CW: Blood, Death, Assault, Murder, Child Abuse
Synopsis: On a day that is raining, Walker receives a call to travel back in time to save his parents from certain death. But to do so might mean unravelling more than just his world...
Word Count: 5719 words
Date Written: January 2021
Author's Note: Credit to the original story idea goes to Aeon! Thanks for letting me write this <3
Time is a fickle thing.
I should know. I saw the whole thing happen.
And I’m the only one left who remembers it.
That day, it was raining. Touhai Jian was standing beneath the overhang of a business building, right in front of a crosswalk that led to a bank. His black hair was drenched, his long black coat too. He kept his hands in his pockets, thinking about the lunch he had had earlier.
The light at the crosswalk turned from red to green to red again, and still he did not cross. If he possessed the habit of smoking then at this point he would have pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, but he didn’t, so the man instead focused on breathing exercises to relax his nerves. Four counts in, eight counts out.
The street was empty again. Touhai checked to see if he had everything: dagger, pistol, watch…he had everything he needed, save for an umbrella. But who could have predicted weather like this? And once again he turned his gaze upon the cold rain that was coming down, and pretended that a window separated him from the water.
It was time. He pulled out that heavy golden watch from his coat pocket, watching the hands travel around the clock face, one tick at a time. There was no use in putting it off anymore. What he had to do, he had to do. And everything would be right again.
Touhai pocketed the watch, the light turned green, and he crossed the street and entered the bank. The door shut behind him, and he was gone.
I stood there, watching him. Perhaps if I had stopped him that day, then this wouldn’t have happened. But you could never tell with things like this; time is too fickle.
Walker Ting was a normal student. At least, that’s what he tried to make everyone believe. And at some point, he started to believe it too.
He attended the local university (most days), he lived in a small apartment with several other students (if the mess they kept the place in could be called “living”), and he was young and free to do what he wished. He could have instant ramen for dinner, he could go down to the internet café and play games with his friends, he could see the girl he liked. In the others’ minds, he was merely a student.
Until one day a servant from the old house came by.
“Is this the residence of Lian Shi?” he asked me.
When I confirmed, he went up to the front door of the apartment and knocked. Someone opened, the two conversed, and in the end Walker Ting was called out to speak to the servant on the sidewalk in front of the house.
“What is it?” Walker asked, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I told you not to come anymore.”
“Master Walker.” The servant pulled a letter out from inside his coat. “This came. Addressed to you.”
“Did you look inside?”
“No, sir.”
The servant left, leaving Walker holding the letter. He saw me, and frowned. “You again,” he said. “Why are you always outside my house?”
“Because…you’re inside?”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, cramped from bending over his schoolwork late at night. “Look, kid. What do you want? Money? Candy? Some toy?”
I glanced down at the cracked pavement, then back up at him. “Candy will do.”
As he pulled out an old peppermint for me, his friend and classmate Rin came around the corner. She was a very pretty girl, her black hair long and silky. Walker’s face changed when she saw her, and hurriedly stuffed the envelope into his jacket pocket and the candy into my hands. “Rin! Why are you here?”
“I came to see if you wanted to come to the library with me.”
As the two walked away, I heard Rin ask Walker, “Who was that?”
To which he replied with a shrug: “Don’t know. Just some kid with an umbrella.”
Walker wanted to have a good day; he really did. But the envelope weighed like a stone in his jacket pocket. When he returned to his room late that night, he shut the door, opened his desk lamp, and took out a letter opener. If this was from…
Within, written in a shaky print:
Mr. Walker Ting, or, as you are known by your family, Lian Shi, son of Sun and Lara Shi, this is a timely message meant for your eyes only.
It should perhaps come to your attention that someone has, at this moment, traveled back in time to kill your parents. It is advised that you go back as well to stop him.
For further instructions, please come back home.
Walker didn’t know what to make of it. He scoffed, at first. Time travel? His parents? Out of all the parents in the world…
He really didn’t want to go back to the house.
A book fell off a nearby shelf. Walker jumped, and as he bent to pick it up, he caught sight of me, perched uncomfortably on his window sill. “You again? How did you get here?”
“I…climbed?”
“What do you want from me?” He rose, striding over. “And can you please shut your darn umbrella when you’re indoors, at least? Carrying it when it’s sunny is already weird enough, but keeping it open indoors is just plain rude.”
He tried to grab my umbrella from me, but I hung on. “Don’t do that! I need it!”
“What in the world could you possibly need it for?” He seemed defeated, tired of dealing with a certain small child that followed him around all day.
