Our fate woven in the sky《Zhanyi》

《Loop 2》

"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream . . ."

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Xiao Zhan's POV

"Ignorance is key, ZhanZhan. As long as you act like they don't exist, they won't know you can see them. Let them fade into the background, just like what happens to certain sounds when a person is falling asleep." Remembering my shizun's advice, I sat down with the book. My hands lightly trembled as I forced myself to regulate my breathing, ignoring the direct stare of the ghost boy.

"A-Zhan, I know some ghosts seem friendly in interaction, but many of them got chained to this world for a reason. Don't trust too easily."

Keeping those words of my shizun as a chant, I tried to calm down, letting my hand run across the book.

"So humans, their breath control differentiates when they get excited?" The ghost softly hummed as he took a step back.

I flipped the book open, concentrating on the words inside the book, trying to ignore the ghost, who was muttering to himself, too soft for me to hear yet too loud to ignore.

The definition of time loops stems centuries ago, first noted in the early Chinese dynasty when a man claimed to stick in a time loop. Yet there was no solid evidence to back up what he said, and there is no recollection of information telling society how he escaped.

Time loops are like rabbit holes; once you fall, it's near impossible to make your way out, let alone prove what you went through.

Over time, tons of people claimed to have gotten stuck in time loops; many of the claims, in the end, are refuted, yet some cases are unexplainable and leave most humans to ponder whether such time loops exist.

I sighed, flipping a few more pages because all the author spoke about was the phenome of time loops but gave no information.

Continuing to flip through the book, I stopped at a random page, scanning the sentences when my eyes fell t a particular bit of the page.

The term "time loop" is sometimes used to refer to a casual loop.

However, causal loops are unchanging and self-originating. Whereas time loops are constantly resetting: when a 'certain' condition is met, such as a death of a character or a clock reaching a 'certain' time, the loop starts again, possibly with one or more characters retaining the memories from the previous loop.

If the information in this book was reliable, which would mean that the killing spree of yesterday should be the cause of a time loop, but the clock only resets after midnight.

I frowned, re-reading the same piece, the context not changing no matter how many times I read it.

Letting a frustrated sigh escape, I ruffled a hand through my hair, closing the book and placing it aside.

"The theory of time?" I heard the ghost whisper, his breath felt so close to my neck, but as I straightened up and stood up, the boy was already a few steps behind me, standing next to the bookcases.

I watched the ghost boy lingering around the books, his fingers touching each book as he slowly walked forward. I followed him quietly with the book in hand.

At some point, the ghost stopped, his fingers lingering on a book with a deep red cover, and as I approached closer, acting as if I just found the book, the boy took a step backwards.