He didn't answer right away.
Because he knew—it wasn't a question one could answer in a single breath.
It was a riddle that required the soul to slowly shed its layers,
to be rewoven before it could respond.
"Do you think I still have a choice?" he whispered, as if asking himself.
"You were never given a choice,"
Bai Zi-Ming replied, his gaze calm like a still river,
but with currents hidden deep beneath.
"What you've always had—was burden."
He tried to speak,
but his throat was parched,
his voice buried beneath layers of fractured time.
The ungrasped past, the names too dangerous to recall,
and the cross in his pocket—
all pressed against his breath like a weight.
"You want the truth behind the 281 days?"
Bai Zi-Ming asked suddenly, his voice nearly a whisper.
"Then understand this:
your memory was never from a single source."
"…Meaning?" He looked up, brow furrowed.
"You've been… adjusted.
Or rather, your time has been written, rewritten, and folded again."
"Each moment you remember—
may come from yourself,
another version of you,
or a future that hasn't yet occurred."
Silence stretched between them,
like the broken timeline unraveling inside his mind.
He suddenly remembered the photo—
the clock frozen at 28:01.
It wasn't the end of time.
It was a new beginning, in another form.
"So who am I now?"
He asked softly. But this time, there was no tremble in his voice.
Bai Zi-Ming didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he stepped closer, and said quietly, with clarity:
"You are the one who—across every version—chose to remain."
The moment those words landed,
something inside him stirred—
not breaking,
but realigning.
"When you're ready," Bai Zi-Ming said, turning into the shadows,
"come back to me.
But remember—don't be late again.
One more delay, and you will forget who you are."
The lights in the hallway flickered,
like a memory signal about to be severed.
He stood still.
Didn't chase,
didn't turn back.
Because he knew—
the silence in that moment was already a kind of wordless promise.
He lifted a hand and held the cross in his pocket.
His fingertips trembled slightly.
It wasn't just cold metal—
it was a key to every possibility.
A key to memory,
and to the fate he could no longer avoid.
The door was opening.
---
When he left the LUOYEH base,
the sky outside hung between two extremes—
not day,
not night.
A soft light drifted through the air,
carrying whispers left unfinished.
As he entered the alley,
his phone screen lit up on its own.
The time flickered for a second, then displayed:
February 23, 2025 (Sunday) — 18:40
He froze.
That was impossible.
When he entered the base, it was 3:47 PM.
The conversation hadn't lasted more than a few minutes.
There should've been no gap of nearly three hours.
Even stranger—
he couldn't recall anything from the moment he left the inner room until now.
As if someone had sliced out an entire stretch of memory—
cleanly, surgically, without even ash remaining.
"How long have I walked again?"
he asked himself, voice so low not even the wind bothered to reply.
He opened his notes app,
intending to record what Bai Zi-Ming had said—
only to find a line he never remembered writing:
[Tuesday – fracture : 2/25, 03:00 tentative]
[Reverse Axis remains unstable.]
[Do not return.]
He hadn't written that.
But it was in his voice—
his format, his rhythm, his syntax.
Exactly like something he'd write to his future self.
He tried deleting it—
but nothing happened.
His finger brushed the screen,
and the entire device seemed to chill.
Tiny static flickers danced across it—
like interference.
Then he knew—
this wasn't a warning.
This was a trace of timeline interference.
He looked up quickly, scanning the distance.
At a far corner,
a figure flashed past—
so like the reflection he'd once seen in a mirror.
But the stride was different, the posture foreign,
the eyes not his.
Yet—
not entirely not his.
He turned sharply,
ready to chase—
but stopped.
Because he understood:
if he approached,
he could never come back.
He whispered,
"28:01… is it beginning?"
He drew the cross from his pocket,
held it in his palm—
as if testing whether it would respond again.
Cold.
Silent.
But as his gaze settled on the point where the bars intersected,
he saw it—
a fine fracture running along the surface,
and at a specific angle,
a hidden reflection emerged:
X-Ω Layer // Phase 1 Initiated
First Reversal Expected: 火曜日 28:01
Not "Tuesday".
火曜日.
He'd never seen that word in his phone or system—
an ambiguous name,
a term that only surfaced
when events had crossed into irreversibility.
"He really did stay behind," he murmured.
"But now…
can I still leave?"
No one answered—except the wind.
The wind had never truly stopped.
And now,
it was no longer just the movement of air.
It was the echo of memory—
and of fate.