"You're finally here." A man's voice drifted from inside the room, as gentle as the first breeze of early autumn, yet carrying a weight that made the air hum faintly.
Lin Xia spun around, her heart lurching so violently it nearly smashed her ribs. That voice—familiar yet strange, like a half-remembered melody—sent a shiver down her spine.
By the bookshelf stood a man in a pale blue shirt, around thirty, roughly her height. The fabric clung softly to his frame, but there was an undercurrent of tension in his posture, as if he'd been waiting for hours, days, years.
His left hand hung naturally at his side, a silver ring adorning his ring finger—simple in design, glinting with a cold light amid the red glow. That ring… why did it send a prickle of déjà vu up her arm?
"Who are you?" Lin Xia's voice came out tight, a thread stretched to breaking. She took an involuntary step back, colliding with the bookshelf behind her. The impact jolted loose a cloud of dust, which made her cough, and a paperbacks tumbled to the floor with a thud. Her pulse roared in her ears, drowning out the sound.
The man smiled, a faint, weary curve of his lips, and took two steps forward, holding out his hand. "I'm Zhou Yan, a distant nephew of your mother's. You should call me cousin."
Lin Xia's fingers curled into fists, nails digging into her palms—pain to ground herself. Her mother was an only child; her father had passed away before she could even form memories of his voice. There were no cousins, no distant nephews, no one. "I don't know you," she repeated, firmer this time, though her voice still trembled.
"I know. But the thirty-year-old you knows me." His gaze held hers, steady as a compass needle. "She asked me to wait here for you, to uncover the truth. Because you're too afraid to face it alone."
"The thirty-year-old me?" She stared in shock, her breath catching. The room seemed to tilt, the red light swirling like blood. "How could that be... I'm only twenty-nine. I haven't even lived that year yet."
"She came to me in a dream," Zhou Yan said calmly, as if "appearing in a dream" were as ordinary as discussing the weather. "Ever since I was a child, I've often dreamed of my grandfather throwing me out of a window in a house. He was carried out on a stretcher, muttering that it was a curse, and then he died."
Lin Xia listened in silence, a chill settling over her. His words mirrored fragments of her own nightmares—falling, screams, a voice whispering curse.
"But my grandfather isn't dead. He's still alive to this day. Starting in 2019, I kept having a recurring dream: she begged me to help you, said you couldn't set things right on your own anymore, that you needed me to give you a push."
"I tried adding you on WeChat, but you didn't accept. Later, I couldn't even find your account. I got in touch with your blind date, asked him to introduce us, but you walked out before even having a proper conversation with him. I went to the small town you'd moved to, found out you worked at the library, yet I never managed to track you down." His voice softened, tinged with frustration. "I tried so many ways, but you skillfully evaded them all. Like you were running from something you couldn't name."
Lin Xia flinched. It was true—she'd spent years running: from crowded cities, from unfamiliar faces, from any situation that sparked that sickening sense of having been here before. But how had he noticed?
"This is the last chance." He leaned forward slightly, his eyes intense. "About a week ago, I started having the same dream on repeat: in it, you guided me to send a letter to another version of you, with an old newspaper inside—this very newspaper, on the third shelf of Room 709. You urged me, insisted that I lead you here today. You have half a newspaper in your hand, sent to you now by the thirty-year-old you through me. The other half is on the third shelf of the bookshelf."
Lin Xia's head snapped toward the bookshelf, her throat dry. Her fingers tightened around the crumpled half-newspaper in her palm, as if it might burn her. Could this be real? Or was she trapped in a elaborate delusion, another of her mind's cruel tricks?
As her fingers brushed the edge of a piece of paper on the third shelf, she took a deep breath—too deep, making her lungs ache—and pulled it out. It was half a newspaper, its ragged edge fitting perfectly with the one she'd brought, like two puzzle pieces finally clicking into place.
On the joined newspaper, alongside the 1998 gas leak news, was a small note in red ink: "July 15, 2019, 3 p.m., Old Tailor Shop." The words seemed to pulse, as if written in fresh blood.
