Chapter 1

Chapter 2

An unconscious person had no sense of time, so the phrase people generally used, "who knew how much time had passed," was accurate enough. I would borrow it for now-who knew how much time had passed before I slowly woke up and saw patches of mottled color on the ceiling. I felt as though I had seen that color somewhere before. Our home seemed to have been that color before we moved, back when we still had plenty of room, back when we could still grow strawberries in the yard, back before my parents separated, when I was still a good student...

As these random thoughts drifted through my groggy mind, I fell asleep again, thinking, Anywhere is fine, as long as I'm not dead...

After sleeping like that for another unknown stretch of time, I woke again and saw a face both familiar and unfamiliar.

It was familiar because I had once seen it almost every day, and unfamiliar because I had not seen it in years. Even when I did see it, it had not been this young.

In my memory, that face should have been covered in acne, with crow's-feet beginning to appear, no longer cheerful, and considerably fatter. Yet now she smiled as though time had turned backward, a pair of dimples in her childish face, a few soft, yellowish strands of hair hanging over her forehead. I involuntarily found myself thinking of a word like "loli."

I looked again in confusion before confirming it. It really was her, my distant older cousin, Zhang Xiaotong. But she had married a year ago, and we had already attended her baby's one-month celebration. This... how could...

Could Zhang Xiaotong have another sister?

Could I have been unconscious for ages, with years having passed, and this was her daughter?

My thoughts ran wild. I struggled, trying to sit up, only to discover that I could barely move.

Seeing that I seemed to be trying to move, Zhang Xiaotong looked a little surprised. She turned and shouted, "Auntie, Zhou Ran looks like he's trying to stand up!"

Zhou Ran? Wasn't my name Zhou Xingwen?

Wait... I looked at this little girl who resembled Zhang Xiaotong and suddenly recalled something that made my hair stand on end: before I was three, I had always been called Zhou Ran. Later, an elderly woman in the neighborhood said I was bound to accomplish great things through writing, and only then was my name changed to Zhou Xingwen.

A chill ran through me until my scalp nearly went numb. I raised a hand before my eyes, took one look, and passed out again.

It was a hand only a baby could have, delicate and pale, with a hint of pink in the dim light.

Before I passed out, there was only one thought in my mind.

Fuck!

Passing out clearly was not a means of escaping reality that I could use often. Before long, I woke again. The moment I opened my eyes, I saw Zhang Xiaotong sitting in front of me, her face full of concern. This cousin of mine had become very distant after she turned sixteen. I understood that it was only human nature. My family had fallen apart by then, and we were not close relatives. Without anything to gain, she naturally would not waste time cultivating our relationship. But at her current young age, she still treated me quite well. I looked at Zhang Xiaotong's face and thought, How did she get so ugly when she grew up? Letting my mind wander like that, I became a little less concerned about why I had turned into a child, or why time seemed to have run backward.

When Zhang Xiaotong saw that I was awake, a smile spread across her face. She reached over and pinched my cheeks. "The little rascal's awake. The little rascal's awake."

Though my mind was full of questions, the feeling of her pinching me was unmistakably the feeling of being alive. Perhaps we really were all butterflies, and all of this was nothing but a muddled dream?

I opened my mouth. My tongue curled awkwardly and was not working very well yet, but saying one simple word should have been no problem. "Sis... sis..."

This time Zhang Xiaotong really was surprised. She shouted, "Auntie, Auntie, Zhou Ran spoke! He spoke!"

Perhaps my waking up only to fall unconscious again had dampened their enthusiasm; Zhang Xiaotong had to shout several times before anyone came in from the outer room. At the sight of them, my nose stung. Besides my parents, there were several uncles, aunts, and other relatives. Even those I was closest to had not seen me for nearly three years. A small child's tear ducts were beyond control. My tears began falling, drop by drop, and I waved toward my parents. "Dad... Mom..."

I had been late to speak, only learning when I was over three. Judging by Zhang Xiaotong's current age, I reckoned I was not quite three yet, and she was not quite seven.

The moment I spoke, my parents were so delighted that they hardly knew what to do with themselves. Because I had been unable to learn to speak since I was little, who knew how many people had called me stupid behind their backs. I could more or less understand the thinking of my parents' generation. They were not afraid of hardship themselves, only of losing face through other people's gossip. With those words, I had given them face, so naturally the couple were happy.

