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The shape of Cheng Xiaoshi’s smile is devious, though not malicious. There is something nostalgic about it, Lu Guang thinks, if not simply for the fact that Cheng Xiaoshi was once dead.

“I’m here to save you, Lu Guang,” the dead man says, and the smile opens, teeth flashing white, and the pink underneath—a glimpse into hell.

The devil opens his pink mouth and says You’re safe now.

This was the dream. When he dives, another follows.  

There are distinct moments in time where saving Cheng Xiaoshi seemed worth it. Having a basketball ball hit him straight in the face is not one of them.

“Sorry,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, and the words echo in his still muddled head, the one that got hit straight in the face with a ball, the one who just saw Cheng Xiaoshi with his pool of blood on the ground. “Lemme call the nurse.”

“I’m fine.” Cheng Xiaoshi’s wrist feels too foreign. Lu Guang fights the urge to clasp. To crush. “I’m really fine.”

“Okay.”

He’s going to ask him to join. We need another player.

“We need another player,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. Come and play with us. “Come and play with us!”

Lu Guang forgets. The pitch of his voice. The joy in his step. Cheng Xiaoshi pulls him up and drags him towards the field. His body moves, but his mind forgets. Cheng Xiaoshi says things with such vigor and conviction that the memory of him pales and trembles over the real thing, and the pain on his face numbs as the distant dribble of the basketball starts matching his heartbeat; the saccadic rhythm of Cheng Xiaoshi’s shouts. Cheng Xiaoshi passes him the ball. Lu Guang raises his arms high and throws.

The ball makes a singular circle over the metal ring before dropping unceremoniously into the pit.

“I think we should take this request.”

“You have never refused a request. Except for that one time where you were quarrelling with Lu Guang like a baby.”

Ignoring Cheng Xiaoshi’s protests, Qiao Ling turns to Lu Guang. “What do you think about this?”

Lu Guang’s fingers graze over the picture’s yellow, fragile edges. The black and white picture of a dead body. “I refuse. This case was solved ten years ago. The murderer was found, and proofs were verified in court. We will be opening an old wound that no one remembers.”

“His brother clearly does! That’s why he came to us.”

“Mr. Wang is wrecked by guilt. He himself admitted that the nightmares he had were possibly induced by his medication.”

“C’mon, Lu Guang!” Xiao Chengshi’s arm drapes on his shoulder. It’s a heavy weight. “Mr. Wang just wants us to check that he for sure did nothing during that night. It’s easy. I just need to get in there and do a final check-in and then poof! I’m back here as nice as a new. Easy-peasy.”

Lu Guang shows him the picture once again. Cheng Xiaoshi leans even closer.

Lu Guang slaps away his arm. He has had enough. “You do realize what you must do then, Cheng Xiaoshi. You have two options.” He holds a finger. “You appear as yourself in a crime scene with the killer right in front of you. You disrupt the past with your presence and possibly, most likely, get yourself killed in the process.”

“I could just not get killed.”

“You don’t keep a good record of that,” Lu Guang says, before adding, “you will be facing a serial killer, Cheng Xiaoshi. I hope you understand what you’re getting into.”

“Hu-huh,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, looking like he finally gets it. “I mean, okay, yeah. That’s a little yuck.”

“The picture was taken a day after the victim is murdered. I could not see the moment the murder occurred.”

“Let’s hear the second option, Lu Guang,” Qiao Ling says.

Lu Guang looks at her. He adds another finger, the ‘v’ trapping Cheng Xiaoshi in the hollowed space of his fingers. Words sink in her eyes before Lu Guang understands it. “Second. You enter the body of the person taking the picture. You take his consciousness for twelve hours. You are not allowed to change the past, and you will not impact the future.”

“Great, great, I like the second option,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, holding his hand up. “Let’s do this then!”

“Cheng Xiaoshi,” Qiao Ling says, her thumb and index pitching the sides of her face. “Do yourself a favour and read the news the victim’s brother sent us.”

Lu Guang helpfully provides him the blurred picture of a paper editorial:

SERIAL KILLER CAUSING BLOODSHED ONCE AGAIN! On August 15^th, a man is found dead at his house by his brother at 9am in the morning, with a single photograph left by the notorious serial killer that has been on a killing spree for the past two months. The photograph has been kept private by the request of the victim’s brother. It also displays elements unable to appear on the news. 

The police have been in the search for a suspect since their first crime in July, when the first photograph appeared at the crime scene—

“The alleged killer committed another murder four hours after this report was published,” Lu Guang says, scrolling through the news on his phone, the written details of what he has seen through the picture: a seven-year-old boy, killed on his way back home from school.

Here is the request: a university man asks for proof that he did not kill his brother in a wrapped case ten years ago like he did in his nightmares.

