Chapter 1: Zhang Wenda
"Mom, what’s Grandpa doing?" Zhang Wenda, wearing his child-sized shoes, held his mother’s slightly cold fingers as they walked through an unusually empty garden square.
He looked over and saw a group of elderly people in the middle of the park. They were wearing aluminum pots on their heads, the rims covering their eyes, and were hovering perfectly still in mid-air, holding hands to form an oval.
Bathed in the light of the setting sun, the scene was like a sallow, yellowed photograph, searing itself deep into Zhang Wenda’s memory.
"They’re practicing Qi Gong. Don’t stare, let’s go!"
A firm tug on his hand jerked Zhang Wenda forward, making him stumble. In an instant, the ground beneath his feet gave way. A powerful sense of weightlessness washed over him as he plummeted into an endless darkness.
"Gah!" He shot up in bed, drenched in a cold sweat. The moment his eyes snapped open, the feeling of utter despair finally vanished.
His eyes landed on the fabric wardrobe with its zipper front, and he realized it had just been a dream.
"Damn, what a weird dream," Zhang Wenda muttered to himself.
He remembered his grandfather had practiced that "Information Pot" Qi Gong for a while. As far as he knew, though, his grandpa had only used Qi Gong as an excuse to mingle with the many middle-aged and elderly women in the group.
The old man himself never believed in any of it, and he certainly had never floated in mid-air.
But he stopped going after he threw his back out practicing Qi Gong. He holed up at home all day, deciding to dedicate the rest of his life to the nation’s "Four Modernizations" by obsessively trying to invent a perpetual motion machine.
"Yaaawn..." He opened his mouth in a wide yawn and stretched his arms out vigorously.
"C’mon, Gramps, what was that dream supposed to mean? If you need something, just say it. You were a machinist your whole life, don’t start getting all artsy with metaphors now. I’m already exhausted from my job; I don’t have the energy for riddles."
He got out of bed while talking, reaching around to scratch his back. He habitually grabbed the clothes left at the foot of the bed and pulled them on. But when he slipped on the sneakers, which were clearly a size too big, he suddenly froze. ’Sneakers? I wasn’t wearing sneakers yesterday.’
As his mind finally pulled away from the dream about his grandfather, his eyes subconsciously swept his surroundings. That’s when he finally noticed something was wrong.
Before him was a small, old, and slightly cluttered room, about 30 to 40 square meters in size.
It was a studio apartment. Patches of peeling plaster revealed the red bricks beneath, testifying to the building’s age.
His gaze traveled from the small mountain of black honeycomb briquettes stacked behind the door to the sky-blue, zipper-fronted fabric wardrobe patterned with white doves.
The whole wardrobe leaned and bulged, overstuffed with belongings.
From there, his eyes moved to the old wooden desk—where cash and old photos were pressed under a sheet of glass—and then to the black-and-white television beside it, with its two retractable antennas.
Looking at this familiar yet strange scene before him, his expression gradually changed from confusion and bewilderment to shock.
"This... This is... my old home? The old dormitory building I lived in as a kid?! Am I still dreaming?"
SMACK! He lifted a hand and slapped himself. The pain jolted him into focus, but nothing around him changed.
"I... I-I time-traveled? I’ve gone back to when I was a kid?"
His breath came in ragged gasps, his heart hammering in his chest. He rushed to a nearby trunk and snatched up a pink, flower-shaped mirror with a picture of a woman on the back.
He still felt a powerful sense of unreality as he stared at the young face in the mirror. But when he ran a hand through his hair, feeling how wonderfully thick and full it was, he was so moved he nearly wept.
He had taken it for granted back then. You don’t understand just how thick your hair was until you’ve grown up and lost it.
"For the sake of my hair, I’m absolutely not pulling any all-nighters this time around! Damn it, I’ll be damned if I go to bed later than nine!"
His hands trembled as he touched his smooth, supple skin, overcome with emotion.
’I’m back? I’m really back?’ Zhang Wenda couldn’t spare a thought for how it happened. Only one thing mattered now: he was going to be rich!
