Huang Jinchen ran two steps into the cold night breeze, then suddenly felt something was wrong. He pulled Kou Tong back, took off his jacket, which was ballooning in the wind, and put it over him. In the midst of turmoil, he loudly said, “Chief, you can’t go into battle dressed like that!” 

Kou Tong said, “Shit, brother, we’re about to die, don’t be so meddlesome.” 

Huang Jinchen said, “Huh?” 

Kou Tong said, “It’s happened before that a patient couldn’t tell the space from reality and killed themselves inside. After the conscious subject collapses, the space immediately collapses…” 

Huang Jinchen said, “Isn’t that all for the better? We’ll get out, then.” 

Kou Tong said, “Like hell! I’ve already told you we’re in an unknown closed loop program now. I wasn’t planning on using this program when I made it, so I didn’t set the projection’s limiting values!” 

Huang Jinchen reacted quickly. “So you mean that if you get hung up here, you may really be hanging on the wall from then on?” 

Kou Tong considered, then very systematically said, “I have no way to determine that. The possibility is probably fifty-fifty.” 

Huang Jinchen was silent for a moment. Then he cried out, “Fuck! Then what are you waiting for?! Run!” 

The two of them rushed through the streets that were shaking like a magnitude 4 earthquake. Though Huang Jinchen admired Kou Tong in the manner of admiring an ancient hand-painted porcelain vase, he now became deeply aware that this half-superior, part-senior really was as unreliable as a vase. He felt a chill go up his spine, a dismal chill about the future that rose from the heart. 

The two of them ran through the street as though trekking over mountains, dodging countless obvious and hidden attacks. They made it to the bottom of a tall building—it was very easy to find, because the whole area around them was collapsing, while only this one small area seemed like the eye of the storm, unusually quiet. 

For professional reasons, Huang Jinchen was particularly sensitive towards tall buildings. Almost at once, he saw a teenager on the roof, with his feet sticking out suspended in midair, sitting on the railing, his thin arms planted on either side of his body, holding onto the railing, looking down with an indistinct expression.

“Up there.” Huang Jinchen pulled Kou Tong over, his gaze quickly turning sideways. “Follow me.” 

He familiarly took Kou Tong through the building’s emergency passage. The door was locked, but to Huang Jinchen’s eyes, these locks may as well not have existed in the first place. There seemed to be a super processor in his brain that could turn any kind of bewildering three-dimensional distortion that would make others dizzy into a level map for dummies. 

Five minutes later, when Kou Tong was standing behind a big door that had long fallen out of repair, looking through the blurry glass on top of it at the teenager with his back to them, his figure blown askew by the wind, he somewhat suspected that this building was in fact Huang Jinchen’s backyard. 

Huang Jinchen proudly made a gesture towards him—Well, aren’t I awesome? 

Kou Tong had no attention to spare for him. He was closely watching the teenager’s back. 

It wasn’t a problem now of one person wanting to kill himself. If he jumped, it was likely that this whole building would collapse, or even this whole area might be impacted by this conscious subject. No one knew whether there was some mystical connection between the seven people who had accidentally been drawn in. 

I don’t want to see her die again… Even up to now, for the whole evening, Kou Tong had still been unsuccessful in saying “mom.” 

Kou Tong made a “stand there and don’t move” gesture at Huang Jinchen. Then he quickly opened the lousy door in front of him and charged directly towards…a stack of waste cardboard boxes five meters away from the teenager who wanted to jump. 

Huang Jinchen: “…” 

The teenager was startled. Half a beat slow, he turned his head to look at this strange man. 

He found that this person was wearing only a bathrobe with a jacket over it that obviously didn’t really fit him. He hurriedly opened the door and came out. There was still a trace of sweat at his temples. He cut a bizarre and sorry figure. 

This was an eccentric, but what did that have to do with him? the teenager thought numbly.—After today, once he had accomplished his parting from the whole world, no one would have anything to do with him. 

The teenager opened his mouth, wanting to warn the man to mind his own business, but he found that the man didn’t so much as look at him. He was squatting irritably on the ground, picking up a pile of waste cardboard boxes in the corner, raising them and looking, as though searching for something. After rummaging for a long time, he didn’t turn anything up. Then he hit each of the railing’s bars one by one. 

The man’s expression was extremely agitated, so much so that the teenager’s gaze was involuntarily drawn by him for a moment. In that moment, the man had already arrived in front of him. 

