DM Chapter 10

Living Together with My Share

Posted by April Fox, ? Views, Released on December 24, 2024

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Chapter 10: Living Together with My Share

In the instant the strong light swept over her, Jiang Xiaoyuan’s fear, aided by guilt, reached its peak and plummeted sharply.

She risked her life, thinking, “Anyway, I can’t escape. I might as well confront that sissy head-on. Maybe I can even save someone.”

That white-faced Ming Guang actually intended to do a “Li Dai Tao Jiang[mfn]Li Dai Tao Jiang (李代桃僵 lǐ dài táo jiāng): a Chinese idiom that literally translates to “the plum tree withers in place of the peach tree.” It is used figuratively to describe two situations:

Substituting one thing for another: This is the most general meaning of the idiom. It can be used to describe any situation where someone or something takes the place of another, often at a personal cost. For example, you could use it to describe a child taking the blame for something their sibling did.

Someone sacrificing themselves for another: This is a more specific meaning of the idiom. It refers to a situation where someone willingly takes on the burden or punishment meant for another person, often a close friend or family member.[/mfn]“ with her. For the sake of a so-called “legitimate identity,” this grown man was willing to spend three hours grooming and dressing up every day, focus on updating fashion information once each season, and eagerly await the arrival of limited edition Christmas blush and sanitary pads from abroad every day?

If this isn’t madness, what is it?

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s courage surged. Even though the strong light rendered her unable to see anything, she kept her eyes open, tightly gripping the mobile phone in her hand like a remote control, silently praying that this knockoff gadget could withstand bullets like the old Nokia phones did, while preparing herself for a guest appearance in an action scene.

At that moment, her old, shaggy phone suddenly emitted a soft white light, gradually expanding around her like a soap bubble enveloping her within. Looking out from the “bubble,” the strong light sweeping towards her seemed to dim a few degrees, becoming less dazzling.

She could see Ming Guang’s panicked face clearly, as well as the lighthouse assistant’s seemingly inorganic eyes… as if he had known she was there all along.

Suddenly, the bubble surrounding her began to ripple like water. Jiang Xiaoyuan felt as if she were surrounded by a handful of cold water, with chaotic whispers filling her ears, as if a thousand people were simultaneously a tightening spell in her ears. She couldn’t move at all, and her brain suddenly throbbed sharply, as if a spike pierced directly through her temple, flooding her brain with a flood of unfamiliar memories.

Jiang Xiaoyuan saw a young athlete, a table tennis player.

When he slightly arched his chest, holding the racket in his hand, it was as if he held the whole world in his hand. The figure of the ball darting around the table seemed to dance, and Jiang Xiaoyuan’s dull eyes would lose track of it seven or eight times in a minute, yet the young man seemed to be in tune with the ball’s every move, grasping every angle, every force, and even the landing point… all with such precision.

After a practice session, the sweaty young man picked up his sportswear and wiped his sweat, turning around to Jiang Xiaoyuan with a bright and sunny smile, which was full of life.

Jiang Xiaoyuan suddenly felt something, lifting her head to gaze into the distance. At the end of the world behind the young man, the lighthouse assistant’s eyes, devoid of joy or sorrow, seemed to be staring at her from afar.

Jiang Xiaoyuan wanted to ask: “Is this boy you?”

But she couldn’t speak or move, she could only open her eyes and watch.

As she continued to watch, Jiang Xiaoyuan discovered that this table tennis youth was actually a member of the national team. Small ball sports has always been a Chinese specialty, and one can imagine how fierce the competition is. Aside from talent, how much hardship had this kid endured from childhood to adulthood was something Jiang Xiaoyuan, who rarely got out of bed before noon, couldn’t imagine.

Perhaps because the lighthouse assistant directly implanted these memories into her brain, Jiang Xiaoyuan felt especially immersed in them. A person who relied on treating teachers to meals just to pass high school physical fitness tests could actually feel the simple dreams of a professional athlete.

