“Little Black, you know this—people can only save themselves.”

It was a little past eight on a Saturday. Without the twin armies of students and office workers, the streets felt like a low tide. Shopfronts on both sides had lifted their shutters for a while, yet their aisles were hollow, like shells left by the sea.

Ye Weibai lived on the edge of G City’s central district, a spot with decent light and water. The only snag was the tangled transfers to the true center, a knot of routes that tired the feet. Word was, a new subway line would soon cut through like a clean blade. Then he could ride the steel serpent straight into the heart.

Mm. When that time comes? Ye Weibai felt that his own time wouldn’t.

“People can only save themselves—” The little girl’s laugh was cold, like frost on glass. “So you let that girl play your sister forever? That’s your self-rescue—by grinding another life into dust.”

“Let me tell you a story.” Ye Weibai smiled, brushing aside her ice-thin mockery. Good thing the morning traffic was sparse. No one noticed the man talking to thin air, like a fisherman whispering to fog.

“Once, a girl lost her brother. Not a home invasion; no Detective intrigue. Her brother stepped out for work, met a trucker who’d driven through the night, eyelids heavy like stones. In the end, the brother bled out. The driver didn’t run. He waited at the scene like a stump after a storm, took the law’s axe, clean and proper. So there was no thousand-mile pursuit, no theater.”

“What are you really saying—that the roles should flip? You’re the brother who lost his sister, aren’t you? Stop lying to yourself.”

“Don’t rush, Little Black. Hear me out.” Ye Weibai smiled again, the way you would soothe a yapping pet; it made the girl sputter, then fall silent. He went on. “Deaths like that happen every day across the World. Losing kin—humans have no shield against disaster, like paper boats on black water. It’s normal, isn’t it, Deity?”

The little girl only exhaled a dry “Heh.”

“But for that girl, the sky cracked open. Six months earlier, her father had died after a long illness, a slow candle guttering out. That morning, before the brother left, she had fought with him about a boyfriend. Her words flew like stones at a bird lifting off—”

‘Who do you think you are!’

‘Why do you get to control me!’

‘Who I’m with is my business.’

‘Don’t ever come back!’

‘You—you might as well die!’

…

“And then—her brother died.”

Ye Weibai’s voice stayed level, yet the tale raised goosebumps like weeds in winter. Her words had no magic in them; she wasn’t a Deity, nor dragon-blood. No spell, no binding. But—

“But she wouldn’t see it that way. Humans are fragile reeds. Psychology says we replay painful memories until numbness feels like a grim sweetness. Morning scenes flooded her skull like stormwater; the call, the rush, the red lake at the scene, her brother’s body. She fell, like a stone through a well. Guilt and regret became a nightmare-beast, wrapping cold vines around her sleep and days.”

He walked to a bus stop while speaking. People were trickling in now, like sparrows gathering. To be safe, he pulled out his phone and pretended to talk, words drifting like smoke.

“Her only remaining family—her mother—was gentle, kind, soft rain over a garden. She knew about that morning’s quarrel; she knew it was a common squall between siblings, small waves on a pond. It was ordinary, forgettable, hardly worth blame—until the accident splashed it crimson. She knew she shouldn’t accuse her daughter. But as a mother who had lost husband and son in quick succession, even the gentlest throat tore hoarse. In front of her girl, she cried out—”

‘Why did you fight with your brother?’

‘Why did you say those things?’

‘If you hadn’t—if you hadn’t—he wouldn’t have died!’

Ding ding.

Coins rang against metal like tiny bells in a chapel. Ye Weibai fed two coins to the mouth of the bus and stepped aboard toward the city center. The stop was far from the line’s first breath, so the seats were already a field of heads. He stood by a spot and steadied himself. In the seat before him, a long-haired high-school girl in black-and-white—same colors as Ye Fei’s uniform—kept her head down, thumbs swimming across her screen.

Ye Weibai lowered his voice, still acting like a man mid-call.

“The mother was blaming herself more than the girl. Why hadn’t she met her duty, why hadn’t she woven a stronger net—though in truth, no one was at fault.”