Kou Tong tilted his ear and knocked on the railing bars one by one, as if determining something based on the echo inside. Then at last he raised his head and looked at the teenager. He said to him, “Excuse me, can you come down? I can’t hear clearly with you sitting there.” 

The teenager frowned, simply not quite able to believe his own ears—he was about to jump from here, and someone had come along openly telling him to get down. He looked at Kou Tong in disbelief for a while, then coldly said, “You can wait another five minutes. I’m about to jump from here. You can knock all you want then.” 

But this person unreasonably clutched his already messy hair and very impatiently said, “Why are you in such a hurry to jump? Wait a little, then jump. I have urgent business!” 

The teenager felt that he had been insulted. Though he had made up his mind to end his own life, this ought to have been a solemn and moving action after having come to the extreme of great confusion and despair. When this scoundrel who had come from who knew where said it, the holy act of “suicide” seemed like waiting in line to use a public toilet! 

“I want to jump!” 

“I want to knock!” 

The observing Huang Jinchen quickly covered his mouth, afraid that he would slip up and laugh during the performance. 

The teenager furiously cursed: “Where did you come from, lunatic?!” 

Kou Tong cursed back: “You’re the lunatic! Only lunatics jump off buildings! You’re polluting the environment!” 

The teenager said, “You…” 

Kou Tong grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down from midair, making Huang Jinchen jump with nerves as he watched. The teenager was sixteen or seventeen. While he was fairly skinny, he was still a person, not a featherless little chick. 

His brain was like his surname¹; Master Huang’s mind, full of all kinds of bizarre colors, turned up some fantastic little notions—he thought, This guy looks pretty skinny, but he’s actually quite strong. His body must be impressive. 

Huang Jinchen looked out through the crack in the open door and saw that at some point the quaking ground and collapsing buildings had calmed down. The teenager was in a towering rage, his anger towards the line jumper already covering up his fully brewed desire to jump. 

But Kou Tong didn’t so much as look at him. He was wholly absorbed in knocking on the railing with his ear tilted, nearly sticking to the ice-cold metal bars, his expression as serious as if he was receiving a TV news station from outer space. 

The teenager coldly watched him knock all the way around, then slowly turn his back to the railing and sit on the ground. 

Kou Tong lit a cigarette and glanced at the teenager with an indifferent expression. He pointed with his chin. “All right, go ahead and jump.” 

The teenager was beside himself with fury. 

Kou Tong’s slightly wide sleeves dropped a little, revealing forearms covered in scars. 

Huang Jinchen stopped laughing. Leaning in a corner against the light, he carefully observed Kou Tong. His vision was excellent. From this angle, he could see the scars clearly, one after another, very jumbled. But however you looked at it, they all seemed to have been done by himself. 

He remembered how Kou Tong had reacted as if electrocuted when he had run across them earlier, but now he was bringing them out as props without a care. 

Huang Jinchen rubbed his chin. He kept thinking that Kou Tong was in two completely different states at work and in private. It couldn’t be seen on the surface, but in the details it was like so-called multiple personality disorder. 

Living up to expectations, the teenager’s gaze fell on his arms. Puffing away, Kou Tong said, “What are you looking at? Oh…this? This won’t kill you. You have to aim at a major artery for it to work, and even if you do aim at a major artery, it would still take you a fairly long time to die. The rate of success isn’t very high. If you want to die, I think that the idea of jumping off a building is pretty good, more reliable than sleeping pills or slitting your wrists.” 

The teenager hesitated, then sat down next to him. “How did it happen?” 

Kou Tong glanced at him. “I went to the forest park and got scratched up by a big black bear.” 

The teenager snorted. “Liar.” 

Kou Tong indifferently ignored him. After a while, the teenager spoke himself. “I have scars like that, too.” 

Then he rolled up his own sleeves. On his smooth skin, there were even scars that hadn’t fully healed yet. They were mottled with blood. The two of them sitting there together looked like two cellmates from a prison hole discussing their torture experiences. 

“What’s your name?” Kou Tong asked. 

“He Xiaozhi,” the teenager said. 

“I see.” Kou Tong nodded. He paused, then slowly said, “The person I loved most in this life, she abandoned me.” 

He Xiaozhi turned his head to look at him. He said, “What?” 

Huang Jinchen also craned his neck and looked. He thought, What? 

