Luo Bing had finally dared to go out normally these past few days.

After seeing Luo Xiaoming, he was sure the two of them had been in cahoots, messing with him. Luo Bing was furious. “I worried about you for days, couldn’t eat or sleep, and you were making a joke out of me!”

The Huaguo police had probably found the plane and brought the survivors back. From the way Luo Xiaoming was bouncing around, she clearly hadn’t been hurt at all.

After that, when Xu Fang called again, Luo Bing stopped answering. He planned to leave her hanging for a few days as a protest.

A few more days passed, and Luo Bing still hadn’t seen Luo Xiaoming again. He wasn’t too concerned, figuring she’d gone off somewhere for fun, so he contacted the local police station and told them there was no need to look for her.

To Luo Bing’s surprise, the police checked the travel records in S City and said Luo Xiaoming had never appeared there.

Puzzled, Luo Bing called Luo Xiaoming, but she didn’t answer.

Uneasy, Luo Bing went to the police station himself.

The police told Luo Bing that they still hadn’t found the flight Luo Xiaoming had been on and asked him to keep waiting for news.

Luo Bing was stunned.

No, no. Something wasn’t right.

Luo Bing stumbled home in a daze, sat on the sofa, and covered his head with his hands. His mind was a complete mess.

The police wouldn’t lie to him. They really hadn’t found Luo Xiaoming.

Then what had he seen a couple of days ago? A hallucination?

He’d felt the same sense of impending disaster when he’d received that threatening call: “I’ll kill you within three days.”

He took out his phone and looked at the call Xu Fang had made a few days ago.

Should he call back?

Luo Bing hesitated, but in the end, he didn’t. Some part of him was still clinging to wishful thinking. Maybe if he didn’t get involved with trouble, trouble wouldn’t come looking for him.

Luo Bing checked the company executives’ group chat.

To tighten his grip on his father’s company, Luo Bing had hastily announced Luo Qingyuan’s death and reclaimed his shares. But after being frightened by one strange incident after another, Luo Bing had been too afraid to leave home for days. He hadn’t taken part in the election for the new board members, so naturally, he hadn’t been chosen as one of the company’s new directors.

Luo Bing knew that the vice chairman, Wang Zhibin, was deliberately trying to cut back his authority. After all, he was too young and had no connections. The management wasn’t going to make room for someone like him.

A wave of frustration welled up in him. “Sooner or later, I’ll take that vice chairman down.”

Luo Bing lay on the sofa with his eyes closed, thinking about the latest assessment plan and whether the senior managers needed to be evaluated individually. In the blink of an eye, his thoughts drifted back to Luo Xiaoming, whose fate was still unknown. Before long, he began to feel drowsy.

He hadn’t done anything, yet all that mental stress had left Luo Bing utterly exhausted.

“Sigh… How did I end up crossing that walking calamity…?”

“Are you talking about me?”

A familiar, cool voice rang beside his ear. Luo Bing’s eyes flew open in shock.

An upside-down face filled his vision—small and pale, like a porcelain doll carved with exquisite care. Long black hair spilled down like a waterfall, almost tickling the tip of his nose. Those eyes stared at him without blinking.

Luo Bing’s mind froze for a split second. Then, almost instinctively, he rolled onto the floor.

“Hahaha! Xu Fang, look how scared you made him!”

Still shaken, Luo Bing looked over. On the table behind the girl sat another girl who looked exactly like her, though their outfits and expressions were different. One wore a pitch-black cloak, her mismatched eyes calm and her face blank. The other was wrapped in strange chains and wore a teasing smile. When their eyes met, she winked at Luo Bing.

Luo Bing recognized them. They were the source of all his confusion and frustration.

“You two?” Luo Bing clutched his chest. “Could you at least knock before coming in?”

Xu Fang said nothing and continued looking Luo Bing up and down. The stare made his skin crawl. “W-what are you going to do?”

