Shen Xun returned home with the object in his pocket, feeling inexplicably heavy-hearted.
The little box dug into his pocket. All the way home, his steps had been much slower than usual.
Shen Xun could not understand his friend’s death. But since his friend had made that choice, perhaps he had gotten what he wanted in the end.
When it came to life and death, Shen Xun had never really understood them.
“My friend is dead.”
Shen Xun pushed open the door and said it expressionlessly.
Only Shen Ruxu was at home, playing on his phone.
As thoughtless as ever, he said, “Then you’re really unlucky, Xiao Xun.”
He paused his game, rested the controller on his knees, and tilted his head to look at his younger brother standing in the doorway. The corners of his mouth lifted.
“I never thought you’d actually manage to make a friend. That’s quite a surprise.”
Shen Ruxu had been lonely ever since he was a child.
For some reason, he had tried to make friends too, but that group of friends always disappeared because of one accident or another.
Some transferred schools, some moved away, and some met with misfortune. One after another, they exited his life.
He always felt that someone was manipulating his life. Every step had been arranged in advance—even something as trivial as making friends was not spared.
But who could be that bored?
Who would go to such lengths to meddle in his everyday friendships?
Shen Xun ignored his teasing and tossed the little box in his hand onto the table.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He went out to take care of something.” Wen Ya leaned halfway out of the kitchen. When she saw the little box on the table, she frowned and reminded him repeatedly, “Xiao Xun, don’t throw things around the house.”
“Okay, Mom,” Shen Xun replied obediently. “But this looks like something Dad made. I brought it back for him to take a look at.”
The patterns along the side seams and the clasp where the box closed were unmistakably his father’s handiwork.
And yet, he still could not understand why something like this had appeared around Song Sijun’s neck.
Shen Xun handed the box to Wen Ya, then turned and went back to his room.
Wen Ya fiddled with it for a while, but could not figure out how to open it.
When Shen Sixing came home and heard what had happened, he merely picked up the familiar-looking little box absentmindedly and tossed it onto the desk in his study.
Metal tapped against the wooden surface with a soft sound.
Like a coin tossed into some forgotten corner.
Discarded along with it
was the secret buried inside the box.
Leaning against the back of his chair, Shen Sixing pondered the trivial affairs of the household.
Wen Ya had been pestering him lately, insisting that they go out and adopt another child.
There were already several children in the family, but Wen Ya felt that one was still missing—as though the most important stroke of color were absent from a painting, leaving her unable to let it go.
Unlike his wife, whose emotions were intense and single-minded,
Shen Sixing viewed everything with indifference. He had never been able to understand her obsession.
What difference did it make whether they had one more child or one less?
In any case, their life was already perfectly content. It was worlds apart from the directionless, wandering, ghostlike existence he had led in his youth.
As Shen Sixing thought this, he unconsciously spun a pen between his fingers, his gaze resting on the sky outside as it gradually darkened.
Speaking of which, what had he been doing when he was eighteen…?
He could not remember clearly.
Shen Sixing vaguely recalled spending many years outside in a daze.
Back then, he had been like a ship cast into the sea, without an anchor, pushed onward by wind and waves, drifting wherever fate carried him.
It was only after he met Wen Ya and married her that he finally found a shore.
Later, they had children.
Every child in the family was a money-eating beast. The two inexperienced parents had been forced to learn, in a frantic scramble, how to raise a whole brood of little creatures, and they often worried about money.
But later, good fortune always seemed to fall into their laps.
Shen Sixing had always felt that he was remarkably lucky.
When he was a teenager, the labels attached to him were mostly “Unlucky,” “Half-Dead,” and “Jinx.” Even his mother had used them to mock him without the slightest mercy.
Yet after starting a family, his luck had somehow improved.
Whenever a mission ran into trouble, the problem would be resolved at the crucial moment. Any loose ends he had failed to clean up would be dealt with by someone else before he even realized they existed.
Every problem in life would somehow resolve itself in the end.
He often wondered whether he really had a fairy godmother—or perhaps a guardian spirit—by his side.
Shen Sixing had also suspected that his family might be behind it all.
But after thinking it over, he knew that, given how ruthless his family was, they had never shown any sign of kindness by helping him.
They would have been more than happy to see him die outside. Why would they secretly clean up his obstacles for him?
Shen Sixing closed his eyes and thought that his present life was practically perfect, like something out of a dream.
If this was a dream,
then he would rather never wake up.
The night outside had completely fallen.
The study lamp cast a dim yellow glow, illuminating the little box that had been casually tossed into the corner of the desk. A soft halo shimmered across its metal surface.
Shen Sixing did not look at it again.
…
The moment Shen Yi came face-to-face with her past self,
she vanished before Song Sijun’s eyes.
She had not even had time to take a proper look at her younger brother before an invisible force tore at her body and pulled her away.
At that moment, Shen Yi thought she would be dragged back to the future.
But she was not.
Her entire body became transparent.
Shen Yi frowned and looked down at her hands.
All five fingers were still there, and their outlines remained, but light passed straight through her palms and fell onto the floor. Not even a shadow was left behind.
She tried touching the table beside her, but her fingertips passed through it as though through air. She could not feel a thing.
Clearly, the encounter between Shen Yi and Song Yi had caused Shen Yi—who should not have appeared in this time and place—to become nothing more than a passerby in this era.
She existed, yet no one could see her.
“I haven’t gone back?”
Shen Yi murmured, her voice echoing through the empty room.
【Almost, Xiao Yi. Once you return, everything will be over, and I will leave too.】
As always, the system’s voice was utterly devoid of emotion.
【But since you’re already here, come and see the beginning and the end of the story.】
The beginning and the end.
Shen Yi frowned. At first, she did not understand what those words meant.
Not until she returned home.
There, she saw the little box she had personally handed to Song Sijun. It now lay quietly among a jumble of books and documents, brought back to the Shen family by Shen Xun.
Shen Yi suddenly understood.
“Do you think my father will open it in the end?”
The system replied, 【Do you want him to open it?】
Shen Yi stared at it in silence, then smiled.
“I do, and I don’t. Don’t you think things are fine as they are now?”
Selfishly speaking, she did hope he would open it.
Too many things had been recorded inside. She had wandered through this time and space for far too long.
Even Shen Yi herself had begun to forget.
She could only use the one box she had managed to bring with her to preserve most of her memories of the people she had met and the time she had spent with them.
But personal wishes were the least important thing.
Shen Yi clenched the nothingness in her hand a little tighter, then slowly let it go.
The dangers they might encounter in the future—she had eliminated them one by one.
Bai Que was dead. So was Shen Ruxu’s friend—the one who had stabbed her in the back. Everyone who had been coveting what belonged to them from the shadows had been quietly eliminated by her.
Shen Yi had gone to such lengths to make all this happen, not so they would end up on a road with no return.
“I hope not,” she said.
“This is already the best ending we could have hoped for.”