Kou Tong’s face was a little blurred under the starlight, even a little weary. This almost made him not look like a young man, giving him an indescribable air of having lived through many changes…

Kou Tong continued, “Before she left, she said she left me some things, here on this rooftop, but I can’t seem to find them.” 

He Xiaozhi asked, “So why were you knocking on the bars?” 

Kou Tong said, “She knocked on the railing at this tempo. I come here every year on this day to knock. But I’ve never been able to find the things.” 

“Oh.” He Xiaozhi paused for a while. He couldn’t especially understand this behavior. He still thought he was a little crazy. So he said in consolation, “Don’t think about it anymore. It’s not your fault if others abandon you.” 

Kou Tong asked, “So why are you doing this?” 

“I think…that there’s no point in living.” He Xiaozhi’s expression blurred for a while. Then he put his chin on his knees and slowly said, “What can I do if I’m alive? I can’t think of an answer, so it’s better to die.

“Living…is too painful.” His voice became quieter and quieter, slower and slower. The anger he had felt at the beginning because his suicide had been interrupted by Kou Tong had quickly left him, like an easily consumed good.

Kou Tong frowned. He knew that his crisis intervention had succeeded, but this teenager named He Xiaozhi must have a serious problem. It couldn’t be resolved with a couple of days of talking. He thought about it, then tentatively asked, “You’re so young. What pain do you have?” 

The corners of He Xiaozhi’s mouth curved as if he wanted to smile, but the smile didn’t take shape. It quickly disappeared. He didn’t seem to want to explain anymore. After a long time, he quietly said to Kou Tong, “I think that if I was gone, many people’s lives would be a little better. You wouldn’t understand.” 

In this, he was wrong—Kou Tong’s brows moved suddenly, and a thought flashed through his mind. He didn’t continue the subject concerning the meaning of “living.” He pinched out his cigarette end and dropped it off the building. With a mocking laugh, he said, “You want to die? I think you’re being too slow about it. Have you noticed that?” 

He Xiaozhi raised his head and looked at him half a beat slow. His expression was blank. 

Kou Tong lifted him by the collar, lifting him off the ground. He pulled him to the railing. Pointing to the disorder, he said, “Come over here and look.” 

The look in He Xiaozhi’s eyes was a little empty, as if he was a little out of it, like he had retreated into his own world. But all the same, after looking down for a long time, he still noticed that something was off. He couldn’t resist pointing in the distance and saying, “That…isn’t that a movie theater? Why has it turned into an office building? And the vegetable market over there is gone, and there’s no supermarket…” 

“Even if you jumped off, you wouldn’t die.” Kou Tong let him go. Pointing to the surroundings, he said, “Do you know what I mean by saying I come to knock on the railing every year?” 

He Xiaozhi frowned. 

The strong wind on top of the building ruffled the messy hair in front of Kou Tong’s forehead. With a slightly ridiculing smile, he said, “Because this isn’t the real world, time and place here are disordered and illogical. My timeline and hers have broken into two halves. They connect here. So at this joining point, I might be able to find the things she hid during that time… Oh, fine, you don’t understand. Have you heard of the Projector?” 

“A lantern slide projector?” 

Kou Tong spat. “It’s frightening how children don’t study and are so uncultured—the Projector is a new supplementary instrument for psychological treatment. Its full name is the multidimensional frequency-changing projection installation. We had an accident during an experiment, leading to many people’s consciousnesses being drawn into the altered space. Do you understand that?” 

He Xiaozhi stared blankly and shook his head. 

“You still don’t understand? Then just watch.” Kou Tong held him by the collar and pressed his head down. “Do you see the broken windows and chaotic streets? That’s all because of you.” 

He Xiaozhi’s eyes opened wide. 

Kou Tong pressed him: “I’ve just now determined that you’re one of the conscious subjects of this space.” 

“…Me?” 

“If you had succeeded in killing yourself just now, the space that’s under the influence of your consciousness would all have collapsed, and these people would all have died.” 

He Xiaozhi’s eyes opened wide, but Kou Tong laughed coldly. “But the only person who wouldn’t have died is you. Your consciousness would have entered the installation’s cache, and then it would have been set free. This is because when the projection installation was planned, for the sake of safety, some limiting value principles were set.” 

Huang Jinchen silently thought, Didn’t you just say the Projector’s limits were gone? 

Which version was cooked up? 

Then he heard Kou Tong sharply say, “That wouldn’t be murder anymore. It would be a massacre.”