Winter Time Rendering

Chapter 3: Chapter 1: Abnormal Death

It wasn’t because he didn’t care.

A young mother was sitting in the movie theater lobby. The woman was crying nonstop, and uniformed police officers had cordoned off the area. From snippets of conversation, he learned that a child had gone missing.

Before he could react further, the backtracking triggered.

He backtracked a full five times that day before finally finding the abducted child. Afterward, he collapsed at home, utterly exhausted.

But that summer date seemed to have become a reality he could never reach.

It was also on that day that Zhang Shutong discovered a terrifying fact.

He could help others escape their terrible pasts.

But he was the one who ended up trapped in the past.

The backtracking kept triggering, uncontrollably.

For anyone else, Monday to Friday was just a week, but for him, it felt as long as a month.

Finally, during his senior year of high school, he nearly had a complete breakdown from the endless backtracking. A doctor almost diagnosed him with a dissociative identity disorder, citing the many "memories" in his head that had never happened.

During the worst of it, he holed himself up in his rented apartment, afraid to have any contact with the outside world. He relied solely on takeout for his meals and would only dare to step out for a breath of fresh air in the middle of the night.

Then he took a leave of absence from school. For the sake of his treatment, he moved with his parents to a city farther away and transferred to a new school.

Something miraculous happened.

The frequency of the backtracking decreased significantly.

Trivial, everyday mishaps no longer sent him back in time.

But it only decreased. Like an eternal nightmare, the ability he’d accidentally gained at sixteen had completely changed his life. He could no longer live normally; all he could do was try his best to keep going.

Later, he managed to graduate from college. Since he had to minimize his contact with other people, he moved out on his own and found a work-from-home job.

He’d saved up some money over the years, so supporting himself wasn’t difficult. But sometimes, alone in his quiet room, he would think about the future.

His parents getting older, getting married, having children... Where was his future? He couldn’t see it yet.

Even now, he didn’t much like going out, and his life wasn’t exactly great. But at least he had finally escaped the endless backtracking.

In the midst of these days that seemed to stretch on without end, he received an obituary for a junior high classmate two days ago.

His experiences over the years had made him someone who dreaded trouble. In the past, he was always being dragged into all sorts of incidents, and the suffering was unbearable.

But this was the one time Zhang Shutong actively wanted to use his ability—to hear the contents of that phone call.

And so, after eight long years, he returned to the island that had changed his life.

But it had already been two hours since he’d set foot on the island. A short while ago, he had gone to the mourning hall and stood by the body for a long time, yet the backtracking still hadn’t occurred.

’I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.’

Gazing at the lake in the distance, Zhang Shutong sighed.

’I’d considered this before coming. The prerequisite for backtracking is always an event happening near me.’

’I wasn’t there when she died. Even though I knew the chances were slim, I still wanted to come and try. But reality... well, it’s as real as ever. In the end, I couldn’t change anything.’

There was no wind or waves today. The surface of the lake was a nearly frozen, steel-gray color. He leaned against the guardrail and lit a cigarette—one that had been handed out at the funeral.

He himself had quit long ago. He’d lit it out of pure habit, but he didn’t smoke it, just held it between his fingers and watched the smoke drift away.

It wasn’t that he felt heavy-hearted. One has to learn to make peace with reality, something he’d grown used to long ago.

Powerlessness, despair, self-abandonment—he had experienced all these emotions in his life before.

Eight years had passed in the blink of an eye. Now, returning to the shore of this lake and recalling the past, his heart wasn’t as turbulent as he’d imagined. He just felt... a faint sense of regret.

And with that, he had no reason to stay any longer.

He was just about to head to the funeral home to let them know he was leaving when someone clapped him hard on the shoulder.

He turned around. It was a young man with short hair and a wide grin on his face—his best friend from junior high.

His best friend’s name was Du Kang. Just like the Du Kang from the saying, "What can relieve one’s sorrow? Only Du Kang wine." He’d always had a carefree personality.

He had stayed in their hometown all these years and taken over his family’s small restaurant. He was a walking encyclopedia when it came to island affairs, and he was the one who had told Zhang Shutong the news of Lu Qinglian’s death.

The other man was helping out at the funeral and had come out to chat with him during a lull.

"So you finally decided to show your face, huh?"

It was his childhood friend. Even after so many years apart, there was a sense of warmth, but Zhang Shutong didn’t know how to respond to that. He could only shrug and offer an apologetic smile.

"I’ll take you around for a bit later. Qingyi didn’t come, but Ruoping and the others are here. Wanna grab dinner together tonight?"

Zhang Shutong could only politely refuse again.

He really wanted to go, but he truly couldn’t. He was afraid someone might have a little too much to drink and start complaining about how life wasn’t going their way... If that happened, he probably wouldn’t be going home at all.

"You haven’t changed a bit."

His repeated refusals made it hard for his friend to keep smiling. Du Kang complained:

"You’re just like you were back in school, barely saying a word all day. You’re always wearing black. Oh, and wearing a trench coat in this cold weather—who are you trying to look cool for? Even though the girls all thought that was ’cool and aloof,’ I never understood why you and Qingyi were the most popular."

’This is a misunderstanding,’ he thought. ’I just left in a hurry, and I don’t own any clothes that aren’t black. I’m not trying to look cool at all.’

’And why do you even have that impression of me? I didn’t even know that myself.’

"Don’t be so stubborn. We haven’t seen each other in so long, just let me lecture you a bit."

Zhang Shutong, who had been about to say something, bit the inside of his cheek, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

The two of them stood by the roadside for a while. Du Kang rubbed his face, then took out a cigarette and lit it. After a long moment, he finally spoke:

"So... should we talk about her?"

Zhang Shutong knew that "her" meant Lu Qinglian.