Three oh nine in the morning.
Jin Feixun stood by the window, awake all night.
She had looked through the photograph on the table so many times she'd lost count.
That old photograph from seventeen years ago.
Her mother.
Her seventeen-year-old self.
And Yan Chuxian.
Three people who should never have appeared in the same photograph.
She slid the photograph into a clear document sleeve, then took out another one.
South Bank Cinema.
Three months ago.
Yan Chuxian had vanished from the photograph.
But the person behind her was still there.
Black clothes.
A silver watch.
No face.
Seventeen years lay between the two photographs.
Yet the same person had appeared in both.
Jin Feixun turned on her computer.
The lower-right corner of the screen displayed:
03:10
She stared at the time.
Suddenly, she remembered that day seventeen years ago.
Before her mother left, it had also been sometime after three in the morning.
She had been only seventeen then.
It had been pouring that night.
Just before leaving, her mother had said only one thing.
“Don’t go to South Bank Cinema.”
She had asked why.
Her mother hadn’t answered.
She had simply stood in the entryway and looked at her for a long time.
She hadn’t understood back then.
But now, all at once, she did.
Her mother hadn’t been forbidding her from going.
She had been protecting her.
Jin Feixun picked up her coat.
She knew she had to go to B-17.
Even if Yan Chuxian had told her not to.
Even if the note had clearly said:
I’m not there.
Sometimes,
a command not to go was the clearest direction of all.
Four twenty-seven in the morning.
South Bank Old District.
The streets after the rain were terrifyingly empty.
Jin Feixun walked alone through the demolition zone.
Every so often, a car passed over the distant overpass.
Its headlights cut through the darkness,
then vanished just as quickly.
The old cinema had been sealed off behind construction barriers.
A construction notice was posted on the front gate.
South Bank Cinema Demolition Project: Work expected to begin at 8:00 a.m. today.
Jin Feixun glanced at the time.
Three hours left.
She went around back.
A narrow path there had been swallowed by weeds.
She remembered coming here seventeen years ago.
She had been too young then.
Her memory felt as if it had been scoured by rain,
leaving behind only a few scattered images.
An iron gate.
A yellow light.
Her mother’s hand.
And a woman in white standing in the rain.
She stopped.
Her heart suddenly gave a hard, violent beat.
The woman in white.
Yan Chuxian.
Seventeen years ago.
She really had seen her.
But why couldn’t she remember any of it?
Jin Feixun continued forward.
At the end stood a concrete wall.
A door in the wall had been sealed with steel plates.
The number plate was rusted,
but still legible:
B-17.
She took out the photograph.
The position of the number plate matched the photograph exactly.
Jin Feixun reached out and touched the door.
Cold.
Nothing unusual.
She took out her tools.
Just as she was about to pry open the lock,
footsteps suddenly sounded behind her.
One step.
Two.
Three.
Jin Feixun stopped.
She didn’t turn around.
The footsteps stopped several yards away.
“You finally came.”
A woman’s voice.
Not Yan Chuxian’s.
Jin Feixun slowly turned.
A woman stood in the darkness.
She was in her forties,
wearing a dark-gray overcoat.
Her face was unfamiliar.
But Jin Feixun immediately noticed her wrist.
A silver watch.
Her pupils contracted sharply.
“Who are you?”
The woman didn’t answer.
She only looked at her.
“You look a lot like your mother.”
“You knew my mother?”
“I did.”
“Where is she?”
The woman was silent for a moment.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Once you know, you may never be able to return to the life you had before.”
Jin Feixun stared at her coldly.
“My life doesn’t have a ‘before’ anymore.”
The woman smiled.
“Just as I thought.”
“What?”
“She wasn’t wrong about you.”
Jin Feixun took a step forward.
“Who are you, really?”
But the woman took a step back.
“Don’t go in.”
Jin Feixun looked at B-17.
“Why?”
“Because what was left there isn’t an answer.”
“Then what is it?”
The woman looked at her.
“It’s what you forgot.”
With that, she turned and walked away.
Jin Feixun immediately chased after her.
“Stop!”
The woman didn’t look back.
She ran into a narrow alley beside them.
Jin Feixun followed,
but all she saw was a red light at the end of the alley.
There was no one there.
