At 6:50 a.m., Zhang Shutong was woken up right on time by his alarm clock.
He opened his eyes.
It was an unfamiliar ceiling.
His heart gave a sudden leap. He lay there for a good while before he realized where he was.
He really was back eight years in the past. None of it was a dream.
It was enough to chase away all sleepiness.
For a person who has returned from eight years in the future, what's the first thing they do upon waking up?
Zhang Shutong figured it was to check his phone.
Not necessarily because someone was looking for him, but just out of habit.
Squinting, he typed in his passcode, feeling a pang of nostalgia for fingerprint scanners. He yawned, slipped his feet into his slippers, and padded out of the bedroom.
He turned on the screen only to realize there was nothing to look at. No work notifications, not many apps for fun. All there was to open was QQ, and he only had a few friends on it.
The small four-person group chat had been active until past midnight.
It was only then that he noticed the group chat had a very cringe-worthy, "eighth-grade syndrome" name.
It was called "The four."
Mhm, I think I'm the one who named it.
A person's memory is sharpest in the morning. He tried to recall the origin of the group name while he washed up.
He seemed to recall that Du Kang had originally wanted to name it "The Fish Nest," but Ruoping had vetoed it for being too lame.
Then Qingyi had suggested just calling it "The Dragon's Nest," so that the four of them could each claim a title: The King of Bronze and Fire, the King of Earth and Mountain, the King of Ocean and Water, and the King of Sky and Wind. That way, the whole gang would be there, a complete set.
But since the Four Sovereigns in the story were nearly all dead, it was too unlucky, and Ruoping shot it down.
In the end, he was the one who had come up with the compromise, and it had been unanimously approved.
He glanced through the chat history. The conversation had derailed long ago, ending with Du Kang spamming Panda Head memes. Finding it utterly inane, he couldn't be bothered to scroll up any more and went to wash his face.
A chiseled face looked back at him from the mirror: broad forehead, straight nose, thin lips. The only drawback was its lack of expression.
He had never understood before why people said he always had a "cold face," but after last night with Lu Qinglian, he got it. He tried raising an eyebrow at his reflection, but it only made him look disdainful and even more unapproachable, so he stopped.
He hadn't been like this as a child.
When he was little, he looked so much like a girl that his mom loved to pinch his cheeks, calling him "Tongtong."
He once had a bright red hat with Mickey Mouse's face and two ears on it. His mom had nodded in approval in front of the fitting room mirror, while he had tugged on her hand, gazing longingly at the Ultraman hat on the next rack.
But the requirements for becoming Ultraman were strict: you had to believe in the light. His mom had told him, with a perfectly straight face, that he didn't qualify yet and would have to wait a few more years. He'd believed her and waited until he was in his teens, after which he never consulted her on clothing purchases again.
He recalled Du Kang once remarking that he always wore black. Thinking about it, it was true. It was more a case of childhood trauma; if you opened his wardrobe, you wouldn't find a single vibrant color.
He thought of his mom as a very meticulous person. Not vain, just meticulous in how she lived—making him eat an egg every day, chew slowly, drink only warm water... These habits had left their mark on him, like a stake propping up a young tree to keep it straight. But the stake couldn't stay there forever, and eventually, he'd grown crooked anyway.
He washed his face not with cleanser, but with a bar of soap. It left his skin a little dry, but that was all. After patting his face dry, he stared for a moment at the bottle of almond lotion by the sink.
For years, he had tried to pinpoint a definitive symbol of a boy becoming a man, but he always felt that no single thing was convincing enough on its own. Now, however, he thought he'd found it. A boy would never give a second glance to anything resembling "skincare"; spending an extra minute washing his face was already giving it a great honor.
But now, he poured some of the almond lotion into his palm, rubbed it on his face, and was immediately enveloped in a fragrant scent, feeling a little wistful.
How did I get to this point in my life?
But he had to go to the Forbidden Zone this morning, and if he didn't put something on, his skin would get chapped the moment he stepped out into the wind.
He had plenty of time, but he never dawdled. Ten minutes was all he needed to get ready. Just as he was heading out the door, though, he remembered something and ran back to his desk to pull open the drawer.
On the desk were comics, books, crayons, even some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, but Lu Qinglian's notebook was nowhere to be found. It must still be at school. He rushed out of the apartment, down the stairs, and biked toward the Forbidden Zone.
He had eaten the steamed bun last night, so he would have to get breakfast on the way.
—A fish fillet sandwich. Perhaps it was an island specialty; Zhang Shutong certainly never saw it sold anywhere else in his later years.
A snakehead fillet, coated in steamed-bun crumbs and fried to a golden brown, was placed in a bun along with some fried vegetables and tofu skins. The bun was slathered with a dark, savory sauce, but the real secret was the salted duck egg yolk, crumbled and sprinkled inside.
It was pale red and had a grainy texture, somewhere between a sauce and a paste. A single bite filled your mouth with a unique, rich flavor. Besides fish and shrimp, the island also produced mallard ducks, and salted duck eggs were another local specialty.
In their second year of junior high, they had studied Wang Zengqi's essay, ‘The Dragon Boat Festival's Duck Eggs’. While kids elsewhere might have salivated over it, the children on the island had never thought it was anything special.
A light white mist filled the morning air, water vapor rising from the lake after the night. It felt wonderfully refreshing, but it was also true that his nose stung from the cold.
That's why he was wearing a scarf today—a black one. He couldn't remember the last time he'd worn one, and it felt a little itchy around his neck. After finishing his sandwich at the cart, he pressed on, the morning clamor of the streets quickly fading behind him.
He had arrived at his destination when the last signs of human activity had disappeared.
The mist around the Forbidden Zone was even thicker, a vast expanse of white. The sky was high, the surroundings wide open, and the reeds swayed gently in the wind. He walked to the water's edge and saw that his tripwire was still in place.
Zhang Shutong was now beginning to doubt Du Kang's story—not its credibility, but the identity of the person the fishermen had seen a few days before the incident.
The killer? Or was it actually just those two poachers?
The bald man had an electric net. Maybe he had been poaching in the Forbidden Zone recently?
Had the murderer himself ever actually been to the Forbidden Zone?
This scrap of a clue was nowhere near enough, but he had no other leads to go on.
If only he could return to eight years in the future, he could use the internet to do some real research. This murder case was the one and only time Zhang Shutong felt that the "future" was more useful than the "past."
He would just have to check again after school today.
Pondering this, he biked back. At 7:25 a.m., Zhang Shutong arrived at the school gate right on time and reluctantly squeezed his brakes.
The school gate was honestly a bit small. He didn't say this out of any dislike for his alma mater—as the proverbs go, a son doesn't find his mother ugly, a dog doesn't mind a poor home, and a black Audi never minds blocking the road—
—A black sedan was blocking the entrance.
A girl in a red scarf got out of the car, the pendant on the end of her hair swaying with the movement.
The time was 7:25 a.m., on the second day since his return.
The boy stopped his bike and waited for the Young Lady to exit her car, completely oblivious to what awaited him in the classroom.
If he had known, he absolutely would not have worn a black scarf.