Before her blood could boil, she witnessed the young man encounter an accident.

After all, he was still a half-grown child who lacked some maturity. One day, when he and his teammates sneaked out for a late-night snack, they encountered a house-breaking robber armed with a knife in a narrow and deserted alley. The blade had just been stained with blood from stabbing someone.

When the knife pierced the young man’s body, Jiang Xiaoyuan was too scared that she forgot to scream, her mind blank, just like the moment she crashed her car into a tree. Then, she and the young athlete felt a familiar temporal disturbance together.

It turned out that, like her, he had also been to this lighthouse of temporal overlap, heard the same set of words, made the same life-or-death choice, and finally signed the same unequal treaty to take refuge in another parallel space, waiting for the so-called “gateway” to be built.

The temporal shift turned Jiang Xiaoyuan from a wealthy girl who squandered money into a poor working girl, and turned the young man from a promising professional athlete into a disabled person sitting in a wheelchair.

The more Jiang Xiaoyuan looked, the colder she felt. She realized how this temporal shift selected its victims—they were different in age, gender, and identity, but all couldn’t let go of their lives in their original time and space.

A professional athlete was like an eagle with clipped wings. Without legs, his life was shattered, and his only hope lay in fragments, unable to live long.

Jiang Xiaoyuan, on the other hand, was like a precious domesticated pet. It doesn’t matter that she was born with a purebred genetic defect. She has been wearing clothes and food and opening her mouth since she was a child. She does not have the ability to “survive in the wild” at all.

If she couldn’t return to her original time and space, it would likely be a dead end—on this point, they were the same.

The young man was forced to sign the contract. When he came to the parallel time and space, he was obviously suspicious of Ming Guang. At first, he didn’t reply to any messages from him, dragging his disabled body through the fifty days in incomparable pain and endless doubts. From the fifty-first day onwards, he would receive a message from Ming Guang every day: “The gateway is ready, are you setting off?”

It started with text messages. If he turned off his phone, the messages would appear on his computer, TV… even on billboards outside his house. Like a relentless curse, it surrounded him at all times. As long as he had the slightest moment of weakness, a hint of vulnerability, it would immediately take advantage, tempting him to choose that fatal “yes.”

This tug-of-war lasted for three whole months. During this time, the young man tried countless times to create miracles with his disabled body, but after failing again and again, one day, reality finally wore him down, and he surrendered to Ming Guang with a glimmer of hope.

There was no suspense afterwards. The hope of luck would never be fulfilled.

The young man was crushed between two repulsive parallel time and spaces. The owner of the lighthouse successfully replaced his identity in the original time and space, becoming the young athlete who was stabbed by the villain. After being rushed to the hospital for treatment, he miraculously “survived,” replacing his life.

As for the young man himself… he was very lucky. Just as his brainwaves were about to dissipate, a robot in the lighthouse happened to malfunction. This allowed him to take advantage of the situation and parasitically inhabit the robot, becoming a lighthouse assistant who sometimes seemed human and sometimes not.

Jiang Xiaoyuan suddenly understood why the lighthouse assistant tried to send her back to that terrible scene of the car accident the first time she entered the lighthouse. Going back meant that there was a glimmer of hope for her to survive. Not going back would lead her to surely suffer a fate worse than death.

As her memories gradually faded, Jiang Xiaoyuan saw Ming Guang rushing towards her. His astonishingly handsome face twisted with a grimace as the protective film enveloping her repelled him away.

Realizing she had nothing to fear, Jiang Xiaoyuan quickly lifted her head to look at the lighthouse assistant, only to find that he had already lowered his head, and the lights on his exposed sensors had gone out.

Jiang Xiaoyuan was startled. She thought, “Could he be dead?”

In her anxiousness, she suddenly heard someone whisper in her ear, “Don’t look, I’m here.”

It was the lighthouse assistant’s plain, robotic voice.

Jiang Xiaoyuan looked around but didn’t see anyone. She felt the voice lingering around her, as if it were everywhere.

