Chapter 11: Strange Neighbor 11

In the brightly lit consultation room, the warm afternoon sunlight bathed everything in a gentle glow.

Doctor Chen, her hair streaked with gray, had just listened to a ghost story that had veered wildly from spine-chilling horror to absurd comedy. After a brief moment of surprise, she seemed to settle on the most reasonable explanation, smiling with a mix of tolerance and helplessness.

“Looks like this move—”

The young man sitting quietly across from her suddenly shuddered, blinking in a daze.

Then, he let out a deep, profoundly melancholic sigh.

As the familiar wave of dizziness and encroaching darkness washed over him, he opened his eyes once more to find himself back at the same point in time.

To be fair, he wasn’t all that surprised this time.

It was just that when the utterly clueless Doctor Chen remarked how helpful the move had been for his work, Yu Bai couldn’t help pulling a face like he wished the ground would swallow him up right then and there.

Helpful? Oh, absolutely.

Someone stuck reliving the same day over and over didn’t need to work anymore anyway.

Haha 🙂

“Your creative juices are really flowing today… Huh?” Doctor Chen trailed off, a hesitant look crossing her face. “Little Yu, what’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”

Still dizzy, Yu Bai grabbed the hug pillow nearby and buried his face in it, mumbling listlessly, “I had a burst of inspiration, but now I’m hit with writer’s block again. Give me a bit—let me figure out how to continue the story.”

Seeing him suddenly act like an ostrich with its head in the sand, his voice muffled yet full of life, Doctor Chen paused for a moment before breaking into a smile.

She didn’t quite get it, but she would respect it.

“Take your time thinking it over. I won’t disturb you,” she said gently. “It’s a really interesting idea, though.”

The consultation room fell quiet.

Sunlight filled the space—it was an ordinary, beautiful day.

Buried in the pillow, Yu Bai thought to himself that it was interesting, alright. As long as he wasn’t the protagonist.

At this point, he had to admit the situation was even worse than he’d first realized.

He’d inexplicably gotten trapped in a time loop.

The starting point was fixed: the moment right after he’d finished telling the Water Pipe Little Stars Story in the consultation room.

The endpoint was still unclear. It might be some moment the next day, or tied to certain actions.

The first time he’d looped back, he’d stayed up all night gaming with Yan Jing, dozed off into a deep sleep that morning, and woken up back here today. He still couldn’t pinpoint the exact trigger for the reset.

It might restart when he lost consciousness in sleep, or maybe it snapped back to this fixed time node while he was sleeping—something to test.

And the second reset, which had just happened, made Yu Bai realize something else.

His non-human neighbor probably wasn’t deliberately trapping him in the past.

That earnest student of humanity who was so quick to apologize didn’t seem the type to pull something like this.

Images flashed through his mind: the watermelon on the rooftop silently swelling into a yoga ball, the Long-Haired Man passionately drumming with bones for drumsticks, the Little Girl treating the water pipe like a secret base without a hint of suspicion. Yu Bai’s plight suddenly felt like one of their bizarre mishaps.

Of course, even if it wasn’t intentional, he was still blaming it squarely on his non-human neighbor. It had to be some influence from him causing this freak occurrence.

After all, none of this could happen in a normal human world.

But what had triggered this latest reset? Time hadn’t reached the next day yet, and he hadn’t gone to sleep.

Still playing ostrich, Yu Bai racked his brain, recalling what had happened just before everything went black.

He’d grabbed his non-human neighbor by the collar, then concisely laid out everything that had happened.

Physical contact on one hand, shattering the guy’s worldview on the other.

Which one had done it?

Yu Bai couldn’t be sure.

He resolved to test these uncertainties one by one.

No one in this looped world remembered anything from before the reset anyway.

Not even that non-human guy.

The thought oddly excited him.

Doctor Chen, on the verge of retirement, gazed fondly around the room she’d used for years—the familiar decorations, the furnishings, and the young man she’d watched grow up on that sofa…

That young man suddenly bolted upright.

“Doctor Chen, I’ve got a sudden burst of inspiration! I need to head back and write it down right now.”

Yu Bai snatched up his backpack from beside him and bolted for the door without a backward glance. “See you tomorrow!”

Doctor Chen responded on reflex, then realized her mistake. “Tomorrow…? Hey?”

She was retiring tomorrow.

From beyond the room, his bright voice carried back: “I’ll definitely come find you tomorrow!”

The street bustled with noise and energy as Yu Bai hurried toward the bus stop for home.

Across the road, four buzz-cut guys in loud floral shirts trailed him at a distance. When he quickened his pace, so did they; when he glanced back, they abruptly looked away.

Amid his glances, the same bus pulled slowly into the stop. Yu Bai boarded at an unhurried pace and took the same empty seat.

His phone was stacked with unread messages. As usual, the magazine editor had sent an urgent reminder about the deadline.

A few seats away, a young woman kept stealing glances at him.

“Why do you keep staring at him?” her boyfriend grumbled. “Is he that hot?”

