Zhang Shutong instinctively pressed the pause button.
A fox. Another fox...
That sorrowful fox...
He then picked up his phone and dialed Qingyi's number.
Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
"How are things on your end? You suddenly hung up just now."
"..." Zhang Shutong saw the goosebumps on his arms and felt his throat tighten. "That day we went to the tunnel to clear debris, after Ruoping went home—I mean that night—what happened on her end?"
"Let me think. I wanted to see how she was doing after dinner, but I knocked on the door for a long time and nobody answered, even though the lights in her living room were still on... So I gave you a call to ask if you two were together. You remember, right?"
"I remember." Zhang Shutong instinctively stood up from his chair. None of this deviated from his memory. "And then?"
Qingyi recalled:
"And then..."
Zhang Shutong gripped his phone tightly, instinctively holding his breath.
From the other side of the receiver, Qingyi's voice slowly rose:
"I gave Du Kang a call too, and only then did I find out that he had gone out for dinner with Ruoping's family."
Zhang Shutong's mind went completely blank with a buzz.
He had completely confirmed his conjecture.
No wonder Qingyi knew nothing.
No wonder both he and Ruoping's mother felt that nothing out of the ordinary had happened from their perspectives.
No one had lied. Instead—
Du Kang's movements had changed!
He hadn't gone with Qingyi to check on Ruoping; instead, he had gone straight out to dinner with her family.
It was this timeline that had changed!
"What about before that?" Zhang Shutong pressed further. "What was Du Kang doing that day?"
"Helping out at the restaurant, I suppose. He couldn't come with us to the tunnel, and then you went to the restaurant to look for him around noon, Shutong. I think that's how it went?"
That was exactly how it went.
All of this was identical to his memory. That day, because he had seen Su Yunzhi, he had run to the restaurant and crossed paths with Du Kang. It matched down to the last detail—except at that exact point in time that evening, Du Kang's movements had changed.
And then he and Ruoping had cut ties.
And all of this was highly likely related to that sorrowful fox.
Zhang Shutong couldn't help but feel his skin crawl as he thought of that eerie children's song.
The final line of the lyrics had already confirmed that the past had been altered.
In that case, what did "a pair of ears, a single leg" refer to?
The former was Lu Qinglian's ears. What about the latter? Whose leg was it?
"Hey, hey, Shutong, can you hear me?" Qingyi asked.
"Did any of us ever have a leg injury?"
"A leg... You mean the four of us? No such thing happened, right?"
"What about the people we know around us?"
"Doesn't seem like it either. What do you mean?"
"Just like Lu Qinglian's ears..."
Before Zhang Shutong could finish his sentence, a raspy voice suddenly came from behind him:
"Good girl, don't cry. It'll be okay—"
He whirled around instantly and looked down at his feet. The parrot was happily mimicking inside its cage.
"What's going on over there?" Qingyi asked hurriedly.
"Nothing, I'm at Ruoping's house. It's a parrot. It suddenly squawked for some reason. Hanging up first..." Zhang Shutong was dazed for a split second before recalling Ruoping mentioning that her family's parrot was extraordinary. Not only could it mimic phrases, but if you spoke the first line, it would remember the next.
So... He knit his brows. What did that sentence just now mean?
It sounded like Ruoping had previously brought up Lu Qinglian's ears to her parents and had been comforted by them.
Did this parrot catch a similar keyword from his mouth, which triggered the next line?
A thought blossomed in Zhang Shutong's mind because of this.
"...Leg."
The parrot stared at him with its wide eyes.
As expected.
He tested it further:
"How's the leg?"
The parrot still didn't say a word. He tried a few other combinations, but the parrot merely began to mimic his own words instead. Zhang Shutong didn't know if this parrot was too dumb, or if Ruoping simply hadn't mentioned any relevant information in front of it.
Zhang Shutong felt somewhat disappointed. This parrot was like a phonograph; you needed the correct password to open it, but that was the best-case assumption, and it couldn't be ruled out that it simply hadn't recorded those sounds at all.
Zhang Shutong let out a breath and stopped paying attention to it.
He put his headphones back on, preparing to listen to that children's song once more to see if he could extract any other information. Zhang Shutong pressed the replay button. Following a brief silence, a female voice hummed a cheerful and light melody:
"Look, look, look for a friend..."
Zhang Shutong paused it.
Holding his breath and concentrating his mind, he hit play again.
"Find a good friend..."
Pause.
