Chapter 296 - 128: That Four-Leaf Clover Pendant Never Falls (Part 1)

Chapter 296: Chapter 128: That Four-Leaf Clover Pendant Never Falls (Part 1)

I’m back.

I’m really back.

Zhang Shutong thought, staring blankly at the ceiling of his hospital room.

This time, the regression had sent him eight years into the future for reasons he didn’t understand, and now he was back, just as inexplicably.

But he had no time to ponder the reasons. The hallway was growing noisy, and Zhang Shutong fought to stay conscious. He glanced again at the digital calendar on the wall.

Sunday morning, after the avalanche.

Four o’clock sharp.

The long-haired woman had already been taken away by Lu Qinglian.

He’d been brought to the hospital in Ruoping’s father’s car.

It was still dark out.

’Why did I come back to this specific moment?’

He could no longer predict how his regression ability worked based on past patterns. But one thing remained constant: he always returned to an "important juncture" right before a major event.

’So, what is this juncture?’

Previously, he had woken up on Monday and spent a week in an off-island hospital. Now, he was awake an entire day earlier.

’What did I miss during that one day?’

Zhang Shutong urgently tried to sit up, but the moment he had the thought, he realized his body wouldn’t obey. All he could do was move his eyes. Tubes snaked from his arms, an oxygen mask covered half his face, and a monitor by his bedside displayed incomprehensible waveforms.

He realized he was at his most vulnerable, having just been pulled back from the brink of death. Trying to do anything was a pipe dream. He lay in bed, frustrated, trying to speak, but only hoarse, discordant syllables escaped his lips.

Exhaustion, pain, drowsiness... He knew he could pass out at any second. He stopped struggling and let out a long sigh.

’What in the world is it?’

A doctor quickly ran over. He watched as the man pulled out a penlight and roughly pried open his eyelid. He instinctively tried to shut his eye, but the doctor held it firmly open as a beam of light shot into his pupil.

"Can you hear me? If you can, open your mouth."

Zhang Shutong moved his lips.

Next, the doctor pressed down above his eye, and the pain made him frown. Then he lifted his hand... After a series of checks that left Zhang Shutong on the verge of passing out again, the doctor finally instructed the nurse behind him:

"Everything is normal, he’s finally out of danger. This kid is just too weak and needs rest. Don’t let his classmates get near him for now. Just notify the family."

"Okay."

The doctor left, and the nurse came to his bedside.

It was that young nurse.

The young nurse blinked.

"Do you still remember your name?"

"Zhang..."

"Good, as long as you remember."

’I wasn’t finished...’ Zhang Shutong thought weakly. ’What if I’d said my name was Zhang Jiahui?’

He couldn’t believe he was still in the mood to crack a joke. But for Zhang Shutong, nothing was more wonderful than being back from eight years in the future.

"Anything else you want to say?" the young nurse asked, seeing he still had his eyes open.

"Qingyi..."

"Who? A classmate of yours? That girl you brought back?"

The young nurse was a chatterbox. Her questions didn’t stop her from walking to the door of the hospital room.

"Who’s Qingyi? Do your classmates want to see you?"

Zhang Shutong couldn’t see what was happening at the door. He could only tell from the sounds that a lot of people were there—he heard the voices of Ruoping, Gu Qiuyan, and Qingyi. Ruoping seemed to be holding up a phone on speaker, from which a woman’s anxious voice was coming.

His thoughts were all a beat behind. By the time he recognized the voice on the phone as his mom’s, a young man was already at his bedside.

The young man sighed and leaned in, putting his ear close to Zhang Shutong’s mouth.

"I’m listening."

"Gu... Qiuyan."

"You want to see her?"

"Send... her... back."

Qingyi thought for a moment.

"I get it. You mean send her back before her family finds out?"

Zhang Shutong couldn’t nod; he could only move his eyes.

"Any other instructions?"

"...Don’t leave the island."

"You mean, for us to stay here?"

"Mhm."

