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This is... a four-lane main road in front of the school?

There was no way he was wrong. This awful school, which he felt no fondness for at all, was one that Old Lin Qunzhi had never considered returning to even once, no matter how many times he had set off for and returned to Taiwan. But now, seeing that malicious school standing right in front of him, a mountain of filthy memories, like a garbage dump, suddenly rushed back to him from thirty-six years ago.

Extremely clear.

It stinks terribly.

These scenes, however, are too similar to those deep in my memory, almost identical. Everything is old. The cars running around the streets are all extremely outdated, and the air I breathe feels stale and expired. Indeed, this journey has taken me through a long period of time.

Just as Lao Lin was about to ask a passerby what year it was, he caught a glimpse of someone standing at the school gate, looking around suspiciously…

"Myself."

Old Lin Qunzhi gasped.

That naive version of myself, wearing a high school uniform and carrying a backpack that had been scribbled with profanities by classmates using Liposuction, stood outside the broken wall next to the school gate, constantly peering inside.

What are you looking at?

"..." Old Lin Qunzhi was trembling all over.

What are they looking at? Do I even need to ask?

How many times has this scene appeared in my dreams? How many times have I recalled this image while wandering endlessly in the treacherous wilderness? It cannot be erased, it cannot be forgotten, that naive me waiting for the goddess to come home from school, and then, like every dusk of the past year, secretly following her.

At that moment, my younger self looked so panicked and uneasy.

He knew he was thinking...

Why hasn't she come out yet? What is she doing in the classroom? Or has something happened to her? Is she wiping the blackboard? Is she mopping the floor? Is she cleaning up the curse words her classmates scribbled on her desk with bleach? Did her homeroom teacher suddenly come to bother her again? Or was she pranked by her classmates and locked in the bathroom again? Was her backpack hidden? Could it be that the missing bastard suddenly came back to cause trouble for her?

Fifty-three-year-old Lin Qunzhi saw the innocent love in his seventeen-year-old self.

"Have you regretted it over these 36 years?" Old Lin Qunzhi murmured to himself as he stood by the roadside.

I've asked myself this question countless times.

The answer every time was a firm denial.

This is a question that many people have heard.

"If you could do it all over again, would you still give up medical school and study mathematics, which you love?"

"If you could do it all over again, would you still choose your current wife and not get back together with your first love?"

"If you could do it all over again, would you still argue with your boss, quit your job at a big company, and sell braised food at a night market?"

"If you could do it all over again, would you still choose to send your child abroad, even if he is very successful but distant from you?"

The answer is definitely yes, I won't regret it. If I could do it all over again, I would make the same decision.

Since there's no real chance of changing things anyway, of course we have to hold on.

I need to save face, but I also need to comfort myself.

But what if there really is an opportunity for that kind of change?

Looking at his seventeen-year-old self, constantly looking around anxiously and guessing wildly, Lao Lin Qunzhi was plunged into unprecedented fear.

I was having trouble breathing, my heart was racing, and even the soles of my feet were sweating profusely.

That child will know.

Longing for an ordinary life,

Is it about to become anything but ordinary?

Five minutes later, the child would be holding a utility knife, staring blankly at his throat, which was gushing blood.

The child spent his entire life on the run, and had to run, spending all his years wandering.

He couldn't possibly have a realistic dream. He has no job, no identity. He won't have a family. He's never made friends. He won't own a dog. He's never been to a movie theater. He's never had a driver's license.

For thirty-six years, he has only been setting out and turning back, enduring scorching heat, extreme cold, disease, hunger, getting lost, wild beasts, war, poverty, loneliness, emptiness, and even his beloved goddess turning into a prostitute whom everyone buys and rides.

Perhaps he's one of those people who says they don't regret it, but when the opportunity arises, they still want to change things. The so-called "finding meaning in life for a goddess" is nothing more than a way of comforting oneself in utter despair.

If you give that child the power of choice, and tell him, who is so anxious he's about to cry, what he will see when he returns to the fourth-floor classroom, and what will happen after that, would that child really be willing to repeat the same mistake and cut that bastard in the back again?

No, 99.9 percent, that timid child won't.

At first it was just a simple impulse, but the rest of the actions were... an inescapable love?

Is my love for my goddess just an unavoidable, infinitely magnified illusion?

I am now standing at the watershed of cause and effect.

Just walk over and pat the child on the shoulder.

Even a slight time difference could subtly prevent the child from returning to the classroom on the fourth floor.

