The wind in the ruins was cold.
Jin Feixun sat there, gripping the recorder tightly.
Most of the construction workers had already left.
The morning sunlight pierced the dust that still hung in the air, falling across the crumbling walls of the cinema.
The sign that had once read “South Bank” was down to half its length.
The place where she had first met Yan Chuxian was being crushed bit by bit beneath the bulldozers.
But only three words remained in Jin Feixun’s mind.
The fourth time.
She pressed play again.
There was no sound.
She pressed it again.
Still nothing.
The recorder looked like an ordinary piece of scrap metal.
But she knew.
Yan Chuxian had just been inside it.
She removed the battery, then put it back in.
The screen lit up.
The time read:
08:17
Jin Feixun frowned.
The recorder clearly hadn’t been set to display the time.
She pressed play.
This time, it wasn’t Yan Chuxian’s voice that came out.
It was the sound of waves from very far away.
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
Then a man’s voice spoke.
“Fourth confirmation.”
“The target still remembers her.”
Jin Feixun jerked her head up.
The man continued.
“Memory erasure failed.”
“Photograph erasure failed.”
“Voice-recording erasure failed.”
“Should we proceed to the final stage?”
A brief silence.
Another voice answered.
A woman’s.
Very young.
Very soft.
Jin Feixun’s breath stopped instantly.
It was Yan Chuxian.
“Don’t.”
The man asked:
“Why?”
Yan Chuxian was silent for a long time.
“Because she’ll die.”
Static crackled through the recording.
Then it ended completely.
Jin Feixun sat in the ruins.
Her fingers were ice-cold.
She finally understood.
The fourth time wasn’t the number of times they had met.
It was some kind of experiment.
Something that had been repeated four times.
And every time,
she had survived.
But Yan Chuxian had vanished.
Ten in the morning.
Jin Feixun returned home.
She didn’t sleep.
She opened her computer and immediately organized everything she had on South Bank Cinema.
2017.
2020.
2023.
2026.
Four points in time.
Every three years.
There seemed to be some kind of pattern between them.
She searched for “B-17.”
No results.
She tried “South Bank B17.”
Still nothing.
Then she searched for old-city planning maps.
Finally,
an abandoned building file appeared on the screen.
The underground structural plans for South Bank Cinema.
Jin Feixun opened it.
The plans were only one page.
The cinema’s underground level originally had two sections.
Section A.
Section B.
Section A was the equipment room.
Section B was the storage room.
There was no Room 17.
She zoomed in.
At the very bottom of the plans, she found a number blacked out by hand.
She adjusted the brightness.
Slowly, she made out several words beneath it.
B-17 / Restricted
Restricted area.
Jin Feixun’s expression changed.
She kept digging through the files.
The file’s last modified date:
November 3, 2017.
Modified by:
Yan Chuxian.
She fell back against the chair.
Impossible.
If Yan Chuxian really was only a sound recordist,
how could she modify municipal building files?
And on the very day her mother vanished?
She opened the personnel records.
Entered:
Yan Chuxian.
Search.
No results.
She searched for an ID number.
Nothing.
Address.
Nothing.
Birth record.
Nothing.
As if this person had never come into the world at all.
Jin Feixun suddenly stopped.
She remembered something.
Sound.
Yan Chuxian’s greatest strength was sound.
If every written record could be deleted,
if every photograph could be altered,
then—
what about sound?
Could sound also prove that she existed?
She opened every recording she had saved over the past three months.
Forty-seven in all.
The first time they met.
The first time they ate together.
The first time they recorded the sound of waves at the seaside.
Their first argument.
The first time…
Jin Feixun stopped on one of them.
File name:
Seaside_03
She clicked play.
Waves.
Wind.
A car in the distance.
Then her own voice.
“Yan Chuxian, why do you keep recording the ocean?”
Yan Chuxian laughed.
“Because the ocean doesn’t remember people.”
“What about you?”
“I do.”
