In 2000, the midsummer sun filtered through the sycamore leaves, leaving dappled light spots on Lin Xia's arm like brand marks.
Five-year-old her fell under the faded green slide in the kindergarten, her mouth hitting the railing at the foot of the slide, and she tasted the flavor of rust.
Suddenly, a sharp astringent taste welled up in her mouth.
It was not the sweetness from the melted candy she had just been holding, nor the fishy smell from her split lip when she fell.
It was a mixture of disinfectant and rust.
She suddenly covered her mouth, and a jumble of images flashed before her eyes:
A white ceiling, a hanging IV bottle, a dull pain in her knee, and a doctor holding tweezers saying, "This scar has such a special shape."
"Lin Xia, what's wrong?" The voice of Teacher Zhang, the nursery worker, came from above the slide. "It's time for snacks."
Lin Xia looked up, and the illusory smell of disinfectant still lingered at the tip of her nose.
"Teacher Zhang," her voice, with a childish lilt, answered earnestly, "Will I break my leg in the future?"
Teacher Zhang smiled and ruffled her hair; the warmth of her fingertips was gentle.
"Little ones shouldn't talk nonsense. Go wash your hands quickly."
In 2012, seventeen-year-old Lin Xia stared at the plaster cast on her knee and finally understood that it hadn't been nonsense.
The monitor's voice rang in her ear: "You're so delicate. Everyone is busy."
"I told you I wasn't going to move the books!" She gritted her teeth, sweating from the pain on her forehead.
At the moment the box of books fell, time seemed to stretch into a line.
She saw her five-year-old self squatting under the slide, the sunlight just as dazzling;
Heard Teacher Zhang's voice overlapping with the monitor's urging;
In the severe pain of her knee hitting the corner of the bookshelf, the rusty taste she had tasted in her childhood clearly emerged.
When the doctor removed the plaster cast, Lin Xia rolled up her trousers, and a crescent-shaped scar remained on her knee.
The doctor held up tweezers and said, "This scar has a really special shape."
Lin Xia looked up: the white ceiling, the hanging IV bottle, and the dull pain from her knee.
She suddenly remembered that afternoon when she was five, squatting under the slide, with the inexplicable smell of disinfectant in her mouth.
In 2018, the night before her 23rd birthday, Lin Xia woke up with a start on the sofa in her rental apartment, her pajamas soaked through with cold sweat.
A suffocating feeling was still stuck in her throat, and the same image flashed repeatedly before her eyes:
A shabby room, with the smell of dust and mildew floating in the air.
Her right hand was tightly clutching half a newspaper, and the tips of her fingers had worn the three characters "709" until they were fuzzy.
There were traces like blackened tea stains on the edge of the newspaper.
Outside the window, there was a cluster of red neon lights, like an open eye, burning people panic in the darkness.
Then there was a sense of weightlessness.
Someone pushed her from behind, not with much force, but enough to make her lose her balance.
At the moment of falling, she saw a hand, with distinct knuckles, and a silver ring on the ring finger, which flashed once in the red light.
The clock showed 00:03, and the date was fixed on June 12, 2025.
"Ah!" Lin Xia sat up suddenly, looked at her mobile phone, it was 00:03, June 12.
June 13 was her birthday, the day before her 30th birthday.
It was exactly seven years away from the day she "saw".
She rushed to the desk, took out her diary, drew the shape of the half piece of paper from her "memory", and wrote "709".
The sound of the pen tip tearing through the paper was as harsh as nails scratching across glass.
"Red neon lights... silver ring... 709..." She wrote these three words on a sticky note and stuck it in the center of the computer screen.
Over the next six months, this "memory" became a lingering nightmare for Lin Xia.
In early 2019, Lin Xia sat on the sofa in the psychological clinic, holding a crumpled diagnosis report in her hand.
The three characters "retrograde memory disorder" were worn fuzzy by the pads of her fingers, like some kind of ominous spell.
"Put simply, it's a warning from your brain through memories," said Dr. Li.
Dr. Li pushed his glasses, his eyes behind the lenses were gentle: "Ordinary people's memories are stored in the brain, but you have a neuron that is actually taking things out - taking things from the future."
He pointed to an area on the examination report: "The direction of neuron discharge here is reversed, like growing backwards."
Lin Xia thought of last week when cutting fruit, a sudden stabbing pain came from her left index finger as if it had been cut by a blade.
She looked down three times at that time, and the pad of her finger was so smooth that there wasn't even a fine line.
It wasn't until three days later, when she cut fruit again, that the wound really appeared, with the same position and shape as in the "memory".
"But how can something that hasn't happened be taken out as a memory?"
"There's no way to explain this at present," the doctor said helplessly.
"Can it be cured?" Her voice was a little tight.
