8:12 a.m.
Lin Wanqing hadn't slept all night.
She sat at the dining table with three things in front of her.
The white shoes.
The photograph from ten years ago.
And the alarm clock that rang by itself.
The three things seemed to have nothing to do with one another.
But they all pointed to the same day.
July 14, 2016.
She scrolled through the photographs on her phone one by one.
Room 217.
301.
A birthday cake.
Her mother.
Gu Yan.
The white shoes.
The alarm clock.
And the group photograph from her sixteenth birthday.
She zoomed in on the last photograph.
There were four people in it.
Her.
Her mother.
Her father.
Gu Yan.
But something felt wrong.
She clearly remembered...
There hadn't been only four people in the house that day.
She closed her eyes.
And tried hard to remember.
The dining table.
The cake.
The candles.
Her mother's hand.
Her father standing by the window.
Gu Yan sitting in the farthest seat.
And someone else.
Standing in the doorway.
But that person's face...
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember it.
Wanqing opened her eyes.
Suddenly, she understood something.
It wasn't that she'd forgotten someone.
Someone had taken that person's existence from her memory.
9:30 a.m.
She went to a nearby coffee shop.
The person who had asked to meet her wasn't Officer Zhou.
It was the strange woman from last night.
The woman sat in the darkest corner.
She was wearing a hat.
Two cups of coffee sat on the table.
“Sit.”
Wanqing didn't sit.
“Who are you?”
The woman looked up.
“You can call me Su Rui.”
“Your real name?”
“Names aren't important.”
“Then what is?”
Su Rui looked at her.
“You saw those shoes last night?”
Wanqing didn't answer.
Su Rui already knew.
“So you're starting to remember.”
“You knew my mother.”
“I did.”
“What about Gu Yan?”
Su Rui fell silent.
“I knew him too.”
“Then what exactly were you to each other?”
“We used to be friends.”
“Used to be?”
“Ten years ago.”
Wanqing sat down.
“Tell me what happened ten years ago.”
Su Rui didn't answer right away.
She took a very thin folder from her bag.
And placed it on the table.
“Look at this first.”
Wanqing opened it.
The first page was a photo developing order.
Date:
July 15, 2016.
Number of photographs:
Seven.
Wanqing froze.
“Seven?”
“Yeah.”
“But I've only seen six.”
Su Rui nodded.
“Because the seventh one is missing.”
“Where did it go?”
“No one knows.”
Wanqing turned to the next page.
It was an old-fashioned photo studio pickup slip.
Name:
Lin Yaqin.
That was her mother's name.
Pickup date:
July 20, 2016.
Wanqing frowned.
“She went to pick up the photographs?”
“Yes.”
“But she'd already disappeared by then.”
Su Rui looked at her.
“That is the problem.”
Wanqing said nothing.
She kept turning the pages.
The last page held a blurry surveillance still.
A woman stood outside the photo studio.
Although the image was blurry,
Wanqing recognized her at a glance.
It was her mother.
Her heartbeat suddenly quickened.
“She was still alive.”
Su Rui didn't answer.
“On the fifth day after she disappeared, she went to the photo studio.”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn't anyone tell me?”
Su Rui lowered her head.
“Because someone deleted the surveillance footage.”
Wanqing stared at her.
“Who?”
“Officer Zhou.”
Her heart sank.
Of course.
Him again.
“Do you have proof?”
Su Rui took out a sheet of paper from the folder.
“This is the investigation record from back then.”
“The last person to modify it was him.”
Wanqing stared at the name.
Her fingers slowly tightened.
“So he's been lying to me this whole time.”
“He's not the only one.”
“Who else?”
Su Rui didn't answer.
She took out a photograph.
“This is what you really need to see.”
She placed the photograph on the table.
Wanqing looked down.
Her entire body instantly went rigid.
It was a group photograph.
Date:
July 14, 2016.
There were...
Seven people in it.
Her.
Her mother.
Her father.
Gu Yan.
Su Rui.
A strange man.
And...
The seventh person.
Wanqing stared at that person.
Her face slowly went pale.
Because that person wasn't a stranger.
She knew them.
And knew them very well.
That person...
Was her.
Not the sixteen-year-old version of her.
Her as she was now.
The photograph showed a twenty-six-year-old Lin Wanqing.
Standing at a birthday party ten years earlier.
Wearing a black coat from her current wardrobe.
Holding a glass of water.
Her face completely expressionless.
Wanqing's hands began to tremble.
“That can't be.”
Su Rui said nothing.
“This photograph is fake.”
“No.”
“It has to be a composite.”
“I wish it were.”
Wanqing stared at the photograph.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
Su Rui drew a deep breath.
“You thought you'd lost a few hours of memory when you were sixteen.”
“But that's not what happened.”
“What you lost was ten years.”
Wanqing looked up.
“What does that mean?”
“You remember being twenty-six.”
“But this photograph tells us that you were already here ten years ago.”
Wanqing shook her head.
“That's impossible.”
Su Rui took out another sheet of paper.
“These are your fingerprint records from ten years ago.”
“When you were sixteen, you left your fingerprints at No. 17 Nan Street.”
“And not just once.”
Wanqing's mind went blank.
“Then where have I been all these years?”
Su Rui didn't answer.
She only said:
“That's the answer we've been looking for all along.”
2:00 p.m.
Wanqing returned home alone.
She placed the photograph of the seven people on the table.
And stared at it for two full hours.
She couldn't believe it.
But she couldn't deny it either.
The person in the photograph...