Up to this point, it was just an ordinary children's song. If there was any anomaly to speak of, it was only a faint static noise mixed into the background.
The lyrics repeated once, and then the static grew louder. The female voice became somewhat fleeting, drifting in and out, sounding as if she were right by your ear, yet also very far away:
"Look, look, look for a fox, find a small fox. Bow and shake hands, it gazes at you sorrowfully..."
"A pair of ears, a single leg. The change is hidden within the past~"
"Look, look, look for a fox, find a small fox. Bow and shake hands, it gazes at you joyfully..."
"..."
"..."
How... was there more?
Zhang Shutong shuddered.
He hadn't misheard. The lyrics no longer said sorrowful, but joyful, instantly reminding Zhang Shutong of that wide-grinning fox. His breathing stalled for a split second.
"Deep breath when anxious, run and run in a hurry~"
The woman's previously somewhat downcast voice turned joyful, but Zhang Shutong didn't even have time to carefully ponder the meaning of the lyrics. Instead, an incredible thought surfaced in his mind: this song didn't just mention a single fox, but just like that rock relief wall, there were a total of five!
He didn't even care to press the pause button, only wanting to verify this conjecture immediately.
"Look, look, look for a fox, find a small fox. Bow and shake hands, it gazes at you fearfully..."
"Cover your eyes and cover your mouth, do not tell it the secret~"
The third one.
"Look, look, look for a fox, find a small fox. Bow and shake hands, it gazes at you hatefully..."
"The dead shall rise, blood drops down one by one~"
The fourth one. Zhang Shutong tightened his fist. Then the next one would be—
"Look, look, look for a fox, find a dead fox..."
He pressed the pause button once more.
A dead fox?
The five foxes were five sculptures. Why would there be a "dead fox"?
Zhang Shutong pressed the play button again, but the static that had been faintly hidden in the background suddenly surged, completely drowning out the lyrics:
"...find a dead fox, don't find... evil... destroy... five foxes return together, the mystery unfolds in your heart~"
Zhang Shutong tried his best to discern the meaning of the lyrics. He seemed to understand the final line, which said to place all five foxes on the altar, but the intermediate information had been completely drowned out. Don't find it? Evil? Destroy? What on earth was this?
The singing stopped.
Only a blanket of silence remained in his ears.
Zhang Shutong stared out the window in silence as the static sizzled. One second, two seconds, three seconds... She said with a smile:
"Let's leave it at that. If you know too much, you won't be able to re-turn."
At this exact moment, Zhang Shutong's heartbeat skipped a beat.
Who exactly was she, and why did she know these things... Zhang Shutong gazed at the MP3 player. It was purple-red, with a few scratches on its plastic casing.
Zhang Shutong had initially assumed it hid the most important clue of this timeline, but he hadn't expected it to be the whereabouts of the five foxes. Countless coincidences amounted to an inevitability, yet within that inevitability, it only seemed to tell him one thing—
And that was to find all five foxes.
He didn't know how long he had been sitting on the chair. The raucous chirping of the cicadas made him raise his head. Leaning against the back of the chair, Zhang Shutong stared abstractedly out the window. The smiling fox had already been found, and next would be that sorrowful fox.
When it came down to it, he still needed to figure out what had happened back then.
He didn't linger in his bewilderment for long, forcefully pulling his attention back as he filtered out a few keywords.
Ears, leg, Lu Qinglian, Du Kang, Ruoping, the altered past...
He typed these words into his memo app, trying to piece something together, before closing the windows and doors tightly and dialing Qingyi back.
"I say, Shutong, what exactly did you discover after going back this time?" Qingyi's tone was very helpless. "You can't just suddenly hang up on me again."
"I had a conjecture just now, and now I have a bit of a lead," Zhang Shutong also let out a sigh, saying out of habit, "Sorry, sorry..."
And it said:
"Du Kang, you shouldn't have used it to save me."
With a thud, the phone fell onto the desk.
Dead silence.
Only the chirping of the cicadas remained by his ear. Aided by the remaining glow of the setting sun, Zhang Shutong stared open-mouthed at the parrot. He seemed to have inadvertently found the key to unlock the past, but this answer caused his mind to short-circuit.
Or rather, everything suddenly became clear.
"Du Kang, you shouldn't have used it to save me. Du Kang, you shouldn't have used it to save me..."
The parrot squawked noisily, as if this sentence had also been bottled up in its heart for a very long time.
