Her heavy eyelids lifted, but her eyes couldn’t focus.

Her nose picked up a pleasant scent. The blanket covering her carried a warm, comforting fragrance, and the air itself seemed to hold a faint, familiar sweetness.

Cicadas sang loudly from the trees outside, like a natural wake-up call.

Slowly, Jiang Xi’s consciousness returned.

She raised her hand to rub her eyes and found it taped—someone had hooked her up to an IV drip.

Where was she?

Jiang Xi yanked off the tape and needle and sat up in bed. She looked around in confusion. The layout of the room looked very familiar, but the furnishings were quite different from what she remembered.

Then her eyes landed on a grown man asleep in a rattan recliner, and everything clicked.

Wearing pajamas, Lin Jia was dozing off with his eyes closed in the recliner. The floor around him and the nearby shelves were filled with potted plants. He looked perfectly at ease, cuddling a large, snow-white cat.

—This was Lin Jia’s home, without a doubt.

She had just been eating dinner in his living room!

…So, was that whole transmigration experience just a dream?

Jiang Xi didn’t think so. Dreams were abstract and chaotic, but her experience of becoming “8-year-old Jiang Xiaochan” had been vivid down to the last detail. It felt far too real.

Now she was back in the real world? Before she fainted, Jiang Xi remembered getting out of a taxi and collapsing into the bushes near her home. How did she end up in Lin Jia’s house?

Her head was foggy. She felt like she needed to wash her face to clear it.

Getting out of bed—

She noticed her clothes had been changed. She was now wearing pink pajamas, a girls’ version that matched the ones Lin Jia had on. It was clearly a couple’s set.

And her original clothes were folded neatly on the nightstand, her phone resting on top.

Jiang Xi scooped up her clothes in one arm, and as she did, a picture frame on the nightstand came into view.

She recognized both people in the photo—Lin Jia and Jiang Xiaochan.

Lin Jia was on the left side of the frame, smiling faintly, his neck dotted with various shades of kiss marks. Jiang Xiaochan sat on his lap, holding the white cat. Her hair reached her waist, and she wore a small camisole and gray lace-trimmed shorts. Her long legs were confidently exposed, radiating youthful energy.

But Jiang Xiaochan wasn’t smiling.

She looked coolly at the camera, her expression full of disdain, like she might pull a gun on you the next second.

Jiang Xi couldn’t help staring at the photo a bit longer. Then she hugged the frame together with her clothes and went into the bathroom.

She dunked her face into cold water. The slight sting cleared her mind.

The mirror reflected a face Jiang Xi was familiar with.

Phoenix eyes, fine eyebrows, pale skin, jet-black hair. She looked haggard, but otherwise no different from usual.

Leaning on the sink, Jiang Xi began checking her phone.

There were many unread WeChat messages from her makeup studio. Her coworkers had noticed she hadn’t shown up and hadn’t taken any new clients. They were asking if she had partied too hard for her birthday and when she planned to return to work.

Jiang Xi typed and deleted replies several times before finally sending one that said she wanted to take some time off.

After replying to work messages, she backed out of the app and noticed Lin Jia’s name in her chat list. She tapped in—it seemed they had only just added each other. There was only one message from him, a simple greeting.

Then, a message from her mobile service provider popped up, welcoming her to Maocheng—sent two days ago.

Today was July 21st.

Jiang Xi was a little surprised. She had actually been unconscious for two whole days.

Other than that, nothing else seemed strange.

Because the experience of transmigrating felt so real, there was a moment when Jiang Xi had a wild thought: maybe she had traveled to the past and changed something—like… blocking that knife meant for Lin Jia from his father. So, when she returned to reality, something had changed, and that’s why she woke up in Lin Jia’s bed.

But reason told Jiang Xi it couldn’t be that.

Lin Jia had added her on WeChat on the 19th, which clearly meant they were still just a one-night stand kind of connection. She had no reason to be at his home—unless he brought her here after she fainted.

If that was the case, it meant Lin Jia had followed her car after she left the hotel.

That thought made Jiang Xi uneasy.

This whole transmigration experience made it seem not impossible that she and Lin Jia had known each other in the past.

