Explanation? Explanation?
Yu Bai froze for a moment before subconsciously asking, “What explanation?”
He gazed into those gray-blue eyes, cold as a winter day, and for some reason, he felt a surge of inexplicable tension.
That tone, those words—it felt exactly like he’d made a mistake, tried to run, and gotten caught red-handed.
It was just like the legendary funeral pyre…
Xie Wufang said, “You mentioned earlier that you’d explain it to me later.”
…Crisis averted.
“Oh, that.”
Yu Bai let out a breath of relief as he finally remembered. Earlier, when Zhang Yunjiang had said he wanted to learn Go from Xie Wufang, Yu Bai had used those words as a stopgap to placate the non-human.
“Earlier in this loop, I called to invite you out. We passed by Sun Park, and you took an interest in Go. You learned it right there on the spot and beat Uncle Yuan… That’s how I met Uncle Yuan and Uncle Zhang in this loop.”
Yu Bai gave Xie Wufang a concise rundown of the events leading up.
“Uncle Yuan got so excited that he was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, but he was still fixated on learning Go from you, so he sent Uncle Zhang to find you. A thief in the crowd watching you play got beaten up, someone called the police, and we all went to the station to give statements. Then you pulled out your ID… You know the rest.”
He recounted the main sequence of events truthfully but skillfully skipped over some unnecessary minor details.
For instance, the call had been a flimsy scam pretext, he’d gone to the park to test Xie Wufang’s learning ability, and Xie Wufang had only noticed the Go board because it had a lot more of that annoying white… And after winning that game, Xie Wufang had silently asked for chips with those unfairly beautiful eyes. Yu Bai had told him to imagine what kind of return gift he’d give…
Anyway, just irrelevant little details.
Once Yu Bai finished, Xie Wufang fell silent for a moment, lost in thought.
“I’m interested in Go?” He paused, then asked flatly, “What is Go?”
“…”
Yu Bai tried his best to brush it off. “It’s a board game that’s popular with humans. I’ll explain it properly later when we have time.”
He resorted to his delay tactic again, and Xie Wufang let the topic of Go drop.
The man changed the subject instead. “You seemed really nervous just now… when I asked you to explain.”
“Why?”
Yu Bai froze again.
He knew the non-human standing before him was simply asking out of curiosity, taking the words at face value, just like in so many of their past conversations.
But why did it taste even more like a funeral pyre now?!
Yu Bai covered his face and said with a touch of agony, “It’s nothing. I just remembered a lame joke.”
“Lame joke?”
“By its name, you can tell it’s a really bad one. No need to know it… Wait, I’m getting a call!”
The phone still clutched in his palm suddenly rang. Yu Bai seized the opportunity, feeling a wave of relief as he paused his conversation with Xie Wufang.
He’d only just given his number to Zhang Yunjiang. Surely the old man couldn’t have run into trouble already?
Yu Bai glanced down worriedly, only to freeze when he saw the caller ID.
It was the mother of all lame jokes… No, Yan Jing’s mom.
Yan Mama.
A bit surprised, Yu Bai picked up.
An excited voice burst from the other end right away.
“Little Bai! Are you home? Got time right now?” Yan Mama spoke rapidly. “Can you come over to the house?”
“I’m on my way, Auntie. Don’t panic—what happened?” Yu Bai replied at once.
“Wonderful! We’ll wait for you.” Yan Mama sounded deeply worried. “Something’s wrong with Yan Jing!!”
Yu Bai had already started hailing a cab. His heart jolted at her words. “What happened to him?”
Had Yan Jing’s journey back to this timespace not gone as smoothly as his own and Xie Wufang’s? Had there been some accident?
He could faintly hear Yan Jing’s voice mingled with Yan Papa’s in a noisy tangle on the other end of the line.
Yan Mama spoke in a panic. “He suddenly ran back from the gym, yelling that he’d been reborn!”
“He says he was reborn seven days ago. Now he’s staring at tomorrow’s lottery numbers, mumbling who knows what!”
…
Yu Bai mustered every ounce of self-control to keep from bursting into untimely laughter.
Sorry. As a third-rate writer scraping by with submissions to pulp magazines, he really shouldn’t have filled his good friend’s head with all those random novel tropes.
It had backfired on both of them—and on the king of lame jokes himself.
…And it had been nine days ago, not seven!
With math skills and memory that bad, there was no way Yan Jing could recall lottery numbers he’d never paid much attention to in the first place.
“Don’t worry, Auntie,” Yu Bai reassured her. “He’s fine. I’ll be there soon—about twenty minutes.”
“Good, good! We feel so much better knowing you’re coming!”
He ended the call just as he luckily flagged down an empty cab.
Yu Bai prepared to climb in and, offhandedly, said to the person beside him, “Yan Jing hasn’t realized he’s entered another timespace. He thinks he just went back in time to the past. I’ll have to figure out how to explain it to his parents later, or they’ll think he’s lost his mind.”
When Yu Bai finished speaking, the open car door remained conspicuously empty. Only then did he realize and glance back.
The black-haired, blue-eyed man was still standing in place, showing no sign of getting in the car.
