“Crack!”
Jiang Yu spun around.
There was no one outside the convenience store.
The automatic doors slowly slid shut.
The wind chime was still swaying gently.
“What’s wrong?”
Shen Zhiwei turned back.
“You didn’t see him?”
“See what?”
Jiang Yu didn’t answer.
He immediately turned back toward the glass.
In the reflection,
there was only him.
Lin Zi’an was gone.
As if that one glimpse just now had only been an illusion.
“Impossible…”
Jiang Yu slowly moved closer to the glass.
He reached out.
His fingers touched the cold glass.
The instant they made contact,
the reflection of himself
didn’t move with him.
Jiang Yu’s entire body went rigid.
The Jiang Yu in the glass
was still standing there.
He didn’t move at all.
And behind him,
someone slowly stepped out.
Lin Zi’an.
His uniform was rumpled.
He was still holding that half-eaten red bean bun.
That familiar smile curved at the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t say anything.
He only looked at Jiang Yu
and slowly raised a hand,
pointing at the glass.
The next second,
four words appeared on the fogged glass by themselves.
I’m still here.
Jiang Yu’s breath caught.
“Jiang Yu?”
The convenience store clerk suddenly pushed open the door.
“Are you okay?”
At the sound of his voice,
the glass returned to normal.
The fog vanished.
Lin Zi’an was gone.
Jiang Yu stood frozen in place.
“Hey, kid?”
The clerk called out again.
“Why have you been standing outside the door?”
Jiang Yu looked at the number above the clerk’s head.
42.
Normal.
He immediately asked,
“Was someone standing behind me just now?”
The clerk looked confused.
“No.”
“You’ve been alone the whole time.”
Jiang Yu didn’t say a word all the way home.
Shen Zhiwei suddenly spoke.
“Did you see him?”
Jiang Yu stopped.
“You knew?”
“I don’t know.”
She shook her head.
“It’s just that your expression was exactly the same as it was on the first day.”
“I really saw Lin Zi’an.”
Shen Zhiwei didn’t deny it.
She only asked,
“Did he talk to you?”
“No.”
“Could you touch him?”
“No.”
“Only in the mirror?”
Jiang Yu nodded.
Shen Zhiwei fell silent.
For a long time.
Then she said softly,
“So that means…”
“They’re still here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I always thought…”
Shen Zhiwei gazed at the storefront windows along the street.
“Everyone who disappeared was dead.”
“But if what you saw was Lin Zi’an…”
“Then that means…”
She slowly clenched her fists.
“They didn’t disappear.”
“They just…”
“went somewhere else.”
Just then,
Jiang Yu’s phone vibrated once in his pocket.
It wasn’t a text.
It wasn’t a call.
It was an email
with no sender.
The subject was a single word.
Zero.
Jiang Yu frowned
and opened it.
There was only one photo in the email.
It showed a classroom.
The window seat in the last row.
Jiang Yu was sitting there.
And in the seat in front of him,
Lin Zi’an was sitting clearly in view.
In the bottom-right corner of the photo,
there was also a timestamp.
Today.
6:43 p.m.
In other words…
five minutes ago.
Jiang Yu’s face instantly went white.
“This is impossible.”
He hadn’t even gone back to the classroom today.
Who took it?
More importantly…
In the photo,
Lin Zi’an hadn’t disappeared.
He was turning around,
smiling at the camera.
And on his desk
lay an open math textbook.
Written in red ink in the blank space
was a single sentence.
Don’t trust Love Value.
Jiang Yu stared fixedly at the photo.
The next second,
the photo began to burn on its own.
It wasn’t the phone malfunctioning.
The photo on the screen itself
began at all four corners
and slowly turned to ash.
Ten seconds later,
the email disappeared.
The inbox
showed no record that it had ever existed.
Jiang Yu and Shen Zhiwei looked at each other.
They thought of the same thing at the same time.
If someone could email him,
if someone could take a photo of Lin Zi’an,
then that meant…
there was a second person who remembered the erased.