But I could not feel happy at all. I knew I really was not daydreaming or running a high fever. I had truly returned to my childhood. If I was not yet three, then it should have been around 1986. I was born in October 1983 and dropped out of school in 1997. I had been under fifteen when I left school.

Working that out only made my mind more muddled. I did not know what expression to wear before these people. Though I was somewhat moved by seeing relatives after such a long separation, I had to muster the energy to keep calling out "Dad" and "Mom," making the elders around me smile in "relief." My gaze passed over them one by one. Most of these people had given me no help when I was at my lowest. I was very grateful for their "kindness."

After amusing themselves with me for a while, the novelty wore off. It was mealtime, too, so the adults went out to drink and celebrate the child learning to speak, while I stayed in the inner room drinking prepared formula. At three, there was no breast milk left for me to drink. Over the past few years away from home, I had drunk nothing but so-called pure milk, whose milk-to-water ratio might not even have reached one to seven. Suddenly drinking proper Wandashan formula, I actually found it delicious. Zhang Xiaotong stared wide-eyed as I finished the milk and still cried that I was hungry. She had no choice but to go outside, get me some food and a bowl of rice porridge, and feed it to me.

I was terribly hungry, too. I wolfed everything down, wiped my mouth with my hand, then lay down and pretended to sleep.

I only pretended to sleep so that nobody would disturb me. I needed time. I needed to think.

Clearly, for some inexplicable reason, I had returned to my own past, when I was nearly three. It was not even time turning backward; I had simply come back all of a sudden. My thoughts and consciousness were still intact, but my body had reverted to that of a toddler. It was like the so-called LOAD function in a video game. I already knew everything that would happen for a stretch of the future, yet I had to do it all over again.

I recalled a story I had wanted to write. Wasn't this situation very similar? Intelligence and experience remained intact; only the body had to start over.

Shao Ke's assessment had been, "That's too unfair to everyone else." Because of that comment, I had kept putting off writing the story.

Now I had become its protagonist.

This really was a headache...

Several days passed in succession. I drank milk and ate porridge every day, and grew used to it. After struggling out on my own for so many years, I had rarely had the chance to be waited on hand and foot like this. Apart from feeling a little depressed by the lack of freedom, it felt quite good. Besides, Zhang Xiaotong had not started school yet, and came to play with me almost every day. We had always gotten along quite well before, and I had nothing against her, so I let her pinch and squeeze me every day...

In truth, I had spent these days thinking. Every day gave me far too much time to think. Apart from pretending to babble in response to the elders' concern, I could spend most of my time quietly considering my own problem. What exactly should I do?

During the first few days, I thought about the friends who had accompanied me through the years, the people I had met at different stages of my life.

First came the friends I had met after turning fifteen, the buddies who had stayed with me through hard times, seeking neither profit nor money.

Then came the classmates I had gotten along with at school before I turned fifteen.

These people passed before my eyes one by one. I knew that if I chose a different life, I would pass most of them by. Like most people, I was deeply dissatisfied with my current life, and I wished for a chance to start again. Yet once that chance was placed before me, I actually began to hesitate.

I thought of those friends, of those old times. Of fights, cheap barbecue, football, beer, rock music, and comics. Of poverty, of hardship.

I thought about everything, yet still could not decide.

On the thirteenth day, after eating, I was thinking about my old friends again. I wondered what expressions they would wear when they heard I had died or gone missing, and how my parents, whom I had not contacted in years, would look when they heard. As I was thinking, the mournful sound of an erhu drifted slowly inside. I looked out the window and saw a legless old man sitting on a board with four wheels, plainly a beggar. Zhang Xiaotong, who was playing with me, screamed in fright at the sight of someone with such a physical deformity.

Reacting out of years of habit, I lowered my head and grabbed the small-denomination notes beside the bed, meant for buying ice pops for Zhang Xiaotong and me. I handed them to her and said, "Give him this."

Hearing me give her an order with clear pronunciation, Zhang Xiaotong was immediately more astonished than she had been at her first sight of a disabled person.

A little impatiently, I pressed the money into her hand. "I told you, take it to him."

Perhaps nobody had ever spoken to her like that before. Zhang Xiaotong obediently took the money outside and gave it to the beggar. Watching him leave satisfied, I felt a little happy.

The beggar at the door turned and laboriously shifted his wooden board away. I stood at the window, watching quietly, and slowly came to understand what I should do, and how I should do it.