"And?"

Zhang Shutong closed his eyes.

When Qingyi left, he seemed to have closed the door.

This time, the hospital room became completely quiet.

He forced his eyelids open again, staring at the ceiling. ’Is there anything else I forgot to tell them?’ he wondered.

But Zhang Shutong racked his brain and could only come up with those two things. Since it was 4 AM, Gu Qiuyan probably hadn’t called her dad yet, and the people at the villa would still be asleep. And then there was the instruction not to leave the island. Even if he was stuck in the hospital, he had to make sure he stayed on the island.

Zhang Shutong wanted to wait for Qingyi’s reply. He had asked him first because Ruoping and Gu Qiuyan could be a bit emotional sometimes.

He actually would have preferred to ask his mom for help, but they were on the phone, and he might not have been able to explain things clearly.

These two matters were both difficult and simple. Zhang Shutong fought to stay awake, but his eyelids still slowly closed.

His consciousness faded to black.

...

A dark, snowy night.

Zhang Shutong was back on that Ring Mountain Road.

He twisted the throttle and plunged into the middle of the road, but the avalanche didn’t happen as expected.

Instead, he and his motorcycle crashed to the ground.

The long-haired woman approached, step by step.

But worse, the motorcycle was pinning him down. He tried to break free, but the motorcycle was so, so heavy, and he couldn’t push it at all. Gradually, he began to have trouble breathing.

’Damn it, damn it, damn it!’

He used all his strength but still couldn’t push the motorcycle off.

Finally, the long-haired woman stood before him.

Zhang Shutong woke with a start.

He gasped for air, the first thing he saw was an unfamiliar ceiling.

For a moment, he was dazed.

’Where am I?’

’The hospital?’

’That’s right. I came back from eight years in the future, gave some instructions, and passed out. I’m safe now.’

This thought made his whole body relax.

A ray of sunlight playfully slipped into his eyes.

It seemed he had finally said goodbye to that snowy night. His senses began to clear. It was quiet everywhere. He smelled the disinfectant in the hospital room, and within it, he found a familiar scent.

Zhang Shutong smelled Gu Qiuyan’s scent.

He was usually oblivious to smells, unable to distinguish between perfume, shower gel, or body lotion. Yet, for some reason, he had memorized the exact scent of Gu Qiuyan.

If sunlight had a scent, hers would be the warm, damp air of sunshine after a rain. It could be vague—who knows what sunlight really smells like, maybe just the scent of sun-baked dust mites—or it could be very specific: soil, plants, and dust, all having their own unique fragrance after a downpour.

Zhang Shutong looked up. Gu Qiuyan was slumped over the side of his bed, her head resting on the white, striped sheets.

It was daytime, and she seemed to be asleep. Her eyelashes trembled faintly with each breath. Outside the window, a tree’s branches swayed in the wind, and sunlight filtering through the leaves danced in her hair.

A four-leaf clover hair charm dangled from the ends of her hair.

And now Zhang Shutong understood where that motorcycle crushing him in his dream had come from.

It wasn’t a motorcycle at all. It was Gu Qiuyan.

Zhang Shutong wiggled his fingers, wanting to push her head away, but he couldn’t. His left arm was in a splint. ’Oh, right,’ he remembered, ’a hairline fracture.’

’So I wasn’t meant to die in an avalanche, but to be crushed to death by Gu Qiuyan herself? That’s a pretty depressing way to go.’

He suddenly sighed. ’You’re such a handful,’ he thought. ’Even my nightmares are about you.’

Zhang Shutong didn’t wake her. He looked at the digital calendar:

Sunday, December 9th.

1:20 PM.

It was Sunday afternoon.

Zhang Shutong breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes heavily again.

The third time he woke up, it was his mom calling his name.

The sunlight wasn’t as bright as it had been earlier.

Gu Qiuyan was also gone.

It was later in the afternoon.

