Su Tong pressed a hand against the wall outside the bank.

It was marble, cut and polished until its surface was smooth. The moment her palm touched it, she could feel its lustrous hardness and chill. It was almost reflective enough to show her face.

So perhaps it could serve a purpose it was never meant to—Su Tong studied her reflection in the pale-shining wall.

A tired, haggard face stared back at her.

Her eyes had the dull, lifeless look of a dead fish. Her mouth and brows drooped, and stubble shadowed her cheeks. Long nights and sheer exhaustion had left her skin rough, and it was almost puffy, too. That was what happened to middle-aged people. They’d lost the vigor and vitality of youth, so even a little overexertion could leave them in this state.

But she didn’t regret it.

A booze-fueled battle, glass after glass clinking together. She’d gone back and forth beneath dazzling golden lights as a hubbub of voices mingled with the stench of liquor and sweat, churning through a gaudy world of excess.

At last, she’d fought her way through the gauntlet.

From Jialehao to Baiyun Pavilion, from dance clubs to quiet private booths—she’d clinked glasses with who knew how many people and downed who knew how much swill. At last, in the sky-high restaurant at Dalang Tower, she’d watched the big client sign and closed the deal.

It was all worth it!

Even if she’d nearly been hauled off to the hospital, even if her stomach had hurt so badly she’d thought it had perforated, leaving her to crouch over a toilet and make herself throw up…

She forced the corners of her mouth up into a relieved, let-it-all-go smile.

With that money, she could finally pay off every last bit of her mortgage and car loan, with plenty left over… She was pushing fifty, and that wasn’t young anymore. It was time to find a decent enough woman, settle down, and start a family.

Thinking about it, the weight on the shoulders of this middle-aged corporate drone seemed to ease. Su Tong turned to leave the bank and head home, her steps suddenly lighter.

She lifted her aching, heavy leg and stepped forward, ready to walk down the stairs.

But then something strange seemed to happen.

Every thought in her mind snapped like a lightbulb filament. All thought stopped for a moment, and then the entire world around her fell abruptly silent.

The crowd’s voices faded like mist. The midsummer city’s clamor grew strangely faint and distant. It lasted only an instant, yet it felt as though she were the only person left in the world.

Su Tong tried to turn her head and look around, but her muscles had gone stiff as steel. She couldn’t control them.

Fortunately, she could still see.

And so she witnessed a sight so shocking it might have made someone faint.

Everything was moving backward.

The high-rises before her gradually shrank into low buildings. The concrete underfoot vanished, replaced by asphalt. The landscaped tree nearby disappeared, while the outline of a huge locust tree slowly emerged farther down the street.

It was like watching a movie in reverse. For some reason, everything in front of her looked strangely unreal.

And yet she remembered it all.

Thirty years ago, before the city was redeveloped and the CBD was built, this old district had looked just like the scene before her now. Su Tong even remembered sitting in the shade beneath that huge locust tree as a hazy-eyed child, listening to her grandmother tell stories of an even more distant past.

But it wasn’t just the scenery around her that had changed. Her body had changed, too.

The skin that had lost nearly all its luster with age was taut and fair again. The muscles she’d built by sweating it out and lifting weights at the gym had somehow shrunk. Her view sat much lower, and a tingling sensation stirred in her chest. Then glossy, satin-smooth hair fell beside her ear and draped over her shoulder.

It tickled.

For some reason, Su Tong sneezed without thinking.

It was as if she’d disturbed some fearsome presence. In an instant, the clamor rushed back, growing louder and nearer until it was roaring in her ears again.

Hawkers calling out. Hammers pounding. And nearby, some truant brat who’d snuck off to an internet café getting dragged around by the arm, yanked by the neck, and kicked in the butt by a parent while he begged and wailed. All those vivid sounds from the first half of an era she remembered surged forth, filling the head inside Su Tong’s tiny new body.

At last, time began to flow again.

And then Su Tong was left completely dumbfounded.

The bank, along with the entire building, had vanished in the rewind of time. A little stationery shop stood in its place. So when Su Tong turned around to figure out what was going on, she found herself at the shop’s entrance, staring blankly at her reflection in its glass door.

Oh, no. It should be “her” now.

Because the reflection belonged to a lovely little girl.

Her hair was black as a crow’s feather, gathered simply into a side ponytail that fell as smoothly as a length of fine satin. Below it, her eyes were round and wide, bright with life. Even the middle-aged corporate drone whose soul now inhabited this body, and whose eyes were perpetually dead-fish dull, couldn’t dim that clear light.

They were the kind of eyes that could speak.

Her lips were a soft pink like cherry blossoms, and her skin looked so delicate it might bruise at a touch. Her nose was straight and refined. No matter how you looked at her, she was a little beauty in the making—the sort of girl who made you think of words like “radiant smile.”

“B-but… that’s me?”

The middle-aged corporate drone gaped. But the girl in the glass door raised her right hand along with her, confirming her suspicions.

It really was her.

No matter how hard it was to believe, no matter how insistently reason told her it was impossible, her eyes had confirmed the truth.

Su Tong took a deep breath.

By middle age, your view of the world had long since settled into place. And she’d grown up beneath the red flag, so of course she didn’t believe in ghosts or gods. Just like the lyrics of “The Internationale”: “There has never been a savior, nor can we rely on gods or emperors. To create humanity’s happiness, we must depend on ourselves!”