Here is the verdict: the nightmares don’t stop. Lu Guang knows what it is like to kill something close to a brother. He knows that vengeance is futile, and innocence is frugal and fraught in the heart of a guilty man.

“I will definitely avenge your death,” Cheng Xiaoshi says out of nowhere after his turn in the shower, roughly drying his hair with a hand towel.

“You realize that I don’t necessarily appreciate the assumption that I will be murdered one day,” Lu Guang says, gesturing his side. “Come here.”

Cheng Xiaoshi sits next to him. Lu Guang is not used to this, sometimes. He is not used to the heat of Cheng Xiaoshi’s body, the fluidity of his movements, the sheer life behind it. Lu Guang has been in this photograph for too long to detach himself from the miracle that is Cheng Xiaoshi.

Lu Guang takes over the towel to dry his hair. Cheng Xiaoshi comes to him smiling without a care in the world. “Thanks. I know you’re the best—ow! Lu Guang, you know a man’s hair is his pride—"

“Idiot.”

Cheng Xiaoshi rubs the back of his injured head, his half-dried hair dripping a little on Lu Guang’s arm like the leaked roof of an afternoon rain. “What, don’t believe you can be saved by some random idiot like me?”

Lu Guang looks at him. He wonders briefly if it is a byproduct of Cheng Xiaoshi’s supernatural ability, to be unable to lie about anything, or if the ability to turn back time is only for given to people that are pure to a fault.

Lu Guang looks away. “I highly doubt you have the detective skills for solving a murder.”

Cheng Xiaoshi protests by turning his head. Lu Guang twists it forward. “Tut-tut. You forget I’m a supernatural anime protagonist, Guang Guang.”

“I thought we established the rules of using your power baselessly, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

“Hey! Avenging you is not baseless!”

Lu Guang drags him back to the edge of the bed, throwing the towel to Cheng Xiaoshi’s face.

“We—”

“We must not change the past, and not question the future,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, the back of his neck visible as he sits there obediently, waiting to have his hair dried. Lu Guang has gotten good at it over time. “But you heard what Mr. Wang said, right? I think he makes a lot of sense.” A beat. “I didn’t understand everything. But, ah, he makes sense to me.”

Cheng Xiaoshi’s fingers twist in his hair, a curl tangled between his thumb and index. “Uh—endings are created by our set of actions.” Another pause. Cheng Xiaoshi’s laugh takes a turn, a pitch that he always does when he is clueless. “Or something,” he says, and looks at Lu Guang expectantly, like he knows he would understand.

Lu Guang does. Sometimes he is struck with the distinct impression that he has given everything to understand his friend. Struck by something—the ever-present red shadow under Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes; the twitch of his bottom lip when he smiles— Lu Guang says: “Deterministic actions do not take in account the fact that there are people like you out there.”

As expected, Cheng Xiaoshi takes offence. He puffs his chest out. “Now, now. What’s that supposed to mean?”

He means Cheng Xiaoshi’s unpredictability. He means supernatural power. He means that time can be violated when you’re desperate. “Mr. Wang is a philosophy professor,” he says. “They tend to get theoretical about these kinds of things.”

“If me saving you is already established, and going back in time is something that is set in stone, then it is already planned in the stars that I am going back to find out the killer and save you, right? Like last time with Li Tianchen.” A yelp. Cheng Xiao’s hands come on his. “Lu Guang, it hurts! Stop pulling my hair!”

He stops. “I wasn’t aware that in this hypothetical you will be also saving my life.”

“I mean, you would do the same if the roles were reversed.”

“You can’t bring back the dead,” Lu Guang says, and bites his mouth hard enough to draw blood.

Lu Guang sees him wave a careless hand. Some curls on his head bounce with the movement. Cheng Xiaoshi does everything with unnecessary excess; in gestures and in words. “Anyway. What will be will be? Isn’t that what Mr. Wang said?”

Lu Guang’s fingers clutch the towel. Some of Cheng Xiaoshi’s hair flutter the pads of his fingers. “He meant that a number of causal factors determine our actions, and that our actions are ultimately predetermined by the laws of physics. You are committing actions already pre-set by the universe. It’s quite a fatalist view of determinism.”

It is useful to hold this kind of bleak view when a victim’s relatives are concerned. They don’t get too adamant about saving people that are already dead. It’s in their best interest.

Lu Guang is aware of the hypocrisy when a hand—a very alive hand—comes to rest on his shoulder.

“Huh-huh,” Cheng Xiaoshi finally turns to him, grabbing back the towel. His heavy hand on his shoulder, Cheng Xiaoshi has the distinct impression that he is being pulled down. His hair is ruffled but dry. His eyes are so bright. “Whatever you just said, buddy. I will be saving you no matter what. Even the universe freaking says so.”