His gaze rested on Yu Bai, listening quietly, but he seemed utterly uninterested in anything to do with Yan Jing.
Reflexively, Yu Bai recalled how Xie Wufang had worn the exact same expression not long ago upon seeing Old Man Zhang alive again.
He paused. Some thought flickered through his mind, too fleeting to grasp. On instinct, he blurted out, “Aren’t you coming with me?”
It came out just like something he’d say to a close friend he’d known forever, someone who tagged along for everything.
Only at those words did Xie Wufang’s halted steps move toward him.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
The car door shut. Scenery rushed past the windows.
The driver kept the car moving while occasionally stealing glances in the rearview mirror, curiously sizing up his two passengers in the back seat.
Blond, blue-eyed foreigners weren’t uncommon, but someone with mixed East-West features? Much rarer.
And to have two passengers this strikingly handsome? Practically unheard of.
Still… the atmosphere in the back felt a little off.
Yu Bai’s brows furrowed faintly. He didn’t initiate conversation with the man beside him, racking his brain to pin down that elusive thought from earlier.
He felt like the Xie Wufang sitting there now wasn’t quite the same as the Xie Wufang he’d come to know across countless loops.
On the surface, the personality was the same:
He stayed quiet most of the time, silently observing everything that unfolded in the human world around him.
He was polite to a fault, quick to apologize, and made an effort to follow all of humanity’s rules—albeit sometimes through his own peculiar interpretations.
He had a terrifying memory, never forgetting anything he saw or heard, especially if it piqued his interest.
When he encountered something he didn’t understand or wanted to know more about, he’d ask directly.
He never lied and rarely hid his emotions.
Except for that first time, when he’d tricked Yu Bai into thinking he was human, and later when he’d claimed not to dislike white.
But…
No matter how Yu Bai turned it over in his mind, he couldn’t shake the image of the non-human standing stock-still earlier, with no apparent intention of getting in the car.
In the loops, every time Yu Bai approached him with some bizarre excuse to drag him out for mischief or adventure, Xie Wufang had always agreed without hesitation. At most, he’d express mild curiosity about how Yu Bai knew his name or phone number.
So why had his first instinct been to refuse this time?
Yet once Yu Bai asked, he’d agreed.
And it hadn’t felt reluctant at all.
Yu Bai couldn’t figure it out.
He leaned against the half-open window and zoned out.
A summer breeze wafted in. The brilliant light of the waning sun poured through the clear glass, washing over his slightly knit brows and exquisite features, turning the light brown strands of hair on his forehead to a soft, glowing gold.
A voice tinged with curiosity suddenly came from right beside him. “Are you unhappy?”
“Hm?”
Yu Bai snapped back to attention and looked over in confusion, meeting those gray-blue eyes fixed on him.
“I’m not unhappy,” he said on reflex. “I just…”
Just like that non-human silently observing humanity, he had been quietly observing and studying the non-human in return.
Yu Bai didn’t voice it.
He suddenly found the situation a little amusing.
Without realizing it, the corners of his pale lips curved up. His gaze darted to the scenery whipping past outside the window as he abruptly changed the subject, his tone stiff.
“Look, that building’s all cordoned off. They must be renovating it, right? It wasn’t like that last time we passed.”
“…”
Xie Wufang actually followed his gaze.
Then he thought for a moment and said, “It was cordoned off last time we passed, too.”
Yu Bai whipped around, his face full of surprise. “How do you—”
Halfway through his words, he remembered.
The last time he’d taken this road had actually been just yesterday—when he’d driven the Funeral Parlor van back to his own home with them inside.
That yesterday was already in the past, yet it was also several days in the future that hadn’t yet arrived.
…This guy’s memory was just a bit too good.
Was he some kind of indiscriminate video camera that recorded every passing scene along the way?
“This is the road to the Funeral Parlor. I remember,” said Comrade Little Xie, the human camera. “Yesterday you were focused on driving and didn’t see it.”
At those words, Yu Bai happened to catch sight in the rearview mirror of the driver—who had been eavesdropping on their conversation—surreptitiously glancing back at them.
“Of course you have to focus when you’re driving.”
He drawled the words out at length before continuing, “Yan Jing’s house is just a five-minute drive from the Funeral Parlor. I used to go over there all the time to hang out.”
The taxi driver up front gave a light cough and quietly withdrew his gaze, pretending as if nothing had happened while staring straight ahead at the road.
The man beside him then asked, “You used to go over there all the time?”
“Yeah, he’s my best friend,” Yu Bai replied. “We’ve been close since elementary school, right up until now. His parents have always been really good to me too.”
Xie Wufang asked again, “Then why ‘used to’?”
“…” Yu Bai shot him an incredulous look.
For a moment, he couldn’t tell if the non-human had just stumbled onto the key point by accident or had keenly zeroed in on it with unusual sharpness.
“Because I’ve grown up,” Yu Bai said with a smile. “From ten years old to eighteen, and now twenty-two. So many years have passed—I’m no longer the little kid who needs looking after.”
He went on smiling. “That’s why I can’t keep lazing around in someone else’s home like I did when I was little, refusing to leave.”