"What does this mean?" Lin Xia turned to ask Zhou Yan, her voice cracking. Her mind was a whirlwind—1998, 2019, a tailor shop, a date. None of it made sense, yet a quiet certainty was spreading through her, like ink seeping into paper.
Zhou Yan pointed to a chair by the bookshelf. "Sit down and I'll tell you. The thirty-year-old you left a letter for you." He drew out a white envelope, just found on the shelf, and handed it over. "She said it holds everything you need to know."
The envelope was unmarked. The stamp, identical to the one on the newspaper Lin Xia had received, bore a postmark from the downtown post office, dated June 11, 2025—the day before her "remembered" death, two days before her birthday. A cold sweat broke out on her back. That date had haunted her for months, a shadow she couldn't outrun.
Lin Xia clutched the envelope hesitantly, her fingers hovering over the seal. What if opening it made the shadow real? What if ignorance was the only safety she had?
The air in the locked room was stuffy, thick with the smell of old paper and dust. Dust motes danced in the red glow, settling on her arm with a faint chill, like the touch of a ghost. She could hear the thud of her own heartbeat, interwoven with the hum of the neon lights outside, like a countdown ticking away—tick, tick, tick—each beat bringing her closer to something inevitable.
"Why you?" she suddenly asked. "Why would the thirty-year-old me reach out to you, of all people?" Suspicion gnawed at her. This man was a stranger, yet he knew things no stranger should.
Zhou Yan leaned against the doorframe, watching her with eyes that seemed to see too much. "My grandfather was a victim of the 1998 gas leak in Room 709. He was lucky enough to be rescued, but he didn't survive in the end. His last words, as he was carried out, were that it was a curse."
"But I clearly remember the newspaper saying no one died in that leak," Lin Xia said, stunned. She'd read those words a hundred times, memorized them as proof that some horrors were just stories.
"That's because the thirty-year-old you saved him in 2019." Zhou Yan's voice was matter-of-fact, as if talking about the weather. "After uncovering the truth at thirty, she came up with this plan. Through repeated mental reinforcement, she guided me in dreams to send you that letter, ensuring I led you here today."
"Does the letter... say why I'm here?" Lin Xia's voice trembled. Her hands were shaking now, the envelope rattling in her grasp.
Zhou Yan nodded. "She said you'd be scared, skeptical, but you have to read it. It concerns the lives of twelve people—including your own."
Twelve people?
Lin Xia's heart sank like a stone, cold and heavy in her chest. She thought of the old newspaper headline on the locked room wall—"Fire kills 12"—and the twelve deaths in the gas leak. Coincidence? In this room, in this moment, there was no such thing as coincidence.
She hesitated no longer, tearing open the envelope. The paper gave way with a satisfying rip, as if releasing a breath it had held for years.
The moment she unfolded the paper, Lin Xia recognized her own handwriting. Not her current hand, which still carried the faint hesitancy of someone who second-guesses every word, but a more mature, firmer script, each stroke deliberate, carrying a resolve she had yet to find. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing a stranger—someone braver, stronger, someone who didn't run.
Her eyes fell on the opening words, and her heart constricted as if squeezed by an invisible hand, stealing her breath.
"To the 29-year-old Lin Xia: When you read this, I will have been waiting for you for a year, in the summer of my thirtieth year."
Lin Xia's fingertips shook, making the paper quiver in her grasp. "This is truly my handwriting," she whispered, half to herself, "but if the thirty-year-old me wrote this, how is it in my hands today? How can a letter from the future exist here, now?" It defied logic, defied everything she knew about the world.
"Because this is where the energy fluctuations from time travel converge. Objects from different timelines can persist here," Zhou Yan replied, his voice calm amid her chaos.
Lin Xia read on, her eyes scanning the words as if they might vanish if she blinked: "You must be wondering why the death you've tried so hard to avoid still came. In fact, ever since that day at five, when you 'remembered' breaking your leg, we should have known: some retrograde memories are not premonitions—they're cries for help."
Cries for help? Lin Xia frowned, confusion knotting her brow. She had always thought retrograde memories were a curse, a theft of free will—glimpses of pain that chained her to a future she couldn't change. But cries for help? From whom? From herself?
"Do you remember July 15, 2019?"