Jin Feixun listened.
The corner of her mouth moved slightly.
That was the first time she had heard Yan Chuxian say that.
But the next second,
a third person’s voice appeared in the recording.
“You shouldn’t keep going.”
Jin Feixun went rigid.
She immediately paused it.
Rewound.
Played it again.
The voice appeared once more.
Low.
Distant.
“You shouldn’t keep going.”
Jin Feixun opened the audio waveform.
Three voices.
Three separate channels.
But she remembered.
That day at the seaside, there had only been her and Yan Chuxian.
The third person—
who was it?
She extracted the voice by itself.
Reduced the noise.
Amplified it.
Played it again.
This time,
she heard it clearly.
The man said:
“The fourth time has already begun.”
Jin Feixun’s hand stopped on the mouse.
Then
the computer screen suddenly went black.
The lights in the room went out at the same time.
A power outage.
She sat in the darkness.
There was no wind outside the window.
The entire city seemed to fall silent all at once.
Her phone screen lit up.
There was no signal,
but she received a message anyway.
Sender:
Yan Chuxian.
Just one sentence.
“Stop listening.”
Jin Feixun stared at the words.
For a long time.
She replied:
“Why?”
The message showed as failed to send.
The next second,
her phone buzzed again.
This time,
it wasn’t text.
It was a photograph.
The photograph showed a hospital hallway.
Date:
November 3, 2017.
At the center of the photograph
stood a seventeen-year-old girl.
Jin Feixun.
She looked at the photograph,
then slowly zoomed in.
Finally, she saw—
Yan Chuxian standing behind her.
And Yan Chuxian’s hand
was holding hers.
One in the afternoon.
Jin Feixun went to the South Bank Mental Rehabilitation Center.
It had been out of use for many years.
Now, only an old building overgrown with plants remained.
She stood at the entrance,
looking at the rusted iron gate.
Seventeen years ago,
this was the place where her mother had last been seen.
She pushed the door open.
Dust fell from above.
Abandoned patient rooms lined both sides of the hallway.
The room numbers followed one after another.
103.
104.
105.
She walked to the end.
There, she saw a door number that had half fallen off.
117.
Jin Feixun stopped.
Seventeen.
Seventeen again.
She pushed the door open.
There was no bed inside.
Only an old table.
On the table sat a recorder
and a bundle of dried white baby’s breath.
Jin Feixun walked over.
The recorder started automatically.
No one had pressed it.
“Feixun.”
She jerked her head up.
Yan Chuxian.
Her voice was right there in the room.
“If you’ve come here,”
“that means you’ve remembered the first part.”
Jin Feixun closed her eyes.
“The first part?”
“Yes.”
Yan Chuxian’s voice was very soft.
“You didn’t forget me.”
“You made yourself forget me.”
Jin Feixun opened her eyes.
“What?”
The recording continued.
“Seventeen years ago, your mother discovered B-17.”
“She saw something there she shouldn’t have seen.”
“She wanted to take you away.”
“But you didn’t leave.”
Jin Feixun’s breathing grew faster and faster.
Her memory began to blur.
A rainy night.
A hospital.
Her mother.
An underground room.
Names covering the walls from floor to ceiling.
And a girl.
Yan Chuxian.
She stood in front of Jin Feixun
and held out her hand.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Seventeen-year-old Jin Feixun asked through her tears:
“Where’s my mom?”
Yan Chuxian didn’t answer.
She only slipped a tiny recorder into Jin Feixun’s hand.
“Remember my voice.”
“Why?”
“Because one day—”
Yan Chuxian looked at her.
For the first time, sorrow appeared in her eyes.
“You’ll forget my face.”
The scene vanished abruptly.
Jin Feixun opened her eyes with a start.
Tears had already fallen.
She didn’t know when she had started crying.
Yan Chuxian’s voice in the recording continued:
“Later, you asked them to erase your memory.”
“Because that was the only way you could survive.”
