Positron Cannon on the lab table, looking a little concerned.

"Nine days ago... That'll definitely be a challenge."

Jiang Ran understood what he was thinking.

So far, using the Positron Cannon and the transformer distribution box, they'd only sent messages as far back as three days.

To send a message nine days into the past, they'd have to operate the beam collimator and increase the electron beam density.

Would that cause any problems?

"It will."

Qin Feng saw Jiang Ran's concern and nodded.

"Increasing the electron beam density means increasing the power. It won't multiply geometrically, but the power will still be higher than in any of our previous experiments."

"Then what do we do?" Cheng Mengxue asked anxiously.

"We can run the experiment late at night or early in the morning."

Qin Feng suggested it.

"It's getting hot, and the club activity building has the air conditioning on, so the circuits are already under a heavy load. If we increase the Positron Cannon's power now, we could easily burn out the wiring, or even the cannon itself."

"We can wait until ten or eleven at night, or even after midnight. The building will be empty, the circuits won't be under much load, and we should be fine even if we use a little more power."

No sooner said than done.

That night, the three of them lay low in the club activity room until midnight, then ran the experiment in the dead of night.

Jiang Ran perched on the windowsill.

"Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Zero—"

Bzz!

Bzz!

Bzz!

As Qin Feng started up the Positron Cannon and Cheng Mengxue sent the message from beside the distribution box, Jiang Ran was overcome by dizziness once more. He lost his balance as the world spun around him.

Two seconds later, once he'd recovered, he realized he was somewhere else.

He was lying in his dorm bed.

He was wearing pajamas and tucked under a blanket.

Jiang Ran sat up and slipped on his slippers, just as his roommate in the top bunk pulled up his pants.

"What are you doing?"

"Going to pee!"

His roommate replied.

"You're still awake?"

"Yeah. I'm going to the bathroom too."

Jiang Ran went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.

Clearly, spacetime had shifted. The established history had changed, the Worldline had jumped, and now this was a new history, a new Worldline.

Tonight, on this Worldline, the three of them hadn't sent a Spacetime Bulletin. So at this hour, they naturally weren't in the club activity room. They were asleep in their dorms instead.

"I'll go back to sleep first."

He yawned.

"I'll sync memories with Little Xue and Qin Feng tomorrow when I see them."

The next day, the three met at the cafeteria and compared notes.

Nine days had passed since Cheng Mengxue received the Spacetime Bulletin with the advanced math answers, but history had barely changed—in fact, it had hardly changed at all.

At the end of the message they'd sent Cheng Mengxue, they'd specifically told her she didn't need to tell Jiang Ran and Qin Feng about it, and to focus on studying. She could tell them about the message nine days later.

So the message's Spacetime Butterfly Effect was tiny. Besides helping Cheng Mengxue score a dozen or so more points in advanced math, it had no effect on any other established history.

Another day passed, and it was time for the makeup exam results to come out.

Cheng Mengxue was nervous and excited, refreshing the page on her phone over and over.

"Yes! I passed advanced math! Sixty-five points!"

Jiang Ran and Qin Feng wiped their brows.

That had been a close call. If Cheng Mengxue hadn't gotten that final question right, she would've failed the makeup exam too.

Afterward.

The three gathered once more in the club activity room.

"The only shame is that we still only received one Spacetime Bulletin this time."

Jiang Ran looked over Cheng Mengxue's phone.

"I wonder when we'll get the next mysterious message. Without any follow-up information, there's no way to make sense of this awkward sentence, 'Don't believe ha.'"

Qin Feng was modifying the Positron Cannon on the lab table.

"We'll take it one step at a time. We're making progress with every experiment."

He stepped aside and waved them over.

"Look, I went to the secondhand appliance market a few days ago and found an LCD knob control panel that fit this old machine. I made a few modifications."

Jiang Ran and Cheng Mengxue stepped closer.

They saw an old LCD knob control panel attached to the Positron Cannon's casing.

The panel had four knobs, each corresponding to one of four red LCD screens that displayed numbers. The labels beside them read year, month, day, and hour.

Turning a knob increased or decreased the number on its corresponding screen.

The two of them understood at once.

It was a visual control panel!

It let them set the time for sending a Spacetime Bulletin precisely, with the push of a few buttons!

"Tony Stark!"

Jiang Ran exclaimed.

"You're practically Iron Man, Qin Feng. With a control panel this straightforward, even we can operate the Positron Cannon."

"It's all right."

Qin Feng wasn't the least bit proud.

"I could've made it look a little nicer, but these parts are twenty years old. The components were really hard to find."

"Operating the Positron Cannon will be easy now. We just point it at the distribution box outside the window, set when to send the Spacetime Bulletin with the knobs—nine days ago, a month ago, a year ago, and so on—and then press the start button. Simple."

"Great."

Jiang Ran sat on the sofa and leaned back.

"According to our Spacetime Message Phase Two Plan, all three of us can use the Spacetime Bulletin to fulfill one wish, taking turns."

"Little Xue's wish has come true, so Qin Feng, you're next..."

"What wish do you want to fulfill with the Spacetime Bulletin? What regret do you want to make up for?"

A gentle breeze lifted the curtains and swept through the room.

The whole activity room fell silent.

Cicadas cried mournfully, one after another. Tender willow shoots swayed in the spring breeze, and the world outside the window teemed with life.

"Qin Feng?"

Jiang Ran blinked and looked at Qin Feng, standing silently by the window.

At last.

Qin Feng turned around amid the ceaseless chirping of the cicadas.

"I want to bring my dead father back to life."

The cicadas fell silent in an instant.

As if he'd already seen it coming, Jiang Ran's heart lurched. He couldn't hear anything anymore.

Only their quiet, heavy breathing intertwined, saying everything they both already knew.

Jiang Ran swallowed and lowered his head.

"When did your father die?"

He already knew.

They were so close.

How could he not know?

How could he not have guessed?

Cheng Mengxue hugged the Rhine Cat tightly and stared ahead, avoiding both their eyes.

Sunlight pierced the clouds, passed through the gauze curtains, and streamed in, illuminating everything.

The sunlight glinted in the eyes of a hundred Rhine Cats, all of them staring intently at the two boys, now closer than ever and yet worlds apart.

Qin Feng raised his head and looked at Jiang Ran.

"Ten years ago."