Reset to Zero | A Normal Person's Two Train Tickets

Preface:

Time is an illusion. It deceives human memory.

June 3, 2048.

Jiang Xueming was a day-to-day kind of man.

Male, heterosexual.

He was forty-six and had worked in Hong Kong for years. He wanted to find something meaningful to do in retirement, however many years away it was—so that the emptiness of having a complete family wouldn't drive him to face a useless old age, complete with cats and dogs, as a useless middle-aged man.

He worked as a cashier at a braised-food shop in Hung Hom MTR Station and occasionally picked up shifts at a toy shop on Guanghua Street.

If you took this line, you could probably spot a man like him in a small shop near the ticket gates.

He stood just shy of six feet tall. He'd finally torn up his military disability certificate on Xiaohongshu, and twelve years ago, at his wife's urging, he'd taken advantage of his looks to walk the runway at Milan Fashion Week. He'd been quite the supermodel. He ate plenty of meat, eggs, and dairy, and never stopped working out.

He was still a cheerful young man with customers. The occasional stubble appeared on his face, and his wrinkles had given him a complete makeover, leaving him looking weathered.

When there were no customers, he still looked as if a gentle breeze were blowing through his life. He seemed to enjoy every moment, waiting for his wife, a kindergarten teacher, to finish work and ride home so they could meet at the station and walk back hand in hand.

But today, he didn't seem able to enjoy his life.

Because he'd received two counterfeit bills—

—to be precise, two tickets with a texture remarkably like banknotes. Both their thickness and the grain of the paper were almost identical to