Rain fell over the city. On an empty old street, Chen Ge and Zhang Ya stood together beneath an umbrella.
"The dreams were too real — as if the world inside them was the actual reality."
Looking into Zhang Ya's eyes, Chen Ge's lips parted slightly, but he ultimately didn't say what he wanted to say. After hesitating for a long while, he looked away. "I can't tell which side is real either. But it doesn't matter. No matter where we are, I'll stand by your side — inseparable, never apart."
Raindrops fell into puddles by the roadside, and the reflected neon lights rippled outward.
Zhang Ya leaned gently against Chen Ge. The pain she had been enduring all this time had never been shared with anyone. Now that she had finally spoken it aloud, the unease and fear in her heart slowly began to dissolve.
Neither of them wanted to break this fleeting moment of beauty. They walked together through the rain for a long distance.
The rain grew heavier. Chen Ge hailed a cab and saw Zhang Ya home.
When Zhang Ya got out of the car, she told Chen Ge one more thing.
Some time ago, a young man named Zhang Wenyu had come to visit the haunted house. He had looked no different from any other visitor, and it was only after Zhang Ya reviewed the liability waivers that she learned his name was Zhang Wenyu.
After Zhang Ya went inside, Chen Ge took a cab back to the theme park haunted house. He opened the cabinet where the liability waivers were stored and examined them one by one. In the end, he found twelve waivers bearing the name Zhang Wenyu.
"Judging by the dates, Zhang Wenyu appeared more and more frequently. Originally, it was once a week. But ever since I arrived at the haunted house, this name has been appearing on the waivers almost every day." Chen Ge was responsible for playing the ghost on the third floor, while Zhang Ya handled the visitors outside. Everyone had been too busy to pay attention to the names on the liability waivers.
"Zhang Wenyu has come looking for me. He may have already seen me." Chen Ge held the waivers and sat down beside the wooden table. "Why are there so many people named Zhang Wenyu? Zuo Han looked through the patient records in the night-shift doctor's on-duty room — why would tens of thousands of patients named Zhang Wenyu all appear on the same day?"
Pressing his temples, Chen Ge searched his mind but found no memories related to Zhang Wenyu. Those locked memory fragments had already been transferred into the glass jar. All that remained in his head were a few scattered, unlocked memories.
Gathering up all the waivers with Zhang Wenyu's name, Chen Ge headed toward the staff break room. As he passed the haunted house bathroom, he instinctively glanced inside — the stall door had been closed by someone again.
He pushed the stall door open without thinking, then entered the break room. Cradling the white cat, he watched the rain intensify outside the window.
"I've learned so much about the past, but not a single bit of it was beautiful."
Chen Ge raised his hand, as if reaching toward the night sky.
"Now I have the beauty I once desperately longed for, but time won't stop at this moment."
He picked up the white cat and gazed into its mismatched eyes. "If you were me, what would you choose?"
Chen Ge was asking the white cat, but he was also asking himself.
The downpour stopped in the latter half of the night, and after tossing and turning, Chen Ge finally fell asleep.
…
When he opened his eyes, sunlight was streaming through the window onto his face. Chen Ge rubbed his head and climbed out of bed. "A new day begins."
He got dressed and brought the white cat into the bathroom to wash up. When he looked up at the mirror, he noticed that the stall door behind him had been closed again at some point.
"I'm pretty sure I opened it before going to sleep last night? Why is it closed again now? Could the wind have blown it shut?"
Chen Ge pushed the stall door open once more and peered inside. It was just an ordinary toilet stall — nothing out of the ordinary.
"Something still feels off."
After tidying up quickly, Chen Ge opened the haunted house's protective barrier and began the day's operations.
Zhang Ya was the first to arrive for work. After their outing together the previous night, they had grown much closer.
Zhang Ya's parents seemed to be deliberately creating as many opportunities for the two of them to be alone as possible, and they didn't arrive at the haunted house until quite a bit later.
At nine in the morning, Xinhai Theme Park opened to the public, and visitors swarmed in, forming a long queue outside the haunted house.
Dressed as the killer, Chen Ge pulled back the curtain of a second-floor window and watched everything from the shadows.
Throughout the entire morning, nothing unusual happened inside the haunted house.
At lunchtime, Chen Ge — still in his killer costume — began reviewing the morning's liability waivers.
After visitors signed the waivers, they were stored sequentially inside the cabinets within the haunted house, so from their placement, one could roughly estimate when each visitor had come.
Chen Ge had only flipped through two when he froze. The waiver he was holding bore the name Zhang Wenyu.
"He can't have gone far!"
He took the waiver to Zhang Ya. After thinking for a moment, she said the person who had signed it was a middle-aged man — refined, with a sharp gaze that made it uncomfortable to meet his eyes.
Having gotten a rough idea of the man's appearance, Chen Ge charged out of the haunted house, still in his costume, his entire body splattered with red paint — a terrifying sight. "Zhang Wenyu. Where would he be?"
He crossed the tree-lined path and stopped at the intersection in the middle of the park. There were far too many visitors around. Even with his excellent eyesight, it was nearly impossible to spot one person in the crowd.
"He keeps coming to the haunted house, so he must want to see me. But why doesn't he leave some kind of message?"
He stood at the intersection for a long time, and just as he was about to give up, he noticed a man sitting in the corner of the park's themed restaurant, watching him.
"Is that him?"
Without hesitation, Chen Ge walked straight into the restaurant with the waiver in hand and sat down beside the man.
Studying the man up close, a sense of familiarity washed over Chen Ge. He felt he had found the right person.
"Long time no see." The middle-aged man took a sip of coffee from his cup and leaned back in his chair.
"Long time no see? This should be our first time meeting." Chen Ge placed the waiver on the table. "You're Zhang Wenyu?"
"I'm a part of Zhang Wenyu. You can call me..." The man tapped his fingers on the table, thought for a moment, and said: "The Writer."
"The Writer?"
"It seems you really don't remember anything." The middle-aged man stood up abruptly, as though he had sensed something wrong and was preparing to leave immediately.
"Wait — don't go. Can we sit down and talk?"