Lu Guang fights the urge to close his eyes. He is still not used to this. “You ignore the presence of unpredictability in his theory,” Lu Guang says, and his own voice sounds foreign to him; the dragged syllables, the tired drag of his throat. He gets up and climbs to his bed.

“Wow, hey! Finish what you were saying, Lu Guang!”

Lu Guang waits for Cheng Xiaoshi to grab him by the arm. It’s a blessing that he knows; it’s a curse that he does. This very well could be part of his punishment for fucking with time.

He grabs him. Lu Guang shakes him off. He is aware, in this tired back-and-forth, that his actions are simple reactions to Cheng Xiaoshi’s behaviour. Every action and choice are mediated by one singular cause— the law of physics, they say.

“There is in this world a selected chain of events that leads to one predetermined result. Every time you go back, Cheng Xiaoshi, you are defying that chain. You are also feeding it, because the chain of events is created by your very presence. Such is the dilemma of having free will coexisting with the idea of premeditation.”

Lu Guang lies down. He pictures Cheng Xiaoshi with his towel in his hand, lost and frowning.

“You know I don’t understand these things.”

“I know.”

“You know I will try to save you no matter what, Lu Guang.”

Lu Guang remembers being saved. He remembers Cheng Xiaoshi dying in his arms.

“I know,” he says.

In a world dictated by gravitational pull and linear time—Lu Guang finds himself dictated by a worse, much more unpredictable variable in the shape of a tall, impulsive idiot.

Cheng Xiaoshi is only quiet in his sleep when he is crying, Lu Guang learnt through the photographs, the fragments of time that he wasn’t supposed to break into. It’s not the silence that woke him— it’s the simple fact that he wasn’t asleep, and the terrible truth that he is unable to sleep without Cheng Xiaoshi’s audible proof that he is alive.

“Cheng Xiaoshi.” He only lets out a sigh when he hears the slight hitch of a breath. “You didn’t wake me up. Save your sorry for a time you truly deserve it.”

A sound beneath him. Lu Guang stares at the ceiling above him. The cacophonic storm in his head quiets down with each breath he hears, and the white blue of the ceiling stares back like a blank canvas waiting to be painted.

It’s not the first time Cheng Xiaoshi has a nightmare. It’s the first time that Lu Guang does not pretend to sleep through it. He knows that sometimes pride is treasured over comfort. One breath takes a wrong turn, and just like that the spell is broken with Cheng Xiaoshi’s cries.

He’s still asleep. Lu Guang climbs down to where Cheng Xiaoshi is dreaming in pain and thinks of painting the world red. Cheng Xiaoshi’s face twists, his mouth open in a wordless scream. He looks like dying. He once died in a more peaceful way.

Cheng Xiaoshi’s hand tries to grasp something. It finds Lu Guang’s without fail—because Lu Guang moves to meet it. Lu Guang has forgotten what it’s like to hold it without something bad happening. No magic, no pictures, no death; nothing occurs when he holds Cheng Xiaoshi’s hand. A small miracle that he cherishes as much as any.

So he holds it. Lu Guang blinks away tears. It’s the sleep deprivation; it’s watching his friend cry. It’s the warmth of his hand.

“Cheng Xiaoshi,” he says. It’s also, mostly, he thinks, how much he loves him.

“Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. His eyes are closed, still asleep, and Lu Guang imagines himself in Cheng Xiaoshi’s nightmare—and wonders briefly if they share the same terrors, the same dreams.

Qiao Ling returns from her morning run after Lu Guang finished pouring his first cup of tea.

“Good morning,” she says, still slightly out of breath. “You should really stop indulging him so much. I bet he’s still asleep.”

The chrysanthemum tea is light. He likes it that way. “He didn’t sleep much last night.”

Qiao Ling raises an eyebrow. “And how exactly would you know that?” she says, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “I can lend you my foundation if you care about upholding your reputation as the most beautiful man in town.”

Lu Guang scoffs. “I don’t—”

“It’s bad for business if you become the man with the darkest circles in town is all I’m saying.” She flashes her Weibo page. “It recently reached a million followers. Whatever pays rent, pretty boy.”

Lu Guang pinches the bridge of his nose. Qiao Ling tuts, sitting down with a concerned look. “Are you worried about that request? No matter how Cheng Xiaoshi protests, you know that you hold the final decision.”

“He was crying in his sleep,” Lu Guang says slowly, “about his parents.”

Qiao Ling pauses for a moment before starting, a little pained: “I thought he stopped having nightmares.”

“They didn’t,” he says. “He has the tendency to understand others in a way that is detrimental to himself,” Lu Guang says. “What Professor Wang experienced; he likely had the same experience as a child.”