Home, her mother, Jiang Xiaochan—those memories were all fuzzy or even missing in her mind. If Lin Jia had been her neighbor and was important to Jiang Xiaochan, then it made sense that she had forgotten about him too.

Thinking of that, Jiang Xi picked up the photo frame she had seen earlier.

She studied the photo carefully, hoping it might jog her memory.

With one glance, she keenly noticed a few faint blue marks on the white fur of the cat.

She took the photo out of the frame and flipped it over…

Just as she expected, there was writing on the back.

The first line, scrawled messily and crookedly:
“All the bad things were because you forced me.”

The second line, in a completely different, neat and forceful handwriting:
“Let’s die together in the summer.”

“Hiss…” Jiang Xi drew in a sharp breath after reading it.

The first line was written by Jiang Xiaochan. The second was written by Lin Jia.

This conclusion didn’t come from logic, but from a kind of mental reflex. She was very familiar with both of their handwriting.

Did he force Jiang Xiaochan to do something terrible?

Was Jiang Xiaochan’s death… driven by Lin Jia?

A wave of unease and irritation surged inside her.

Jiang Xi couldn’t sit still. She had a bad feeling and wanted to leave Lin Jia’s place immediately.

She quickly got changed and tiptoed out of the bathroom.

She did want to check what kind of IV medication Lin Jia had given her—but the bed was too close to where he was lying on the recliner, and she didn’t dare go over.

Jiang Xi did her best to make as little noise as possible while leaving.

Luckily, both Lin Jia and the cat were sleeping soundly.

She made it out without waking him.

At two in the afternoon, the sun was blazing and waves of heat rolled through the air.

Jiang Xi raised a hand to shield her forehead from the sun and slowly walked toward the street.

As she walked, something started to feel familiar. This road… it was the same one from the end of her transmigration dream—the one she and her “sister” had walked on to go home. They had just reached the house when she woke up back in the present.

She looked up—and sure enough, Jiang Xi saw her old house.

The exterior looked quite different now. Jiang Xi studied it carefully and walked closer.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to do this, but her hand was already knocking on the door.

The person who opened it was not who she had expected.

A slightly plump, unfamiliar middle-aged woman stood inside.

“Who are you looking for?” the woman asked.

“I… I’m looking for…”

Jiang Xi hesitated, unsure how to respond.

The woman found her a bit odd and started closing the door.

“Wait, please hold on.”

She suddenly remembered that she had tucked three hundred yuan in cash behind her phone case.

Taking out the money and stuffing it into the auntie’s hand, Jiang Xi asked, “Do you know where the people who used to live here went? I’m looking for them.”

The auntie clutched the three large bills like they were a hot potato.

“I don’t know. I’ve only been renting this place for a few months. This house had been empty for a long time; no one wanted to live in it. I only moved in because it was cheap.”

Jiang Xi murmured, “No one wanted to live here? Why?”

The auntie glanced at the money in her hand, then looked around and leaned in to whisper.

“I heard it from people in town… The daughter who lived here before committed suicide, and the elderly mother jumped off the building with her.”

“Mm.” Jiang Xi wasn’t too surprised. “So who did you rent the house from?”

“This is Xiao Lin’s house. He lives right over there.”

The auntie pointed to a small house not far away. It was the very one Jiang Xi had just escaped from.

She gave a strained smile. “That’s really close. Does he come by often?”

Rubbing the money in her hands, the auntie replied, “All the time. He helps me fix up the place.”

“What kind of person is Xiao Lin?” Jiang Xi asked, sounding casual.

Now that she’d pocketed the money without hesitation, the auntie spoke freely.

“He’s really nice, but also pretty intimidating. Xiao Lin runs a restaurant in town—business is good, and he draws a lot of attention. He was in prison before, so no one dares mess with him. You could say he’s the local tyrant around here.”

“Been to prison, a local tyrant… does that mean he bullies people?” Jiang Xi wasn’t sure if she and the auntie shared the same definition of the term.

The auntie gave a light cough and didn’t answer.

A tall figure suddenly blocked the sunlight, casting a shadow over where she stood. Someone had arrived.

“If you want to know about me,” a voice said, “you can just ask me directly.”

Jiang Xi turned around.

Lin Jia was standing right behind her.