On the 15th, Lin Xia stood at the entrance of the high school library, a yellowed photo clutched in her hand.
The photo was given to her by the monitor at the class reunion last week, with the words "Commemoration of moving books in June 2017" written on the back.
In the photo, the 17-year-old her was being pushed by several classmates towards the book storage room, with a reluctant expression on her face.
The one who pushed her the hardest was exactly the monitor who had called her to the library back then.
"On that day, you suddenly said 'I can't go to the library today, I'll break my leg'," the monitor said in a half-joking and apologetic tone. "We even laughed at you for being superstitious and dragged you there."
Lin Xia didn't speak, but it felt like something had hit her heart.
So that's how it was!
If she hadn't said that "I'll break my leg", would the monitor not have dragged her here?
If she hadn't deliberately resisted, would she have been able to avoid that accident?
She touched her knee, where the crescent-shaped scar was coldly sticking to the skin.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket; it was a message from Dr. Li: "Retrograde memory is like an echo. The louder you shout, the clearer it comes back."
Lin Xia walked out of the library. The sunlight was so bright that she couldn't open her eyes. The wind passed through the corridor, bringing the noise from the playground in the distance.
"Why have you been avoiding me lately? You even deactivated your WeChat. What's wrong with you?" Her best friend shook the silver ring on her hand, her tone full of confusion.
"I just bought this. Do you like it?"
Lin Xia's gaze shifted away as if scalded, and she mumbled, "It's a bit dazzling."
Her best friend pouted and didn't ask further.
What made her even more uneasy was that during a blind date, the other person held out his hand and said, "Hello, my name is Chen Mo." On his left ring finger, he was wearing the same silver ring as in her retrograde memory.
Lin Xia almost fled in a panic.
She rushed out of the café, her heart beating as if it would burst.
When she got home, she collapsed on the floor and suddenly "remembered" the supposed follow-up to this blind date:
Chen Mo would introduce her to a friend.
And though she clearly hadn't met that friend before, they seemed extremely familiar.
In her memory, they even went to the old neighborhood together.
"I messed up again," Lin Xia hugged her knees and buried her face in them.
The rain outside was still falling, tapping against the glass, as if reminding her: some evasions might be causing her to lose important things.
Lin Xia decided to move to a small town in the spring when she was 26.
She saw a rental listing online: "South-facing bungalow, rice fields outside the window, no neon lights, friendly neighbors."
When she saw the words "no neon lights", she made up her mind almost immediately.
"Are you crazy?" Her best friend shouted over the phone. "Giving up your job in the city to move to a place where there's nothing?"
"I need a break," Lin Xia packed her luggage, crumpled up the sticky note with "709" written on it, and threw it in the trash.
At least she had to get through her 30th birthday.
The small town was quieter than she had imagined.
The bluestone paths wound and turned, the houses were all white-walled with black tiles, and the street lamps were dim yellow, like the moon hanging in the sky.
The landlady, Aunt Liu, was a smiling old lady with a jade bracelet on her wrist, not a silver one.
The chili peppers grown in the fields were green.
"According to our customs here, even spring couplets are written on off-white paper," Aunt Liu brought her a bowl of sweet soup. "They say red will attract bad things."
Lin Xia drank the sweet soup, and in this place without red, her heart felt unprecedentedly at ease.
She found a job organizing old books in the town's library. The town was mostly inhabited by the elderly, and not many people read books.
Every day, dealing with yellowed pages, life was as calm as a stagnant pool.
It had been a long time since she "saw" that locked room from her 30th birthday.
But the retrograde memories still came, all trivial things: it would rain tomorrow, the bread in the supermarket would be on sale, Aunt Liu's cat would give birth to three kittens.
On the day Aunt Liu's cat gave birth, Lin Xia had known three days in advance.
She "remembered" that the cat would give birth at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, three kittens in total, two black and one white.
So on Tuesday night, she specially cooked a pot of fish soup and took it to Aunt Liu's house.
"Xiao Lin, how did you know she was about to give birth?" Aunt Liu took the fish soup in surprise. "The vet said it would be a few more days."
Lin Xia smiled and didn't say anything.
In the early hours of Wednesday, she was woken up by the cat's meowing. The moonlight outside the window shone right into the room, and the clock on the wall pointed to exactly 3 a.m.