Qiao Ling wraps her arms around herself. “About killing his parents? He wouldn’t think he killed his parents, right? He was only a child when it happened.”

“Not killing,” Lu Guang says, “but Cheng Xiaoshi being the reason behind their deaths, or why they didn’t come back.” Lu Guang drinks his tea, and the bitterness spreads in his mouth. “Though I don’t think Cheng Xiaoshi can necessarily differentiate these two statements.”

Qiao Ling grimaces. “It’s tricky to get him off a case when it gets personal.”

“He always makes them personal.”

Qiao Ling raises her hands. “Okay, don’t get me wrong. I agree with you. I don’t think Cheng Xiaoshi had the ability to stay sane after playing the role of a killer. He tends to react to feelings that aren’t his and make them his own. It took him so long to get over what happened to Emma,” she says, nodding in thanks to the tea Lu Guang poured for her, “but luckily it ended well.”

Qiao Ling takes a sip of her tea. She lets out a gasp when his cup hit the floor. She stands up, likely to grab him a towel.

“Guang Guang, this is so uncharacteristic of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you just don’t usually—”

“What do you mean, ended well?”

Her back is facing him. She returns with a box of tissues. Lu Guang barely registers the wetness of his sleeves as she throws him the box.

“Cheng Xiaoshi talked her out of jumping. I’m surprised you don’t remember. You two got into a fight about it.”

“A fight.”

She rolls her eyes. “You guys didn’t talk for months.”

“Ah,” Lu Guang says. He wills himself to speak through the dread pooling in his stomach, tries to remember this timeline that he built for Cheng Xiaoshi. “Death is a node that cannot be changed.”

“Nothing bad happened in these two years, at least.” She smiles. “Some days I wonder if I’m just going to spend the rest of my life here with you guys, running this shop rumored to have supernatural powers until we are old and fed up with this photograph business.”

Lu Guang startles when he feels a hand on his. He recoils. His hands are wet.

“Lu Guang,” she says, “are you okay?”

Out of instinct, Lu Guang seeks out for a sign—a shadow of Cheng Xiaoshi—moving, breathing, alive. He is sleeping in his room. Surely, he is sleeping. Lu Guang glances at his watch and has the distinct impression of seeing his watch contorting and melting under an invisible heat.

“I’m fine,” he says, “I’m just a little dizzy.”

And he closes his eyes, willing the world to stay the way he wants it to be.

“First, you have twelve hours.”

Cheng Xiaoshi wounds his arm around his shoulder. “You’re stunt-up today. Are you feeling fine, Lu Guang?”

Lu Guang is fine. “Second, you must follow my orders.”

“Lu Guang—”

“Third,” Lu Guang says, cutting through the last tilt of his name, “remember what we agreed on this time, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

Cheng Xiaoshi nods. “I exit the picture before the next murder happens. Find clues. No fancy gimmicks. Just playing detective and get out. Become the next Sherlock Holmes.”

“I don’t recall saying that last part.”

Cheng Xiaoshi grins in a way that is a little too familiar, the kind where he knows he’s getting away with things he shouldn’t. “Well, now you know something new about me. Crazy how it still happens.”

Lu Guang fights a smile despite himself. He holds out his hand. “No matter the past, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

Cheng Xiaoshi’s hand is warm when he touches him. He is supposed to clap his hand, but the fingers rest firmly in his palm before curling in. His grin morphs into a smile that Lu Guang cannot quite discern.

“Don’t question the future,” Cheng Xiaoshi says as he moves his hand high again, and let it drop down like a feather, silent and light, before disappearing into the memories of a murderer in a flourish.

I don’t know, man. I wouldn’t spend my unemployment benefits on a concert, Cheng Xiaoshi tells him.

The man recently lost his job at a factory before using all his money for a one-way ticket to Shanghai and an individual ticket of Paganini violin concerto.

Sometimes people need something beautiful to keep on living. Even if it’s objectively useless in the eye of society.

Wow, tough audience. I thought you would be the kind to be into classical, Lu Guang.

A pause. Lu Guang lets him assume that it’s because of a connection lag. I do listen to Paganini.

Nerd.

Lu Guang sits on the sofa with his hands folded, thinking about a time where he cared about useless but beautiful things. But he twisted time and stripped himself of all useless things. Ask for two tickets at the booth.

Why?

He has a date.

He has a date? Cheng Xiaoshi’s face collapses. He’s an old balding man that murders kids and he has a date? Life is so unfair.

He’s coming.

A fair man with an above average face greets Cheng Xiaoshi. It startles him so much that Lu Guang has to remind him that he shouldn’t act like a virgin with his boyfriend that he has been dating for ages.

These are things you should’ve warned me, Lu Guang! Cheng Xiaoshi cries out, smiling awkwardly at the pretty man in front of him. “Ha,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, “nice seeing you here, uh—”

…Guang Guang.