I tilted my head, resting the umbrella on my shoulder. “What would you say…if I told you that I couldn’t exist without it?”
Walker glanced at me, first out of disbelief, then turned and scoffed. First a letter about time travel and his parents, then this tiny child in knee shorts with a weird umbrella…what couldn’t he believe anymore?
“What’s your name? Don’t tell me you don’t have one of those either.”
I blinked. “Name? You want my name?”
“Yeah. Is even that too much to ask?”
“My name’s Edmund.”
“Edmund? And what do you want with me, Edmund?”
“What’s that letter you got there?”
He passed it to me, and I scanned it, then passed it back to him. “So what are you going to do?”
“Do?” Walker tossed the letter on his desk. “Nothing, of course. Time travel’s a messy thing. It’d be better not to deal with it.”
“What about your parents?”
He stiffened. “What about them?”
“Your parents are going to die.”
Once again, he scoffed. “You don’t know my parents.”
“Walker.” I tried calling him, just a little bit louder. “Your parents are going to die.”
“Does it look like I care?”
“And if they die, you die too.”
That last part shook him out of his reverie. Walker turned to look at me, his eyes wide. Die…
Because really, who wanted to die?
The next morning, Walker Ting showed up at the house again. It was an old manor house that had been passed down through his family for five or six generations. As he looked up at it, standing in the front way, he caught sight of the gray sky and wondered if it might rain. But then he shook himself and walked up to the front door and knocked. There was no time to waste.
“Master Walker, you’re back,” the butler greeted him. “Just in time for breakfast, too.”
The wooden floor in the dining room was just as polished as he remembered, and the large windows just as bright. The table and the chairs surrounding it still seemed to take up so little space in the vast room where he had once played as a child. He scanned the people around the table: his grandparents there on the ends, the servants standing by, me and my umbrella…
“Where are my parents?” he asked, sitting down.
One of the servants placed a dish in front of him. “They are out and about, young master. They will be glad to hear of your return, however.”
Walker glanced at the food in front of him, feeling his gut wrench after living on instant ramen for so long. He didn’t want to come back to this life…
There was a note alongside the food. He picked it up and opened it.
So you decided to come back. You have made the right choice. Your parents and their assets are extremely influential in this world. If they are to die…well, to put it simply, nothing would be the same anymore.
You shall find everything you need in your old bedroom.
Without touching his food, he excused himself and went upstairs.
His old bedroom…he hadn’t seen it in years… He pushed the door open, expecting there to be dust everywhere. However, it appeared that the maids had kept mostly everything clean.
There, on the bed, was the last note, along with a switchblade, a pistol, and a heavy golden watch.
You may be thinking that you are the wrong person for this job. On the contrary, Lian Shi. I believe that you are the right person for this job.
The watch will be your key to traveling back. Simply wind it until the minute hand points to the year which you wish to travel back to. I believe that the assailant has gone back a little over twenty years…
Good luck. I believe in you.
As he picked up the watch and looked at it, he felt like he was holding the weight of the world in his hands.
His world.
That day, it was raining. The night was dark, and the rain made it even darker. There was no storm, merely straight rain and some wind that called for an umbrella.
I was glad I had mine.
Walker stood at the street corner. Twenty years ago...his parents should be coming down the street soon. And the assailant should be coming to meet them.
He took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the knife in his hands. If worst came to worst… He didn’t want to use it; he had had little experience with fighting, outside of video games and action movies.
He looked up as the headlights of another car passed by, reflected in the puddles. The rain had cleared up into a misty drizzle, a “smoke rain”. Very few people were passing this way at this hour, and several of the street lamps weren’t lit. His parents would be returning from some business meeting, or maybe an art venue...
Someone walked past him at a fast pace, crossing the street. Walker followed his movements. It was hard to see in the dark, but...was that a golden watch? Similar to the one which he had...
When the person melted into the darkness, Walker quickly followed him.
His ears had been fine-tuned to catch tiny snippets of sound, during those times as a child when he was shut in his room so he couldn’t hear the adults, when he was a teenager and he would eavesdrop while listening to music from his earbuds, when he was on the noisy bus was trying to catch the sound of the birds outside...
And there were two people, talking, laughing, and then a murmured threat, louder, a scream, and then...
Walker broke into a run, and as he turned the corner, he saw three people...
Yes, those were his parents on the ground, twenty years younger, his father holding his mother, both terrified, and the one holding the pistol...
