“Wife, it’s time to board.”
“Coming, coming!”
“Husband, how long until we reach Sri Lanka?”
“It seems like over 4 hours.”
“Once we arrive, I’m going to have a big meal. I’m sick of curry after all these days in India.”
“Heh, my dear, it seems Sri Lanka also has curry.”
“Ah! (╯°Д°╯)”
“Husband, I’m scared. The plane won’t crash, will it?” Her voice held a hint of fear.
“No, don’t worry,” he said, looking through the window to see the burning plane engine.
The plane began to descend rapidly, and people in the cabin made various sounds of despair. The person in his arms was trembling, and his left hand was tightly gripped.
“Husband, are we going to die this time? What should we do?”
“Don’t be afraid, I’m here, don’t be afraid,” he offered meaningless comfort. “Heh, I said we’d go eat lobster, but that might be tough now.”
“You’re still joking at a time like this.”
“Uh, what can I do? I’m helpless too. Next life, I’ll definitely pick up a skill for flying planes.”
“Even if you could fly a plane, what difference would it make in this situation? But there will be a next life, right?”
“Yes, definitely. Maybe we’ll even transmigrate directly.”
“Then in the next life, you’ll come find me, right?” “Yes, I will.” “What if I don’t remember you?” “I’ll remember you.” “No backing out!” “I won’t. I’ll definitely find you, I swear.”
Explosions, screams, darkness.
Xu Chuan woke from his dream, everything from it vivid in his mind. He rubbed his forehead, sat up from the sofa, and took a deep breath. “Heh, wife, I haven’t dreamed of you in a long time.”
He got up and went to the bathroom, washed his face, and looked up at the person in the mirror. He had short hair, slightly gaunt cheeks, and red eyes from lack of sleep. His appearance made it hard to tell his age.
“It’s been over ten years since I came here, and it still feels so out of place,” Xu Chuan muttered to himself.
Coming out of the bathroom, he picked up the alarm clock on the bedside table, which displayed: 2011 05 07 03:04. “It’s only just after 3 AM. I actually slept for 12 hours.”
He turned on the TV, which was playing an Arabic drama. He watched an American Black actor playing the prisoner Sucre, who was introducing the various inmates in the prison to his new cellmate, Michael. The two chatted in Arabic with a Moroccan dialect accent, a truly amusing scene.
“Thank me, if I hadn’t come, you wouldn’t even have seen the shawshank redemption,” Xu Chuan leaned against the headboard, facing the TV, as if speaking to the whole world.
It had been over ten years since he came to this world. After waking up, he found himself an eight-year-old boy, and the time had returned to 1998.
Lying in the hospital ward at the time, Xu Chuan could only stare blankly at the anxious but unfamiliar people around him, feeling extremely nervous inside, but also a hint of secret joy. Since he could come here, could his wife also? Thinking of this, he almost used all his sanity to keep himself from jumping out of bed.
After being discharged from the hospital, Xu Chuan learned from the daily information and memories in his mind how melodramatic the events that happened to this body were.
The original owner’s biological mother committed suicide by turning on the gas at home, not knowing her son was also there. After being discovered and sent to the hospital, the original owner’s mother became a vegetative state due to prolonged oxygen deprivation to her brain.
And the original owner was rescued, or rather, not rescued, because the one living now was Xu Chuan, who shared the same name.
In the following years, Xu Chuan took care of the original owner’s mother while familiarizing himself with this world. He searched for his parents from his previous life; after all, they were in the same city. He found his former home from that period but discovered that it was not his former parents living there.
After becoming an adult, he continued to investigate. His family had changed starting from his great-grandfather’s generation, which in turn caused his father’s generation to be completely different. As for his mother’s side, she had always stayed in her old home in Ji Province and had never come to Tianjin City. His plan to find his relatives died before it even began.
The situation with his wife was similar; she simply didn’t exist. But Xu Chuan didn’t want to give up, because they were on the same plane. If he could come over, it meant others could too. Maybe it wasn't the same person, maybe she was also looking for him in her own way, maybe... there were many maybes. He even, after the internet became popular, posted some songs and novels from his previous life that they both liked. But his contact email received nothing but spam and some invitations from music companies. Hope rose again and again, only to be shattered each time.
“I’m so hungry. I wonder if I can find anything to eat outside at this hour,” Xu Chuan said to himself as he put on his clothes and tucked an HK45T into his underarm holster.
Dar el-Beida, a famous port city in western Morocco, also known by a name made famous by a movie: Casablanca.
Xu Chuan walked down the street, habitually pulling his hoodie over his head. There weren't many people on the street, as it was still deep into the night. Shops on both sides of the street were all closed. Ten minutes later, Xu Chuan sat resignedly in a 24-hour KFC at a street corner, eating a burger that tasted completely different from those in China, while looking out the window.
Not far away was a white four-story building, brightly lit inside, with staff walking back and forth, working overtime. The sign at the entrance seemed to indicate it was a newspaper office. Several coconut trees were planted in front of the door. Across a narrow road was a small parking lot with a few scattered cars.
“Oh ho,” Xu Chuan, accustomed to observing his surroundings, felt a sudden surge of vigilance as he looked at a dark alley not far away.
The entrance to the dark alley was very narrow; if you weren't a local or didn't look closely, you would definitely not notice it, let alone at this hour in the morning. Any normal person would definitely not go there, so who was the insomniac lunatic whose cigarette butt flickered there in the middle of the night? “Smoking is bad for your health, idiot.”
Curiosity surged. He finished his burger in a few bites, quietly pulled out his pistol from his chest, concealed it with his backpack, attached the suppressor, and after disengaging the safety, put it back into his underarm holster.
He picked up the soda from the table, sipping it as he walked out, trying to appear as natural as possible. He unzipped his jacket, allowing himself to draw his pistol at any moment.
Xu Chuan walked slowly like an ordinary person wandering around at night because he couldn't sleep. As he passed the alley, he seemingly casually glanced inside. A white man, around 30 years old, was leaning against the wall, bored, smoking. There were already several cigarette butts on the ground.
Seeing someone walk by, the white man also vigilantly glanced at Xu Chuan, then quickly threw away the cigarette in his right hand and reached for his lower back.
Xu Chuan also didn’t hesitate. He first flung the paper cup in his left hand, hitting the opponent accurately in the face. His right hand swiftly drew his gun, firing two consecutive shots to the chest, then slightly raising the muzzle for an accurate headshot. The entire process was extremely smooth and fluid.
“FUCK,” Xu Chuan cursed under his breath, quickly ducking into the alley. After confirming there was no one else, he first kicked away the P226 near the white man’s hand, then, in the darkness, glanced left and right to ensure no one was paying attention to them, and felt the man’s pulse. He was deader than dead. “What rotten luck.” He grabbed the corpse by its clothes and dragged it deeper into the alley.