Chapter Text
“When are we going to take an identification photo together?”
The words hung in the air, and Yu Tu watched with a soft smile on his face as Jing Jing slowly looked up at him. There was something about the way her face softened that made her glow under the yellow light of the street lamp.
“I guess,” she said, a little coquettishly, “since you’ve already expressed such a wish, it will have to be soon now.”
Yu Tu could only continue smiling at her. Her smile widened as well.
For a long moment, he was sure they probably looked rather strange if the security guard had decided to look over at them, just standing there staring giddily at each other.
Then, distant chatter drifted over, and they looked towards the research institute to find a group of young men approaching the gates. Jing Jing finally dropped his employee badge and tucked her ID card into her coat pocket.
Grabbing his hand, she said, “Come on, weren’t you in a hurry to get home?”
Yu Tu chuckled as she pulled him along, now clearly unable to disguise her haste as well. They didn’t slow down until they were in the lift, which was thankfully empty. Jing Jing circled her arms around his neck and leaned close to him.
“Do you mean it?” she whispered, her breath warm against his cheek.
“Of course,” he said simply. If he didn’t know there were cameras in the lift, he would probably lean in to kiss her. But then, it wasn’t like this image they were presenting wasn’t incriminating enough if anyone cared to comb through the security footage of his building’s lift. Then again, it probably didn’t matter that much now.
Still, Yu Tu was glad when they finally arrived home and he could freely push Jing Jing against the closed front door to kiss her to his heart’s desire. All pretence of coyness was gone now, and Jing Jing’s fervour matched his perfectly, until she pushed herself up to wrap her legs around his waist, so that he could carry her like that into the bedroom.
It never failed to be a marvel to Yu Tu how good Jing Jing felt in his arms, and when her lips were on his and her skin was pressed hot against him like this, he always wondered how he could have willingly given this up for so many years. Now, they would still have years and decades ahead, but he could not help but retroactively miss the years they could have been together but were not. But as it was all his own fault, there was nothing he could do but silently chastise himself, while giving all his effort to drive Jing Jing to the brink of oblivion with pleasure.
When the clouds and rain finally dissipated, Jing Jing snuggled against him contentedly, and Yu Tu just stroked her hair gently, so entirely relaxed from the pleasure they had just shared to move much.
He didn’t know when he fell asleep. But when Yu Tu opened his eyes again, it was to the bright light and chatter all around him.
Yu Tu startled, and with the light blinding him, he immediately realised that he was no longer in bed with Jing Jing. Instead, he was…sitting at a desk? Yu Tu’s entire body jerked as he looked around wildly, trying to understand where he was.
He was almost delirious with relief to realise that he was fully dressed, at least. Except…what on earth was he wearing…?
“Hey Yu Tu, did you just sleep through most of the lunch hour?”
Yu Tu turned to find Li Ming flopping down onto a seat in the desk in front of him. Then, he looked around, finally seeing things enough to slowly gather his bearings. Yu Tu forced himself to just focus on the sights and sounds before him…which made no sense.
He was sitting at a desk at the back of a classroom that looked like his old high school classroom, even if that seemed impossible. But then everything about this entire situation seemed impossible, from the fact that he was here though having no recollection of going back to Yixing, to Li Ming staring expectantly at him, looking much too young, to all the people, some he hadn’t seen in years, milling about the room…all looking much, much too young.
“Yu Tu!” Li Ming called, waving his hand in front of Yu Tu’s face.
“Uh…yeah,” Yu Tu replied on autopilot. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“What were you doing?” Li Ming wondered. “Please don’t say studying. You know you don’t have to be first all the time, right?”
Yu Tu just shrugged. Then, he had the clarity of mind to feel around the pockets of the tracksuit jacket he was wearing to find his phone. Well, it was a phone he found in his pocket, but not a smartphone that was now so familiar to him, but a brick phone whose only function was to call, text (painfully) and play Snake. Pulling it out, still bewildered, and looking down at it, Yu Tu found the date on it read: 2 November 2007.
How was this possible? This shouldn’t be possible!
And yet, as he took in the sights and sounds around him, everything he saw and heard only seemed to confirm this date, from the polyester of the school uniform he was wearing, to the countdown to gaokao on the chalkboard. It all defied logic and every boundary of science, but at the same time, logically, it was clear that somehow the impossible had happened. He had been transported back to high school in Yixing, when he should be in Shanghai with Jing Jing.