Yu Bai clutched his phone and quietly perked up his ears.

“Hey, keep it down! He’ll hear you.”

This time it didn’t feel like he was being chased by debt collectors, but the unfamiliar girl was still sneaking peeks.

So last time, her words had just been an excuse after all.

“You look but get mad if he hears?” her boyfriend sneered. “Why don’t you just go sit with him? Throw yourself at him and see if he even notices.”

“Why do you have to talk to me like that over something so small!” The girl’s voice rose. “How many beauties have you ogled? Did I ever say anything?”

“He’s hot, and I like looking—what about it? Is looking a crime? I’ve put up with you for a long time, you know! I still haven’t settled the score with you for secretly friending my bestie!”

“Hey, what’s wrong with you yelling like that? What do you mean ‘secretly friending your bestie’? That was for work…”

It was the same old melodramatic lovers’ quarrel, and the passengers listened with keen interest all the way.

This time, Yu Bai stayed calm and rode straight to his stop. He casually replied to the editor’s message.

[Definitely submitting tomorrow.]

Before getting off, he walked toward the doors and paused by the still-bickering couple.

They fell quiet on instinct, meeting his gaze.

Yu Bai’s eyes skimmed over the boy’s somewhat twisted expression before fixing seriously on the girl.

“Would you give me your contact info?”

He finished and deliberately glanced at her boyfriend.

“…It’s for work. No hard feelings, okay?”

At his pointed words, many passengers in the bus burst into knowing laughter.

The girl, who had been fuming and hurt, cracked a smile too. Blushing and teary-eyed, she looked away. “N-No, that’s okay… Thank you.”

Her boyfriend stood there, neck stiff and face flushed beet red, mouth opening and closing with nothing to say.

Some nosy passengers chimed in: “Girl, you should dump him already. What’s so great about this guy?”

“Yeah, a total stranger shows you more respect than he does…”

In the ensuing uproar, Yu Bai stepped off the bus with an oddly pleasant feeling.

Being nosy wasn’t half bad.

He entered the neighborhood. Before the anxious-looking Gatekeeper Grandpa could speak, he waved toward the bodyguards across the street—a farewell for the day.

The meddlesome grandpa’s concern caught in his throat. “Eh—you know them?”

“Yeah, my friends.”

The grandpa let out an “oh,” scratched his head to cover his awkwardness, and added, “Whoa, they look pretty badass.”

Yu Bai smiled.

He walked through the tree-lined path, entered the building, and reached the elevator lobby.

This time he’d taken the bus the whole way, arriving a bit earlier than he had a week ago.

He waited a moment, and soon enough, two figures appeared one after the other in his line of sight.

He already knew Master Wang was coming back from work with food, but where had the Non-Human Neighbor been?

Yu Bai suddenly felt curious.

And the guy had said he’d seen Yu Bai once yesterday, but he had no memory of it. Where?

Before he could dwell on it, the tall man with black hair and blue eyes stepped into the elevator.

Yu Bai followed suit and hit the close-door button.

He didn’t want Master Wang’s spicy noodles spilling in the elevator again—not to mention he had questions for his non-human neighbor, and being alone would be better.

But Wang Jianbin, eager to get home to his fried chicken, picked up his pace and came running.

“Hey—hold up!”

With hurried footsteps, a hand shot out to block the nearly closed doors.

The elevator shook slightly with a clang, and the doors slid open again.

Wang Jianbin had made it aboard and was about to thank Yu Bai, whose finger hovered over a button inside the car.

But on closer look, it was the close-door button.

“Tha… nks… Uh.”

…No wonder the doors had shut so fast!

Wang Jianbin felt embarrassed, but also puzzled.

Why was this stranger looking at him with such sympathy?

Yu Bai cast a regretful glance at Master Wang, destined to be the third wheel, then turned to the man standing in the elevator corner.

He still looked a touch awkward, but now his gaze had lifted from the floor, fixed straight ahead as if he had something to say but held back.

There, on the elevator doors, was a glaring red-and-black warning sign.

One of the rules: Do not use body or objects to block the doors.

Yu Bai couldn’t help but think that his intuition from that day had been spot on. The other man really had been reading that line of text.

His non-human neighbor was earnestly studying every single human rule.

Only to discover that humans themselves didn’t follow them.

But he wasn’t sure whether he should point it out.

Yu Bai found the whole thing a little amusing.

So he called out to Master Wang, who had his back turned to him. “Don’t block the door with your hand. It’s dangerous—it could cause the elevator to malfunction.”

At those words, Wang Jianbin turned around in surprise. He saw the brown-haired young man smiling as he pointed out the problem.

And the blue-eyed man, who had relaxed just a fraction in that instant.

He stood quietly in the corner, glancing sideways at just the right moment to catch the slight upturn at the corners of the mouth of the man beside him.

The brown-haired young man asked him casually, “It says right there that you can’t do it like that, right?”

“Yes,” he agreed softly, ripples shimmering in his gray-blue eyes, like light dancing on a lake. “That’s wrong.”