At 6:50, Zhang Shutong was punctually jolted awake by his alarm clock.
He opened his eyes.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
His heart skipped a beat. He lay there for a good while before remembering where he was.
He really had returned to eight years ago. This wasn't all just a dream.
It completely dispelled any lingering drowsiness.
What's the first thing someone who's traveled back from eight years in the future does when they wake up?
Zhang Shutong figured it was checking his phone first.
Not necessarily because someone was looking for him—it was just habit.
Squinting, he entered his password, missing the convenience of fingerprint unlock a bit. Yawning, he slipped on his slippers and shuffled out of the bedroom, his footsteps making soft patting sounds.
When he lit up his phone screen, he realized there wasn't much to see. No work entanglements, not many entertainment apps. Only when he opened QQ did he find a few contacts.
The group chat with four people had continued until after midnight.
Only then did Zhang Shutong notice the group chat had quite the chunibyo name.
It was called "The Four."
Mm, he seemed to have come up with that himself.
Morning is when memory is at its best. While washing up, he recalled how this group name came about.
Du Kang had originally wanted to name it "Fish Nest," but Ruoping thought it was too uncultured and vetoed it.
Then Qingyi suggested just calling it "Dragon Nest" instead, so the four of them could each claim one of four titles:
King of Bronze and Fire, King of Earth and Mountain, King of Ocean and Water, King of Sky and Wind. That way all the worthies would be assembled—quite perfect really.
But since all four Dragon Kings were practically dead, it was really unlucky, so Ruoping vetoed that too.
In the end, he was the one who came up with that compromise name, and everyone unanimously approved it.
He casually scanned a few lines of the chat history. Who knew where the conversation had wandered off to—in the end, only Du Kang was spamming panda head emojis in the group. Zhang Shutong found it utterly devoid of substance and was too lazy to scroll up further, so he started washing his face.
In the mirror was a face with distinct features—a broad forehead, a straight nose bridge, thin lips. The only flaw was the lack of expression. Zhang Shutong used to not understand what people meant when they said he liked keeping a cold face, but after dealing with Lu Qinglian all last evening, he suddenly got it. He tried raising his eyebrows at the mirror, but it actually gave off a contemptuous feeling, making him look even more unapproachable, so he gave up.
Actually, he hadn't been like this as a child.
When Zhang Shutong was little, he looked like a girl. His mom's favorite thing was to pinch his face while calling "Tongtong, Tongtong." He once had a hat with Mickey Mouse's head on it, bright red, with two ears on top. His mom kept nodding approvingly at the department store's fitting mirror while Zhang Shutong tugged at her hand, staring longingly at the Ultraman hat beside it.
But the requirements for becoming Ultraman were quite strict—you had to believe in the light. His mom said with a straight face that he didn't meet the requirements yet and needed to grow a few more years. Zhang Shutong believed her and kept waiting until his teens, after which he never asked for her opinion on clothes again.
He recalled Du Kang saying he always liked wearing black clothes. Thinking about it, it was true. Or rather, after being tormented so badly as a child, if he opened his wardrobe, he definitely wouldn't find a single bright color.
Zhang Shutong felt his mom was a very refined person—not vain, but refined in how she lived life. For instance, she made him eat an egg every day, chew food slowly and thoroughly, drink warm water... These habits inadvertently left their mark on him, like a wooden stake propping up a sapling to keep it from growing crooked. But that stake couldn't be there forever, and later he went crooked again.
He didn't use face wash, only soap. Aside from being a bit drying, it was fine. After drying his face, Zhang Shutong stared at the almond cream by the washbasin for a while.
All these years, he'd been trying to find a symbolic marker of a boy's growth into a man, but felt that singling out any one thing lacked persuasiveness. But now he felt he'd found it—as a teenager, he would never give anything that resembled "skincare products" a second glance. Washing his face for an extra minute already counted as giving his face respect.
But now he poured the almond cream into his palm and rubbed it on his face. Instantly, his whole person smelled fragrant, and he felt somewhat melancholic.
Why had this day come for him too?
But he was going to the Forbidden Zone this morning. If he didn't put something on, the wind would make his skin peel.
Time was neither tight nor loose, but he never dawdled. Ten minutes was enough to handle hygiene and clothes. As he was about to leave, he remembered something and ran back to his desk in a few steps, pulling open the drawer.
On the desk were manga, books, crayons, even Yu-Gi-Oh cards, but not Lu Qinglian's notebook. So it could only be at school. He rushed out the door, hurried down the stairs in a few bounds, and rode his bike toward the Forbidden Zone.
He'd eaten the steamed buns last night, so he could only handle breakfast on the road.
—Fish patty sandwich. Perhaps it was a specialty of the small island. At least Zhang Shutong hadn't seen them sold anywhere afterward. Blackfish patties coated in bun crumbs, fried golden, sandwiched together with some fried vegetables and tofu products. The center of the flatbread was smeared with a black sauce—quite salty. But the truly special part was that they'd crush a salted duck egg yolk and put it in the bread.
Pale red, with a sandy texture, like a sauce but not quite. One bite filled your mouth with oil, with a unique mellow fragrance. Besides being rich in fish and shrimp, the small island also produced plenty of mallard ducks. Salted duck eggs were one of their specialties. In their second year of middle school, they studied Wang Zengqi's "Dragon Boat Festival Duck Eggs." Perhaps children from other places drooled with envy, but those of them on the small island never thought it was anything special.
The morning air was filled with a light white mist—water vapor that had risen from the surrounding lake overnight. The crisp, refreshing air was real, as was the painful freezing of his nose.
So today he'd worn a scarf—also black. He didn't know how long it had been since he'd worn one. His neck felt a bit itchy. After finishing the sandwich at the small cart, Zhang Shutong continued on his way, the bustling voices of people rapidly receding behind his ears.
When he could no longer see any signs of human habitation, he'd reached his destination.
The mist around the "Forbidden Zone" was even thicker, a vast expanse of white. The sky was high and distant, the surroundings vast and open. Reeds swayed gently in the wind. When he walked to the lakeside for a look, the fishing line was still properly tied there.
Zhang Shutong was starting to doubt Du Kang's words a bit now—not their inherent credibility, but rather, who exactly had the fishermen seen in the days before the incident?
The killer? Or were they actually just those two poachers?
The bald guy had an electric fishing net on him. Maybe he'd been electrofishing in the Forbidden Zone these past few days?
Had the killer himself actually come to the Forbidden Zone or not?
These few clues weren't nearly enough. But aside from this, there were no other decent leads.
If only he could return to eight years later, he'd definitely use the internet to investigate thoroughly. This was the only aspect where Zhang Shutong felt the "future" was more useful than the "past"—specifically regarding this murder case.
He could only check again after school today.
While pondering this, he rode back. At 7:25, Zhang Shutong arrived punctually at the school gate, reluctantly squeezing the brakes.
His school's gate was honestly a bit small. He wasn't saying this because he looked down on his alma mater. As the saying goes: a son doesn't disdain his mother's looks, a dog doesn't disdain its home's poverty, and a black Audi never minds blocking other people's way—
A black sedan was blocking the entrance.
A girl wearing a red scarf got out of the car, the ornament on the ends of her hair swaying.
The time was 7:25 in the morning, the second day of the regression.
The young man stopped his bike, waiting for the young miss to get out of the car, still unaware of what was about to happen when he returned to class.
If he'd known, he definitely wouldn't have worn a black scarf out.