“Wait! Stop!” Walker cried, grabbing the assailant’s shoulder. The assailant turned to face him, and Walker’s eyes widened. “Touhai? Is that you?”
“Walker...” Yes, it was Touhai Jian, his black hair, his thin face, his eyes terrified but full of determination. He swore. “What are you doing here? Get away!”
“Touhai, please, you can’t do this—”
“I can and I will. You know what your parents are like. You - you know what they’ve done—”
Walker tried to wrench the pistol out of Touhai’s hand, but he hung on tightly. “Touhai, no—”
“Walker, if you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to have to shoot you too,” Touhai replied. He was almost a head taller than Walker was, and had almost always beat him in arm wrestling. There was no way that Walker could overpower him…
“I don’t want to do this either,” Walker said, tugging harder, but then a shot went off, startling them both. A sharp, hot pain went through his left shoulder, and he nearly fell over. He pressed a hand over it, feeling warm blood seep out… If he could just stop Touhai now, then everything would be all right later…
He tried to rush at Touhai again, but Touhai elbowed him out of the way and he landed on the wet pavement. He gave him an extra kick in the ribs for good measure.
“Walker, this is for the both of us.”
“If you do this…I die…”
Touhai ignored his words, and advanced on his parents again. “Ugh…because of you, I’ve wasted a bullet…”
While he was focused, Walker struggled to pull out the switchblade that had been given him. If he could just…press the button…
Another shot rang out, but Walker’s father managed to, by some magic, catch the bullet in his hand. He let out a cry, blood flowing down from the wound.
“You got lucky this time,” Touhai seethed. “But next time you won’t be. Y’know, maybe it’s best that you feel some pain. A lot of pain. For what you two did…”
“Stop the monologue.” Walker dragged himself over the ground and grabbed Touhai’s legs, stabbing him in the calf. Touhai kicked him in the face, but Walker brought the knife down again, and he fell to the ground, crying out.
Walker dragged himself forward, pressing Touhai to the ground. He brought the knife down once again, into the man’s ribs. He was going to live…
“I’m sorry.”
But as he looked down at him, he saw that Touhai was crying, glistening tears like droplets of the moon flowing down his face…
“You don’t know how lucky you were…”
They had been friends once, hadn’t they? And Walker’s heart hurt to see him like this. But no, he had to stop him…
“I’m sorry,” he said once again, dragging himself to his feet, leaving Touhai curled up on the ground, blood draining out of him. To his parents, he said: “You can go now.”
And he watched as the people who were his parents crawl to their feet and scramble away as fast as they could, into the darkness. Of course they weren’t going to thank him. Because they were that kind of people.
Well, his life was saved now, wasn’t it? He looked back for Touhai, but he couldn’t see him. Well, perhaps he’d left already. He didn’t want to feel too bad about it…
So, pressing a hand over his shoulder again, he began limping down the street. It was all fixed! He’d done it! He’d time-traveled back and saved his parents! Like all those fictional superheroes wished they could…
And then, right before it happened, he caught a glimpse of me, standing beneath my dripping wet umbrella.
“You…”
And then something didn’t feel right. When he stepped out again, his foot hit nothing. He looked around, confused, and saw that the whole world was crumbling to pieces, into white…
“What’s happening?” And he looked at himself, and saw himself also disintegrating…
I stood over him, watching every single expression change on his face, every single memory pass through his mind…
“Young master, it is time for your breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.” Young Walker sat on his bed in the dark room, around seven or eight years old, a servant outside the door, a crack of light streaming in.
“Young master, you must eat. It has been two days now.”
“I said, I’m not hungry.”
The servant was silent, then asked, “Is the food not to your liking? The cook does her best to create the finest meals for you and your family…is there anything that you wish to eat?”
Walker could not answer this, for indeed the food was delicious, but it was also tasteless at the same time.
“Leave him be. He’s just throwing a fit. When he’s hungry, he’ll eat,” the housekeeper said to the servant, who reluctantly shut the door.
Lian Shi, the first and only son of Sun and Lara Shi, heir to all the businesses and companies that his parents owned. A future full of bright possibilities. With the wealth that his parents had, he could go anywhere he wanted, become anything he wished. That was what the servants said.
But to Walker, everything was dim. He sat upon his chair at the table, treated like a prince by almost everyone in the household. His eyes were cold, his face expressionless. They expected that he would take over the vast empire which his parents owned.
But Walker never gave a thought to it.
Young Walker sat in the manor’s library, where he was supposed to be working on his studies. His tutor asked him what he was thinking about, what he was looking at.
