At nine o’clock in the evening, Zhou Yanqing rode a small electric scooter to go home. After turning right ahead and going straight for another 300 meters, he’d reach the old, run-down community he was renting in. He had been walking this road for nearly two years, so even though the street lights had been broken for months, Zhou Yanqing could use his perception to measure the distance.
The dim headlights of the little scooter swayed along the uneven road. When he turned right, two blinding lights suddenly shone in front of him. Then, came a piercing screech of tires scraping the ground, slicing through his eardrums. The next thing Zhou Yanqing knew, he was flying up and hitting the ground hard.
His head hurt as if it were splitting, and the strong smell of blood drilled into his nose. Zhou Yanqing struggled to open his eyes, but he could only see a vast expanse of whiteness. He felt as if he was floating on the clouds.
He had imagined countless times the way he would die in this life; died of old age, illness, and anger but he had never thought that he would be hit and killed by a car.
I am not afraid of death, but why is it now? I am only twenty-five years old, I still have very important things to do, Zhou Yanqing thought regretfully before completely losing consciousness.
“Yanqing! Yanqing! Wake up!”
His head hurt so badly it felt like it had been run over, and his chest was so stuffy that he couldn’t breathe. Zhou Yanqing clenched his teeth, wanting to just faint and get it over with, but someone kept trying to wake him up by his ear.
He was in pain and exhausted, unwilling to respond, but that person started shaking him again.
So annoying. Even in death, people won’t let me die in peace!
Zhou Yanqing was so angry that he let out a breath and howled, “So annoying!”
The moment he shouted, the suffocating tightness in his chest and the splitting pain in his head both miraculously vanished, and Zhou Yanqing suddenly opened his eyes.
“Yanqing!”
The voice sounded again. Zhou Yanqing slightly turned his head and a familiar face with tan skin and low cut hair came into view. It was Jiang Cheng, his roommate in college.
“Jiang Cheng, why are you here!” Zhou Yanqing froze for a moment. He hadn’t seen Jiang Cheng for almost two years.
The worried look on Jiang Cheng’s face turned into one of shock in an instant. He turned Zhou Yanqing’s body over, felt his forehead, and asked, “Yanqing, you didn’t hit your head and become stupid, did you? Of course I’m here…”
Zhou Yanqing froze. After checking himself up and down, he found that there were no injuries on his body at all, no blood either. Only then did he realize something was wrong. His heartbeat speeded up abruptly, before asking carefully: “Jiang Cheng, I shouldn’t be a vegetative and sleep for a year or a half…”
Jiang Cheng looked terrified: “Yanqing, don’t scare me ah, what vegetative ah? You just fell after the shower and passed out. If you didn’t wake up soon, I would call an ambulance!”
Zhou Yanqing said blankly: “I was just hit by a car and sent flying…”
For the next hour, Jiang Cheng used a very patient and careful tone to convince Zhou Yanqing over and over again: You did not have a car accident, you just stayed up two days in a row working on your script and fainted while taking a shower.
Then, Zhou Yanqing kept sitting still with a stiff body, and finally he came to an unbelievable conclusion: he was hit by a car and sent flying back two years. He had been reborn.
After taking a shower, Jiang Cheng came out of the bathroom, his body still surrounded by steam from his shower. He once again walked towards Zhou Yanqing side, bent down and touched his head: “Yanqing, are you really alright? Should we go to the hospital?”
Zhou Yanqing raised his head; his eyes were blank as he whispered back: “No, no, I just fell right. ”
Jiang Cheng didn’t hear clearly. He thought he said he was fine so after a few words of concern, he went to bed and played with his mobile phone. After a short while, the lights-out time arrived, the boys’ dormitory plunged into darkness
Zhou Yanqing wiped the sweat from his hands and lay down too. The swelling on his forehead was still painful. According to Jiang Cheng, it was knocked on the bathroom sink when he fainted, but compared to being hit by a car and smashed into a pulp, this was much better.
The car accident happened in just an instant, yet that scene was still vivid in his mind. Zhou Yanqing closed his eyes and tried to recall the appearance or license plate number of the car that hit him. A sharp pain surged into his temples and his heartbeat suddenly accelerated. The body’s magical self-protection mechanism prompted Zhou Yanqing to gasp violently. It took him a while to slow down.
There was already a slight snoring sound on Jiang Cheng’s side, but Zhou Yanqing did not dare to sleep. He was afraid that rebirth was a delusion in his mind, that all this was only a life-flashing-before-his-eyes moment, and that if he fell asleep, he would never wake up again.
He used the faint light from the corridor to trace the outline of this dorm room. He lived in this room for more than three years, so everything was so familiar. Right now, this was his senior year. Originally, the dorm had four people, but the other two had already found internships and moved out. Jiang Cheng and he hadn’t yet found satisfying internships, so they were still living in the dorm.
His nerves were too tense. Zhou Yanqing’s mind kept spinning with various memories, and his eyelids unknowingly started to droop. In the end, he couldn’t resist the strong drowsiness and fell into the walking lantern of his previous life.
…
Rubbing his sore eyes, Zhou Yanqing came out of a three-star hotel. He had just stayed up late to accompany a third or fourth-tier actress to revise the script.
He majored in Drama and Film Literature at university. This major already had limited job opportunities, and he was determined to become a screenwriter. It had been more than a year since he graduated, but he hadn’t been doing well. Before the new year, he joined a film and television investment company, thinking there would be a good development, but the result was a lot of muddled writing, all of which were for others to take credit for.