This sense of "control" made her feel at ease.
She began to use her retrograde memories more skillfully: stockpiling discounted eggs in advance, reminding neighbors to collect their clothes to avoid the rain, and even helping the owner of the town's grocery store avoid a small-scale purchase scam.
"Xiao Lin is really a lucky star," the townspeople all said.
Lin Xia gradually began to believe this.
She even started to think that perhaps that death 预告 for her 30th birthday could really be rewritten.
Or maybe that retrograde memory about death was just a nightmare from her younger years.
Until one 深夜,she was woken up by a strange noise.
In the rice fields outside the window, a tall frame had been set up somehow, and workers were installing something on it.
In the moonlight, the outline of the frame looked like a huge letter "7".
Lin Xia's heart sank suddenly.
She walked to the window, looked at the frame, and saw her 30-year-old self frantically shaking her head at her, shouting something.
She couldn't hear clearly, but could faintly make out the mouth shape: "Don't hide, don't hide..."
She kept shouting, over and over, always those three words, "Don't hide"?
But if she didn't hide, would she let herself reach that day when she was 30, only to be pushed down and die?
One day, while organizing old books, she found an old photo album from 1998.
Lin Xia's fingers began to tremble.
Tucked inside the album was a yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline: "Gas leak in Room 709 of the old neighborhood, no casualties."
There was a small 缺口 on the edge of the clipping, the same shape as the 缺口 on that half-piece of paper in her "memory".
She closed the album, wanting to put it back on the shelf, but "remembered" that a man wearing a silver ring would come to the library tomorrow, looking for information about the 1998 old neighborhood.
"No, I won't let him come," Lin Xia locked the album in a drawer and put two locks on it.
The next day, she pretended to be sick, and the library was closed for the day.
The next day, the day after that, whenever she remembered that man with the silver ring, she would close the library.
Finally, the memory of him disappeared.
Lying in bed, listening to the wind outside the window, she told herself: as long as she didn't meet that person, there would be no problems.
But a voice in a corner of her heart said: you're hiding again.
A week before her 29th birthday, Lin Xia began to suffer from insomnia.
Every day at 3 a.m., she would wake up on time, staring at the ceiling until dawn.
That retrograde memory of the locked room on her 30th birthday, like a reef exposed after the tide recedes, became clearer and clearer.
She could make out the pattern of the wallpaper on the walls of the locked room, an old floral design with edges already curling up;
Could smell the dust floating in the air, mixed with a faint musty odor;
Could feel the texture of the paper in her hand, rough and brittle, as if it would crumble at a touch.
What frightened her most was the man with the silver ring.
Now she could see the folds of his cuffs clearly, and even "hear" what he said when he pushed her.
But that sentence seemed to be covered by something, indistinct, leaving only the touch of a breath brushing against her ear.
Lin Xia bought sleeping pills at the town's pharmacy, taking half a pill every night, but it only allowed her to sleep an extra hour.
Her dreams were filled with red light, seeping through the crack of the door, pooling into puddles on the floor. When she stepped into it, the water would climb up her ankles, until it reached her chest — exactly the same as the suffocating feeling in the locked room.
Three days before her birthday, due to work, Lin Xia went to the town's post office to send a letter.
The aunt behind the counter was a chatterbox, saying with a smile: "Xiao Lin, the address you're writing is the old neighborhood in the urban area. It's being renovated recently, with new neon lights installed, which are very bright."
Lin Xia's pen paused, and the ink blotted a small black spot on the envelope. "Is that so?"
"Yes, red ones. You can see them from far away at night."
The aunt took out a leaflet with a rendering of the renovated old neighborhood.
At the window of Building 709, there was a bright red neon light.
Lin Xia walked out of the post office. The sunlight was dazzling, but she felt cold all over.
Seven years had passed. She was like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, thinking that not seeing it would mean safety. But what was meant to come would eventually come.
The night before her birthday, she didn't take the sleeping pill.
At 3 a.m., she sat by the window, looking at the tall frame at the end of the rice field.
In the moonlight, the red neon tubes on the frame had been installed, but not yet lit.
But Lin Xia knew that it would light up soon.
