Chapter 29

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Present\nZhou Luoyang stared drunkenly at Du Jing, lost in thought.\n

Du Jing gazed calmly back. That kiss seemed to have stemmed from a completely natural expression of emotion. At the same time, it was a simple response to Zhou Luoyang’s multitude of complicated thoughts.\n

Just then, they heard a noise—the sound of Leyao’s door opening. Du Jing quickly scrambled off the couch and sat down next to it.\n

Leyao looked between them. The vibes were weird. Zhou Luoyang was laying on the couch, while Du Jing sat to the side. No one spoke.\n

“What’s wrong?” Zhou Luoyang asked.\n

Leyao didn’t know what had just taken place. He simply assumed that they had been in the middle of a conversation, and his appearance had interrupted it, leading to silence.\n

“Gege, where’s the luggage I brought back from school?”\n

Zhou Luoyang got up to grab his suitcase.\n

“I’m going to take a shower,” Du Jing announced.\n

Zhou Luoyang hummed in acknowledgment and also went to grab him a change of clothes.\n

“Are you guys learning to play the piano?” Zhou Luoyang looked at Leyao’s sheet music and decided to spend some time chatting with him.\n

“I learned to play back at home, so I signed up for a music elective,” Leyao explained easily.\n

Zhou Luoyang’s heart clenched. Leyao had lived a very happy, carefree, and well-off life with Zhou Luoyang’s father and stepmother. But following the car accident, Leyao’s life turned completely upside-down overnight, and he began to suffer hardship along with Zhou Luoyang.\n

“I’ll buy you a piano in a few days,” Zhou Luoyang promised. “You can practice when you’re home.”\n

“Don’t do that,” Leyao hurried to say. “I wouldn’t use it very often, and even second-hand pianos are very expensive.”\n

Zhou Luoyang checked over Leyao’s homework. Over the course of the past month, he’d gotten an A+ in every single class. Zhou Luoyang’s stepmother had previously invested an immense amount of energy into her son, and no one had ever needed to worry about him in terms of his studies. \n

“Our bills, Du Jing is paying them all?” Leyao still had the habit of speaking according to Japanese grammatical rules.\n

“Things will improve very soon. Trust me.”\n

Zhou Luoyang knew that his kindness was already a very heavy weight for Leyao to bear, to say nothing of the additional arrival of a stranger at their home. No matter how deep the bond was between Du Jing and Zhou Luoyang, it had nothing to do with Leyao.\n

“Leyao,” Zhou Luoyang said, “is there something on your mind?”\n

“Huh?” Leyao quickly denied it. “No, why do you ask?”\n

Zhou Luoyang sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the wheelchair closer. He sat face to face with him and said, “Leyao, your tuition and living expenses are paid for with the money Dad left behind. You’re not indebted to anybody.”\n

Leyao smiled. “I’ve never thought that I was. I just feel that it’s been hard on you.”\n

“I’m perfectly fine. You don’t have to worry, really.”\n

“There’s actually not much left of Dad’s money, is there?”\n

“There’s what’s under your name, same as we discussed before,” Zhou Luoyang said earnestly. \n

When he took custody of Leyao, the brothers had discussed it carefully. Though they would more or less be able to make do with the money their father had left behind, plus the two sums of life insurance money, it couldn’t be considered particularly abundant.\n

After all, their father had had to support an entire family in Tokyo. He didn’t have a lot of savings. In addition, his small firm had been in debt because of the economic slump. A large portion of the inheritance was used up when Leyao went into the ICU for treatment. Japan’s high medical fees had shocked Zhou Luoyang.\n

The life insurance money went toward clearing the debt their father had accrued. After taking inheritance tax into consideration, Zhou Luoyang gave up on his portion of the inheritance and decided to let Leyao inherit everything.\n

The money would be sufficient to put him through college and still have a little left over. Zhou Luoyang didn’t use the money under Leyao’s name to make up for their living deficits, firstly because he didn’t want Leyao to have to shoulder the burden Zhuo Luoyang had assumed himself, and secondly because he didn’t want Leyao’s mother’s side of the family to gossip.\n

