Liu Hong sat on his bicycle, suddenly thrusting a hand upward while his legs began to kick frantically, as if he were treading water in deep. He gasped for air in huge, ragged gulps, making loud, wheezing noises.
He had stopped his bike by the side of the road to wait for a traffic light, both feet planted on the pedals while he leaned his body against the ginkgo tree behind him to keep from falling. Because of his sudden thrashing, his center of balance failed him, and he toppled straight off the bicycle.
The people waiting at the crosswalk saw him suddenly convulsing, gasping for breath with those harsh, rattling sounds, kicking his legs and reaching up with his hands as if trying to grab something from the air. Assuming he must be suffering from some kind of medical emergency, they instantly recoiled a step, clearing an empty vacuum around him.
"This young man looks pretty healthy. Must have something wrong with him, right?"
"Sounds like epilepsy to me. I've seen videos of people having epileptic seizures on my phone, they twitch just like that!"
"No way? Don't epileptics foam at the mouth?"
"Who knows? Step back a bit, make sure he doesn't try to pin this on us later!"
"Should we go help?"
"Don't go, don't go! I read online that you shouldn't move someone who suddenly collapses like that, or it'll make things worse!"
"Then what should we do? Call an ambulance?"
"An ambulance costs money! What if he dies before it gets here? Who's going to pay the bill?"
"We can't just leave him alone, can we?"
The crowd buzzed with chatter, one moment suggesting someone should help him up, the next declaring he shouldn't be touched. The fragmented information they had absorbed from the internet left them paralyzed: afraid of being scammed, afraid their rescue attempts would make things worse and backfire, and afraid of footing the ambulance bill.
Just as someone picked up their phone to dial for an ambulance, Liu Hong finally stopped struggling. The people around him stepped forward cautiously, wanting to see how he was doing.
"Hah—!"
Suddenly, Liu Hong's lungs dragged in a massive breath, and he finally snapped back to consciousness. Seeing that he had revived, the onlookers let out collective sighs of relief.
An older woman stepped closer. "Young man, what happened to you? Do you have some kind of illness? Should I call you an ambulance?"
Before his brain could even process the word "ambulance," Liu Hong's body reacted on pure instinct. "No, no, cough... I'm fine, I'm totally fine! Don't call an ambulance! Cough, cough..."
While rejecting the woman's kind offer, Liu Hong broke into a fit of hacking coughs. Seeing that he was genuinely unharmed—and that he even managed to prop himself up against the tree trunk and slowly struggle to his feet—the crowd hurriedly dispersed. In a big city, everyone was too busy running themselves ragged for their own survival to spare any extra energy for someone else's business.
Only the middle-aged woman who had just checked on him—perhaps because she had just dropped off her child at school and actually had the time to spare—remained to care for him. Seeing him stand up, she even helped pat his back to help him catch his breath. She went so far as to visit a small convenience store nearby, buying a bottle of water and handing it to Liu Hong so he could take a few sips and clear his throat.
Yet how could Liu Hong possibly swallow anything right now? The sensation of seawater endlessly flooding down his throat still lingered in his body. Right now, he didn't want a single drop of water. He just kept struggling to breathe, desperate to calm that terrifying feeling of suffocation. Only now did he realize how wonderful air truly was, and he dragged in huge, greedy breaths.
He declined the woman's water, and seeing that he was truly none the worse for wear, she finally left as well, leaving Liu Hong alone to recover his composure.
*What is wrong with me? What just happened? Did I time-travel? And the moment I crossed over, I ran right into an earthquake and a tsunami?! Am I seriously this unlucky? Then what is this? How did I get back? Did I die over there, and when they realized my body here was still intact, they just shipped me back? Are you fucking kidding me?!*
Liu Hong patted himself down, up and down, but found no abnormalities whatsoever. With no way of knowing whether what he had just experienced was a vivid dream or an actual time-slip, he had no choice but to let the matter drop.
He straddled the bicycle someone had helped pick up for him; the front basket still held the groceries he had just bought from the vegetable market. He pedated away, riding slowly back to his rented apartment.
Outside the apartment complex gate, he checked the bike back in, hoisted his groceries, and walked into the residential compound. Liu Hong shared an apartment with others, living on the thirty-fourth floor.