Walker turned his head away from the window, outside where a bright blue sky shined, and a bird sat upon one of the leafy green branches, singing its happy song.
One day Walker Shi got up, left his parents’ house and changed his name, determined to never look back. What a pity, that he should have thrown away such great wealth, the servants whispered. He had such a fortune behind him, such a future ahead of him. What a pity he should have left this world behind.
Walker did not consider it a pity. Sure, he was poor now, but his world had never been so colorful. He could finally join the birds outside underneath that bright blue sky and sing his heart out. Outside, he could be whomever he wanted to be. He was finally free.
One day, not too long ago, he had been sitting with his classmate and good friend Rin on a bench at the park, watching children feed the ducks and geese down at the pond. He liked her, but he hadn’t told her. Maybe one day.
“What do you want to do after we graduate?” Rin had asked, her face practically glowing in the sun.
“Let’s see the world,” Walker replied. “Let’s travel around the world together.”
“That sounds nice. I’m up for that.”
Yes, he had wanted to go see the world with the girl he liked. And before he did that, he would not allow himself to die.
Call him selfish, maybe. Some people want little. Some people want a lot.
“I don’t understand,” Walker said to me as he disintegrated. “Why…why am I disappearing?”
I leaned forward, the shadow of my umbrella casting over him. “You know, Walker…you don’t exist anymore. You never did.”
“What?”
“Because of the trauma that your parents just suffered…well, they had a kid later than they originally did, by a year. A year after when you should have been born. You were never born, Walker.”
“I don’t understand… I thought, I thought I had chosen the right path…”
“Time is a fickle thing, Walker.”
We were in the empty dining room of the manor house. A couple of rain drops slid from my umbrella and fell to the polished wooden floor. I stepped over to a nearby table, and picked up a picture frame, watching Walker Shi disappear.
“But if I hadn’t gone back, then Touhai would’ve killed them! And I still wouldn’t exist.”
“Oh?” I focused on the dark-haired child sitting between his parents. “Are you sure about that?”
“I…give me another chance! I’ll do it over right this time!”
The desperation in his voice was astounding, so I turned around to face him. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything, Walker. I don’t exist, just like you.”
“Who - who are you?” Walker asked, tears and blood mixed on his face. “Why have you…been following me this whole time?”
It would have been a lie to say that I had not been looking forward to this moment. Not that I had thought that this moment would actually come. I bent down and looked him in the eyes, so that I could see my own reflection in them.
“I am Edmund Shi, the son that your parents had a year later. And I suppose that we could be considered brothers, except that I became the son your parents truly wanted. The prince to inherit their empire.”
“You - you’re—”
I showed him the photograph. “Don’t we make a lovely family? It’s a shame, though…such a shame…”
The scene fell away, and we were in the whiteness again. “Please,” Walker begged. “Surely…surely I can exist somehow! You have that umbrella, don’t you? If - if I could have one as well—”
“No, you can’t have my umbrella!” I tugged it away from him. “This was specially given to me, because I wasn’t supposed to exist at all. And there’s only one.”
Walker was almost completely gone. It must have been mercy that he hadn’t disappeared before this.
“To tell you the truth…you can exist in this white space by hiding underneath this curtain—” I pulled the whiteness up like a cloth, “—but I doubt you’d want that. After all, you want to be free, don’t you? Not attached to anything at all…”
“Then I guess…” There was still a trace of a smile left on his face. “I guess…it wasn’t that bad of a life…after all. If I even had a…life…”
I placed a hand on what was left of his head, and watched it, too, disappear, like a patch of water evaporating from the bottom of a pan over the fire.
“Goodbye…”
Walker Shi was gone. He had never existed, and never would. He was only left in my memory.
And I could turn and face the darkness behind me.
Part of the Shi’s empire was an orphanage, one of the only orphanages in the city. Once upon a time, it did look like a proper home, with children cleanly dressed in uniforms, smiles on their faces, but if anyone went there now…well, it looked more like a hellhole than anything.
And it felt like one, too.
A small, dark-haired boy sat in the corner, leaning against the cracking wall, his hair growing out over his face. Children ran past, dirty and dressed in ratty clothes, just like him.
Touhai Jian had lived here for as long as he could remember. Once upon a time, perhaps, he had felt less hungry and more happy. But those days filled with sunshine were long gone. Now, there was only darkness.
It wasn’t that the orphanage directors and volunteers beat them or anything. No, they rarely did, and only as the most severe punishment, and when they did so, it was never very hard, barely enough to leave a bruise.