But he had to clear things up for Leyao so that he wouldn’t feel like he was depending entirely on someone else or that everything the brothers had was provided by Du Jing.\n

“As for me,” said Zhou Luoyang, “I have faith. I made an agreement with Sotheby’s today to take part in their auction. Very soon, we’ll no longer have to struggle financially, and our debts can be paid off.”\n

Leyao nodded. He had no experience in the collectables industry and knew nothing about it. \n

But Zhou Luoyang knew what he was doing. If, back then, he’d sold off the few antiques his grandpa had left behind, he would’ve been able to get through that period of hardship. But if he had done so, he would never have been able to turn things around again.\n

For the rest of his life, his only option would have been to find some corporate job to support his little brother, and live a life in which they could never be full, nor would they starve to death.\n

The only way the industry would take his abilities seriously was if he held onto what his grandpa left him, paid back his debt in full, and reopened the store.\n

This was the reason he’d been so anxious to find a business partner and had held off on sending his resume to potential employers, despite the debt that plagued him. As long as he had sufficient funds to clear out and purchase inventory and cover his expenses while he was first getting started, he was confident that he could support his family and even provide Leyao a comfortable life.\n

“Believe in me.” Zhou Luoyang stroked Leyao’s hair and pressed a kiss to his forehead.\n

Leyao nodded. By the time Zhou Luoyang had exited the room and shut the door behind him, Du Jing had finished showering and was lounging in bed, setting the date on his watch. He glanced up at him.\n

Zhou Luoyang showered as well and sprawled onto the bed.\n

“Are you going to the store tomorrow?” Du Jing asked.\n

“I’m just going to check up on it really quick, then leave.” Zhou Luoyang turned off the lights and spoke into the darkness. “Is our big boss taking us out to have fun?”\n

“Where do you want to go?” Du Jing asked in response. “Should we drive out of the city?”\n

Zhou Luoyang hadn’t decided either. Every National Day, Wan City became terribly crowded. At the moment, the public square was sure to be packed full of people waiting for the flag raising ceremony that would be held on the first.\n

“Do you remember that year we went to Lake Tai in the springtime?” Zhou Luoyang asked.\n

“I remember,” Du Jing said. “I later heard that all three couples split up.”\n

“Even Fang Zhou,” Zhou Luoyang confirmed. “Life is as fleeting as a white horse’s passage over a small crack.”\n

“Zhuangzi¹,” Du Jing said. “Sleep. Maybe you’ll soon turn into a butterfly².”\n

Zhou Luoyang burst into laughter. He shut his eyes and slipped into the most comforting sleep he’d had all year.\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nAt 7:30 AM, the alarm on his phone went off. Zhou Luoyang blearily cracked his eyes open. He felt for his phone on the bedside cabinet and silenced the alarm.\n

Du Jing was currently washing up. His hair a mess, Zhou Luoyang put on some music and padded into the kitchen to make breakfast for Du Jing.\n

“Leyao?” Zhou Luoyang still wasn’t fully awake. He knocked on Leyao’s door and pushed it open. “Time for school.”\n

“Oh, he’s still rooming at school. He hasn’t moved in yet,” Zhou Luoyang murmured to himself. Suddenly, he got the sense that something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.\n

He stood in the kitchen for a minute, then opened the fridge.\n

Inside the fridge, he found the bento Du Jing had brought with him to work to eat at lunch.\n

Zhou Luoyang looked around the apartment. Leyao hadn’t moved in yet, Du Jing’s bento was still there, and so were the ingredients for the move-in celebration at night.\n

“Du Jing?” Zhou Luoyang promptly called out. “Du Jing!”\n

Zhou Luoyang took out his phone and checked the date—September 30.\n

Upcoming tasks in planner: Store soft opening. Pick up Leyao from school.\n

“Du Jing—!!!” Zhou Luoyang’s voice reverberated throughout the new apartment. “It happened again! Time turned back again!”\n

Du Jing was brushing his teeth at the sink. He looked up, taking in Zhou Luoyang’s odd expression in the mirror’s reflection, and gave a simple grunt in acknowledgement.\n

Zhou Luoyang turned off the music; the apartment fell silent. Du Jing sat down at the dining table and asked, “Why did you stop the music?”\n