How could you expect a worldly old fox like her to believe she’d stepped out into broad daylight and turned into a little girl?

It wasn’t going to be that easy!

So she raised her hand.

The little girl’s hand was tiny and fair, like it had been soaking in milk. She could almost smell its sweet, milky scent. It was nothing like the middle-aged hand she’d had before, with its thin layer of calluses.

“This is getting more and more ridiculous. That texture…”

She murmured to herself.

She thought it might be a dream, but how could a dream feel so real? As she studied her palm, she could clearly see the crisscrossing lines and feel the sticky tackiness of a little sweat.

But enough of that.

She simply shut her eyes, steeled herself, and pinched her thigh as hard as she could.

“Gwaah!”

A deliberately muffled cry of pain rang out.

Su Tong sucked in a sharp breath. Rubbing her thigh, she marveled at how sensitive a little girl’s nerves were to pain. Once the burning sensation finally faded, she found herself looking up at the sky almost against her will.

The familiar strains of “You Are My Little Apple” blared in her ears, mixed with the shrill cicadas of midsummer. Familiar memories unfolded together, like pictures emerging from an old, yellowed photograph album.

She narrowed her eyes and sighed indifferently.

This sky, these clouds, this familiar sun—and the familiar taste of PM2.5 lingering in her nose…

There was no doubt about it.

She’d stepped off the stairs and crossed three decades in a single stride. One foot had landed in the future, thirty years from now; the next had brought her back—

to the little city of her memories, thirty years in the past.

She lowered her head again.

The memories of her distant childhood had long since crumbled into fragments. She could just barely remember a few things, but they were no use to her now. The one thing she could be grateful for was that she had no ties left.

Her parents had passed away. She’d never married, so there was no love she couldn’t bear to leave behind. She’d lived alone in a concrete jungle, and now she’d been reborn like this—but it still didn’t quite feel real.

Both parents dead, no wife, no house. She was the textbook reborn protagonist: alone and unattached, with nothing left to mourn. All on her own, with nothing to lose—just go for it…

That wasn’t so bad, was it?

She came to that conclusion and couldn’t help laughing. So she tipped her head back and laughed out loud.

Her laughter rang like silver bells.

The passersby had no idea what the little girl was so happy about, so they stared at her strangely as they went by.

Su Tong didn’t care.

After living two lives, her skin was so thick that no needle could pierce it and no bullet could get through. She just kept laughing to herself, until she was tired and finally wiped away her tears.

Then she started walking.

Time to make a getaway.

She’d already cried. What was the point of staying sad?

After all those years as a corporate drone, survival was etched into her DNA. Staying alive was enough. The rest could be left to time.

Even like this, she still had to eat, drink, use the bathroom, and sleep, didn’t she?

As long as she was alive, Su Tong was satisfied.

She had nothing on her that could tell her who she was, and she couldn’t figure out the identity of this body. She racked her brains, wringing every last childhood memory from her mind, but couldn’t remember ever seeing such a pretty, adorable little girl. So she decided to look around the neighborhood for clues.

There was always a way forward. Besides, she was reborn—surely she wouldn’t starve to death, no matter what.

So she walked on.

The huge locust tree from her memories. The nearby elementary school. The little store and baozi shop beside it, where the kind-faced auntie was always smiling…

Su Tong felt like a thread, stringing together the things from her childhood that had once shone brightest in her memories, one by one, bead by bead. She rearranged them, pieced them together, and somehow rebuilt them bit by bit, like stacking toy blocks, until she’d managed to piece together a whole childhood.

One place after another.

Her memories gradually returned. Perhaps it was the feeling of old scenes stirring old emotions; whatever the reason, the past thirty years slowly unfurled before her like a long scroll.

The memories lit up one by one as she made her way through them, until only the last one remained dim.

It was just ahead, around the corner at the end of the road.

Her steps suddenly grew heavy. She moved as cautiously as a thief, inching along with one hand against the wall. Her fingers brushed lightly over its colorful chalk marks.

Faded and colorful, with childish handwriting and silly doodles of big heads on tiny bodies. All sorts of marks crowded every inch, stretching from one end of the wall to the other.

Lost in thought, her vacant gaze rested on the chalk marks, which had almost completely faded. She didn’t notice the figure that suddenly appeared around the corner.

“Ow!”

Two cries of pain rang out in perfect unison.

Su Tong was hurt. With tears in her eyes, she crouched with her arms over her head and protested in a soft, childish voice:

“Hey! Who are you? Can’t you watch where you’re—”

But she cut herself off.

She looked up, frozen. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

The boy in front of her rubbed his head with a frown. The books in his arms spilled everywhere, revealing a face that seemed strangely familiar.

It was exactly like her own face in her memories.

His hair hadn’t been cut in ages and nearly covered his eyes. Plain black-rimmed glasses sat on his nose. He was all youthful awkwardness, dressed head to toe in nothing but unfashionable black and white.

He must have been hit, because the boy was holding his chin and moaning softly.

After studying him for a long while, Su Tong finally gave a bitter smile.

She’d known it. Two different people in the same timeline. A reunion between herself thirty years ago and herself thirty years later, appearing so abruptly right before her eyes.

She shook her head and sighed.

Hello, other…

me.

[To be continued]