All of the sudden, he was desperate for a mirror, or at least a phone with a front-facing camera, to check if he looked as Li Ming did, and as he suspected - fifteen years younger. He was almost sure he did…
Even without this confirmation, Yu Tu racked his mind for an answer that would make sense, knowing at the same time that there was none. Time travel was theoretically possible, but it could not possibly happen this randomly in his apartment in Shanghai, or at least, it would require him to move at a speed that would kill him before it would take him anywhere. And time travel did not explain why only his mind was transported back to his seventeen-year-old body. Which must be what was happening here. Because he could recall with perfect clarity all the memories of the fifteen years beyond high school, of gaokao that now apparently loomed over him again, of university and postgraduate studies, of Beijing and Shanghai and…
And Jing Jing.
Yu Tu stared, as at that moment, she walked into the room, arm in arm with Pei Pei, seemingly not aware that he existed. He could only blink at the sight of her as he had not seen in a long, long time. Tracksuit uniform and ponytail and shiny lip gloss on lips curled into a playful smile, she looked…all of seventeen.
That was when Yu Tu knew for sure that he still very much had the mentality and experiences of all his thirty-two years. As soon as the thought made into his head of how cute she looked, with the pink bunny-ear scrunchie in her hair and the too-long sleeves of her jacket pulled over her hands, immediately came the realisation that he was nearly twice her age and this thought directed at seventeen-year-old Jing Jing was…at least a little bit creepy.
Jing Jing chose that moment to glance at him, perhaps feeling the intensity of his gaze on her. Her eyes widened in surprise to find him staring at her, and she smiled tentatively back. He tried to think, to remember, if this current date placed him before, or after, her confession. Of course, he could not for the life of him remember, and it seemed the only thing he could think of was the stark image of how she had looked just moments earlier in his consciousness, womanly, alluring, and naked in his bed.
It was very inconvenient to have this thought while in the body with all the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Yu Tu immediately realised.
Also, she was seventeen. And he, oh god, he was thirty-two.
He had no idea what expression he must have on his face as he thought this, and how he must look to her; he only glimpsed her smile faltering as he tore his own gaze away. Yu Tu felt like his heart must be beating twice as fast as it should, and it must be a miracle that no one heard it. Could it be possible that all of the last fifteen years were just a dream? Could a dream be so vivid, so full of details?
Or was this the dream, being transported back to high school and being seventeen again? Was this one of those dreams where he knew he was dreaming, but could not wake up from? But he didn’t know if he was dreaming…
He pinched himself, and only hurt for the trouble.
It was a blessing that at that moment, the Math teacher walked into the room. For the rest of the afternoon, Yu Tu had to focus on pulling all the high school level knowledge from the recesses of his mind and did not have time to wonder much more about what was going on. Whatever was going on, it would not do to lose his stellar academic reputation, right?
When the final bell rang, putting an end to the day, Yu Tu had never been in more of a hurry to leave school. He ignored his friends calling after him to wait and cycled home as fast as he could. But then, standing at the door of childhood home, Yu Tu hesitated. He knew what awaited him inside, and yet it felt almost scary to look…to find his parents younger, knowing how much they must have worried over him even in the next fifteen years…He had been so carefree at this age, thinking his parents would of course always be there. It was not so easy to take them for granted anymore now that he was older…
The door opened before he had the chance to.
“What are you doing, standing out here without going in?” his mother asked, looking at him in astonishment. “Did you lose the keys?”
“No, Ma,” he said. “I was just about to go in.”
He didn’t say anything out of the ordinary, and he didn’t hug her like he wanted to, knowing it would probably freak her out if he randomly showed such an uncharacteristic display of affection, but perhaps something showed on his face or his voice, because his mother peered at him closely.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asked.
“Of course, I’m fine,” Yu Tu said, stepping into the house. “What’s for dinner?”
“I haven’t started cooking yet, I didn’t expect you to be home so early. Are you not going to basketball today? Your dad won’t be back for a couple of hours either.”
“No, no basketball today,” Yu Tu said. The truth was, he had totally forgotten about it and had not listened to anything his friends shouted after him as he left the school. “I’m…going to do homework, Ma.”
His mother looked at him suspiciously, but when he just smiled innocently at her, she sighed and let him escape into his room while she went out for whatever reason she had planned in the first place.
He didn’t exactly lie. As much as he wanted to turn on his computer, which was now the desktop that once upon a time he had had to dig out of storage, Yu Tu forced himself to complete his homework before doing anything else, because he was sure he would get sucked in and forget everything the moment he went online.
This was why no one wanted to go back to high school, not even him, who actually liked studying, Yu Tu thought. The work wasn’t even that much easier now at the ripe old age of thirty-two, considering he had not had to think in the way of high school assignments for a long time. Still, if the last fifteen years in his memories were real for anything, they at least taught him discipline, and he managed to finish his homework just before dinner.
Yu Tu had too much on his mind to talk much during dinner, even if it was admittedly nice to spend this time with his parents. It wasn’t as if he was particularly talkative on a normal basis, so his parents didn’t think anything was amiss.
