Winter Time Rendering

Chapter 6: Chapter 2: Winter’s Reappearance

Rewind. It triggered.

Filled with overwhelming shock, the world before him flickered like a black-and-white negative.

His consciousness went blank, as if it had flown out of his body.

This was what happened during a Rewind.

Zhang Shutong was all too familiar with this. When his consciousness returned, though his body had yet to regain sensation, his mind buzzed as alarm bells instantly went off.

’Someone is trying to kill me!’

He didn’t even have time to consider the reason for the Rewind. The time jumps were usually short, especially after a sudden attack.

’A few seconds ago? Or a few minutes?’

’Will I be back in the waters known as the Restricted Zone? Or on my way there? Or was someone already targeting me back at the hotel?’

He tried to steady his breathing, his mind racing to come up with a countermeasure.

’I have to save myself first.’

He mentally rehearsed the upcoming scene, even preparing different contingency plans. Sensation finally returned. He took a deep breath, his limbs already moving subconsciously, then snapped his eyes open—

But...

’Where am I now?’

The world before him matched none of his imagined scenarios. That pitch-black winter night was long gone.

He seemed to be in a classroom.

A series of unfamiliar sights entered his vision:

A blackboard straight ahead, kids in school uniforms in his peripheral vision, a black-painted desk before him, and on it, an open workbook...

All was quiet around him, save for the rustling of pen tips on paper.

Nothing here had any connection to the attack... No, to his current situation.

Looking down, he saw that even his hands weren’t his own. They were a little smaller, a little fairer, and currently holding a pen.

But the faint white mark on the web of his thumb was familiar—a scar from his childhood.

A sudden suspicion welled up in his chest.

Zhang Shutong turned his head in disbelief, his gaze finally landing on the electronic wall calendar at the back of the classroom.

Red pixels displayed the current date:

December 5, 2012, Wednesday.

’I... I actually went back eight years!’

...

A few minutes passed, or maybe longer. He didn’t count. Perhaps after his heart had hammered a few hundred times, Zhang Shutong slowly exhaled and accepted the truth of his situation.

He was really back.

This was different from a simple rebirth; relying on his Rewind ability, he had crossed a span of eight years all at once.

He had also figured out the exact date. He’d just counted on his fingers several times to confirm: it was the fall semester of his ninth-grade year.

It wasn’t that he was bad at math; his life over the past few years had made him lose all sense of time’s passage.

If you mentioned a specific year, he could at most vaguely recall what he was doing—like being in middle school—but as for which specific grade, he’d have to think hard to remember.

Then there was his current situation:

This was probably a study hall, which was why everyone around him was quietly doing their homework.

His deskmate’s face was unfamiliar, and he couldn’t recall their name. Besides, he wasn’t the type to ask a million questions; when faced with the unexpected, he preferred to think things through on his own first.

The most familiar thing, ironically, was the workbook open in front of him. He flipped through a couple of pages. It was for English, with a blue cover bearing the title *Five-Year Zhongkao, Three-Year Mock Exams*—something he couldn’t forget even if he tried.

He turned to look outside again. Through the window’s iron grille, he could see the ground outside the school building.

It must have snowed today eight years ago. The red of the rubber running track was ringed by a circle of white snow.

It was hardly a nice day. The clouds hung low and the light was dim, so all the fluorescent lights in the classroom were on. That, at least, was similar to how things were eight years later.

But this brought with it more questions:

’Why did I Rewind?’

’Why eight years ago?’

’And who was trying to kill me?’

But there was one thing that concerned him even more than all of that, more than even his own death—

’Do I still have the Rewind ability?’

It was currently the fall semester of his ninth-grade year. The accident happened during the summer vacation after the high school entrance exams.

With a thrill of excitement, he recalled a famous paradox:

If a person travels back in time and kills their grandfather before he has children, can they succeed?

Zhang Shutong didn’t care whether the grandfather died or not. The fact was, he was back, and that meant—

’If I stay away from that temple, if I avoid that accident, I can have a normal life.’

A normal life... a chance to start over...

It was a thought he had buried deep in his heart for years, a hope he had never dared to entertain, and now, in this moment, it had become real.

He pressed his lips together tightly, but an irrepressible smile spread across his face anyway. He buried his face in the crook of his arm, trying not to make a sound, but his body trembled slightly.

’The sixteen-year-old Zhang Shutong would have bolted from the classroom, sprinted to the rooftop, and released his boundless joy at the spot closest to the sky.’

’But his twenty-four-year-old self just wanted to sit quietly in his seat, savoring the thrill of this moment and recalling the face of his sixteen-year-old self.’

’Even without a mirror, I can still remember what I looked like back then: a head of perpetually unruly hair, features that were still boyish, a straight nose, a defined lip line, and eyes that always shone with a vibrant light.’

’I used to think the future held infinite possibilities. And though the years had shown me that I’d been heading in a single direction all along, in the end, I’ve returned to the starting point, haven’t I?’

He then recalled a passage, though he’d forgotten the source:

"A boy, thirteen or fourteen years old, finds a real gun one summer. Young and ignorant, he pulls the trigger. No one dies, no one is hurt, and he thinks he fired a blank. Later, when he is thirty or older, walking down the street, he hears the faint whistle of wind behind him. He stops, turns around, and the bullet hits him right between the eyes."

A bullet from eight years ago had just hit him right between the eyes.