Chapter 87: Circles
“Okay. I’ll wait for you.” Liu Yi started to arrange her bag as she prepared to leave.
“Don’t leave yet. I still have some questions.” Gao Ming stopped thinking about what Liu Yi said and started to take the initiative. “You still haven’t told me why do you know where I live?”
“Did you not realise you’ve been missing something?” Liu Yi took out a ruined resume from her bag. It had Gao Ming’s picture. It also contained his address and his games, which had won gaming awards. “I don’t know your contact info. This resume piece only has your home address.”
“A resume?” Gao Ming remembered. When he planned to seek a job at Nightlight Gaming Studio, he printed out his resume at the prison. When he exited the tunnel, he was surrounded by supernatural events. He forgot about this.
“Why is this thing with you? Why is it torn?”
“It looks like your memory is not complete. How about we work together to piece it together?” Liu Yi sat back down. “Song Xue and I got on the bus at Han Jiang. Other than the two of us and the driver, there were only three passengers in the last row. When we left the city, the bus only paused at Hen Shan Town. Then, it continued on its journey.”
“I know. I got on the bus at Hen Shan.” Gao Ming still remembered this.
“When the bus started again, the bus was full of people.” Liu Yi and Gao Ming sat across from each other. Their expressions and gazes were very serious.
“No.” Gao Ming shook his head. “When I was waiting for the bus, there was only me at the station. I got onto the bus and realised the bus was full.”
Their memories were different, but it didn’t seem like either of them was lying.
“Perhaps we can think of this from a different perspective. The passengers who got on with you were all ghosts.” Liu Yi continued, “The bus continued to the intersection of the three cities. He put on your headphones once you got on the bus and focused on your game.”
“That’s right. I needed to insert an ad for a cake shop into the game. It was urgent.” Gao Ming didn’t deny it.
“Song Xue had already fallen asleep. After the bus went for 10 minutes, I wanted to say hi to you, but when I stood up…” Liu Yi took a deep breath. “Half of the passengers looked at me. My movement was light, so I couldn’t have interrupted so many people. Plus, they didn’t look at me with annoyance. But they had some eerieness to it.”
“Was it like you were being stared at by people at the morgue?” Gao Ming was experienced in this.
“Yes.”
“That’s a good way to differentiate humans from ghosts.” Gao Ming placed the cup on the left. “The ghosts turned to look at you while the humans kept doing their things. What happened after that? Do you remember?”
“I felt like if I did anything wrong, something bad would happen.” Liu Yi touched her phone. “I thought about taking pictures and videos in silence, but it all failed. Every recording was deleted.”
Gao Ming was ashamed. Liu Yi was doing so many things while he was designing a game.
“Then, we entered the tunnel. When everything was black.” Liu Yi pointed at the time on her phone and said seriously, “I saw that time had stopped.”
The tunnel was like a gap in the law of nature.
“I didn’t have time to compute anything because the accident happened. The bus ran into someone, and the whole bus went out of control.” Gao Ming didn’t interrupt Liu Yi. He didn’t tell her he was the person the bus hit.
“When I came to, I noticed half of the passengers were gone. I wanted to call for help, but there was no signal.” Liu Yi’s eyes filled with terror. She didn’t want to remember these. “There was screaming everywhere. I felt like I was transported back to the accident ten years ago. Adults and children were crying. The light on the phone couldn’t travel far.”
“When I woke up, there was no one else on the bus. I didn’t hear anything. I only saw darkness.” Gao Ming said.
Liu Yi looked at Gao Ming and then said with difficulty, “You screamed the loudest back then. I’ve never heard such a harrowing scream before.”
“Is that so?” Gao Ming scratched his nose. “I have a bad memory. I don’t remember this.”
“After hearing your voice, I moved towards it. Then, I heard an unfamiliar male voice.” Liu Yi was curious. “Who were you speaking to? Why was he in the tunnel? Was he related to the accident?”
“I couldn’t see his face.” Gao Ming had died many times in the tunnel, but he still didn’t know the man.
“You two made some kind of deal. Then, you started to run like a madman. I had to try so hard to catch up to you.” Liu Yi placed the resume on the table. “You dropped your resume, laptop, and backpack. I thought about picking them up, but someone fought me for them in the dark.”
“Was it another survivor?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything. Eventually, I heard you running, and I ran too.” Liu Yi picked up the cup and drank. “I forgot how long I ran. When we were about at the exit, there was light.”
“Did you see the person carrying me then?” Gao Ming asked.
“No.” Liu Yi shook her head. “You were carried away by a blur of shadow. It couldn’t be a person.” “You didn’t see Xuan Wen?” Gao Ming was an experienced psychiatrist. He could tell that Liu Yi wasn’t lying.
“I have no idea who that is, but I have to ask, other than yourself, have other people seen her?” Liu Yi’s words frightened Gao Ming, “It looks like you still have some questions you need to answer too.” Glancing at her watch, Liu Yi picked up her bag. “It’s late. I have something else to do. See you again.”
“What are you doing so late at night?”
“A lawyer’s job.” After exchanging contacts, Liu Yi hurried away. When she glanced at her phone last, she saw some urgent messages.
“Be careful.” After the door closed, Gao Ming immediately called Xuan Wen. After a long dial tone, the call was finally connected, “How are you now?”
After some time, Xuan Wen answered, “Not so good.” Her voice was so weak. It reminded Gao Ming of when Xuan Wen was swallowed by the shadow world. “Give me an address. I’ll be there in a minute.”
After a moment’s silence, Xuan Wen said, “I’m at Li San Min Long Street’s Apartment 9.”
Zhao Xi didn’t die, so Xuan Wen didn’t get to move into his house. Thankfully, she lived not far away.
“Okay. I’ll go now!” Gao Ming put his raincoat back on. He pushed open the door to say goodbye to Wan Qiu, but he realised the kid was practising boxing. “I’m leaving. Take care of yourself. If it gets too late, you should sleep first.”
“Are you going to do some adult things?” Wan Qiu blinked his beautiful eyes at him. “I have no idea what you’re saying.” Gao Ming closed the door and ran. He ran into the rain. Gao Ming started to ponder a few things.
“After I changed Xuan Wen’s fate, Liu Yi came to tell me the same thing. Fate can’t be seen or touched but it is omnipotent and everywhere.”
The thoughts in Gao Ming’s mind collided.
“But if fate is omnipotent, I should have existed.
“Perhaps I am in a circle outside of fate. After I was knocked over by myself, I became the previous version of myself.
“I am the first circle; the bus ten years ago was the second circle; the shadow world that can’t unite with the real world but is still uniting with the real world is the third circle. The three circles intersect at the tunnel to form the fourth circle.”
The past is the future and the future hasn’t arrived.
Gao Ming felt a headache. He could only guess mindlessly.
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