Dr. Li tapped his pen on the desk, making a regular light sound.
"Why not try to use it. For example..." He raised his wrist to check his watch, "I 'predict' it will rain in ten minutes. If it does, you can trust me once."
Lin Xia stared at the clear sky outside the window. How could she not know that Dr. Li had checked the weather forecast and hoped to reassure her.
She knew it would rain. Half an hour ago, she had "remembered" the sound of raindrops hitting the clinic's glass.
Ten minutes later, big raindrops began to fall.
When she walked out of the clinic, Lin Xia opened her umbrella and deliberately walked in the opposite direction.
She wanted to see if she could avoid the bus stop in her "memory".
But when she reached the street corner, her mobile phone suddenly rang. It was her mother urging her to pick up the specialties that her grandmother had asked someone to send - the location her mother said was just next to that bus stop.
She stood in the rain and watched the bus slowly pull into the stop. The moment the door opened, it overlapped with the image in her previous memory of herself getting on the bus and having her umbrella squeezed off.
Lin Xia smiled helplessly. Some things couldn't be avoided.
Lin Xia finally believed what Dr. Li said on an ordinary Wednesday morning.
While frying eggs, she suddenly "remembered" that at three o'clock that afternoon, she would have a big quarrel with Aunt Wang downstairs over the noise problem.
Aunt Wang's voice would be sharp, saying, "Young people have no sense of public morality at all", and she would be so angry that she would slam the door.
But this "memory" was very vague, like looking through frosted glass.
"The more unstable the future, the less clear the picture," Lin Xia said to herself in the mirror.
She remembered what Dr. Li had said: "Vagueness means there are variables."
At 2:30 p.m., Lin Xia held a plate of freshly baked cookies and knocked on Aunt Wang's door.
When Aunt Wang opened the door, her face still had the usual impatience: "What's the matter?"
"Auntie, I've been working overtime these nights. I wonder if it has affected your rest," said Lin Xia.
Lin Xia handed over the cookies with a sincere smile: "Please try these. I just baked them."
Aunt Wang was stunned for a moment, and her hand taking the cookies was a little stiff.
"Oh... It's all right, it's all right. Young people are busy with work," said Aunt Wang.
Lin Xia returned home and checked the time. It was exactly three o'clock.
It was quiet downstairs, and no one came up to knock on the door.
She leaned against the door and let out a long sigh of relief.
It turned out that it could really be changed.
This discovery was like a shot in the arm for her.
In the days that followed, Lin Xia began to actively fight against those vague retrograde memories.
When she "remembered" that she would knock over the milk, she put the cup in the middle of the table in advance;
When she "saw" that she would miss the bus, she left ten minutes earlier.
She even successfully avoided a small car accident - in the retrograde memory, she would be grazed by an electric bike running a red light at a certain intersection, so she deliberately took a detour that day.
"I can still control my own destiny," Lin Xia wrote in her diary, leaving a light and lively trace.
Only in the dead of night would the image of the locked room on her 30th birthday creep in.
The image was clearer than before. She could see the old newspapers pasted on the walls of the locked room, and the title contained the word "fire".
But Lin Xia soon persuaded herself: in seven years, she would always find a way to solve it.
From that day on, Lin Xia's life became a game of avoidance.
She deleted all photos with red neon lights in her Moments, blocked clients whose addresses contained "7" and "9", and even refused to shake hands with people wearing rings.
When colleagues chose a restaurant with a neon sign for a dinner, she made an excuse that she was allergic;
When a friend got married, she asked in advance if the groom would wear a silver ring;
Even when shopping online, she had to repeatedly confirm that there was no "709" in the delivery address.
One late night when she worked overtime, she stood downstairs of the company waiting for a car, and suddenly "saw" herself having to take a detour through a street full of red neon lights because she missed the last bus.
She shivered, immediately opened the ride-hailing app, and added a tip to call the fastest car.
Outside the car window, the city's neon lights were like flowing blood.
Lin Xia huddled in her seat, staring at the time on her mobile phone screen, counting down the seven years, second by second.
The day Lin Xia cancel her social media account, the sky was overcast.
She sat in front of the computer, her finger hovering over the "Confirm Deletion" button, reluctant to press it for a long while.
Her last post was from the previous week. In the photo, she stood in front of a mall's glass curtain wall, with the red neon lights behind her shining harshly in the night.
Every day, she would scan through the photos and texts in her Moments, searching for any traces of neon lights, "709", or silver rings.
She tried to force herself not to look, but the harder she tried, the more curiosity got the better of her.
At its worst, everyone she saw and every word she heard seemed to carry malicious intent.
"Delete it," she said to herself, pressing down firmly with her fingertip.
