I returned to the store after five o'clock. Du Xiaolan jumped up when she saw me, pointing at me and talking a lot. Finally, she quieted down when I agreed to treat her to a Western meal.
Her life was much better than mine. In the car, she listed a lot of Western restaurants and their flavors. I didn't have much interest in this kind of luxury life, so I let her choose a place and then drove there.
After finding a window seat, and sitting down mimicking the scenes on TV, Du Xiaolan took the menu and ordered a lot of things. Seeing the fierceness of this woman, it seemed as if she wanted to eat up a month's salary of mine.
To cover up my embarrassment, I looked around. Through the nearby glass, I saw a young man in a black short-sleeved shirt slowly walking on the opposite side of the street.
The young man, about eighteen or nineteen years old, had no expression on his face, looking straight ahead.
Young man!
I abruptly stood up, and Du Xiaolan asked me what was wrong. At this moment, I didn't want to explain much. To avoid any further discussion, I hastily took out the only 250 yuan in cash from my wallet and handed it to her, asking her to order less and hurriedly ran out.
As I exited the Western restaurant, the young man was still in my sight. I ran along the overpass to the other side of the road, following him closely.
His speed was very slow, as if he was afraid of stepping on ants. I followed behind him, pretending to be very natural, but perhaps I overthought it, as the young man didn't even look back at me.
After following for nearly half an hour, the young man entered a building in the urban village. I hesitated at the door, but eventually followed him inside.
The building had a total of five floors. Although it was the peak of the rush hour, I couldn't see anyone coming in or out. Ignoring this, I quickened my pace to catch up, but even on the fifth floor, I didn't see any trace of the young man.
On the top floor, I finally saw the young man in the black short-sleeved shirt with his back to me, squatting and drawing something on the ground.
Carefully walking over, when I was three meters away from him, I stopped and was about to speak when the young man's voice suddenly came from the front, "Here."
I was stunned and quickly looked back, but the empty top floor only had the two of us.
Turning my head back quickly, I cleared my throat and asked, "Who exactly are you?"
He didn't respond to my question. After finishing his drawing on the ground, he nodded, stood up, and turned to face me.
Before, I had only taken a quick look and hadn't looked closely. Now, face to face at close range, although this young man was very young, there was a sense of age in his eyes.
His gaze seemed to see through people's souls, and I quickly looked away, asking again, "Who exactly are you?"
"Me? Just a passerby," the young man squinted his eyes, still looking directly at me.
I looked at him, then quickly looked away from his gaze, "A passerby of time? Time's passerby?"
"You can understand it that way," the young man smiled and took a step towards me.
An overwhelming sense of oppression came with his steps, and I quickly took a step back, nervously asking, "Were the human pig incident fifty years ago, and making Zhang Roujin a zombie twenty years ago, both your doing?"
The young man didn't refute, nodding and saying, "Yes, and also the incident that happened in your hometown, with Yu Li!"
"What?" I looked at him sharply. Yuli had told us that after her suicide, a man had appeared, teaching her how to seize the souls and spirits of others in order to take over their bodies. I had thought she was just deceiving us, but it turned out to be true.
Anxiously swallowing, I hurriedly asked, "What is your purpose in doing this?"
"It's all because of you!" With the originally three meters distance closed in by just one step, he was now only twenty centimeters away from me.
The proximity was so close that I could even see every pore on his face. The pressure again enveloped me, and I looked at him with fear and unease. After decades without any signs of aging, he could no longer be described as human.
Summoning up my courage, I asked, "Why would you do these things to me?"
"Because, I am you, and you are me," he said each word, one by one, causing each word to hit me like a heavy hammer.
I hurriedly asked, "What do you mean?"
"When you were born, you were supposed to die. Your current life is the one I gave you," the young man said, and suddenly raised his hand to tap my forehead.
I wasn't sure if his hand had any magic, but the moment it touched my forehead, I felt dizzy, and my eyes went dark as I collapsed to the ground.
In a daze, a woman's voice floated around me, "You actually killed him?"
The young man calmly said, "No."
"Well, there's no choice now," the woman sighed, and my surroundings began to quiet down.
The world fell silent at that moment. I had seen many ghosts, but I didn't know what it would be like to become one. I didn't know how long passed, but I felt my body light and floating. Slowly, I opened my eyes, and found myself standing beside a body. Xia Xiaolan had also arrived at some point, holding onto my body and shaking it continuously.
I tried to call out her name as I walked over, but Xia Xiaolan seemed unable to hear, continuously calling my name to wake me up.
I was really dead.
I had heard my grandpa say that after a person dies, they will go to the underworld. Though I had a thousand reasons not to, a voice kept guiding me forward.
Desolately walking down the stairs, out of the village, and into the city center, I continued on for a while, and saw the wedding company I worked at.
But when I looked up, it was no longer the familiar sign, but one with a white background and black lettering, with two lanterns hanging on each side.
"Mingyue Wedding Services."
I wanted to go in, but my body was beyond my control, continuing to walk forward.
I didn't know how long I walked for. There was a period of darkness, and when it disappeared, I saw a layer of white mist in front of me. Passing through the mist, a very tall building appeared before me.
This was the second time I had seen this building. This was the Ghost Gate my grandpa had mentioned - as long as you passed through it, you would enter the underworld.
When I reached the front of the Ghost Gate, I saw many stiff people around me, all with their eyes fixed straight ahead, mechanially taking steps forward.
Entering the Ghost Gate, the scene before me was not as terrifying as the legends. Inside, there were no scenes of purgatory, just a monotonous expanse of pale and darkness, devoid of any other colors.
Following the many spirits for who knows how long, I saw a woman in her thirties standing alone beside a stone about half a meter high.