“—Guang Guang.”

That’s his boyfriend’s nickname, Lu Guang explains, closing his eyes and wishing it to be over soon. The boyfriend smiles ever so sweetly and drags Cheng Xiaoshi’s stiff arm into the movie theater.

It would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact of what’s about to come. Lu Guang looks at his watch. You will see the child on your way out of the theatre.

Okay.

The boyfriend smiles at Cheng Xiaoshi. “It’s been a while since you came to town, and you treat me already. Did you miss me so much?”

“Uh—yeah.”

The concert venue is half full; the reality of classical music in modern society. Cheng Xiaoshi sits with his too small suit, his sweaty hand clutched between the dainty fingers of his elegant boyfriend. Lu Guang watches the watch tick to its doom.

The conductor raises her hands in a matter of seconds. Someone coughs in the room. Cheng Xiaoshi closes his eyes to listen to his next order.  

Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang says in his mind. Paganini begins. You can’t do it.

“I can’t do it.”

Obviously he can’t. Cheng Xiaoshi can hold a knife in his hand but can’t hurt a child; a kind of universal truth that would break the universe should it be forfeited.

“Lu Guang,” he says. Lu Guang watches him hold the handle of the knife close to his midriff. The anxiety of a middle-aged man in the alleyway, whose next step is to murder a child senseless. Beneath the man’s heavy lids, his eyes shine ever so golden. “Tell me what to do.”

“Exit the picture, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

“But we need,” and the voice trembles, its volume flickering on and off like a wavering lamplight, “we need the information, right? Professor Wang—“

“Killing a child won’t get the information that we need.”

“Maybe I can find something.”

Lu Guang looks at his watch. “You have two minutes before you run into the child and stab him to death.”

His hands come to cover his balding head. His big body shakes, and he hides the knife back in his pocket. Cheng Xiaoshi counts time with his fingers; the way he fidgets with them whenever he is thinking— the slight twitch when he taps on the side of his thigh. Lu Guang likes that about him. He is terrified of the things he likes about him sometimes, of the mundane, meaningless things that Lu Guang is willing to rewind timelines for.

Cheng Xiaoshi is in the body of a balding man in his forties on a killing spree. But Lu Guang sees it. The fat finger twitch. The drool of his eyes to the ground. Cheng Xiaoshi is afraid, and Lu Guang knows that fear as intimate as his own.

“Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “This man is going to murder a child.”

“A death node cannot be changed,” Lu Guang says, but his voice picks up anyway. He is quick to sense the danger of being found out. He has grown to be a coward ever since he dived. The fear of exposure hardens his voice. “Exit the picture, Cheng Xiaoshi. That’s not what we agreed on. You cannot—“

“I can sense his feelings. This man is crazy, Lu Guang. I am waiting for something. Someone. I am out for blood.”

Lu Guang moves a trembling hand to his forehead. “Get out of the picture now, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

“I can hear him—”

“Cheng Xiaoshi—”

“—why don’t you do it—”

“—listen to me—”

“—you have killed before, you have clearly killed before—”

“Cheng Xiaoshi!”

“Do I,” he says. “Did I kill them, Lu Guang?”

“You cannot stop death.” Please. Lu Guang urges. He tries not to plead. He begs with his knees bent. Heat goes up to his chest, to his cheeks; shame builds up like fire and it crackles in his head with an ugly sound. “You are not allowed to stop death, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

“Why is that?”

He swallows. The saliva licks the inside of his mouth like a bad ulcer. “What?”

“Why can’t I make it stop, Lu Guang?” In the corner of his eye, Lu Guang sees the roll of a multicoloured ball coming his way. The sound of a child following after it. “What would you do in my place? Would you let a kid die?”

“Please,” Lu Guang says. He realizes he is pulling at his hair. He wishes he can tell him the truth. He wishes Cheng Xiaoshi can get out of the picture. The truth is that Lu Guang would murder a child if that meant keeping Cheng Xiaoshi the way he wants him to be. Happy. Sound. Alive. Alive. Alive. “Get out of there.”

A door swings open. It’s not Cheng Xiaoshi’s world. Lu Guang startles. He thinks it’s Qiao Ling.

The voice is deep. A man stands before his chaotic mind, and for a moment, Lu Guang thinks he has finally lost it.

Lu Guang steadies himself. He stands with his head still buzzing with too many emotions, and a corner of his scalp hurts; the place he has pulled. The man has a hand over his neck and squeezes.

“Young man,” the man says, “this is not your first time dying, is it?”

Wang Xiao holds him by the neck as Lu Guang’s feet leave the ground. Cheng Xiaoshi’s shouts are the last thing he hears before losing consciousness.