“It was me who cheated and brought you here,” said the lighthouse assistant. “Hurry up before you and time and space accept each other, otherwise even Ming Guang won’t be able to do it.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “Does he… that Ming Guang, know you’re not a robot?”

“Him? He’s so arrogant, why would he pay attention to an inconspicuous robot like me? He continuously uses space-time oscillations to find sacrifices like us,” the lighthouse assistant said. “He always uses the same trick, and it works every time. He steals the identities of countless people. After the previous identity dies naturally, he returns to the lighthouse and looks for the next victim, regardless of gender, age, or anything else. This time, it’s finally over.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “What do you mean by ‘it’s over’? What exactly is Ming Guang?”

“You can understand him as a virus, like a Trojan horse on a computer,” the lighthouse assistant said lightly. “You won’t be fooled by him anymore. With all his arrangements up to now, he doesn’t have time to find the next sacrifice. He’s repeatedly exploited loopholes in the rules of time and space, and now he’s just waiting to be cleansed by the law.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan heard a rare sense of satisfaction in his voice, but she couldn’t share in the joy. “What about you? What about me?”

The lighthouse assistant remained silent for a moment before answering, “You will live well in the new time and space.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “What about my original time and space? Is it frozen in the moment I was hit by the car?”

The lighthouse assistant smiled. “I’ve explained it to you. When you stand at a crossroads, each direction is a parallel space. The moment you were hit by the car is like a crossroad. In the next second, countless parallel spaces will diverge from there. Some versions of you die, while others are saved. The whole world, except for you, will continue along different timelines in different spaces—only you end up here.”

“A person’s life is a unique timeline,” he said. “Your trajectory has brought you here, and from now on, you have nothing to do with that place.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan felt strangely heroic about her illegal crossing from the final echoes of the lighthouse assistant’s life, still not fully understanding the situation.

“Don’t cry,” the lighthouse assistant said.

Only then did she realize tears were streaming down her face.

“I’ll send you away,” the lighthouse assistant said. “I’ll also give you my memories and dreams. You’ll live with my share from now on.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan resisted for a moment before giving in to her tears. “How could I fulfill your dreams? I can’t even run an 800-meter race in seven minutes, let alone with your legless condition!”

“I know. I’m not asking you to fulfill my dreams. You have your own dreams. I’m just giving you the legs to reach them… Ming Guang chose us because he thought we were both fragile and needed something to rely on to survive, but that’s not true. Even the weakest person has strengths, right?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan thought as she cried, “Stop dreaming. I have none.”

She only knew how to spend money and live carelessly; that was her norm. Even with the prosthetic legs, what path could she take? She didn’t have dreams, and she didn’t know where she could be strong.

But before she could voice her objections, the lighthouse assistant spoke first. “Time’s up, let’s go.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan said, “Wait…”

The world around her spun in a blur of light and shadow. She could no longer hear the mechanical, icy voice, only a strange feeling flooding her heart—not very intense, but resilient and enduring.

For a moment, Jiang Xiaoyuan had the illusion that she was truly invincible, able to reach any shore.

She knew this feeling didn’t belong to her, but to someone much stronger than her. Yet she couldn’t help but be infected, reluctantly making a resolute decision—

Jiang Xiaoyuan thought, “I will live well in this world.”

Even if she could never go back again.

The next moment, Jiang Xiaoyuan felt herself being gently pushed. Opening her eyes, her pupils were caught off guard by the light, immediately shedding psychological tears.

Through tearful eyes, she saw a circle of people surrounding her. Someone familiar was squatting in front of her, carefully helping her up. “Are you okay? Just discharged from the hospital and you’re going back in? Do you have low blood sugar or something?”

Qi Lian?

Jiang Xiaoyuan hadn’t yet recovered from the lingering echoes of the lighthouse assistant’s final moments. Dazed, she thought, “Why do I always run into him whenever I’m in trouble? What kind of karmic bond is this?”