That was right—the thirty-fourth floor. The building itself only had thirty-three official stories, but the landlord had purchased the penthouse unit, which came with rights to the rooftop. The landlord had gone ahead and built an extra floor right on top, creating a thirty-fourth floor. Seeing the landlord expand upward, other owners on the thirty-third floor followed suit, and thus a brand-new thirty-fourth tier was born.
The landlord had divided his rooftop unit into five bedrooms, a small living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms—one in the master suite and one for common use. Because it was the top floor, the rent was cheap, and he paid annually. Having no real family of his own, Liu Hong basically treated this place as his home. Having lived here for two years, he had outlasted the previous occupant of the master bedroom and moved in himself. The master bedroom cost only two hundred more than the others, but it offered more space and its own private bathroom, which made Liu Hong immensely happy. That was why he had been so enthusiastic when it came time to renew his lease. Still, it was a good thing he signed year-to-year; otherwise, he wouldn't dare slack off even for a single month this past year, terrified that a lack of rent money would get him thrown out on the street.
He took the elevator up to the thirty-third floor, climbed the final flight of stairs to the thirty-fourth, unlocked the main door, and then unlocked his own room. During the day everyone else went out to work, leaving Liu Hong all alone in the apartment. But he wasn't used to lingering in the common living room anyway, so he retreated straight to his bedroom.
Once inside, he dropped the plastic bag by the door and threw himself flat onto the bed. Lifting an arm to shield his eyes, he closed them and felt as though the agony of death was still clinging to him: his left arm shattered; his skin scraped raw on the right; a massive, jagged gash across his back that burned with a bone-chilling sting every time the seawater washed over it. And that suffocating terror of drowning made his heart hammer frantically against his ribs.
He buried himself deeper into the mattress, pulled the duvet over his body, and wrapped himself tightly inside it, struggling to calm his racing thoughts. He couldn't talk to anyone about this; his parents had their own families to look after, and his friends were swamped with their own jobs. He couldn't possibly disturb them with something that sounded so much like a wild fever dream.
After a long while, he finally settled down. Liu Hong lifted the quilt, checked the time, and saw that it was already midday. His stomach was rumbling. He hadn't eaten anything that morning; his trip to the market had been sparked by an empty pantry, and the market sold things cheap. Every now and then, vendors would drag goods nearing their expiration dates to the market to clear them out, and elderly folks loved snapping up those bargains.
Liu Hong had run into one of those deals today and bought two five-packs of instant noodles. Packs like those usually cost over ten yuan at a regular supermarket, but at the wet market, they went for just a few yuan—even cheaper than the off-brands online.
Liu Hong got out of bed, intending to cook a pack of instant noodles to appease his terrified stomach. He picked up the bag from the floor, ready to fish out the noodles, but when he opened it, he found an unfamiliar shopping bag inside, tightly tied shut. He had no idea what was in it.
*Did I buy this?*
Liu Hong untied the bag, only to discover that the contents inside were completely unrecognizable—it looked like nothing more than a bag of garbage. Moreover, the plastic bag itself was extremely old; the moment he pulled at it, it nearly ripped apart. It was probably someone else's trash left on the ground, which someone else had mistakenly scooped up along with his groceries and tossed into his bag.
Liu Hong tossed the strange bag into the trash can, fished out a packet of instant noodles, clicked the electric kettle on to boil water, and unwrapped the noodles into a large bowl. Once the water boiled, he poured it over the noodles right to the brim; with all that water, a single packet would be enough to fill him up.
While waiting for the noodles to steep, he picked up his phone and opened Douyin to scroll through short videos. At that moment, a notification banner popped up at the top of his screen. He tapped it open.
"[ICBC] The day after tomorrow is your ICBC repayment date. Please make your payment on time..."
Seeing that message, Liu Hong couldn't help muttering bitterly: "Why did I have to come back even after dying over there?! Just let the world end already!!"
Right at that second, a blinding white light suddenly flared around his wrist.
Then, Liu Hong's vision blurred. He blinked hard, and when he opened his eyes again—
Before him was a dense, crawling stream of traffic, with everyone running frantically in the opposite direction.
Right before his eyes, a towering wall of a tsunami was crashing down toward him...