The moment the system prompted "Account deleted", she suddenly "recalled" that half a year later, an unfamiliar netizen would find her through that last posted photo and warn her about a certain danger.
But now, that warning would never come.
"Xiao Lin, what are you spacing out for?" The team leader patted her on the shoulder. "On the 15th, there's a document to be delivered to the old neighborhood. The client said he knows you and wants you to go."
Lin Xia snapped back to reality, noticed the gold ring on the team leader's ring finger, and subconsciously took half a step back.
The team leader paused for a moment, then smiled and withdrew his hand. "What's the matter?"
She lowered her head, pretending to organize the documents, but her heart was racing in her chest.
After deleting her social media account, things seemed to have gotten a bit better.
But these past two days, it had gotten worse again. She "saw" more and more of the future.
Sometimes it was a colleague spilling coffee the next day, sometimes it was the subway being three minutes late.
What unsettled her most was a memory from the previous night: she would receive a package on her 29th birthday, with the sender's address being No. 709 in the old neighborhood.
"Wasn't the old neighborhood already demolished?" she asked a colleague.
The colleague, munching on an apple, replied indistinctly, "Not entirely. A few old buildings are left. I heard they're going to turn them into a cultural and creative park."
Lin Xia's fingertips turned cold.
She opened a map app, typed in "No. 709, old neighborhood", and a red dot popped up on the screen, located in the area of old houses near the city that were waiting to be demolished.
After work, she deliberately took a detour around that road.
When she reached the intersection, she suddenly remembered the scene she "saw" that morning: she would meet a high school classmate at the flower shop on the street corner that day.
She hesitated for a moment, then turned in.
The flower shop owner was pruning roses, and red petals were scattered all over the floor.
Lin Xia stared at the flowers, suddenly finding them eerily similar to the red light outside the window in her "memory".
The heel of Lin Xia's shoe tapped against the bluestone slab at the entrance of the flower shop, making a soft sound.
"Welcome," the owner said without looking up, the scissors in his hand "snapping" as he cut the rose stems. Red petals fluttered down onto the white tiles, like an un wiped stain of blood.
Lin Xia's fingertips suddenly went numb – the exact same feeling as when she clutched that "709" note on the night before her 23rd birthday.
She subconsciously stepped back half a step, her lower back hitting the glass door, and the wind chime on the doorknob jingled.
"Xiao Lin?"
The familiar voice made her look up sharply.
A girl in a cream-colored dress was standing in front of the flower stand, holding a bunch of roses, with a mole at the corner of her eye.
It was her high school classmate Su Qing, the one who had dragged her to move books in the library back then.
"What a coincidence," Su Qing walked over, her gaze falling on Lin Xia's pale face. "What's wrong? You look so pale."
Lin Xia opened her mouth, but her throat felt tight.
In the scene she "saw" that morning, Su Qing would hand her a mint candy and say there was a class reunion the next week, and the monitor had insisted she come and get her.
At that moment, she stared at the roses in Su Qing's hand, their petals a glaring red.
She suddenly recalled that in her retrograde memory of her 30th birthday, the red light outside the window of the locked room was just like this, so bright it made it hard to keep her eyes open.
"I..."
"Oh, right," Su Qing pulled a candy box out of her bag – it was indeed mint candies. "The monitor said we're getting together at the school, on the afternoon of the 15th. We couldn't get in touch with you; it's lucky we ran into each other today.
"Do you remember that library where you broke your leg back then? He said he wants to have a 'remembering hardships to cherish blessings' theme."
Lin Xia's breath caught.
The 15th was the day she "remembered" she would meet a client wearing a silver ring.
Of course she didn't want to go.
At that moment, Su Qing had already stuffed the mint candy into her hand, the crinkle of the candy wrapper sounding extraordinarily clear in the quiet flower shop.
"Look at this rose," the owner suddenly chimed in, holding up a freshly pruned red rose. "New arrival 'Carola', such a perfect red."
Lin Xia's gaze was fixed on that splash of red. A drop of water rolled off the petal and landed on the back of her hand, cold as ice.
She suddenly "saw" her 30-year-old self in the locked room, the half-piece of paper in her hand crumpled with sweat, the red light from outside the window reflecting on the paper, turning "709" a blood-red color.
"I'm not buying flowers," she suddenly stepped back, knocking over a potted baby's breath nearby, and white flowers scattered all over the floor.
Su Qing looked startled. "What's wrong with you?"
Lin Xia didn't answer, grabbed her bag, and ran out.
The owner grumbled behind her.
"You must come to the reunion," Su Qing's voice called after her. "The monitor said it won't be complete without you."
She rushed to the street corner, squatted down behind the bus stop sign to catch her breath, the mint candy in her palm crushed out of shape.