Wang Xiao is a philosophy professor at Hui Jie University. His classes were dense, but there are easier ways to be loved by students. The reputation of Professor Wang as a gentle, meek man who gives good grades to any piss-poor excuse of an essay has made his classes to be one of the most difficult classes to get a seat in. Cheng Xiaoshi was the only one desperate enough for a good grade to have bought a seat during his second year of university. Nothing about this narration is surprising until Wang Xiao finished his tea and mentioned how Cheng Xiaoshi has gotten the best grade he has ever given in his career.

The chrysanthemum tea in front of him runs cold. Lu Guang is tied to the velvety chair in a luxurious room and tries to piece together what went wrong.

Wang Xiao just keeps talking.

“His theory on time cannot be established with any logic. At least I know he didn’t copy it from some websites. To this day, he presented to me one of the most ludicrous, nonsensical theory on the concept of time I have ever read. I had to reward him for that somehow.”

There’s a glint in Wang Xiao’s eyes that Lu Guang recognizes as his own. “It’s a thought experiment, really. There is so much exposition on the theory of time travel in popular fiction these days that I don’t expect some twenty-years old to hold novel ideas over the theory of general relativity. I just wanted to see if you can make an argument.”

Cheng Xiaoshi can make an argument; Lu Guang never won against him—but not once Cheng Xiaoshi won because of logic. He tugs the mismatched memories neatly into a box in his head, and wills for the picture book of Cheng Xiaoshi in his arms never be opened again.

“What makes time travel dangerous?”

Wang Xiao looks at him, a corner of his smile tilts up, an unconscious movement, like the twitch of a muscle. “What are the disadvantages of travelling back in time? There are many. You can change a past that impacts a future of which you’re in it— you can lose yourself in a stream of time that does not belong to you. It’s my favourite assignment over the years, but the answers can be repetitive. It has been a popular topic in media these days, the concept of turning back time.”

Lu Guang struggles in his knot. It’s frustrating that he can count the times he has been tied to a chair by some evil minds. It’s getting old fast— but the knife sitting silently to the table next to Wang Xiao isn’t.

“Cheng Xiaoshi gave a very interesting answer. He clearly didn’t read his assigned readings, but the opinion part was simply delightful. I have never quite seen an answer like this before.”

And Wang Xiao laughs— Lu Guang isn’t used to speaking with clients on a one-to-one basis. Usually, Cheng Xiaoshi is responsible with the socializing, but he doesn’t like to think of it that way. It’s not fair to have banal reminders that Lu Guang cannot live without him. His wrists hurt from the wounded tape, a numb pain thudding on the radial vein. “Are you not curious about his answer?”

The box swings open: the pictures of Cheng Xiaoshi swirl in his head like moths swarming to a singular light, and Lu Guang knows the answer.

Wang Xiao stares at the picture in his hand, the one he handed to him and Cheng Xiaoshi with a face washed by guilt.

The smile he is giving him right now is a guiltless thing.

“I used to be pretty handsome,” Wang Xiao says in the vein of a joke. “They used to call me light. I brighten the whole damn place.” A pause, and then a sudden, unexpected laugh. “It’s a shame that I had to date an ugly bastard like him just to get my brother killed.”

Lu Guang’s mouth is dry. He croaks out, feeling every word scrapping the sides of his throat: “Why did you send Cheng Xiaoshi there?”

“A man came to find me a week ago. He has an interesting hat,” he says. “He said that he has proof against me for the crime I committed ten years ago. I thought he was bluffing, of course, until he came up with proof.”

Wang Xiao finishes the tea in a flourish and picks up the knife. “He told me to request the time travellers. Imagine my surprise when he tells me that the power of time is wielded by a recent college graduate that I have taught personally—and had the most memorable essay I have read in my career about the dangers of winding back time.”

The knife twists happily in his hands with frighteningly smooth movements. He holds it like he has held it before. Lu Guang knows he did.

“And frankly, as a teacher, wouldn’t you just like to find out? Even just out of academic curiosity, how in the world you find someone who writes—” Wang Xiao’s voice turns saccharine, and with an automated reading voice— “I cannot turn back time. I don’t want to make my friend sad.”

And in the worst moment, yet one that is the most characteristic of his friend, Cheng Xiaoshi appears in front of them with his hands clasped together, eyes closed, and face still wet from tears.

Wang Xiao looks down at him and circles them like one would a prey. Lu Guang’s hands twist in an attempt at escape that he knows is not going to work, but the urge to comfort his friend is so primal that he almost knocks himself down in his struggle before Wang Xiao slaps him right across the face. The hit stains his face red, the heat of it like a reminder that he is powerless.

Wang Xiao picks up Cheng Xiaoshi’s body in a staggering kindness. “I liked his answer,” Wang Xiao says, almost as a way of explanation, “I have always wanted to meet the friend that he was talking about.”

