Chapter Four 02:59
“Don’t forget me.”
The last trace of Xiaoyu’s outline vanished from the photo.
Shen Yuchuan stood where he was, with nothing left in his hand but a blank photo.
He didn’t speak right away.
He didn’t even breathe.
Not until the clock on the wall made a click.
02:59.
The second hand began to move.
One tick.
Two.
Three.
Like an unstoppable countdown.
“Where is she?”
Shen Yuchuan spun around and grabbed Chen Boyu by the collar.
“Give her back to me!”
Chen Boyu didn’t fight back.
He only looked at him.
“Do you still remember her?”
Shen Yuchuan froze.
“Of course I do.”
“What’s her name?”
“Xiaoyu.”
“That’s not her name.”
“...Su Wanqing.”
Something shifted in Chen Boyu’s eyes.
“Good.”
“At least you still remember her now.”
Shen Yuchuan gritted his teeth.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I told you. She was the first.”
“The first person to be forgotten.”
“And the first person to learn the truth.”
Shen Yuchuan let go.
“Then where is she now?”
Chen Boyu looked up at the clock on the wall.
“Forty seconds left.”
“There’s no point asking that now.”
“In forty seconds, you’ll forget her.”
Shen Yuchuan’s pupils contracted.
“That’s impossible.”
“You’ve already started forgetting.”
“No!”
“Then tell me.”
Chen Boyu stared at him.
“What did she call you the first time?”
Shen Yuchuan opened his mouth.
No sound came out.
The image that had been so clear in his mind suddenly scattered like water washing it away.
He remembered Xiaoyu.
He remembered Su Wanqing.
He remembered her standing in the classroom.
He remembered her smiling.
But...
What had she said the first time she called him?
He couldn’t remember.
“See?”
Chen Boyu said,
“Memories don’t suddenly disappear.”
“They become blurry first.”
“Then they become incomplete.”
“Finally, you start wondering whether that person ever existed at all.”
Shen Yuchuan looked down at the photo in his hand.
It was still blank.
Yet for some reason, he suddenly felt that the photo was familiar.
So familiar...
It frightened him.
“I won’t forget her.”
“You said that before, too.”
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
“What does that mean?”
Chen Boyu didn’t answer.
He took a pen from his pocket.
On the blackboard, he wrote a name.
Shen Yuchuan.
“This is you.”
Then, beside it, he wrote:
Su Wanqing.
“This is her.”
Then he wrote:
Chen Boyu.
“This is me.”
The three names stood side by side.
Chen Boyu looked at them.
“The three of us once did something together.”
“What?”
“We tried to stop 3 A.M.”
Shen Yuchuan stared at him.
“What?”
“Ten years ago,”
Chen Boyu said,
“When we first discovered that someone had disappeared, we thought it was just an accident.”
“Until Su Wanqing disappeared.”
“The day she disappeared, everyone forgot her.”
“Only the two of us still remembered.”
Shen Yuchuan looked at the blackboard.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“But why don’t I remember any of this?”
Chen Boyu smiled faintly.
“Because out of the three of us, you were the first to give up.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You forgot her with your own hands.”
“Shut up.”
“It was what you asked for.”
Shen Yuchuan lunged forward.
“I couldn’t have!”
Chen Boyu didn’t retreat.
“You said you couldn’t take it.”
“You said that every time you remembered her, she died all over again.”
“So you begged me.”
“You begged me to erase your memories.”
Shen Yuchuan stood frozen.
“...My memories?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t have that ability.”
Chen Boyu lowered his voice.
“The person who actually did it wasn’t me.”
The classroom suddenly fell silent.
A chill ran down Shen Yuchuan’s back.
“Then who was it?”
Chen Boyu looked at the blackboard.
Behind the three names.
At some point, another name had appeared.
The Zero.
“It.”
Shen Yuchuan stared at those three characters.
“What the hell is it?”
Chen Boyu answered slowly:
“Something without a name.”
“It has no body.”
“No voice.”
“No fixed form.”
“The only thing it can do is make people forget.”
Shen Yuchuan asked,
“Why?”
“Because memories are its food.”
“What does that mean?”
“The more you remember, the closer it gets to you.”
“The harder you try to bring back the people who disappeared, the stronger it becomes.”
Shen Yuchuan shook his head.
“That’s impossible.”
“Then why does everyone forget?”
“Why are you the only one who doesn’t?”
“Because you’re not an exception,”
Chen Boyu said.
“You just haven’t reached your time yet.”
02:59:20.
The second hand on the wall kept moving forward.
Shen Yuchuan looked at his hands.
His fingers began to tingle.
Suddenly, he couldn’t remember his mother’s voice.
It lasted only an instant.
A very brief instant.
But he knew it.
For that moment, he had truly forgotten.
“Mom...”
he murmured.
A blurry face surfaced in his mind.
A woman stood in the kitchen.
Her back was to him.
She was cutting fruit.
“Yuchuan, are you coming home for dinner tonight?”
Her voice was gentle.
But the next second,
it vanished.