“This was a quarrel family sees often, like summer lightning. It had happened many times. The mother just couldn’t swallow the reality. For a woman who’d had a healthy, bright home half a year ago, the grief was a boulder on the chest. The fact she didn’t break on the spot already showed steel in her bones.”

“In fact, after saying it, she knew she’d stabbed wrong. She held her daughter and cried like rain on dry earth.”

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’

“Her mother apologized to her like that.”

“But it was already too late.” Ye Weibai paused, watching the city slide backward across the window like a pulled curtain. Then he spoke again. “If the brother’s death was a knife driven into the girl’s heart, the mother’s words were a hand turning that blade a full circle—carving a hollow the size of winter.”

‘It’s my fault. Because I fought with my brother, he met that fate.’

‘I’m this kind of person—this kind of person—why am I still here?’

‘Why? Why wasn’t it me who died?’

“She thought like that. After that day, the word ‘suicide’ lit up in her mind like a neon sign, again and again. Each time, a nameless terror rose like black ice and crushed it.”

‘I don’t even dare to die?’

‘I’m such a waste.’

The little girl’s voice cut in, cold as a drizzle. “That’s you, isn’t it.” In her eyes, the story’s roles were swapped; not a sister losing a brother, but Ye Weibai losing his sister. How long would he keep lying to himself till he believed it, hollow as a reed, finding even the value of death thin? Humans—boring, vile.

Thinking she had to shadow Ye Weibai for hours, the little girl wanted the harvest to end fast, like a scythe craving wheat.

“Easy. The peak’s right ahead.” Ye Weibai didn’t mind the disgust in her tone; he could guess her thoughts like reading ripples.

Guessing a Deity’s thoughts—thinking that, Ye Weibai felt oddly proud.

“I said it before—people can only save themselves.” His words made the high-school girl, who seemed absorbed in her phone but whose ears had pricked like a fox’s, glance up without meaning to.

Ye Weibai didn’t notice, or he noticed and let it pass. He said, “It doesn’t mean you can’t lean on others. It means this: instead of letting someone fill your hollow, find your own weight. A dream, a friendship, a sense of justice, a pillar of hate, wanting to befriend lolis, wanting to date a high-school girl—whatever it is. At the root, it’s the last stage in Erikson’s five—self-worth realized.”

“Humans feel alive when they feel useful, like hands finding a handle. And that’s good. If everyone felt nothing mattered, the World would go haywire.” He stopped and looked down. The girl had been listening so intently that her eyes had stayed fixed, bright as a pond. He met her gaze and smiled. “Hey, you from Yuanya High—am I wrong?”

“Right—uh? Huh?” She jolted, her face blooming red like a sunset. She fussed with her brown-dyed hair, then remembered something and glared, sharp as a cat. “Why’re you talking to me out of nowhere? Hitting on me?! I’ve got a boyfriend!”

Look closely, and she’d put on makeup. Long false lashes like moth wings, glossy lips like cherries, nails painted a carnival of colors. With her softly curled brown hair and a slightly flirtatious slouch, she looked a bit frivolous, like a kite in a playful wind.

Cute, but frivolous.

Yet faces lie. She might have dressed this way on purpose. Maybe she admired someone. Maybe she feared that looking too obedient would invite wolves—pretty girls get treated like a different caste too often.

If you dug deeper, you’d find roots and rivers. You’d step into her life and change its weather. On other days, in the logic of a dating sim, Ye Weibai might chase that route: “the high-school beauty on the bus.” Today, he only smiled. The way she listened, eyes wide and hungry, was funny, a little adorable. Teasing her once was enough.

Because he’d die at eight ten. Flirting on the way to the gallows invites retribution—though when you’re minutes from death, what retribution can bite?

So when the girl’s attitude turned prickly, Ye Weibai just smiled and stepped off at his stop. He wasn’t dodging out of shame; he had arrived.

He hadn’t come out just to “take a look at the World.” Some things needed a clean cut today, or tomorrow would have no door.

He had to refuse a certain girl’s confession.