“We’re…experiencing September thirtieth all over again!” A chill ran down Zhou Luoyang’s spine, and his hair stood on end. “This is the third time! Du Jing!”\n

This scenario was becoming frightening.\n

“Yes,” Du Jing agreed simply. He adjusted the time on his watch. “I’ve noticed.”\n

Zhou Luoyang glanced around the apartment, feeling as if the world wasn’t real. This couldn’t be a hallucination. The rewind occurring for the third time made him feel like he was a character in a game world that somebody else was playing, as if there was someone else orchestrating everything, repeatedly going back to a save point and restarting.\n

“Breakfast,” Du Jing said. “I want to eat breakfast. I’m hungry.”\n

Zhou Luoyang: “…………”\n

Zhou Luoyang stared at Du Jing subconsciously. “You’re concerned about breakfast at a time like this?”\n

“Is breakfast canceled today because we went back in time? Even though I had the same meal twenty-four hours ago, I’d still get hungry.”\n

Zhou Luoyang: “…………………………”\n

Five minutes later, Zhou Luoyang popped some frozen snacks in the microwave. They hadn’t started cooking in this apartment yet, so they had to use the microwave for now. Everything was exactly the same as it was twenty-four hours ago. \n

He made Du Jing some coffee and set it down in front of him, stupefied.\n

“At midnight,” Zhou Luoyang mumbled, “in other words, on October first at twelve AM, we were once again brought back twenty-four hours while we slept.”\n

“Yes.” Du Jing was reading the daily news on his phone and sipping his coffee. “Today, I’m going to work, and you’re going to the store. You’ll meet those people from Sotheby’s, while I have to go to the French embassy at one, where I’ll be ruthlessly turned down again.”\n

The microwave beeped. Zhou Luoyang pulled their breakfast out, portioned it out onto plates, and made him some buckwheat porridge in hot milk. \n

“Eat up. When you’re done eating, get changed and let’s go,” Du Jing said.\n

“I…this…I’m a bit scared, Du Jing. What’s the meaning of all this?”\n

“Business as usual.”\n

Zhou Luoyang felt like he was about to have a conniption. “Du Jing!”\n

Du Jing looked up at him, and he said, “No, this can’t go on. I have to figure out the reason behind all this, or else I’ll go crazy.”\n

Du Jing gazed at him.\n

“I’m a bit scared, Du Jing. You promised me that you would look into it. Granted, it didn’t happen again for a long time, but…now, I think…maybe you need to…”\n

“I did look into it,” Du Jing said. “I’ve always taken what you ask to heart.”\n

Zhou Luoyang babbled, “I know it’s difficult to find answers to this, but…” \n

“I’ve figured some of it out. Would you like to hear it?” Du Jing asked calmly.\n

“At this point, I don’t even know if it’s my memory that’s been taken twenty-four hours into the past or…Wait, what did you say?”\n

With his right hand, Du Jing gingerly rolled up his left sleeve and showed Zhou Luoyang the strange watch on his wrist.\n

“Before I went to sleep last night, I conducted an experiment,” Du Jing said. “I used it to rewind time by twenty-four hours for us.”\n

With the truth now revealed, Zhou Luoyang was frozen, as if he’d turned into stone. He gazed into Du Jing’s eyes for a very long time.\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nWan City, morning rush hour:\n

“On September eighth,” Du Jing explained as he drove, his eyes focused on the road ahead, “I first came into contact with it. Before twelve noon, I adjusted the date on it. Do you remember what happened after that?”\n

Zhou Luoyang murmured, “After I woke up in the storehouse, I found that I had returned to September seventh at noon…Yes! That’s what happened!”\n

Du Jing put the car into gear and casually said, “At the time, our hypothesis was that it was caused by the area the storehouse is located in. You even suggested it might be an issue of dimensional disorder.”\n

“But the second time it happened, we were in Hangzhou,” Zhou Luoyang said.\n

“Mhm,” Du Jing agreed. “The Nanping evening bells at Jingci Temple. There, I checked and adjusted the date on the outer ring of the watch.”\n

“I asked you back then if the watch had stopped. Was there something unusual about it?”\n

