Most of Shen Yi’s face was bathed in the warm light, looking remarkably like the version of him held in memory. Back then, he had stood under the setting sun, waving his hand and calling out, “A-Mo!”
Wen Mo’s gaze grew increasingly gloomy. He still did not answer, turning instead to look back at the fire in the hearth. He watched the tongues of fire swallow everything, just as they had swallowed Jiang Yi all those years ago.
“A-Mo?” Shen Yi tried again, his voice cautious and testing.
Wen Mo did not react. After a moment of thought, Wen Mo turned, reached out, and thrust his hand into Shen Yi’s pocket.
Shen Yi flinched in surprise.
Wen Mo pulled out a pen. He rolled up his own sleeve, revealing his forearm, clicked the ballpoint pen open, and began to write on his skin. Shen Yi blinked, waiting patiently beside him.
After a moment, Wen Mo raised his arm to show him a line of text. Shen Yi leaned in to look. Wen Mo was using a red pen; the bright crimson characters looked startlingly vivid against his deathly pale arm.
【What is your name?】
Shen Yi answered, “Oh, my name is Shen Yi.”
He had changed his surname to Shen, but his given name remained the same. Wen Mo wrote the character for “Yi” (奕) on his arm, pointed at Shen Yi, and arched an eyebrow.
Shen Yi nodded: “Yes, that’s the character.”
Even the name was the same character. Wen Mo began writing on his arm again. This time he took quite a while; Shen Yi sat on the stool and waited for about two minutes.
【Those things were indeed from decades ago; we were indeed dating then. But later, we broke up.】
【In high school, you went to a vocational school to learn auto repair. After graduation, you worked in a factory near the village. Later, a recruitment quota for the city opened up, and you went to the big city for further studies. We gradually lost contact and broke up.】
【I am here for my own reasons.】
【It has nothing to do with you.】
Shen Yi was struck dumb, looking up blankly. It was clear at a glance that he had not expected this answer. Wen Mo pulled back his arm, rubbed away the ink, and wrote a few more lines.
【I don’t know why you are here; perhaps you and your friend just happened to be together, so you stumbled in by accident.】
【Don’t listen to their nonsense. Once you clear this level and leave, you won’t come back.】
【After all, you were just pulled in by mistake.】
【When dawn comes, be more careful. The more the villagers tell you to do something, the more you shouldn’t do it. Stay away from everything.】
【You can get out. We already broke up; you don’t need to keep thinking about what happened to me.】
【I killed people; being here is my own doing and has nothing to do with you. You just need to beat the game and leave. You won’t come back, and we won’t meet again.】
【Ultimately, that was your past life. It has nothing to do with who you are now.】
After letting Shen Yi read these lines, Wen Mo rubbed the ink away and lowered his sleeve.
Shen Yi watched in silence as Wen Mo pulled down the dark sleeve, concealing that pale arm once more. He looked into Wen Mo’s eyes. Wen Mo’s eyelids were lowered, his blood-red pupils dim. After staring at the fire for a while longer, he stood up.
He looked down at Shen Yi, who was still sitting on the stool, and signed a few things.
【I have to go. Tonight’s hunt is over. After I leave, dawn will break.】
【Go on out,】 Wen Mo signed. 【You don’t need to think about that dream anymore. You aren’t the kind of person who belongs here. Just slowly forget about the things here in the future.】
His signs were very slow, but there were many of them.
After Wen Mo finished signing, he suddenly felt uncertain. Decades ago, Jiang Yi had known him since he was twelve. At that time, Jiang Yi couldn’t understand sign language at all, and Wen Mo couldn’t write. Because Jiang Yi was such a good-hearted person, he had gone to the county town for a long time just to find a teacher who could teach sign language, all so he could understand what Wen Mo wanted to say.
Wen Mo hadn’t been able to sign properly since childhood; no one had taught him. Jiang Yi had made up excuses to secretly take him to the county town every time he went to sell vegetables. Once the vegetables were sold, he would take Wen Mo to the teacher to sneak in two hours of sign language lessons before heading home.
Only after that could Jiang Yi understand what he was signing.
Shen Yi had only had brief dreams and had only met him today. It seemed he hadn’t encountered a mute person in this life, so he wouldn’t understand.
Looking at Shen Yi’s dazed expression, Wen Mo felt a sense of irony as expected, he didn’t understand. He suddenly felt that it was all meaningless; since he had already written down the important things, it didn’t matter if this last sentence wasn’t understood. When dawn came and Wen Mo was gone, Shen Yi would know what to do on his own.
Wen Mo turned to leave.
Suddenly, Shen Yi’s voice came from behind him: “Do I have to forget you, too?”
Wen Mo stiffened, his footsteps pausing. He turned back. Shen Yi was still sitting there, his brow furrowed, gazing at him with wet eyes. His tone didn’t show it, but he looked very heartbroken.
“Am I… supposed to forget you too?” he said again.
Wen Mo stood there in silence.
“You…” Shen Yi choked up slightly. “Are you lying to me?”
For a rare moment, Wen Mo’s heart tightened. His Adam’s apple bobbed instinctively as he opened his mouth, trying to produce a sound. But the moment he opened his mouth, a sharp pain shot through him. He gasped and clutched his mouth.
Threads of warmth seeped through the collar covering his face and onto his hand.
Wen Mo glanced at Shen Yi. Fortunately, the clothes were black; Shen Yi couldn’t tell that he was bleeding, and his foolish expression remained unchanged.
Wen Mo grew agitated. He lowered his hand, fished the ballpoint pen out of his pocket, grabbed Shen Yi’s right hand, and pulled it up.
“Ugh!”
Shen Yi let out a startled cry as his palm was forced open, his five fingers pulled back firmly. He immediately didn’t dare to move. Wen Mo clicked the pen and began writing in his palm.
The tip of the pen traced back and forth across his palm. An itchy sensation, like ants crawling, followed the pen’s movements. A dead man’s chill radiated from where Wen Mo gripped his wrist.
After a moment, Wen Mo put the pen away. He released Shen Yi and strode away.
Wen Mo pulled open the door and walked alone into the boundless, rainy night outside, his dark figure gradually dissolving into the darkness.
Shen Yi opened his palm. There was a line of bright red text in the center:
【You are not him】
—You are not him.
Shen Yi felt a pang of pain in his heart. He turned to look out again, but that thin figure was already gone from the dark night. Yet, the four words in his palm grew inexplicably scalding.
…You are not him.
You are not him.