Last month, he was assigned to an idol drama crew by the company as an on-set scriptwriter. He finalized 10 episodes of scripts before filming started, and the next ten episodes were said to be revised by him, but in fact there was only an outline; it was basically letting him create them independently.
This creative process also had to be modified at any time according to the director and the lead actress’s whims.
Last night, the actress who brought the capital into the group, called Zhou Yanqing to her room, saying that she was not satisfied with the content of the next few episodes and wanted to change some parts.
As dawn approached, that actress probably realized that all her hints didn’t work on this block of elm wood, so she finally said openly and honestly: “Xiao Zhou, how about we solve each other’s physical needs during this time in the crew?”
Zhou Yanqing sneered and replied: “I’m sorry, I was born bent.”
Then, he was thrown out.
It was still early. Rubbing his throbbing temples, Zhou Yanqing entered the subway station, planning to go home, take a shower, and then head to the set. It was not yet the morning rush hour, and there were not many people in the subway, so he found a position to lean back and doze off.
A short while later, the noise started. The people in the subway were all looking at their phones watching something, some cursing, some surprised, some discussing. The voices was getting louder and louder, and suddenly a woman fell to the ground and began crying loudly.
Zhou Yanqing quickly took out his phone and a push notification suddenly came to his eyes – #Movie Emperor Song Yu Hanged Himself#. His first thought was what kind of stupid cunt would make up such a malicious rumor?
But he still followed his instincts and clicked in. The #Movie Emperor Song Yu Hanged Himself# was at the top of the hot search list, followed by the word ‘explosive’ in purple-red, which meant that the number of people following the topic had reached an unprecedented peak.
The first person to start the topic was a newly registered Weibo user, who posted a Weibo at three in the morning.
@Gululu0423: According to internal news, it was confirmed that the Movie Emperor Song Yu hanged himself in his house. There should be an official announcement soon. If I am spreading rumors, may I die a horrible death.
Although this Weibo post was sent out in the early morning, it still caused a huge uproar. The topic #Movie Emperor Song Yu Hanged Himself# soon became popular. Netizens and marketing accounts came in droves, and there were hundreds of thousands of comments. Almost all of them were Song Yu’s fans cursing the blogger for spreading rumors. The topic #Netizens Spread Rumors About Song Yu’s Death# was also pushed to the trending list.
Originally, this farce should have calmed down once Song Yu’s studio came out to refute the rumor. However, instead of a refutation, netizens were met with a bombshell Weibo post five minutes ago from the official account of ‘S City Police and People News’.
@S City Police and People News: At 22:34 p.m. on August 15, the Public Security Department of Yong’an District received a report that a man was suspected to be dead in a residential building in Luxiang Garden, Chengping Road. After receiving the report, police and medical personnel quickly rushed to the scene. Medical personnel confirmed that the man had died. After investigation, the deceased man was Song (male, 32 years old, from S City). According to the preliminary forensic examination, homicide has been ruled out. The specific cause of death is under further investigation. We ask the public to cooperate with the police and not to spread or create rumors.
The news exploded like a bomb in the early morning of this ordinary day. Although there was no exact name, but according to the disclosed information combined with the unexplained post in the early morning, everything indicated that the account @Gululu0423 might really not be spreading rumors.
Breathing heavily, Zhou Yanqing tried to click on the comments, hoping that someone would disprove the post and say it wasn’t Song Yu at all and that it was just a coincidence. However, no matter how he clicked, the comment section remained blank. He let out a low roar in annoyance; what was he saving money for? He should’ve replaced this crappy phone ages ago.
Immediately, the crowd around him gave him the answer that it wasn’t the phone that was broken, but the huge flood of internet traffic that was rushing in, causing the Weibo server to crash.
The subway stopped and Zhou Yanqing did not know which station it was. He got off the train in a daze. When he walked to the subway exit, he realized that the originally clear sky was raining, like a powerless sob.
The humid air made it difficult for Zhou Yanqing to breathe, and he walked into the rain in a daze.
Zhou Yanqing returned to his cramped rental room, took a shower, and then went back to the film crew’s set. There was a string inside him pulled tight, forcing him to do so.
As a result, when he arrived on the set, he was informed that the crew would take a two-day break. From the staff’s gossip, he learned that the leading actress had asked for leave because she had an emotional breakdown over that morning’s Weibo post about Song Yu.
The composure that Zhou Yanqing had cultivated over the years through literary works was thrown into the trash. He cursed under his breath: stupid, the studio hasn’t yet come out to refute the rumors, what the hell are you crying about like someone died in your family?
Zhou Yanqing went back to his rental house and opened his phone again. He did not open the popular topic that was still ‘explosive’, but searched for a koi[footnote]In Asian cultures, koi fish symbolizes luck, good fortune, and positive circumstances. Koi fish are believed to bring good luck and prosperity to the lives of people who touch them.[/footnote] weibo post that had the highest number of reposts. As a firm atheist, Zhou Yanqing hundred percent religiously reposted this koi Weibo post, and then silently prayed for Song Yu’s safety and that everything was a rumor.
Two days later, Song Yu’s studio posted an official obituary on Weibo, triggering a tsunami-like storm that swept through the entertainment industry.
T/N: There’ll be another update tomorrow!