“No, I just did it subconsciously. My hands were itching for something to do, so I rotated the outer ring once.”\n

Zhou Luoyang remembered—that day, at midnight, time turned back twenty-four hours again.\n

Du Jing continued, “The only connection between the first and second occurrence is this watch. I started having my suspicions then. One rewind occurred at noon, one occurred at midnight.”\n

“And then the third time was last night,” Zhou Luoyang said.\n

“In other words, today,” Du Jing said. “This day, the one that’s gone by, has already become the future for the ‘present.’ In any case, I tested it out. If the date on the watch is rotated counterclockwise in a full circle between noon and midnight, then at precisely midnight, we’ll be returned to twenty-four hours prior.”\n

Zhou Luoyang was a little bit unnerved, but he didn’t interrupt. \n

The road conditions were exactly the same as yesterday’s—there was a traffic jam. He listened as Du Jing spoke again. “If the watch is rotated once between midnight and noon, then once it hits noon, we’ll return to noon of the previous day.\n

“So it can be confirmed that the time coordinates of the rewind comprise two points. It all hinges upon when you rotate the watch—midnight will correspond to midnight, noon will correspond to noon.”\n

“I…don’t really get it, but basically, we can choose to return to either noon or midnight of the previous day, is that correct?” Zhou Luoyang asked.\n

Du Jing eased off the brakes, and the car slowly crawled along with the rest of traffic. “Yes. Actually, this mechanism is very intriguing…”\n

“But why is it us two?” Zhou Luoyang could verify that no one apart from Du Jing and himself knew that they had gone back in time. Du Jing was the one wearing the watch and the one who’d adjusted its date, so why had Zhou Luoyang also been dragged back in time?\n

Du Jing considered the question for a moment. “Maybe the first time we fixed it, we triggered some sort of identification procedure, which caused it to enter you and me into the same system. Or maybe it’s because we were together each time, and it has a certain range of influence.”\n

Zhou Luoyang could scarcely breathe. \n

“There’s more. Would you still like to hear it?” Du Jing asked.\n

“How can you be so calm?!” Zhou Luoyang exclaimed. “What on earth…did we get our hands on? My god! Where on earth did this watch come from?”\n

“You’d have to ask your grandfather,” Du Jing said, spreading his hands helplessly. “The watch is your family heirloom. How would I know? Want to take it apart right now and look inside?”\n

“No, no,” Zhou Luoyang immediately shot down that suggestion. “What…were you going to say just now? What’s your analysis?”\n

Du Jing was so calm it drove Zhou Luoyang nuts. The way he discussed their trips back in time was so matter-of-fact that he might as well have been discussing what they were going to eat for dinner.\n

“If you activate it in the morning, then at precisely noon, at the point when the morning has ended, time will turn back twenty-four hours—going back before the entire morning, as well as the entire afternoon of the previous day. If you activate it in the afternoon, it will go back before the entire afternoon, as well as the previous day’s morning, bringing you back to the morning.” Du Jing drew his finger in a circle. “There’s a twelve-hour window to activate it, yet it rewinds twenty-four hours, which encapsulates that twelve-hour window, as well as the twelve hours before that. That’s twelve plus twelve. What does this mean? Think about it carefully.”\n

“What?” Zhou Luoyang’s thoughts were in total disarray, and he couldn’t comprehend Du Jing’s analysis.\n

“It means,” said Du Jing, “that if we wanted to, we could continually turn back time, twenty-four hours by twenty-four hours. Using the twelve-hour window as a transitional period, we could continually go backwards, back before the entirety of human history, even back to the very instant the universe was born.”\n

Stunned, Zhou Luoyang took a moment to digest that. “Could you share some of your medication with me? I think I need some valium.”\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nFootnotes:\n

<ol>Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE) is the Daoist author and philosopher that saying comes from. [Back]Reference to Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream, a famous piece of philosophical literature. The idea behind it is summarized by the Philosophy Foundation as: “If I believe that my dreams are real while I am experiencing them then how can I tell that what I am now experiencing is really real and not just a dream?” You can find a translation of the story here. [Back]</ol>\n<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nTranslated by beansprout. Edited by opal.\n

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