In that case, without cause and effect, I would immediately disappear from this world.

make a fist.

Clench your fist tightly.

The goddess's power and his own destiny joined forces to bring him to this perfect turning point.

Absolutely, absolutely not, we're not asking him to give up.

"sorry."

A backpacker, tears streaming down his face, stood by the roadside watching a bewildered high school student pace back and forth.

Finally, the child ran back to school.

Just ten minutes later, Lao Qunzhi dragged his sorrowful steps into the old school campus, a place filled with guilt. He slowly climbed the stairs to the fourth-floor classroom, stained with blood. He pushed open the door, which he hadn't locked.

The child has disappeared.

An unknown bastard lay motionless in a pool of blood. On the podium, the young goddess, now out of her high school uniform, stared at her bloodied genitals, her face filled with confusion and contemplation. She wondered if her life was also spiraling out of control.

Looking up, the young goddess saw the fully equipped Old Qunzhi standing in the center of the classroom. Her tender body trembled violently, completely terrified by this unfamiliar intruder.

"goddess……"

Old Qunzhi knelt on one knee: "That child isn't missing, he's just gotten old."

The young goddess stared stiffly at Old Qunzhi. Maintaining a distance that wouldn't trigger a hysterical scream, Old Qunzhi looked at the young goddess tenderly. He also allowed the young goddess to look closely at him, using loving gaze to brush aside layer after layer of wrinkles and strands of white hair, to see clearly how familiar the face hidden beneath the years was. It was just deeply hidden, but never buried.

The young goddess was stunned.

Old Qunzhi's tears dripped down his rugged, winding wrinkles.

On this day, he threw himself headlong into his destiny.

On this day, the goddess chose herself.

"I don't understand," the little goddess said, calming herself down.

“You don’t need to understand.” Old Qunzhi cried and laughed at the same time: “The fact that I haven’t disappeared means that even if you see me now, you won’t give up your plan. That’s enough.”

The young goddess nodded, seemingly understanding but not quite, and approached the old group leader.

"As agreed, tell me where you've been all this time."

The little goddess squatted in front of the old strategist, stroking her aged warrior.

"Over the past thirty-six years, I have been to countless places and experienced countless calamities. I have just overcome the most difficult hurdle."

Old Qunzhi felt the warmth of the little goddess's fingers, and a surge of excitement welled up again: "Everything that happened in the past thirty-six years was for the sake of reuniting with you today."

Tears from thirty-six years in the future flowed into the little goddess's palm.

The little goddess sighed.

"Is the meaning of everything just to meet me again?"

The young goddess, holding Old Qunzhi's tears, curled up and said, "I don't know."

"Today's reunion is for an immediate departure."

Having resisted the opportunity for change, the old strategist now displayed unprecedented determination: "I have a premonition that the next departure will bring the final answer. Goddess, I must borrow your power once again."

Same scene, different combination.

With departure imminent, the little goddess welcomes the old group of wits for their final sprint.

Tell me, what will I be like in the future? Will I be happy?

The young goddess embraced her aging warrior tightly.

Should I tell her? Will telling her the truth lead to a reversal and destruction of cause and effect?

Old Qunzhi tenderly cradled her warm face.

"You will become a goddess who makes me very happy."

10

"call!"

He suddenly opened his eyes. One hand was pulling the button for the miniature jet landing, while the other was wrapped around a non-existent, fragrant shoulder.

He was greeted by several pairs of confused, almost blank stares, and mouths agape.

Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he saw a face covered in stubble, looking travel-worn, and even had a bird showing.

Wait... a mirror?

"satyr!"

The screams that rose and fell made Lao Qunzhi quickly pull up his pants, looking around in a panic.

where?

when?

A familiar and rich scent, old-fashioned furnishings, and a space that seems to extend infinitely with the help of mirrors. This is a barbershop.

The scene felt somewhat familiar; it vaguely resembled the place where I used to get my hair cut when I was a child.

The hairdresser, who was cutting hair and watching TV, yelled at the old man who suddenly appeared in his seat. Meanwhile, a child sitting in front of the mirror was wailing, blood streaming from his ear. The hairdresser quickly put down her blood-stained scissors and frantically tried to stop the bleeding from the crying child.

Old Qunzhi jumped off his seat in a disheveled state, losing his balance due to the weight of his equipment and falling. A vague, severely distorted "memory" resurfaced from the deepest corner of his mind with that fall. Still kneeling on the ground, he instinctively touched his right ear... sure enough, there was a slightly raised scar.

"you?"