Lin Xia's breath hitched. July 15, 2019, was the summer she turned twenty-four—the summer everything had started to unravel. She remembered it vividly: the way the sun had slanted through her apartment window, the taste of the tea she'd burned when the memory hit, the terror that had coiled in her stomach like a snake.
"That day, you were supposed to deliver documents to the old neighborhood, but because you 'remembered' meeting a client with a silver ring, you faked illness to stay home."
Lin Xia's head shot up, looking at Zhou Yan, her eyes wide with shock. How could he know that? That memory had been hers alone, a secret she'd buried deep, too ashamed to admit she'd lied to avoid a man she'd only seen in a vision.
His expression was calm, as if he had long known the contents of the letter—as if he'd carried this knowledge like a burden, waiting for her to catch up.
"That afternoon, at 3 p.m., a fire broke out at the old tailor shop in the old neighborhood. Twelve people didn't make it out, including a seven-year-old boy."
Twelve people... Lin Xia's gaze flitted to the old newspaper headline on the wall, finally understanding its meaning. The fire, the gas leak, the twelve deaths—they were all connected, a chain stretching through time, and she was the link that had broken it. Guilt washed over her, hot and sharp, making her stomach churn.
"The boy's father, Chen Jianjun, was the sole survivor of the 1998 gas leak in Room 709. He had always said the leak was a 'curse.' After the 2019 fire took his son and wife, he snapped."
Lin Xia's throat went dry. She could almost see him—this man who'd lost everything, his grief curdling into something dark and dangerous.
"He told everyone he met that he deserved to die, that those who escaped from the fire did too—that this was the 1998 curse, and all involved must perish. Then he became a serial killer, using claims of mental illness to evade the law every time. His first two targets were among those who 'dodged' the fire—including us."
"I figured this out today, but he has already found me. I can feel him watching, even as I write. I might not live to see my thirtieth birthday. The 24-year-old me, in 2019, altered the 1998 outcome through time travel—but planted a ticking bomb for myself."
Lin Xia's chest felt tight, as if she were suffocating. The 24-year-old her—careless, naive, thinking she could rewrite the past without consequence. But hadn't she done the same? Run from a memory, thinking she was saving herself, only to seal a dozen fates?
"Trust me, you can't run. He'll keep watching, unless—"
Lin Xia's heart raced, her eyes flying over the words, barely able to make them out through the blur of her own panic.
"Unless you can prevent the 2019 fire."
Just then, the floor trembled violently beneath them. Dust showered from the bookshelves like rain; the old newspapers on the wall flapped wildly, as if caught in a storm. The room shook, the bookshelf groaning, and Lin Xia stumbled, her hand flying to her mouth to muffle a scream.
"I tried sending you warnings online through Zhou Yan, but you avoided him every time. I had your blind date introduce us, but you walked out before the first meeting." The words on the page seemed to dance as the ground shook. "That client with the silver ring? He's a pipeline inspector in the old neighborhood, another survivor of the gas leak. He had noticed severe aging in the tailor shop's gas pipes, with leak risks at the joints. He reported it repeatedly, but no one listened. You, with your business there, knew the owner well—he would have asked you to warn them. But your fear stopped that warning."
"Though without that fear, you might have died there that day. Because that afternoon, the pipe burst, sparking the fire."
Lin Xia stumbled, grabbing the bookshelf to steady herself, her knuckles white. Fear. It had always been fear driving her—fear of the unknown, fear of the memories, fear of a future she couldn't control. And that fear had killed twelve people. It had turned her into a killer, even if she'd never lifted a finger.
"She said the floor would shake when you opened the letter," Zhou Yan said suddenly, his voice muffled by the tremors. He held out his hand, his face set with a determination that mirrored the handwriting in her hands. "Grab on."
Lin Xia looked at his outstretched hand, the silver ring glinting in the red glow. A retrograde memory flashed clear: this was the hand that pushed her before she fell, the hand that had haunted her nightmares. But this time, it wasn't pushing—it was reaching out. This time, it was offering salvation.
Her gaze flickered between his hand and the letter, between the past she'd run from and the future she could still change. And for the first time in years, Lin Xia didn't run. She reached out, and took it.