Lu Guang lets the shame gather in that warm pain on his face and closes his eyes.

“It’s easy, really—imagine yourself in a box. The original Schrodinger’s cat. The box is closed. No one can see from the outside. How do we determine if the ‘you’ inside the box is dead or alive? One thing is sure—you can’t be both dead and alive. You’re either dead or alive, that much is clear.” Wang’s face contorts into a smile. It’s ugly. Lu Guang stares. “But there is an unpredictability in this theory that everyone misses.”

“A fatal flaw,” Lu Guang says, and trembles. He fears, maybe for the first time, like one would fear god. The existence of and.

“It presumes that there is only one timeline where you are allowed to exist.” Wang Xiao says and opens his arms like he is about to take flight. “But then—behold— the universe branches out. One universe you’re alive, and another universe you’re dead— if multiple versions of you exist, the paradox can be bypassed completely.”

“But here lies the problem.” He starts solemnly, stretching his left arm on top of his right arm. “The universes are branching out from the choices you make inside the box. You call for help. You get help. You don’t call for help. You don’t get help. You kill yourself in the box. You get saved. There is a fixed point—” his arms cross, then move away— “and it diverges.”

“What do you want,” Lu Guang says, trying not to look at Cheng Xiaoshi on the ground, the very definition of divergence. “We can’t tell the police on you. We don’t have tangible proof that you did it. Besides, the case is closed. You should worry about the guy who started all of this.”

Wang Xiao looks at him with interest. “You are wordy when you’re stressed. Afraid I might kill him?”

Lu Guang has never stopped being afraid of that possibility for what seems like an eternity ago. “We have nothing that could be a menace to you.”

“That’s true,” Wang Xiao says, as though thinking, his knife scrapping the sides of Cheng Xiaoshi’s face. “That man just told me to request you. He didn’t really instruct me what to do after. I guess it really is a case of personal curiosity, but who knows. He might show up any moment.”

Lu Guang bites his bottom lip, his sore wrists tense in the bond. “What do you want.”

“I want a bet,” Wang Xiao says. His smile reminds him of his own. “Let’s make a bet.”

“I’m glad Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t have to resort to drastic actions,” Qiao Ling says. It has been a week. Lu Guang is dusting the shelves. Cheng Xiaoshi is out for groceries. “You know how he can be when he gets emotional.”

“He’s always emotional.”

“It’s his fatal flaw.”

Lu Guang thinks of the kind of books where the hero saves the world. “It could be many things.”

“Oh,” Qiao Ling says. Her voice is afar. “I didn’t know he read actual books.”

She comes to him with a book with a too familiar cover.

“He doesn’t read poetry,” Qiao Ling says, flipping through the sonnets frowning, “and god knows he doesn’t read English.”

“It’s an important book for him.”

“I know.” She holds it out to him, both her hands firm on the velvety cover. “That’s why I don’t know why he would discard it at such a random corner in his closet. And you know how his closet is, you can lose a child in it.”

There’s a photo inside that just hid the last two lines of sonnet eighteen. Shakespeare’s vow to his fair young man. The photo is pitch black, like a misprocessed film. Lu Guang knows better. Cheng Xiaoshi is too good at the dark room side of his job to fail. Qiao Ling’s laughter is a faraway thing.

“Since when Cheng Xiaoshi reads Shakespeare?” he hears her say, can picture an easy smile as Lu Guang stares into the dark. “He fell asleep at our school staged Hamlet in high school when he was asked to take pictures from the theatre club. You should’ve seen him in high school. He was a real pain.”

Lu Guang knows. He knows the previous Cheng Xiaoshi. The one who fell asleep as Hamlet drinks the poison, dead bodies scattered around him all bloody. But this Cheng Xiaoshi he met with a basketball struck to his face. This one cries in his sleep and holds his hand and doesn’t die in his arms.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets are not tragedies,” Lu Guang says, moving the picture to the lamp light, “but it’s close.”

Lu Guang makes a darker color in the picture under the light— a floor, the beginning of a palm peeking out, and the translucent lure proper to a photographic film— Shakespeare’s desire to give his lover immortality through a few lines of poetry.

There is cap in the picture, hidden from the bed frame of the dark room. It has an odd shape.

“Oh, that picture,” Qiao Ling says, “isn’t that that cat cap that you lost after you two returned from Bridon?”

“Yes,” Lu Guang says after a pause. He fights the urge to close his eyes. He forgets how long this has been. Bridon, and then Bridon again. The printed calligraphy beneath that picture is suddenly comical, ironic, suddenly taken aback by the realization that this sonnet is less about love than it is about playing God.