She stopped.
Her breathing gradually steadied.
Then she looked down.
A sheet of paper lay by her feet.
She picked it up.
It was an old hospital payment slip.
The name field had blurred,
but the date was clear.
November 3, 2017.
Location:
South Bank Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center.
Jin Feixun’s gaze stopped.
Suddenly, she remembered.
Seventeen years ago,
after her mother vanished,
the police had told her
that the last time anyone saw her mother was near South Bank Cinema.
But no one had told her
that her mother had gone to a hospital.
And no one had told her—
that night,
there had been someone else there too.
She turned the payment slip over.
A line of handwriting ran across the back.
The letters were faint,
as if the person who wrote them had already run out of strength.
“She’s starting to forget her own name.”
Jin Feixun’s breath caught.
She stared at the sentence.
A scene suddenly flashed through her mind.
Seventeen years ago.
A rainy night.
A hospital corridor.
Her mother sat on a bench.
Beside her was a girl in white.
The girl kept her head lowered.
In her hands was a recorder.
She raised her head.
Looked at Jin Feixun.
And asked:
“What’s your name?”
Seventeen-year-old Jin Feixun answered:
“Jin Feixun.”
The girl smiled.
“Remember it.”
“Why?”
“Because one day, you might forget.”
The scene ended abruptly.
Jin Feixun stood in the alley,
her face pale.
She finally remembered.
She had seen Yan Chuxian.
Not only seventeen years ago.
Even earlier than she had thought.
It was just that the memory—
had been deliberately hidden from her.
Five eleven in the morning.
Jin Feixun returned to B-17.
The door was still there.
She took out the hospital payment slip,
then glanced at the photograph again.
Then she placed her hand on the lock.
Click.
The lock opened.
Behind the door was a narrow staircase.
It led down.
Deep down.
There were no lights.
Jin Feixun turned on her flashlight.
Step by step, she descended.
The walls were covered in water stains.
The air grew colder and colder.
After roughly thirty steps,
she saw an underground corridor.
Yellowed old signage was posted on the wall.
Audio Archives Room.
Jin Feixun stopped.
The Audio Archives Room?
Wasn’t this a movie theater?
Why would there be a place like this here?
She continued forward.
At the end of the corridor was a glass door.
Written on it were the words:
ARCHIVE B-17
She pushed the door open.
The room was filled with tapes.
One row.
Two rows.
Dozens of rows.
Every tape was marked with a date.
2010.
2011.
2012.
All the way to 2017.
But the innermost row was filled entirely with blank labels.
Jin Feixun walked over.
One of the tapes was labeled:
2017.11.03
She picked it up.
There was a name beneath the date.
Jin Lan.
Her hands trembled faintly.
Her mother’s voice.
She had searched for it for seventeen years.
At last, she had found it.
An old recorder sat beside the tapes.
It still worked.
She put the tape in.
Pressed play.
Static crackled.
Then came her mother’s voice.
“If you’re hearing this…”
Her voice was exhausted.
“It means I didn’t make it back in time.”
Jin Feixun stood there.
Her eyes slowly reddened.
“Feixun, if you see this recording someday…”
Her mother paused for a long time.
“Don’t trust photographs.”
Jin Feixun froze.
“Photographs can lie.”
“Sounds can lie too.”
“But memory can’t.”
She jerked her head up.
The recording continued.
“You need to remember one person.”
“Her name is—”
The tape suddenly jammed.
A harsh screech filled the entire room.
Jin Feixun immediately took the tape out.
She played it again.
The same thing happened.
She pressed the button several times.
Nothing worked.
The name was forever stuck at that second.
She closed her eyes.
Tried desperately to remember.
Who had her mother been trying to name?
Suddenly,
a voice came from behind her.
“Yan Chuxian.”
Jin Feixun whipped around.
No one was there.
Only darkness at the end of the corridor.
She slowly rose.
“Is that you?”
There was no answer.
She picked up her flashlight.
The beam fell across the wall.
Names had been written all over it, packed tightly together.
So many names.
Some had been crossed out.
Some were only half left.
And some
looked as if they had been violently scraped away.
Jin Feixun slowly moved closer.
She saw a name.
Jin Lan.
Beneath it was another.
