Butterfly Effect
The wind in the junkyard carried the smell of rust. Shi Xu leaned against the cold car door, his fingertips sinking deep into his palm.
Assistant Chen.
The name exploded in his mind, carrying the pain of the previous fifty-two cycles. His father had finally played this card, meaning the play was about to end—in the most cruel way.
A frantic voice came through the earpiece: "Time Sequence? How are things on your end?"
He could picture her clutching her phone, her brow furrowed. The girl who always said she would stand shoulder to shoulder with him was now walking into a carefully laid trap.
"It's alright." His voice was eerily calm. "Evacuate along the original route and be careful."
The moment the call ended, Shixu closed her eyes. Memories of fifty-three reincarnations surged forth like a tide—every time she collapsed, every time he cried out in vain, every time hope and despair arose at the start of anew.
If this point is destined to be irreversible...
If this game was a stalemate from the very beginning...
Then let's overturn the chessboard.
He had never tried to actively choose the point of regression, but at this moment, an intense obsession solidified as if it were a tangible reality. He wanted to go back to the beginning, back to that June afternoon, back to where everything had not yet begun.
“Go back…” he murmured, focusing all his thoughts on the brightest coordinate in his memory.
Time and space distorted before his eyes, and the excruciating pain of his consciousness being torn apart far surpassed any previous reincarnation. But he stared intently at that point of light—the point of light where she was.
The dizziness gradually subsided.
Shi Xu suddenly opened his eyes, the blinding sunlight making him momentarily disoriented. He stood downstairs in his familiar apartment building, keys in hand, seemingly about to leave. The time displayed on his phone screen made his heart stop—it was the afternoon of his second day here.
Success?
He looked around; the neighborhood was unusually quiet. There were no moving vehicles, no workers' noise, and certainly no sign of that slender figure carrying the cardboard box.
Anxiety gripped his heart like vines. He rushed up to the third floor and knocked on the door of room 301.
"Who is it?" The person who opened the door was an unfamiliar old lady.
"Excuse me... does Yunxi live here?" His voice trembled almost imperceptibly.
"What cloud gap? You've got the wrong person!" The door slammed shut.
In her phone's contacts, that number etched into her very being was now disconnected. Her name was never on the property register. All the investigations pointed to the same fact—she had never moved in.
After several sleepless days of searching, he found the answer in an inconspicuous news article:
"A car accident occurred on the intercity expressway yesterday, where a moving company truck overturned, resulting in one death and two injuries... The deceased was Yunxi, a 17-year-old girl..."
The timing of the report coincided precisely with the moment he forcibly retraced his steps.
It turns out that the very thing he did to save her was the one who killed her.
Shi Xu slid slowly to the floor, leaning against the wall, his phone slipping from his trembling fingers. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks, and he let out a suppressed sob, like a wounded beast.
The deepest despair is not the repeated loss, but the realization that you are the one who pushed her into the abyss.
When the familiar feeling of detachment returned, he closed his eyes and stopped resisting.
The June winds were still hot and dry.
Shi Xu stood downstairs at the apartment building, looking at the empty steps. This time, he didn't even have the courage to take a step forward.
He knew she would come.
She also knew that any move she made could lead to her utter ruin.
How will he protect it this time?
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