Just like the man with the silver ring, just like the door of Room 709, they would always appear in front of her at some point.
On her 29th birthday, Lin Xia was woken up by a knock on the door.
She opened her eyes. The sky outside the window was just dawning. At this time, the town's courier usually hadn't started working yet.
"Who is it?" Lin Xia wrapped her coat around her and walked to the door, looking out through the peephole.
It was Xiao Wang, the town's courier, holding a brown paper envelope, standing on tiptoe to look into the yard. "Sister Lin Xia, your express delivery, sent from the urban area, said it's urgent."
Lin Xia's heart skipped a beat. She opened the door, took the envelope, and the moment her fingertips touched the paper, a familiar astringent feeling crawled up along her blood vessels — exactly the same as when she held half a piece of paper that night when she was 23.
The words "For Lin Xia's eyes only" on the envelope were in an unfamiliar handwriting.
Closing the door, Lin Xia leaned against the door, took three deep breaths before opening the envelope.
There was only half a yellowed newspaper and a piece of paper inside.
Written on the paper: "If you want to know the truth, come here immediately."
Where?
Lin Xia looked at the postmark, which was stamped yesterday, from the post office in the old neighborhood in the center of the urban area.
The edge of the newspaper was jagged, as if torn from an old newspaper.
The date of the newspaper was July 15, 1998, and there was a social news on the page: "Gas leak in the old neighborhood kills 12, only one boy survives".
The words "Room 709" were circled in red pen, the ink had turned black, soaking through to the back of the paper.
Lin Xia's fingers began to tremble.
Not long ago, she had clearly seen this report in the old photo album, and in her memory, there were no casualties.
She turned to the back of the newspaper, and under the date, there was a small line of words printed: "The content of this article is as of 6 p.m. on July 15, 1998".
July 15, 1998, this date struck her mind like a bolt of lightning.
She rushed to the desk, opened her diary, and in the records from when she was 23, found the "death notice" she had written: the day before her 30th birthday, that is, June 12, 2025, the locked room, 709, red neon.
It's not this date.
Lin Xia breathed a sigh of relief.
No, that's not right.
Lin Xia looked carefully at the corner of the newspaper, where there was a smaller date stamp — a certain date after the newspaper was published, stamped with blue ink, which was indistinct, but could be made out as "June 12, 2025".
Next year? It's the day of her "memorized" death.
She picked up the coffee cup on the table, and her hand shook, causing coffee to splash on the white paper next to the newspaper. The blotted shape was exactly the same as the coffee stain on the edge of the newspaper.
"It's impossible..." Lin Xia murmured.
How could a postmark from the future end up in my hands now?
This newspaper was like a slap from the future, slapping hard on her self-righteous "control".
Every minute and every second of this day, she was thinking about this newspaper and the words on that piece of paper: "If you want to know the truth, come here immediately."
The address of Room 709 on the newspaper was exactly the same as the location of the old neighborhood she found on the map;
The "12 deaths" mentioned in it reminded her of the headline of the old newspaper on the wall of the locked room — it turned out that what was written there was clearly "no casualties".
"I'm just going to take a look, not necessarily go in." Lin Xia said to herself in the mirror, but before going out, she somehow took that half of the newspaper with her.
The old neighborhood was more dilapidated than she had imagined.
The bluestone roads were bumpy, most of the houses on both sides were empty, and the windows were covered with thick dust.
The renovation project seemed to be only half done. Scaffolding stood by the roadside, with red banners hanging on it that had faded.
Following the address on the newspaper, she found the building.
Seven floors, with a red brick exterior wall, the plaster peeling off to reveal the yellowish color inside.
The door of Room 709 was at the end of the corridor. The copper lock on the wooden door was rusted, and the house number was worn by time to only a vague "9". Next to it, "709" was written in white chalk, the handwriting was new.
A worker carrying a ladder walked by, muttering: "Why install neon lights in this shabby place? They say it's to match the renovation of the cultural and creative park. Who would come here?"
The renovation of the cultural and creative park was a project that started after she moved out of the urban area. What she thought was "avoidance" was just being pushed a few steps forward on the chessboard of time.
She walked to the door of Room 709, hesitated for a moment, stretched out her hand, and was about to push the door when it opened by itself.