A parrot mimicking phrases could only project a single tone regardless of the words spoken, but this nonsensical sentence caused Zhang Shutong to recall what Ruoping's mother had said not long ago—that one day when she returned home, she had caught Ruoping and Du Kang in the middle of an argument.
Perhaps the parrot had memorized this dialogue back then.
An injured leg.
No wonder Qingyi didn't know whose leg had been injured either. But the reason they had no lead might be as simple as could be—solely because this past had already been altered?
But relying on this alone made it difficult to deduce the full picture of the matter. If anything, the questions only multiplied. Just then, the phone vibrated again, and Zhang Shutong picked it up to look.
It was a call from Du Kang.
The other party had actually chosen to dial back.
Zhang Shutong pressed the answer button. Amidst the silence, he could hear the other party's heavy panting.
"You discovered it, didn't you? That fox in the doghouse?" Du Kang said urgently, completely stripped of his usual cheerful demeanor.
Zhang Shutong gave an "mm."
Du Kang apologized, saying:
"Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to ignore your call just now. I was just a bit unprepared... I know you must have a pile of questions waiting to ask me. I, I..."
"Is it convenient for you to talk right now?" Zhang Shutong interrupted.
"Yes. I ran to a park only after seeing your call to find a quiet spot. Ask away. I've hidden it for long enough, and I truly don't want to hide it anymore." Du Kang's voice carried a sense of relief instead. "You saw Lu Qinglian today, right? What else did you discover?"
"That wooden plaque. The one you wrote."
"Shutong, let me explain first...
"I know." Zhang Shutong interrupted him once more. "This matter isn't as simple as it looks on the surface, is it? Ruoping's leg was injured once, that's correct too, isn't it? But this history was altered."
"...You really discovered it."
After a prolonged pause, Du Kang seemed to make up his mind:
"Shutong, do you believe in time regressions?"
...
Zhang Shutong opened his mouth soundlessly.
But before he could speak, Du Kang acted as if a long-sealed chatterbox had been opened, speaking without a single pause:
"Whether you believe it or not, I have to tell you now that this matter is real. The time and space we are currently in is a time and space that has been altered once. Really, believe me, Shutong, I'm not lying..."
"I believe you."
"If I'm lying, may I get hit by a car on the way back... Uh?" Du Kang was a bit dazed. "You believe me just like that?"
"...Keep talking."
"In fact, you've already guessed most of it." His voice suddenly dropped low. "But you and Qingyi could absolutely never imagine that on the timeline I spoke of, Ruoping's leg was actually amputated."
"Ampu... tated?"
Zhang Shutong felt his heart leap.
"Amputated. An accidental injury sustained during our fourth year of middle school, and then she became disabled. I know your mind must be a complete mess right now. In fact, I don't know where to begin either... The fox, yes, that fox sculpture. Shutong, don't look down on that sculpture. That's a fox capable of altering the past!" Du Kang said urgently. "No matter how incredible you find it, I can responsibly tell you now that I used this fox to alter the past on the night of December 16th, the day you guys went to the tunnel to clear debris! To save Ruoping!"
"How was Ruoping injured that night?" Zhang Shutong asked reflexively.
He couldn't help but care. If his guess was correct, he would return to that exact night, so knowing what had happened to Ruoping was crucial; only then could he prevent this accident.
"It wasn't that night," Du Kang said instead.
"What?" Zhang Shutong froze.
"It happened a week later, but I can't remember which day it was either... Oh, right, Christmas. You remember Christmas, right? Every December 25th, it was right around then," Du Kang said. "Right before Christmas, on the original timeline, Ruoping ran into that man from the basement. That bastard wanted to steal the fox sculpture, and while Ruoping was trying to protect it, her leg happened to get crushed by concrete..."
"Wait, wait, wait..." Zhang Shutong's mind was a bit chaotic. "The fox, the man from the basement? Clear things up for me?"
He could never have imagined that the progression of this timeline was actually this fast.
"Forgot that you guys don't know about this anymore. Let me think how to phrase it..."
"I'll ask, you answer." Zhang Shutong knit his brows tightly. "I know about the person from the basement. Who is he? What's his identity?"
"Don't know. His specific identity and motive—not just me, but all five of us are completely in the dark," Du Kang said deeply. "Even the fact that that person was the owner of the basement was something you deduced after the fact..."
Zhang Shutong asked again:
"Then why was the fox sculpture in Ruoping's hands? Shouldn't it be on the altar?"