Xu Fang finally looked away. “You seem to be the Luo Bing I know. Let’s skip the small talk. Take me to where you met Luo Xiaoming.”

Luo Bing got up and led Xu Fang and Gussy to his bedroom.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to speak to you that way that day. I was just scared.”

“What did you say? You never told me about that part.” Gussy leaned over curiously.

Xu Fang pushed Gussy’s head back and said to Luo Bing, “I understand. I won’t bother you for long. We’ll leave soon.”

Xu Fang hadn’t been here before. From the furnishings, the place had clearly only just been renovated.

The iron chains on Gussy clinked brightly. “Another huge apartment? Just how many properties do you own?”

“It’s not mine. It belongs to the company.”

“Ohh, the company owns it, but you get to use it, huh? You’re pretty good at dodging taxes.”

Luo Bing gave an awkward smile, unsure how to answer.

Soon, they reached one of the bedrooms.

“This is the place. I’d just finished talking to you on the phone that day when Luo Xiaoming came in…and punched me.”

“Where’s Luo Xiaoming’s room?”

Luo Bing shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never brought her here. At the time, I was wondering where Luo Xiaoming had come from.”

Gussy leaned closer and whispered, “Did they overlap?”

Xu Fang glanced at it. “Maybe they only overlapped for a while.”

“Can you find any other patterns?”

“It’s still unclear.”

Luo Bing stood to the side, unable to understand what the two were talking about. Unease rose in him. He felt like he’d stumbled into another one of those abnormalities that humans weren’t supposed to get involved with.

Xu Fang walked farther into Luo Bing’s bedroom and casually asked, “Do you have a housekeeper?”

“I have someone come clean once a month, but I don’t have a live-in housekeeper.”

“Has anyone cleaned this place since Luo Xiaoming left?”

“No. No one else has been here.”

Xu Fang studied the floor and spotted footprints that didn’t belong to Luo Bing.

“Over here!” Gussy called from the hallway, waving Xu Fang over. It had clearly noticed the same detail.

Xu Fang and Gussy followed the footprints for a short distance, then stopped in front of another room.

“This is another bedroom, but no one’s lived here yet,” Luo Bing explained, following behind them.

Xu Fang opened the door, but there were no more footprints inside the room.

“This is where the overlap stops. Could it be…?” Gussy clapped its hands. “Is this a doorway to another world?”

Xu Fang neither agreed nor disagreed. He could see fingerprints on the doorknob. “When Luo Xiaoming came here, she was still talking to me on the phone. After she opened the door, she must have seen another pair of eyes. That action caused the split to happen again.”

“So what I saw wasn’t a hallucination?” Luo Bing didn’t want to get mixed up in strange events, but this concerned his own fate. He couldn’t help asking, “Have you two figured anything out? How did Luo Xiaoming appear here that day? Is she still alive?”

“It’s only a guess. I don’t have proof yet.”

“At first, I thought Luo Xiaoming was in a parallel world similar to this one. But now I think she’s in this world. She’s simply in a state we can’t observe, which also fits the idea of unobservability in quantum mechanics.”

Xu Fang spoke slowly. “The world Luo Xiaoming observes and the world we observe behave differently. We perceive the α world, while Luo Xiaoming perceives the β world. But certain factors may affect them, and at certain moments, our perceptions overlap. That’s why you were able to sense Luo Xiaoming’s presence that day.”

“But what about time?” Gussy asked.

“Time isn’t an independent entity. It’s just a unit we use to describe change—a subjective concept. We see things differently, so our experience of time differs too. There’s nothing strange about that.”

“Isn’t that too subjective? Doesn’t that make everything purely subjective?” Luo Bing couldn’t understand.

“Humans have never seen reality as it truly is. They perceive only a tiny fraction of the world, and even that small part could be wrong.” Xu Fang tilted his head slightly. “Anyway, Luo Xiaoming is still alive. She’s just far away.”