Chapter 12
715words
In his bloodshot eyes were ten years’ worth of guilt, three months of tenderness, and a boy’s irretrievable childhood.
I looked at him, this Jack Wilson who had traversed ten years of time for me.
He hadn’t come to save me.
He had come to repay me.
I stood up from the “throne” and walked to him, the dust in the warehouse swirling again with my movement. I reached out and gently held his cold, trembling hand.
His body stiffened, and he looked up like a startled child.
“Let’s go,” I said, my voice soft but steady. “Take me for a walk outside.”
We walked along the small town streets in the evening, our hands naturally intertwined. His palm was dry and warm, with distinct knuckles, wrapping around my slightly cool fingers with a reassuring strength.
Neither of us spoke.
The shops along the street lit up their neon signs, casting a dreamy glow on the faces of passersby. The wind blew by, carrying the scent of baked bread and freshly cut grass. Everything was the same as yesterday, and the same as every day before.
Yet somehow, everything seemed different.
“Jack,” I looked at our shadows, elongated by the streetlights and intertwined together, “what if today… I hadn’t died?”
He didn’t break his stride, keeping his gaze forward, his voice slightly softened by the evening breeze.
“I think the timeline that has already happened cannot be changed. But perhaps we could enter a new timeline.”
“In that timeline, you wouldn’t have rushed into the road to save a reckless fool. I wouldn’t have grown up carrying this memory, and I would have had no reason to return to ten years ago.”
He turned his head to look at me, with a kind of unburdened sadness in his eyes that I had never seen before.
“We will all survive, Emily. We might attend the same school but not know each other. Or perhaps pass each other on a street corner, but likely forget one another. Maybe I’ll remember that there was once a girl who was very sad, and later, she became happy. I may never know why.”
We arrived at an intersection where there was a wooden bench in front of the crosswalk, next to an ice cream shop that had already closed.
He stopped walking, let go of my hand, and pointed to the bench.
“Wait for me here,” he said. “I’ll go buy you a drink.”
I looked at him, at those impossibly clear eyes of his.
He added a sentence.
“If I don’t come back, you should go home.”
I obediently sat on the bench, feeling the cold touch of wood through my jeans. I looked at him, trying to engrave in my mind his current appearance—the wrinkles of his white shirt, his hair tousled by the wind, the curve of his lips—all of it.
He looked at me deeply one last time.
That look contained so many things.
Then, he turned around and walked toward the 24-hour convenience store at the corner, never looking back.
I sat on the bench, watching his figure gradually shrink and merge into the lights at the corner.
Just then, a huge truck rumbled past on the road in front of me. Its cab was very high, its tires splattered with mud, like a steel beast. I felt the ground shake as it passed by.
I watched that truck, watched it clumsily drive across the zebra crossing in front of me, and something flashed in my mind.
But that image was too quick, too blurry. I tried hard to grasp it, but couldn’t hold onto anything.
The last rays of the sunset were swallowed by the rooftops in the distance, and the street lamps lit up one by one, dyeing the entire world a warm orange.
I sat on the bench, feeling the evening breeze of September 1999.
Here, people live, forget, and wait.
I stood up and patted the dust off my pants.
The street was quiet, with the wind chimes at the convenience store entrance making crisp sounds in the evening breeze.
Alone, I set off on the path home.