The conditions of the orphanage had gone downhill. The house, in itself, was falling apart. One day when there was a leak, two of the directors stood there and observed it, calculating the costs, before announcing that the leak would have to stay, and that they would just have to put a pan underneath it when it rained.
Yes, the house was the first to go. The gardens, pride of the home, were no longer well-kept, and now thorns overran them. The age-old walls succumbed to time and erosion, and cracks appeared in them. A child fell through the floor once and thankfully wasn’t hurt badly, but the hole stayed. And so on, and so forth.
The servants who had kept the house clean and in tip-top shape were let go. Dust gathered. Water and electricity were turned off as the bills piled up on the head director’s desk. Baths could only be done down at the well in the town square, but that was a rare occasion, for it was a shame to see the children of the orphanage forced to clean themselves outside instead of in a house like decent people.
Of course, the children grew sick. That was only to be expected, living in conditions like these.
I looked down at the boy Touhai. Both of us listening to the coughing and wheezing happening down the hall.
“How do you have…such clean clothes?” he asked me. “You’re not…from here, are you?”
“No,” I replied.
“I’m really…hungry…”
“Don’t they still feed you?”
“They do. But only watery oatmeal. And some days…it tastes downright awful.”
I propped my umbrella against my shoulder, then felt around in my pockets til I found a lollipop. “Here,” I said. “Take it.”
He took it, unwrapped it carefully, and put it in his mouth. A little light returned to his eyes as he sucked on it. “Thank you,” he said.
I sat down on the floor next to him, watching him. He did bear slight resemblance to his grown-up self, though thinner, dirtier, frailer. At some point in his life, he must have gotten to eat well.
Touhai’s life there wasn’t all bad. He had a friend. A young boy named Mazhen.
Mazhen was the brightest ray of sunshine at the orphanage. Even as his clothes grew rattier and his face dirtier he still smiled, a smile that could cheer anyone up, even Touhai. Mazhen would always tell Touhai that they were going to be adopted together, that they were going to become brothers, that everything was going to turn out all right.
And Touhai believed him.
As we sat there, I heard voices outside in the hall. Brisk voices in passing, of adults who had grown tired and numb to everything around them.
“Director, did you know that this building is actually insured?”
The director laughed, not that it was funny, but in disbelief. “What? How do you know?”
“Found it buried in the bottom of the file cabinet, sir. Must have been forgotten about.”
“Oh? And tell me, what does it insure against?”
“Oh, the usual things, probably. Fire, flood, natural disasters, the like… It’s most likely expired, though.”
“What was the first again?”
“...fire?”
The voices faded. For some reason, I felt uneasy. There was a certain desperation radiating from the director, a sort of desperation mixed with numbness, about the food, the money, his job… Eyes that had seen late nights and bills that wouldn’t add up and the orphanage crumbling around him…
As I stood up, Touhai looked up at me. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Thanks for the candy.”
“I should be the one saying that,” I replied, and left through the front door.
No one knows how the fire started. It was nighttime. People speculated that perhaps they had gotten so cold within the deteriorating building that someone actually tried to light a fire within to warm themselves.
Whatever the case, it happened. Someone down the street called the fire department.
I’m sure that whoever set the fire hadn’t thought that there would be a room full of sleeping orphans on the highest floor, who would be trapped by the time they realized what was happening.
Then again, with death comes money, no? And less mouths to feed…
Adults were rushing children out from the building. Crying, screaming, coughing from smoke… A piece of building fell and blocked the entrance.
Among all the voices, I heard Touhai’s, as he struggled against one of his caretakers.
“Mazhen! Mazhen’s still in there!”
I stood there, watching the flames soar higher. Why today, of all days, could it not have been raining?
The orphanage was part of the Shi empire. How in the world could it have gone bankrupt? How in the world could it have fallen to such conditions?
The answer was that Walker’s parents—no, my parents—had been skimming money off of the profits which they made. The more money they took for themselves, the less money there was for businesses like the orphanage.
Everything around me melted into the glow of the fire…what I heard was the crackling of it, what I smelled was smoke, what I felt was the intense heat on my face…
I closed my eyes and wished that I was burning with them.
Years later, Touhai Jian met Lian Shi. Or Walker Ting, at the time.
Did he know that Walker was the son of the king and queen of the Shi empire? Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.
Walker invited Touhai to join his friend group. Touhai accepted. He was a little thin, perhaps, and a little pale, but after breaking through his quiet shell, he could smile like the rest of them.