"The one you're talking about is that smiling fox. The one I'm talking about is the one that looks very sorrowful, the one in the doghouse..."
"In less than a week, we discovered a second one?" Zhang Shutong asked in surprise.
"We didn't discover it. In fact, Ruoping was the one who discovered it," Du Kang said hesitantly. "She discovered that fox on the night of December 16th. It was exactly at that time that she was targeted by that man. Oh, forgot to tell you, on the original timeline, I actually didn't look for Ruoping to hitch a meal; instead, I went beneath her building with Qingyi to look for her, only to find no one home."
"Then what originally happened that night?" Zhang Shutong only wanted to figure out why Ruoping's house had the lights on but no one home.
"In fact, they just went out for a meal, they had just forgotten to turn off the lights," Du Kang explained. "I don't know if you can understand, but the event of eating a meal remains unchanged. You still remember, right? Her head got bumped that day and she went back crying, so her mother took her to the commercial street for a meal to comfort her?"
"Are you saying the fact that no one was home was just a false alarm?"
"Yes," Du Kang replied.
"Then how was she targeted?"
"Shutong, in fact, it has to do with you. Remember that text message, right?..." Du Kang uttered a seemingly nonsensical sentence. "It was when Qingyi gave you a call saying he wanted to apologize to her, and then you composed a text message. Do you remember this matter?"
Zhang Shutong naturally remembered; it was right before he went to return the fox sculpture.
The content of the text message was that they had found a rock wall carved with a fox, and that he would visit her home to see her later when he was free, or something along those lines.
But he had only remembered after composing it that there was no signal in the tunnel, so he had tossed the phone into his pocket first.
"In fact, that tunnel doesn't lack signal completely..." Du Kang swallowed a mouthful of saliva. "That text message was sent out by you."
Zhang Shutong's eyelids jumped.
"That night, on her way to dinner, Ruoping discovered the second fox. Originally, she didn't think much of it, but precisely because of that text message, she ran back out halfway through her meal to look for it. She managed to retrieve the fox smoothly, but it was exactly at that time that she was targeted by the man from the basement."
Du Kang fell silent for a brief moment:
"There are two critical points in time for why Ruoping became disabled: one was being targeted by the man on the night of the 16th, and the other was getting injured right before Christmas.
"I know you must want to ask why I returned to a point in time further back instead of right before she got injured, but that sorrowful fox doesn't let a person physically return to the past. It functions more like a wish-granting machine; you make a wish to it regarding a past regret, and by the time you snap back to reality, history has been altered. It wasn't something I could decide on my own.
"So it was also only after all of this was altered that I found out the fox made 'me' go look for Ruoping to hitch a meal, taking the fox away ahead of time on the way, which eliminated the matter of being targeted by that man. Afterward, that fox was hidden away by me."
It took Zhang Shutong a good long while to digest the information in this passage. No wonder on this timeline, he, Qingyi, and Lu Qinglian knew nothing about the second fox; it turned out the past had been altered silently and imperceptibly.
But he immediately thought that these weren't reasons for Du Kang to hide it. Logically speaking, saving Ruoping was a massive achievement; this kid should be bragging about it left and right, so how could he have hidden it for a full five years? Not to mention there was still that wooden plaque carved with "sorry" and his guilt toward Lu Qinglian.
Coupled with the parrot's words:
"Du Kang, you shouldn't have used it to save me."
Zhang Shutong instantly formed a conjecture:
"So... using that fox comes with a price? Which is Lu Qinglian's ears?"
To his surprise, Du Kang smiled bitterly:
"No, Shutong, you finally guessed wrong once. If it were like that... I wouldn't have hidden it for this long. If I had done such a bastardly thing, I wouldn't have the face to see everyone either.
"Lu Qinglian's ears have nothing to do with Ruoping's matter, nor do they have anything to do with that fox. Her mishap occurred only after Ruoping's amputation, though I don't know how she sustained the injury either..."
Speaking up to this point, he paused:
"That fox isn't omnipotent; it can only be used once. Once used, it truly becomes an ordinary block of stone. The opportunity comes only once, the opportunity comes only once... But two people were injured, so can you understand, Shutong?
"What exactly did the thing I did back then signify? It wasn't playing a game where simply using that fox to save Ruoping would solve everything; rather, it was..."
This guy was twenty-one years old now, having already become a man, so his voice was very low, filled with bitterness:
"A choice between two."