Jin Feixun shook her head.
“That’s impossible…”
“It’s true.”
“Why would I ask them to?”
Yan Chuxian was silent.
Then she answered softly:
“Because you saw your mother.”
Jin Feixun’s body went rigid.
“She didn’t vanish.”
“She didn’t die, either.”
“She just…”
For the first time, Yan Chuxian’s voice trembled.
“Became the first name in B-17.”
The recording stopped.
The room fell silent again.
Jin Feixun stood there.
For a long time, she didn’t move.
Then she suddenly noticed a piece of paper tucked beneath the baby’s breath on the table.
There was only one sentence on it:
“Go underground beneath Room 117.”
She slowly crouched down.
Knocked on the floor.
Thud.
Hollow.
She found an iron rod.
Once.
Twice.
The third strike.
The floor cracked open.
A black metal box was revealed beneath it.
She pulled out the box.
Inside was a key.
Engraved on the key:
B-17
There was also a photograph.
Yan Chuxian looked younger in it than she did now.
She was sitting in a chair.
Behind her was a white wall.
Written on the wall:
Fourth Memory Experiment.
And in the bottom-right corner of the photograph
sat another person.
Jin Feixun.
Her seventeen-year-old self.
She wasn’t the subject of the experiment.
She was—
the observer.
Jin Feixun stared at the photograph.
Something seemed to explode inside her mind.
So she wasn’t someone who had been dragged into this story.
She had been in the story all along.
She might even have been—
the earliest part of this plan.
Nine at night.
Jin Feixun returned home.
She spread every photograph across the entire living room.
Seventeen years ago.
Three months ago.
Today.
All the timelines began to overlap.
She finally discovered a pattern.
Before Yan Chuxian appeared each time,
there was always a photograph.
After Yan Chuxian vanished each time,
there was always a recording.
The photographs recorded that she had once existed.
The recordings recorded that she was disappearing.
And now,
both pointed to the same date.
November 3, 2026.
She walked to the window.
Looked out at the distant city.
Her phone suddenly rang.
This time, it wasn’t an unknown number.
It was someone she knew.
Zhou Yu.
“Feixun.”
His voice was urgent.
“Where are you right now?”
“At home.”
“Don’t go outside.”
“What happened?”
There was silence on the other end for several seconds.
“I just found something out.”
“About Yan Chuxian.”
Jin Feixun sat up straight.
“What?”
Zhou Yu took a deep breath.
“I found her file.”
Jin Feixun’s heart jumped.
“Where?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me.”
“The South Bank Mental Rehabilitation Center.”
Jin Feixun froze.
“Her medical records.”
“The date is—”
Zhou Yu’s voice suddenly dropped to a whisper.
“2017.”
Jin Feixun said nothing.
“Feixun.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“The photograph on the medical record…”
Zhou Yu paused.
“It’s you.”
The call cut off.
Jin Feixun sat in the darkness.
The computer screen suddenly lit up on its own.
A new photograph slowly appeared.
In the photograph,
Yan Chuxian stood beside her.
The two of them faced the camera,
smiling softly.
Beneath the photograph,
a line of red text appeared:
Fourth Experiment: Failed.
Then
another line slowly emerged.
Fifth Experiment: Beginning.
Finally,
there was a date.
August 17, 2026.
Today.
Jin Feixun’s face slowly turned pale.
And in the mirror behind her,
at some point,
a woman in white was standing there.
Yan Chuxian.
She didn’t say anything.
She only watched Jin Feixun in silence.
Then she raised her hand
and wrote three words on the mirror.
“Don’t trust me.”
Jin Feixun slowly turned around.
There was nothing in the mirror.
Only her own reflection,
and the words that still remained on the glass.
Don’t trust me.
She reached out and touched them.
Her fingertip was cold.
And from deep inside the mirror,
an extremely soft laugh suddenly sounded.
As if someone were saying from very far away:
“But—”
“You’ve already trusted me four times.”