"Don't believe him!" Mu Xinrong stood up suddenly, beer cans clattering to the ground. "Every world line starts like this!"
Ye Qingliu looked up at him, his pupils dyed amber by the setting sun. A kind of fatigue beyond his years emerged from his eyes, making him look ten years older. "Let's go," he said calmly, "before it starts."
Mu Xinrong was stunned. This answer didn't exist in any of the worlds.
"You won't ask me about other world lines?"
Ye Qingliu bent down to pick up the fallen thermos, his movements meticulous. "If you want to tell me, you'll tell me." He paused. "And... I can probably guess what I look like in other worlds."
A strange golden light suddenly appeared on the surface of the river, as if countless world lines converged there.
Mu Xinrong looked at Ye Qingliu's profile outlined by the setting sun, and in a trance saw countless shadows of Ye Qingliu overlapping behind him - some in military uniform, some with dyed silver hair, some with prosthetic eyes... and eventually all disappeared in the outline of the young man in school uniform.
"You are not a purely evil person." Mu Xinrong said suddenly, "just a person who has gone off the track." He didn't know why he said this, but it just came out of his mouth.
"At least in this world line..." Ye Qingliu said softly as he handed over the hot tea, "We can start over."
When Mu Xinrong took the cup, he found that his hands were no longer shaking. The temperature of the tea was just right, not as scalding hot as in the second worldline, nor as cold as in the ninth worldline.
Perhaps this is the temperature of the real world - neither perfect nor hopeless, just the right amount of warmth.
A ferry whistle blew in the distance. Ye Qingliu's student ID flipped in the wind. The boy in the photo smiled, as if he were just an ordinary high school student. Mu Xinrong suddenly hoped that this world line would be longer than the others.
Mu Xinrong suddenly felt a sharp pain piercing his temple, and the world in front of him became distorted like a muddied watercolor painting.
He subconsciously grabbed Ye Qingliu's sleeve, and the touch of the fabric stretched taut between his fingers was unusually clear - this reminded him of the seventh world line, when he also grabbed the cuff of Ye Qingliu's military uniform in the same way, and when the other party shook it off, the metal cufflinks scratched his palm.
"Again?" Ye Qingliu's voice came and went, carrying a strange understanding. "Those... afterimages of world lines?"
Mu Xinrong wanted to answer, but found that his tongue was as heavy as lead.
Countless memory fragments exploded on his retina: the ceiling light of the sterile room in the third world line, Chao Youye's hand strangling his neck in the ninth world line, the flashing neon lights in the rainstorm in the twelfth world line...all the images overlapped on the overly young face in front of him.
"Don't..." Mu Xinrong squeezed out the words with difficulty, his nails almost digging into Ye Qingliu's arm muscles through the school uniform, "This time... don't hand me... over to Chao..."
In his final moments of consciousness, he saw Ye Qingliu's pupils shrink, and for the first time, genuine panic appeared on his always composed face. Then the world spun, and as Mu Xinrong collapsed, he smelled a faint scent of cedar—the same scent as in the laboratory in the second worldline.
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