From a Thousand Year Ago

Chapter IV: Departure

What was supposed to be just an exciting hike with fellow nature enthusiasts turned out to be an unimaginable encounter with someone from a past long gone. What was supposed to be just a momentary shelter from the storm turned out to be a dream that was difficult to wake up from.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. Gong Jun had returned to the city, back to his normal life. He went to work, he met with his friends, he walked among the millions of inhabitants in the metropolis, just like how he always did.

When he first came back, he was greeted with the cries and relief of his family and friends, since they thought he was lost for good in that secluded mountain due to the blizzard. But that was all. Following a couple more check-ups, he was declared well and healthy by the doctor. The five days he spent on that mountain felt like nothing more than a fever dream, an illusion he conjured up due to exhaustion from braving the fierce snowstorm. In fact, so ordinary were his days afterwards that even Gong Jun began to feel he really did merely dream it up—that he was actually just caught up in a bad weather, sustained injuries and became delirious, and remained in that state until a rescue team scooped him up from the piles of snow and brought him to safety.

He truly would have thought so, if it wasn't for the photos he still kept in the gallery of his phone.

Yes, those photos... When he woke up in that small town's clinic, it was the first thing that he checked upon regaining consciousness. The pictures were still saved in his phone, but he knew Zhou Zishu had made an attempt to erase them. How could he tell? Because there were fingerprints in places that Gong Jun would never touch since he knew there was no button or function to interact with there. But Zhou Zishu wouldn't know this; that man had no idea what a phone was, let alone how it worked. He might have also tried to pry open the whole object itself, since Gong Jun noticed that the phone case wasn't put on correctly.

Zhou Zishu really wanted to erase himself from Gong Jun's memories.

Thankfully, he couldn't do it. Thankfully, he didn't destroy Gong Jun's phone in desperation.

They were all Gong Jun had to remember him by. Every night before he went to sleep, he always looked at them. He looked at that confused face in the very first picture they took. He looked at the awkward smile that person showed in the rest of the photos, both embarrassed and in awe at what such a little thing could do.

Gong Jun still remembered.

How Zhou Zishu's fierce exterior crumbled when he saw his face. How the rim of his eyes went red when he asked him if Gong Jun was "Lao Wen", his fingers visibly trembling. And how that tiny glimmer of hope evaporated the moment Zhou Zishu discovered that the man in front of him was not the person he had been waiting for.

......But he was, wasn't he?"

"Wen Kexing", Gong Jun saw that name written on one of the paintings he discovered in Zhou Zishu's room. When he saw the first painting, despite his shock, he still thought it was just a one-in-a-million-coincidence, the fact that he and this "Wen Kexing" person shared the same face. But the more he saw, the more he felt that they were very strangely familiar. Of course, he had never seen this person named Wen Kexing. Of course, he had no memories of ever living as that person.

It was just...that one strange dream he had before...

In there, he saw Zhou Zishu and only Zhou Zishu amidst the many faces coming and leaving in the changing scenes. He saw everything from his own point of view, and only now did he realize everything he saw in that dream was one and the same with the pictures Zhou Zishu drew.

That painting of Wen Kexing standing by the riverside, he saw Zhou Zishu standing by the exact same river, wind also blowing his black hair.

That painting of Wen Kexing playing a flute in a beautiful garden, in his dream he also found himself in that very same garden, looking at Zhou Zishu who met his gaze.