Shen Yuchuan suddenly clapped his hands over his ears.
“No!”
Chen Boyu didn’t stop him.
“Twenty seconds left.”
“Don’t forget.”
“The more afraid you are, the easier it is to forget.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Chen Boyu looked at him.
“Remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Everyone.”
“Don’t forget a single one.”
Shen Yuchuan took a deep breath.
He picked up his notebook.
And began to write.
The first name.
Mom.
The second.
Chen Boyu.
The third.
Zhou Zihao.
The fourth.
Xu Qing.
The fifth.
Su Wanqing.
He wrote quickly.
His handwriting was almost distorted.
But every time he wrote down a name, another memory appeared in his mind.
Mom humming in the kitchen.
Zhou Zihao sneaking breakfast on the track field.
Xu Qing sleeping with her head down in the library.
Su Wanqing standing by the window, secretly slipping a note into his desk.
One fragment.
Then another.
Like someone piecing a shredded movie back together.
“Who else?”
Chen Boyu asked.
Shen Yuchuan stared blankly.
“What?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s one more person you must remember.”
“Who?”
Chen Boyu didn’t answer.
He only pointed at the notebook.
Shen Yuchuan looked down.
On the last line,
at some point, a name had appeared.
Shen Yuchuan.
He looked at his own name.
A sudden wave of fear washed over him.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“I have to remember myself?”
“If you forget even yourself,”
Chen Boyu said,
“then you really won’t exist anymore.”
02:59:50.
Ten seconds.
Shen Yuchuan snatched up the pen.
Beneath his own name, he wrote a sentence:
My name is Shen Yuchuan.
Then he wrote:
I’m twenty-two.
I live in Southside.
I have a mother.
I used to know Chen Boyu.
I used to know Zhou Zihao.
I used to know Xu Qing.
I once loved Su Wanqing.
When he reached the last sentence,
Shen Yuchuan’s hand stopped.
“Loved?”
Chen Boyu said nothing.
Shen Yuchuan stared at those three words.
Loved.
Was this his memory?
Or had the notebook made him write it?
He didn’t know.
But his chest suddenly began to ache.
A painfully familiar ache.
Like losing someone over and over again.
And yet...
Like he hadn’t truly lost them yet.
03:00.
The clock chimed.
The entire school building fell silent in an instant.
Shen Yuchuan closed his eyes.
He waited.
Waited for a name to disappear.
Waited for someone to be forgotten by the world.
But nothing happened.
Three seconds.
Ten seconds.
Thirty seconds.
A minute.
He opened his eyes.
Chen Boyu was gone.
“Chen Boyu?”
No one answered.
Shen Yuchuan immediately turned around.
The classroom’s back door stood empty.
Outside the windows was only darkness.
He rushed to the doorway.
There wasn’t a single person in the hall.
“Chen Boyu!”
His voice echoed through the corridor.
No one responded.
He pulled out his phone.
The screen lit up again.
03:02.
He opened his contacts.
The first name.
Dad.
The second.
Mom.
The third...
Zhou Zihao.
Shen Yuchuan froze.
Zhou Zihao was back?
He quickly scrolled down.
Xu Qing was there, too.
Chen Boyu was there, too.
They were all there.
Shen Yuchuan let out a breath of relief.
“Did it work?”
He smiled.
For the first time,
he felt that he had truly stopped 3 A.M.
But the next second,
his phone vibrated.
A message popped up.
Sender:
Su Wanqing.
Shen Yuchuan’s smile vanished.
The message contained only one sentence.
“Don’t trust the world you’re in now.”
He stared at the screen.
Another message.
“What you just saw wasn’t real.”
A third.
“The people you brought back aren’t really them.”
Shen Yuchuan’s hand began to tremble.
He immediately called his mother.
Brrring—
The call connected.
A woman’s voice came through.
“Hello?”
Shen Yuchuan froze.
“Mom?”
“You’re...”
The woman paused.
“Who are you trying to reach?”
Shen Yuchuan’s face went deathly pale.
“Mom, it’s me.”
Silence came from the other end.
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you dial the wrong number?”
The call ended.
Shen Yuchuan stood in the classroom.
The phone slipped from his hand.
He stared at his contacts.
All the names were there.
But...
Had they really come back?
Or had only their names returned?
He opened his chat history with Zhou Zihao.
All the messages had been restored.
The last message was from three years ago.
“After you graduate, you’d damn well remember to come find me.”
Shen Yuchuan stared at the sentence.
Then he suddenly realized.
Zhou Zihao had never sent that message.
He remembered.
That day three years ago,
Zhou Zihao had said:
“After you graduate, remember to come find me.”
There had been no “damn well.”
No profanity at all.
But the two extra words in the chat history looked as if they had always been there.
Shen Yuchuan checked the other messages.
Every one contained subtle differences.
His mother’s messages.
His father’s messages.
Xu Qing’s messages.
Even Chen Boyu’s.
Everyone had come back.
But...
Every one of them was different from the person in his memories.