Most importantly, he had his memories of the future. He could buy stocks, he could buy Bitcoin, he could buy houses.
With his knowledge of the future, he could make money with his eyes closed. He could achieve financial freedom!
"I don’t have to be a wage slave anymore! When I’m rich, I’ll be just like my uncle! I’ll do whatever I want! I’m going to travel the world! I’m going to have a harem!"
Zhang Wenda paced back and forth in the room, even starting to plan how he would spend his fortune, when he suddenly stopped. His gaze was fixed on the black-and-white television.
He reached behind the TV and pulled out a Water Margin Card of Wu Song. It was from the Little Raccoon snack brand, showing Wu Song walking through a heavy snow, carrying a long spear with a wine gourd tied to it.
Back in the day, his deskmate had tricked him, saying the Wu Song card was the rarest of the 108 heroes and the hardest to collect. He had treasured it like gold, only to find out later they were a dime a dozen.
Staring at this treasure he had hidden away so long ago, feeling its familiar texture and smelling the familiar scent of ink, the frenzied thoughts racing through Zhang Wenda’s mind gradually began to fade.
He looked at the still-vibrant award certificates taped to the wall, then at the pencil case and notebooks waiting to be packed into his schoolbag. A genuine smile spread across his face. ’It’s good to be back. It’s so, so good.’
All his schemes for getting rich vanished from his mind. That stuff just required making the right moves at the right time. Right now, his only job was to cherish this precious second chance at youth.
As if remembering something, a flicker of deep emotion and conflict appeared in Zhang Wenda’s eyes. But as he looked around at the familiar room, he let out a slow breath and stood up.
He reached out, letting his fingers trail over everything in the small room, tracing every mark left from the past. The feeling nearly brought tears to his eyes.
Flowers may bloom again, but a man is never young twice. But everything had started over for him. He could fix all his past regrets, avoid every wrong turn.
But just as he was taking it all in, lost in emotion, he felt that something wasn’t quite right. He had lived here; he knew every inch of this place.
He knew when the world map had been taped to the wall, when certain items had been bought for the home, and even where all his little treasures were hidden.
This was his home. It should have felt completely familiar. Yet now, there was a sense of dissonance he couldn’t place. He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. "Weird."
He scanned the room carefully one more time, and his gaze suddenly froze on the clock hanging on the wall. It was his family’s clock, no doubt about it. But when he moved closer to get a better look, he finally realized where that inexplicable feeling of wrongness was coming from.
It was a wall clock, but the numbers on its face weren’t 1 through 12. Instead, twice as many numbers were crammed onto the dial, running from 1 all the way to 24.
"What the hell is this?" Zhang Wenda thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He rubbed them, but the clock face remained the same.
"Did Uncle pawn off some of his leftover black-market goods on us? No, that’s not right... I don’t remember us ever having a clock like this." The bizarre clock stirred a flicker of unease in Zhang Wenda’s heart.
"Speaking of which, what year is it?" Zhang Wenda wondered aloud. He walked over to the television and twisted the power knob. He had to figure out the exact date.
The next second, a loud KSHHHHH filled the air as flickering static flooded the screen. A muffled female voice could be heard faintly through the piercing noise.
"In a few years, you won’t even be able to give this piece of junk away," Zhang Wenda grumbled, fiddling with the channel dial.
But he switched through several channels in a row, all of them just noisy static. He reached out and, with a familiar motion, smacked the top of the television hard.
There was a knack to smacking a TV, and luckily, even after all these years, he hadn’t forgotten it.
With a few more smacks left and right, an image flickered into view—it looked like a woman reporting the news—but it was quickly swallowed by static again. A surge of irritation flared through Zhang Wenda.
"Come on, you piece of junk!" With a final, hard slap to the bulky back of the set, the entire television lurched forward. And then, the unexpected happened.
The static on the screen, like viscous lava, was shaken loose from the television. A large patch of it splattered out and stuck directly to Zhang Wenda’s arm.