What good memories they once had, I wouldn’t know, because along with Walker, they had disappeared. And now there was only Touhai.
That day, it was raining. Touhai Jian stood where I had seen him once before, devoid of physical wounds, still thinking about the lunch he had earlier. He ran a hand over his sopping wet hair, and caught sight of me.
“What are you staring at, kid?”
“The watch in your pocket,” I replied.
“Oh?” Touhai reached into his pocket, but pulled out a lollipop instead. “Here, have some candy. Tell your parents I said it was okay.”
“That’s a very strange thing to say, mister.”
“Yeah, well, take it or leave it. Aren’t kids supposed to like candy or something? Just don’t stare; it’s quite rude.”
Should I stop him? Should I stop him from going back in time once more? He didn’t know, he couldn’t remember…
“Mister…”
“Yeah?”
“I…thanks for the candy.”
“Any time.”
He crossed the street without checking for cars.
Walker Shi no longer existed. There was no longer anyone to stop Touhai Jian from committing murder. And nothing stopped him from doing so.
“Mazhen…I did it…I did it, Mazhen…”
He stared down at his bloodstained hands, a maniacal look in his eyes, then looked up and caught sight of me, staring at him.
“What are you looking at, kid?”
“Nothing,” I replied, because that was the truth.
Sun and Lara Shi were dead. They were not alive to steal money for themselves. They left no heir to take over their empire. Their assets were split among several business partners.
The orphanage remained a place full of sunshine and smiles. Of course people wanted to adopt clean, happy children. And so Touhai Jian and Mazhen Fang were taken in by a very kind and caring family.
Touhai Jian had a happy childhood.
That day, it was raining. Neither Touhai nor I had moved from our original spots.
Touhai Jian had never gone back in time. But this Touhai intended to go back in time.
“Wait—” I tried to call out, but Touhai had already crossed the street without hesitating.
“Hey…”
I buried myself in the world of white, letting my umbrella dry while I hung onto the white curtains. Touhai Jian had had a happy childhood. Therefore, Touhai Jian never went back in time.
Then how could he have had a happy childhood?
Once more, we stood out there in the rain. Once more, I tried to call out for him.
“Mister, please don’t go back in time!”
Just as I said it, a car rolled past, splashing water up all over me and my umbrella.
By the time I could see again, Touhai had crossed the street and was gone.
“Touhai…”
Touhai Jian went back in time, eliminating the need for him to go back in time, so therefore, he never went back in time.
And because he never went back in time, he had to go back in time again.
Every time I saw him, something had changed. Just minuscule details, but they soon became evident.
I stood over him, as he sat on the curb, hands shaking as he tried to take a smoke. “Mister,” I said. “Smoking is bad for you.”
“Yeah…I don’t know why I do it…”
“Here, have a lollipop,” I said, holding out the one which he had given me. Unopened.
He looked up at me, and I saw that even the irises of his eyes were shaking. “Have I…seen you before?”
“Yes,” I replied, because that was the truth.
He took the lollipop, twirled it between his fingers a few times, then handed it back to me. “I can’t take candy from kids.”
“It’s okay.”
“No…I have to go, anyway.”
As he stood, I grabbed onto his coat. “Mister,” I said. “You don’t - you don’t have to go back.”
He looked down at me. “But I…have to…”
His coat slipped out of my hands, and he left.
For once, I wanted to cry.
There were two Touhais. There was one who was happy, well, and complete. The other was full of vengeance, regrets, and brokenness.
Gradually, right before my eyes, Touhai was splitting into these two selves. With every travel back, he was torn just a little more asunder.
“I don’t - I don’t understand…” he whispered, burying his head in his hands. “Why do I - why is this…Mazhen…”
“Touhai…” I stood over him, watching him. “Please, you don’t have to…”
“But I…but I must…”
He was crying, but he didn’t know why he was crying, he didn’t know why it hurt so much inside, when nothing had gone wrong, yet everything had gone wrong.
“Shhh…” I pressed his wet head to my chest. “It’s okay…you can rest awhile…before going…”
Still trembling, he let himself lean against me. An adult, crying against a child.
How many times had I watched him go back? How many times had I seen everything happen? How many memories, both existent and nonexistent, did I have within me?
Maybe it was the rain, or maybe it was me, but my face was wet.
“It’s okay…”
It was me.
“Here,” I said, passing him my umbrella. “I think you need this more than I do.”
When Touhai Jian looked up, he saw nothing there.