Really did look too much like her as she was now.
It wasn't just her appearance.
Even her eyes were the same.
She turned the photograph over.
There was a line of writing on the back.
“Don't trust the photograph.”
She froze.
She'd seen those words many times before.
The first time was in Room 217.
The second was in her mother's recording.
The third time...
Now.
Suddenly, she thought of something.
If someone had deliberately told her, “Don't trust the photograph,”
was it because the photograph concealed some kind of truth?
She turned the photograph over again.
And examined it carefully.
Seven people.
Each one standing in a different position.
She zoomed in.
The first.
Her mother.
The second.
Her father.
The third.
Gu Yan.
The fourth.
Su Rui.
The fifth.
The strange man.
The sixth...
Herself.
The seventh...
Wanqing stopped.
She'd always thought there were seven people in the photograph.
But now, counting carefully,
there were only six.
She counted again.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
She shot to her feet.
“Where's the seventh person?”
She immediately called Su Rui.
No one answered.
She called again.
Still no answer.
She called Officer Zhou.
He picked up.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“At the police station.”
“I have a photograph.”
The other end of the line was silent for a second.
“What photograph?”
“From July 14, 2016.”
Officer Zhou said nothing.
“There are seven people in it.”
“But no matter how many times I count, there are only six.”
Silence.
“Officer Zhou.”
Wanqing's voice began to tremble.
“Who exactly is the seventh person?”
A soft breath came from the other end of the line.
Then Officer Zhou said:
“Stop looking into it.”
Wanqing froze.
“Why?”
“Because the seventh person isn't human.”
Her entire body went rigid.
“What did you say?”
“The seventh person you saw...”
Officer Zhou paused.
“Is you.”
Wanqing tightened her grip on the phone.
“But there's already one of me in the photograph.”
“That is the problem.”
The call ended.
Wanqing stood in the middle of the living room.
Suddenly, the entire house felt unfamiliar.
She looked at the photograph again.
Six people.
But on the far right side of the photograph...
there was definitely a large empty space.
As if someone had originally been standing there.
And had later been cut out.
She zoomed in on the photograph.
There was a faint shadow in the empty space.
The shadow of a person.
And that person's hand...
was resting on her shoulder.
Wanqing froze completely.
She slowly looked down.
Her own shoulder.
There was nothing there.
But in the photograph...
there was a hand.
She immediately threw the photograph onto the table.
Her phone suddenly rang.
It wasn't a call.
It was a video.
No source was listed.
She tapped it open.
The image was very dark.
It looked like a room.
The camera pointed at a dining table.
A cake sat on the table.
Seventeen candles.
Wanqing watched the screen.
It was ten years ago.
The day of her birthday.
In the video, she sat at the table.
Her mother stood beside her.
Her father was by the window.
Gu Yan sat across from her.
Everything was exactly the same as in the photograph.
But a few seconds later,
the Wanqing in the video suddenly lifted her head.
She looked at the camera.
Then said:
“If I see this video ten years from now...”
The girl in the video paused.
“Don't trust anyone.”
Wanqing's eyes flew open.
Her sixteen-year-old self...
knew she would see this video ten years later?
That was impossible.
The girl in the video continued:
“Especially don't trust...”
The image suddenly froze.
The sound turned to static.
A few seconds later,
the video resumed.
Sixteen-year-old Wanqing stared at the camera.
Her lips slowly formed three words:
“My other self.”
The video ended.
Wanqing sat on the couch.
For a long time, she didn't move.
For the first time, she began to wonder.
Maybe the most terrifying part of all this...
wasn't that someone was hunting her.
It was that someone was using her own self.
9:00 p.m.
Su Rui finally called back.
Her voice was urgent.
“You saw the video?”
Wanqing was stunned.
“You knew?”
“I knew they'd started.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“Weren't you helping me this whole time?”
“I was.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
Silence came from the other end of the line.
“Wanqing.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember the first time you saw that man?”
“Gu Yan?”
“No.”
Wanqing frowned.
“Then who?”
“Ten years ago.”
Su Rui's voice began to tremble.
“The first time you saw that man wasn't on your birthday.”
“It was even earlier.”
“Where?”
“Your house.”
Wanqing froze.
“When?”
“When you were six.”
Her entire body went rigid.
Six?
She had no memory of this at all.
“That man was standing outside your bedroom door.”
“You asked him who he was.”
“He said...”
Su Rui paused for a long time.
“He said he was you.”
Wanqing stopped breathing.
“What?”
“He said...”
“When you grew up, you'd become him.”
A tremendous crash suddenly came through the phone.
Su Rui's voice vanished.
“Su Rui?”
No one answered.
“Su Rui?”
The call disconnected.
Wanqing immediately called back.
No answer.
She stood up.
Just then,
footsteps sounded outside the door.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
She slowly walked to the door.
And looked outside through the peephole.
No one was there.
But on the floor outside the door...
there was a photograph.
She opened the door.
And picked it up.
The photograph showed her at six years old.
Standing in the doorway of her bedroom.
A man stood beside her.
His face had been painted over in black.
There was only one sentence on the back:
“The seventh person was never anyone else.”
Wanqing stared at the words.
Suddenly,
a voice came from behind her.
Very softly,
“Because the seventh person...”
She whirled around.
The living room was empty.
But the voice continued.
“...has always been you.”
The lights suddenly went out.
The entire house plunged into darkness.
A few seconds later,
her phone lit up.
There was only one final message on the screen.
“Seventh Way to Die: Dying in the other life of your own.”