Lu Guang tucks the picture in his pocket. Nothing can live forever. Not even the lines of a love poem—let alone the glorified lover.

“I’m going to find Cheng Xiaoshi,” Lu Guang says.

Cheng Xiaoshi rubs the back of his head. It’s rare to see him sheepish. Lu Guang’s fingers twitch. Amidst all the photographs—from the grotesque to the banal— he is itching to take a picture of the sublime.

He holds out the book of sonnets. Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes widen at the sight of it, but then he laughs.

“Is it Qiao Ling? I tried very hard to hide this.”

“I’m not surprised that your idea of trying hard consist of stuffing it in the closet.”

“My closet is a battlefield. Not everyone color-codes theirs like you.”

“Cheng Xiaoshi,” he says, his voice cutting despite himself. “We never took a picture like that in Bridon.”

“No,” he says. “Not this time.”

“What time, Cheng Xiaoshi.”

Cheng Xiaoshi just looks at him. The impassivity unnerves him. “Took you long enough,” he begins slowly, almost like he is thinking through his words, “but I guess it’s not easy when you’re trying to hide the same thing.”

Lu Guang’s eyes prickle. He has the uncontrollable urge to break something. “Since when?”

Cheng Xiaoshi shrugs, but his body looks stiff, the edges of his shoulder sharp and defensive. Lu Guang knows how easy Cheng Xiaoshi is prone to emotions, both the good and the bad. He has spent years trying to tame them, if not control them to avoid inevitable damage. He knows what to do when Cheng Xiaoshi is angry, what to do say when he is sad.

The tired drag of Cheng Xiaoshi’s sigh puts Lu Guang out of his carefully concocted map of answers in his head.

“That night where I got taken by Vivian and you came to save me,” he says, “she told us to run.”

“Right.”

There’s a smile on Cheng Xiaoshi’s face. The smile is foreign, and so is the person in front of him. “I didn’t listen. I tried to bring her with us,” he says.

“You would do that.”

“I would,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “Then you died.”

“I died,” Lu Guang repeats. His body is cold, and he reflexively curls his fingers to feel some heat. “What happened to you?”

“I lived.”

“Then Emma,” he begins.

“I didn’t meet Emma,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “I dived back in the picture that Zhou Xun gave us and run for our lives this time when Vivian told us to run.”

“You saved me.”

“You died for me, Lu Guang.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Lu Guang remembers Cheng Xiaoshi grabbing his hand and not look back when Vivian told them to run. He remembers looking at his back, his heart racing from the danger and adrenaline, irrationally happy about the prospect about feeling alive—the wind hitting his face, and the hand guiding him to shore.

“But I remember it,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “Isn’t that enough?”

Cheng Xiaoshi has very sad eyes. Lu Guang knows what to say when he is sad. Idiot. He doesn’t know what to say when the Cheng Xiaoshi in front of him is looking at him like he is the cause of it.

He asks, “How long have you been diving, Lu Guang?”

How long have you? Lu Guang wants to ask, but the effects of diving too deep take his breath away. Sometimes he physically feels it, a streak of pain from his body reminding him that he does not belong. Cheng Xiaoshi looks at him heave, and very gently takes the book of sonnets from him, his fingers grazing his.

“That picture,” Lu Guang manages to say. Cheng Xiaoshi shakes his head.

“When we went to Bridon,” he says. “I brought my camera with me.”

But he didn’t. He didn’t in Lu Guang’s memory. He didn’t in Lu Guang’s fucked up timeline and fucked up world.

“But you didn’t,” Lu Guang hears himself say hollowed out, and Cheng Xiaoshi’s soft laughter echoes in this room like it would in his dreams; like when he died in his arms.

“I wanted to take a photo of you on our way to Bridon. You didn’t want to. I took one anyway. The resolution is shitty, though.” Cheng Xiaoshi’s fingers flutter to the exact place where the photo hides, as though he has it memorized. “Then, after we landed, we got chased by these people at the pub, remember?” A pause. “Well, you kinda died there. Again.”

Cheng Xiaoshi holds the picture. His head is downcast, his eyes glued to the picture. “You died from a head injury.”

Lu Guang’s head is hurting, as if to remind him of the possibility. “So you dived again.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“I didn’t want to make you sad,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. That is the answer to his essay. He pictures it: Cheng Xiaoshi in his first year of college, his legs folded up, poorly balancing his laptop, typing ever so slowly about how time travel is dangerous because it will make his friend sad. Because his friend is Lu Guang. “Though it does look like I’m doing a poor job of it.”

So how are we settling this? Cheng Xiaoshi asks.

A bet.

A bet?

Yes. Lu Guang catches Cheng Xiaoshi by the arm. A bet is a bet. You have to pick a side.

“It’s us,” Lu Guang says, “or time.”