For once, he answered Xie Wufang’s question with complete honesty.
Yu Bai figured the other man probably wouldn’t understand these words anyway, let alone grasp the complicated feelings unique to humans.
So it didn’t matter if he said them.
Sure enough, Xie Wufang’s expression didn’t change.
He turned his gaze to the brown-haired young man smiling beside him, paused for a beat, and then said, “Twenty-two years is short.”
Yu Bai didn’t catch on at first. He blinked in bewilderment. “What?”
“That’s a very brief span of time,” the man replied. “…Not long enough to grow up.”
The warm glow of the setting sun instantly bathed the astonishment in Yu Bai’s eyes.
Then he laughed again.
This time, it was much more genuine.
He had no idea where this guy got his bizarre sense of time from—it was nothing like a human’s.
But… for some reason, he really liked hearing it.
It felt like encouragement to keep being a kid forever.
Laughter gathered in his pale eyes as he turned toward the increasingly familiar scenery outside the window.
“We’re almost at our destination,” he said softly.
When Yu Bai and Xie Wufang stepped into Yan Jing’s home together, a series of voices greeted them, each more excited than the last.
The door had been left open, clearly waiting for Yu Bai.
Yan Mama, stationed right at the entrance, spotted him first. “Little Bai, you’re finally here! Come on in, quick—this kid’s gone and lost his mind working that job of his—oh, and who’s this friend of yours?”
Yan Jing, who had been wearing an “I’m not crazy” expression, lit up the instant he saw them. “Little Bai! Brother Xie! I’m telling you, I really got reborn! But my parents won’t believe me no matter what! If only I’d memorized those lottery numbers from a couple days ago…”
Yu Bai shot a calming look to Yan Jing’s anxious parents, then crooked a finger at Yan Jing with perfect composure. “Come here.”
Yan Jing obediently walked over, all the while blurting out urgently, “Little Bai, you’ll believe me, right? Right before I got reborn, we were riding that elevator together!”
“Yeah, I believe you,” Yu Bai said. Then, puzzled, he asked, “Why couldn’t I get through on your phone?”
“I knew you’d believe me! Why won’t you two believe me? And here I ditched work the second it happened to rush home and tell you!”
Yan Jing shot a plaintive glance at his parents but didn’t forget to answer Yu Bai’s question. “Because right when I got reborn, I was slacking off in the bathroom. I got so worked up that I dropped it—”
Yu Bai cut him off decisively. “Okay, I can guess. No need to go on.”
Then, lowering his voice to the beaming Yan Jing—who looked ready to pull him into a bear hug—he whispered, “You got reborn in the Golden Elevator after seeing two different times, right?”
“Holy shit!” Yan Jing gasped in shock. “How did you know?!”
“Because I was on that elevator with you.”
Yu Bai’s tone was light as he gave Yan Jing a fond look reserved for fools.
“That was the timespace where I met Uncle Yuan. You didn’t get reborn—you entered another timespace. The rest of us did too.”
“…” Yan Jing sucked in a sharp breath. “Wait, what about my five million—?!”
“What five million?” Yu Bai said irritably. “You never remembered the winning numbers in the first place!”
“Go explain things clearly to your parents right now so they stop worrying. We’ve still got to track down the others later.”
Yan Jing glanced dazedly at his parents, who were already debating which Skystar City hospital had the best psychiatric department, and pleaded, “How am I supposed to explain this?”
Yu Bai shoved him forward mercilessly. “Figure it out yourself. Make something up.”
He was done hearing the word “explain” today.
It was about time this muscle-headed dimwit got some exercise for his brain.
While Yan Jing bit the bullet and started spinning a tale for his parents, Yu Bai turned around. Sure enough, there was Xie Wufang standing off to the side, silently observing everything unfolding before him.
He watched quietly from beside Yu Bai, without a care or any desire to get involved.
His gray-blue eyes were the same as when they’d first met—like an ice-covered lake in a winter forest.
In the hazy light of evening, Yu Bai recalled the old man’s earnest hopes from not long ago and couldn’t help asking the man beside him, “In this timespace, Uncle Zhang wants to learn Go from you. I’ve already seen you pick it up super fast and get way better than them… Would you be willing to teach him?”
The silently standing man didn’t reply. He simply shook his head gently.
Honest as always.
After the deep think he’d had in the taxi, this wasn’t too much of a surprise.
On a sudden whim, Yu Bai asked, “What if it was me who wanted to learn? Would you teach me?”
The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them a little—but it was too late to take them back.
All he could do was wait, curious yet a touch uneasy, for the man’s answer.
As dusk deepened and their gazes met in quiet harmony, Xie Wufang softly echoed, “What if?”
“…”
Yu Bai, who had been holding his breath, nearly choked.
He wanted the second half of that sentence!
His fault for forgetting that this non-human wasn’t great at hypotheticals.
“It’s not a ‘what if.'”
Yu Bai rephrased the question immediately and asked again.
“I want to learn Go. Would you teach me?”
The words, laced with uncertainty, had barely settled into the orange-red glow of sunset when a serious reply came washing over him like overlapping waves.
“Yes.”
