So as not to disturb her visit, the staff left after a brief conversation.
Shen Kui wandered around the exhibition hall alone, hoping to see whether she could find any more clues.
The daytime temperature in City A was high. After running around for half a day, Shen Kui’s clothes had already been soaked through with sweat. While she had been chatting just now, she hadn’t felt much of it, but now that she was alone, the temperature inside the exhibition hall felt abnormally low. The sweat-damp clothes clung to her back, sending a chilly sensation through her.
The exhibition hall was roughly three hundred square meters. Besides the several rows of display stands in the middle, it was also divided into two or three small compartments. Inside those compartments were the belongings of victims who had met with misfortune, each item carrying its own story.
There was no natural light source here. The incandescent lamps overhead were excessively bright. Shen Kui had only walked around for a short while before the glare made her eyes ache.
She turned off two of the lamps. The lighting dimmed slightly, and her eyes immediately felt much more comfortable.
Just as she was heading toward one of the compartments, the corner of her eye suddenly caught sight of an irregularly shaped patch of shadow beneath a display stand not far away.
A trace of something strange flashed through her mind. But before she could grasp it, in the next second, all of her attention was drawn to the scene inside the compartment.
On the wall inside the compartment was a panoramic photograph enlarged dozens of times. In the photo, the full view of the Huaixihe platform, newly put into use twenty years ago, was clearly presented.
In the lower right corner of the photograph was a line of small engraved text that read:
【Huaixihe Subway Station, destroyed in the Line 1 subway accident on July 23, 1991.】
Shen Kui took out her phone and opened the photo from the forum, just about to compare it carefully.
At that moment, a careless young man’s voice suddenly came from behind her. “What a pity. It was destroyed on the very first day it opened.”
Startled, Shen Kui whipped around. She saw a young man in his early twenties standing crookedly to the side. His features were delicate to the point of seeming feminine, his skin astonishingly pale. Yet his hair was dyed in a riot of gaudy colors. And from head to toe, he was decked out in flashy decorations, like a walking Christmas tree. He cast a light, drifting glance in her direction.
The instant their eyes met, Shen Kui’s heart settled slightly. But the young man looked as though he had seen a ghost. He let out a strange cry on the spot, turned his head, and ran!
“Why are you running… You gave me a scare.” Shen Kui muttered.
Suddenly, a flash of realization struck her mind, and she immediately dashed after him.
“You! Stop right there! Don’t run!” Shen Kui shouted while chasing.
The young man ahead ran while yelling, “Ghost! There’s a ghost!!”
“Ghost my ass! I’m a human!” Shen Kui was already tired and hungry. After running two laps around the exhibition hall, she could not keep going. Seeing the distance between them only growing, she simply gave up, plopped down on the ground, and shouted, “Run if you want! You’ll come back to find me sooner or later anyway!”
The young man was almost at the door when he heard her words. He stumbled, nearly face-planting, and shakily looked back—only to see Shen Kui slumped on the floor, trembling across half the exhibition hall, flipping him the middle finger.
…For some reason, the fear seemed to vanish all of a sudden.
The young man cleared his throat and stopped running. He hesitated for a long moment, then nervously asked, “You… who exactly are you?”
Shen Kui, still catching her breath, slowly said, “You probably saw the photo on the forum and thought I was one of the seven people in it, right?”
“Y-yes,” he stammered.
“Let’s get acquainted. My name is Shen Kui. Like you, I’m a survivor, too.”
The young man first let out a sigh of relief, but then realization hit him, and he panicked. “Y-you… how do you know I’m a survivor? Are you investigating me?!”
Shen Kui looked at his defensive, on-edge reaction and suddenly burst out laughing.
These past two days, she had been tense every moment, never allowing herself to relax. But this little farce had unexpectedly released a lot of that pressure, leaving her mood much lighter.
She leaned back on the floor, fully relaxing, and slowly explained, “Appearing here on a closed day, seeing me and acting like you’ve seen a ghost… if I’m not mistaken, there should be someone you know in that seven-person group photo on the forum, too.”
The young man didn’t say a word, but his expression clearly showed that Shen Kui had hit the mark.
She continued, “I guess you saw the message from 412L, and combined it with your own experience, assumed that everyone in that photo had already passed away. So suddenly seeing a face identical to someone who’s supposed to be dead… It’s only natural that you’d be so shocked.”
“But right now, I really can’t run anymore. So… can we find somewhere to sit and talk?”
*** ***
Half an hour later, inside a café.
After a brief round of introductions, Shen Kui had a general understanding of the young man in front of her.
His name was Ji Xun, twenty-four years old, currently a third-year graduate student at University A, studying animation. He called his flamboyant outfit “immersive learning”. At the time of the accident twenty years ago, he had just turned four, making him the youngest among the seven survivors.
On the day of the accident, his father had something urgent and couldn’t accompany him, so it was his mother who took him on that subway train. Shen Kui didn’t need an explanation to understand what had happened next.
After sharing the basics of their situations, Ji Xun asked, “By the way, why don’t you think I’m that 412L?”