His mom’s eyes were a little red when she saw him. She said it was all her fault, that she shouldn’t have left him alone to go off-island. "It’s okay, Mom," Zhang Shutong said. "See? I’m fine."

He lifted his hand and found it wasn’t very convincing.

His mom was heartbroken. In the end, his dad had to pull her away. His dad ruffled his hair:

"Rest up and get well."

That afternoon, Zhang Shutong saw a lot of people.

He truly felt sick, not because of how bad his body felt, but because of all the people who came to visit him.

His best friends came to see him. First up was Ruoping.

"We never should have gone along with your crazy plan," Ruoping said, her voice full of regret. "It would’ve been better if you’d just stayed in the hospital yesterday. Instead, we got you hurt."

"Don’t worry," he said. "I’ll take my medicine and follow the doctor’s orders this time."

The doctor had said he wasn’t in a state to be disturbed, so no one stayed for long.

Du Kang was the second one.

"How’d you end up in here too, man?" he said. "Don’t go off on your own next time. Call us if you need anything."

"Got it," Zhang Shutong said. "Next time, I’ll try to call you guys for help."

"You know, anywhere outside the Second Ring Road really isn’t a good place," Zhang Shutong added after a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"But a rooftop is nice, too. Feeling the breeze, drinking some beer... maybe we’ll get the chance someday."

Du Kang muttered, "Oh great, Shutong’s slept himself silly," and left.

The last one was Qingyi.

Zhang Shutong earnestly advised him to hurry up and ask a girl out if he found someone suitable, and not to get so hung up on Masked Rider and Ultraman.

"I don’t think you’re in any position to be giving me advice on this, Shutong," Qingyi said with a sigh, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I just remembered something. Didn’t Gu Qiuyan go home? Why was she still here this afternoon?"

"Oh, that’s a bit of a long story. Ruoping’s dad gave her a ride, and I went along. She called her nanny, and since her bodyguard was asleep in the car, she slipped into the house without any trouble. That was this morning. Then she told her family a classmate was in the hospital and she wanted to visit. Ruoping and I stayed all morning, but we were exhausted, so we went home to get some sleep. Gu Qiuyan stayed through midday, but you didn’t wake up, so she left, saying she’d come back this afternoon. That’s the gist of it."

"Thanks a lot."

"Don’t thank me. I didn’t really do much. I didn’t even have to persuade her. I thought it was going to be a huge pain, but as soon as I walked out of your room and told her you had a message for her, she just asked me very seriously what she could do. When I told her you wanted her to go home, she just left. You really think she’s more impulsive than she is."

Zhang Shutong nodded, then said:

"Sorry for messing up your motorcycle."

"It’s not really broken, just the rearview mirror is shattered."

"So resilient."

"You’re pretty resilient too." Qingyi paused. "Looks like you’re about to become a cautionary tale."

"What do you mean?"

"Riding a motorcycle out to have fun in the middle of the night, only to get buried in snow. It’ll probably be an example in this year’s winter break safety manual. ’Student Zhang from class so-and-so did such-and-such,’ something like that."

"Whatever. I’m definitely not writing a self-reflection essay about it, anyway," Zhang Shutong said, feeling tired.

Qingyi started peeling a tangerine.

"But you actually ran into something terrifying, didn’t you?"

’Hey, man,’ Zhang Shutong thought, ’is that eighth-grade syndrome of yours omniscient or something?’

"I took a look at the motorcycle’s rearview mirror. The damage wasn’t from the crash. It looks more like... someone smashed it." Qingyi said thoughtfully while eating a piece of tangerine. "And it’s not just the motorcycle. You passed out near the villa. The tracks showing your route to the villa, the second set of footprints, the mirror fragments... they’re all a long way from where the avalanche happened. Shutong, don’t think you’ve hidden things as well as you think."

"You know everything?"

"Correction: *we* know," Qingyi said. "I know, Ruoping knows, Du Kang knows, your parents know, Gu Qiuyan knows, and even her dad knows. You don’t get to be the unsung hero this time."