Yan Chuxian.
And beneath that—
Jin Feixun.
She stood there,
all color draining from her face.
This wasn’t a file.
It looked more like a list.
And her name—
was at the very bottom.
There was a date beside it too.
2026.11.03
She finally understood.
This wasn’t a record of the past.
It was the future.
Or rather—
some kind of countdown already in progress.
Six oh two.
The sky began to brighten.
Jin Feixun emerged from the underground archives.
In her hands, she carried one tape,
and a photograph.
The photograph showed South Bank Cinema seventeen years ago.
Her mother stood at the entrance.
Her seventeen-year-old self stood beside her.
Yan Chuxian was there too.
The three of them looked at the camera.
This time,
Jin Feixun didn’t ask herself why she couldn’t remember.
She only looked at Yan Chuxian.
Then she suddenly realized
that Yan Chuxian wasn’t looking at the camera.
She was looking at her.
Looking at her the whole time.
As if she had known all along
that years later,
Jin Feixun would hold this photograph
and come back to look for her.
There was a sentence on the back of the photograph.
It wasn’t her mother’s handwriting.
It was Yan Chuxian’s.
“If you finally found this place, it means I’ve already failed once.”
Beneath it was another sentence.
“But don’t be afraid.”
“This time, I’ll remember you.”
Jin Feixun stood on the streets at dawn.
For the first time, she felt an emotion deeper than fear.
Sadness.
Because she suddenly understood.
Yan Chuxian might not be trying to save her for the first time.
And the story between them—
might already have repeated many times.
Seven forty-nine in the morning.
Construction workers began appearing outside South Bank Cinema.
Heavy machinery slowly rolled in.
The barriers were reinforced again.
Jin Feixun stood across the street.
She didn’t leave.
She was waiting for someone.
At exactly eight,
the first excavator started up.
A roar filled the air.
The cinema’s old walls began to shake.
At the instant the wall collapsed—
Jin Feixun saw someone standing in a second-floor window.
A white shirt.
Long black hair.
Yan Chuxian.
She stood inside the building as it began to collapse.
She didn’t run.
She only watched Jin Feixun from far away.
The two of them stared at each other across the rubble and morning mist.
Jin Feixun immediately ran toward her.
“Yan Chuxian!”
The woman didn’t answer.
She only raised her hand
and gently placed it against the glass.
Then
her lips moved.
Jin Feixun understood.
She was saying:
“Don’t come any closer.”
The next second,
the entire wall came crashing down.
Dust surged into the sky.
Someone grabbed Jin Feixun and held her back.
She struggled desperately.
“Let go of me!”
“There’s someone in there!”
“She’s still inside!”
But no one listened to her.
A few minutes later,
the rubble fell silent.
Jin Feixun rushed in.
There was no one there.
No white shirt.
No recording equipment.
Not even a single footprint.
Only a recorder that had been smashed beyond repair.
She dropped to her knees
and picked it up.
The red indicator light was somehow still on.
Jin Feixun pressed play.
Yan Chuxian’s voice came through.
Soft.
Close.
As if she were whispering right beside Jin Feixun’s ear.
“Feixun.”
“If you’re hearing this recording…”
“Don’t look for me.”
Jin Feixun’s eyes reddened.
“Why…?”
The recording continued.
“Because the day you find me…”
A pause.
“will be the day you start to vanish.”
Jin Feixun’s hand went rigid.
The final words came through.
This time,
Yan Chuxian didn’t cry.
She only said gently:
“So promise me.”
“Before I vanish completely—”
“don’t fall in love with me.”
The recording ended.
Jin Feixun sat in the rubble.
For a long time,
she said nothing.
It wasn’t until she lowered her head
that she noticed the back of the recorder in her hand.
Two names had been carved into it.
One on the left, one on the right.
Jin Feixun.
Yan Chuxian.
Between them
was a line that had been cut in two.
And beneath that line
was another line of tiny text:
“The fourth time.”
Jin Feixun stared at those three words.
Her heart slowly sank.
She finally realized.
This wasn’t the first time she had met Yan Chuxian.
Nor was it the first time she had searched for her.
And it certainly wasn’t the first time she had lost her.
This was—
the fourth time.
And this time,
there would be no next time to start over.