Shen Kui scratched her face awkwardly and replied tactfully, “Well… I just feel that 412L’s posts were so sharp, and they’re quite different from your behavior.”
“That’s called knowing the times! Do you even get that? If it were you seeing a ghost, wouldn’t you run?”
“Run? Of course I’d run,” Shen Kui replied casually, just to brush it off.
She pulled out her phone and opened the seven-person photo from the forum. “Let’s get down to business. Which one of these do you recognize?”
“This one,” Ji Xun said, pointing to the young woman in the center holding a flashlight. “My mom. Pretty, right?”
“Very pretty. But are you sure that’s your mother?”
Ji Xun widened his eyes. “What kind of question is that? Of course, I know my own mom! I was young back then, but not an idiot… Besides, I’ve seen plenty of photos of her over the years.”
“And you? This one beside her must be your mom, too, right? You look so alike, it gave me a fright.”
“No,” Shen Kui said, lifting her coffee and taking a sip. The rich aroma spread through her mouth. Having eaten a piece of cake just now, she felt much more comfortable. “I don’t know her.”
“You two look like a copy-paste! And you’re telling me you don’t know her?” Ji Xun’s face was full of disbelief.
Shen Kui sighed. “There’s probably some distant connection, but I really don’t know her.”
She continued, “If you’re certain that the one in the photo is your mother herself, then she must have known that…”
At this point, Shen Kui paused. She didn’t know how to describe, succinctly and accurately, the woman in the photo who looked exactly like herself.
“That B?” Ji Xun suddenly interjected.
Shen Kui froze. “What?”
Why was he suddenly cursing someone out?
Ji Xun said matter-of-factly, “You’re Shen Kui A, so of course the one in the photo must be Shen Kui B. Problem?”
“…No,” Shen Kui replied, speechless, though she couldn’t help feeling there was a strange sort of logic to it.
She stirred her coffee and mused, “Your mother probably knows her… By the way, has your father seen this photo? He might know something.”
“Him?” Ji Xun scoffed. “No way in hell I’m going to ask him.”
It seemed their family tensions were quite severe.
Shen Kui decided to change the topic. “There’s one more thing. Have you received any packages recently?”
The moment she spoke, Ji Xun’s expression immediately changed.
“You got one, too?”
Ji Xun’s face darkened. Clearly, this was extremely bad news for him. He reached into his bag and pulled out an object, handing it to Shen Kui.
It was a delicate, small silver magnolia brooch. Because it had clearly not been properly stored for a long time, the surface of the brooch was oxidized and darkened.
Shen Kui recognized it instantly. It was exactly the same brooch worn by Ji Xun’s mother in the photo!
“Look, even the pattern is identical.”
Ji Xun zoomed in on the photo on his phone. The details of the brooch’s texture were clearly visible, each line matching perfectly with the one in Shen Kui’s hand.
Recalling how he had come across it, the blood drained completely from Ji Xun’s already pale face. “This thing appeared out of nowhere in my house. When I found it, it was already there. It came in a package—no information at all. No sender, no recipient, no address, no contact… just a box, and inside was this brooch.”
“At first, I thought it was a prank, until a classmate forwarded me that post…”
“Wait!” Shen Kui interrupted. “Your classmate?”
“Yeah, an elementary school classmate. We hadn’t been in touch for a long time. I don’t know why they suddenly forwarded me that post. At first, I even thought their account had been hacked,” Ji Xun said, brushing it off.
“Wait… hold on!”
A sharp, instinctive chill ran through Shen Kui. She realized this was no coincidence. Racing through all the known information in her mind, a horrifying thought slowly surfaced.
She looked at Ji Xun, her expression slow and serious. “Can you… try contacting that classmate now?”
Ji Xun didn’t understand why, but Shen Kui’s demeanor made a ripple of unease form in his chest.
He sent a message to the classmate who had forwarded the post. After a few minutes with no reply, Shen Kui anxiously rubbed her index finger, thinking for a moment before suggesting, “Why don’t you call some other classmates and ask about this person?”
Without hesitation, Ji Xun dialed the number of their elementary class monitor.
After a brief greeting, Ji Xun got straight to the point. “By the way, class monitor, are you still in contact with Zhang Bo?”
The monitor was surprised. “You didn’t know? Zhang Bo passed away last year.”
Ji Xun felt his mind go completely blank; the words after that sounded like a distant hum.
As the monitor on the other end continued calling “hello?” with no response, about to hang up, Shen Kui snatched the phone. “Sorry, I just want to confirm. How did Zhang Bo die?”
“Just a car accident, I think… somewhere around Huaixihe. Hit by a truck, gone just like that. Sigh, it was pretty tragic. I don’t know the exact details. But by the way, who’s this? Ji Xun’s girlfriend?”
Huaixihe again…
Shen Kui frowned, paying little attention to the monitor’s follow-up, murmured a couple of perfunctory words, and hung up.
She fell into thought. Ji Xun, in silent understanding, didn’t say anything either.
They both clearly saw on each other’s faces the same deep, gnawing fear they felt themselves.
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Lucien On ABRWF Chapter 34.1