“It didn’t bring people back.”
Shen Yuchuan said quietly.
“It just...”
“patched the world back together until it looked the way it used to.”
Footsteps suddenly sounded in the classroom.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Someone was slowly approaching from the hallway.
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
A girl stood in the doorway.
Long hair.
A gray coat.
A transparent umbrella in her hand.
Shen Yuchuan’s heart slammed against his ribs.
“Xiaoyu?”
The girl didn’t answer.
She walked into the classroom.
“You finally remembered me.”
Shen Yuchuan stood.
“Are you Su Wanqing?”
The girl shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
She smiled.
“I’m Xiaoyu.”
Shen Yuchuan stared at her.
“But didn’t you disappear?”
“I never disappeared.”
“Then what was that photo?”
The girl didn’t answer.
She walked to the blackboard.
With one sweep of her hand, she erased every name.
Including Shen Yuchuan’s.
Then she wrote a new line.
“The Zero is awake.”
Shen Yuchuan’s heart sank.
“Who the hell is the Zero?”
The girl turned around.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have to accept one thing first.”
“What?”
The girl looked at him.
“You think you’ve been saving those people all along.”
“But actually...”
She pointed at Shen Yuchuan.
“They’ve been saving you all along.”
Shen Yuchuan froze.
“What does that mean?”
The girl didn’t answer.
She only wiped away a patch of chalk writing on the far right of the blackboard.
A photo was hidden beneath it.
Shen Yuchuan walked over.
A group of students stood in the photo.
The same classroom.
The same summer.
The same Su Wanqing.
The same Chen Boyu.
But this time,
there was one more person in the photo.
That person stood at the exact center of the group.
Their face was completely covered in black.
Shen Yuchuan stared at the figure.
A wave of dizziness suddenly hit him.
Because the clothes that person wore...
were the ones he was wearing now.
“Impossible...”
He reached out and touched the photo.
Countless images flashed through his mind.
Ten years ago.
Twenty years ago.
Even farther back.
One person after another disappeared at 3 A.M.
And every time,
someone stood beside them.
Recording.
Waiting.
Watching.
That person never grew older.
Always wore the same clothes.
Always stood in the photographs.
Until the final photo.
Shen Yuchuan saw his own face.
The Shen Yuchuan in the photo turned around.
Across ten years of time,
he locked eyes with his present self.
Shen Yuchuan staggered backward.
The photo fell to the floor.
The girl spoke softly:
“Do you understand now?”
Shen Yuchuan looked at her.
“That Zero...”
The girl nodded.
“It’s you.”
“Impossible.”
“This isn’t your first time experiencing 3 A.M.”
“It isn’t your first time forgetting everyone, either.”
“You’ve started over twelve times.”
Shen Yuchuan’s breathing quickened.
“Twelve?”
“Every time, you thought you were saving the world,”
The girl said,
“But every time, you ended up failing.”
“So this time...”
She slowly moved closer.
“You have to make a different choice.”
Shen Yuchuan looked at her.
“What choice?”
The girl stopped in front of him.
“Don’t save anyone.”
Shen Yuchuan stared at her.
“What?”
“Let 3 A.M. continue.”
“Let everyone disappear.”
“Including you.”
Shen Yuchuan shook his head.
“I can’t.”
The girl smiled.
“That’s what you said before, too.”
“And then?”
“Then you saved the first person.”
“The world began to collapse.”
“You saved the second.”
“Time began to run backward.”
“You saved the third.”
“Everyone who had died began to return.”
“And finally...”
The girl raised her hand.
She pointed behind Shen Yuchuan.
“You turned the entire world into a fake.”
Shen Yuchuan slowly turned around.
At some point, the classroom had filled with people.
Mom.
Dad.
Zhou Zihao.
Xu Qing.
Chen Boyu.
Even people he had never seen before.
They all stood in the classroom,
watching him in silence.
Not one of them spoke.
Not one of them blinked.
Shen Yuchuan suddenly noticed.
Beneath their feet...
there were no shadows.
“Now you know.”
The girl stood behind him.
“The real world has been empty for a long time.”
“Everything you’re seeing now...”
“is only memory.”
Shen Yuchuan slowly turned around.
The girl’s face began to change.
Her long hair vanished.
The gray coat vanished.
Finally, she became a face he knew better than any other.
Su Wanqing.
She looked at him.
Her eyes were as gentle as they had been that summer ten years ago.
“Shen Yuchuan,”
she said softly.
“What is truly going to disappear at 3 A.M....”
“was never us.”
The clock on the wall
stopped at 02:59 again.
And this time,
everyone’s eyes fell on Shen Yuchuan at once.
Su Wanqing reached out her hand.
Smiling, she said:
“You’re the one who has to remember—”
“This world.”
The next second,
all the lights in the classroom went out.
In the darkness,
Shen Yuchuan heard his own voice coming from every direction.
Once.
Then again.
And again.
Like countless versions of himself from different points in time were speaking the same sentence at once:
“If you still remember this place...”
“then it means you’ve failed again.”