Probably the only out of place thing in this entire scene was when Yu Tu voluntarily cleared the table after dinner. “What strange wind blows today,” his mother said as he started doing the dishes. “You’ve really grown up, doing housework without being asked.”
Yu Tu gave his mother a crooked smile. She had no idea how accurate she had it.
This gave him the grace to disappear into his room afterwards, where Yu Tu finally turned on his computer. It ran a lot less slowly than the last time he turned it on, which was in the future.
Yu Tu nevertheless found himself staring at Baidu’s search page for a full five minutes, before typing in the words “Qiao Jing Jing”.
This search would have given him millions of hits in the future. Right now, it showed up random people he did not know who might share one or two characters in their names. Of course, this wasn’t so surprising. After all, Miss Qiao was probably in her bedroom now, a few kilometres away from him, doing homework, or drowned in all the stuffed animals on her bed.
Yu Tu shook his head, trying not to think too much about Miss Qiao and a bed of any kind. But to tell yourself to not think of something - or someone - was tempting the mind to turn that way all the same. Now, he could not help thinking about how throughout the whole afternoon, despite all his efforts to concentrate, he had still been occasionally distracted by the gentle sway of Jing Jing’s ponytail a few rows ahead.
Seventeen, she was seventeen, he had had to remind himself then, and again now. It didn’t matter that he could map out in his head every curve and dip of her body, every mole and birthmark. She was still so young and it felt viscerally wrong to think of her like this at all. At the same time, the more he tried not to, the more he missed her, his actual girlfriend, who had just this evening agreed to be his wife. It was she that Yu Tu wanted and she was impossibly far away.
How could he ever get back to her? Would he be able to? What was he doing here at all, and how could he get out of this situation? Could he?
If he could not, was he going to have to wait at least ten years before it would even be possible to go after her? Yu Tu didn’t think he could wait that long. Even though, right now, the very idea of pursuing her now felt all wrong. She was so very young, so innocent, her feelings for him so pure. To get with her now would feel like taking advantage of that innocence and adoration she had for him.
The way he wanted her could never fit the mould of a high school relationship. It wasn’t seventeen-year-old Jing Jing that Yu Tu wanted now, anyway.
Even trying to be her friend now in the most platonic sense felt like an uncomfortable option, when in his head he was so much older than her. How would it be even better, if he still ended up counting the days as she grew up to an age where they could be on the same page again?
Yu Tu was pretty sure whatever was happening was going to drive him insane, if he wasn’t already insane and that was the very explanation for what was going on.
Yu Tu did not before give any credit to conspiracy theories, but now that he was here, remembering Jing Jing’s occasional grumbles about the restrictions on time-travelling and transmigration plot lines in the entertainment industry and how it killed creativity, he couldn’t help but wonder now if this all was wrapped up in something way above his pay grade and clearance level. Even if it was all still scientifically impossible.
A cheerful sound from the computer snapped him out of his thoughts, and Yu Tu looked at the screen to find a new QQ message popping up.
Hand that Picks the Stars: Are you there, are you there? Have you deleted me?
Hand that Picks the Stars: Everyone was discussing so lively in the group today, do you really think we can immigrate to Mars?
Yu Tu’s fingers automatically fell down on the keyboard, ready to type out an answer. But then…what would he say? After days of ignoring her questions, how could he explain why he was suddenly talking to her?
He knew, of course, that she probably would not wonder why, and would just be happy that he responded at all. But then, what would be his purpose in answering?
Because he regretted ignoring her all those years ago. Which was also now. Because he truly wished he hadn’t been so cold, so ignorant of how much she had always seen him, understood his heart’s deepest desire.
Because he wanted to.
But the person he actually wanted to talk to right now was his Jing Jing, not the younger version of her on the other side of this screen. It felt cruel to engage in conversation with her, knowing that he could not allow himself to get involved with her right now. It didn’t matter that he was physically the same age as her, when his mind had lived twice as long. If it was only just physical things, he could easily hold himself back for her. But with their current mental states, at best, he would only end up comparing this teenage version of her to the woman she would become, and at worst, the difference between their ages, experiences, and expectations would just make them crash and burn…
Yu Tu sighed and could only put his head in his hands, while his heart clenched painfully as he felt the full torment of missing her.
She had not confessed to him yet. The QQ chat history had revealed that much. Which meant that he would probably have to break her heart when the time came.
Was it too much to hope that she would not confess, this time around?
It was too much to hope, even when he avoided that pergola and that tree for all the days that followed.
She appeared before his desk one day at lunch time, when the rest of the classroom was empty.
As Yu Tu took in the bright sparkle of hope in her eyes, his heart sank.
Don’t do this to me, my love, he wished with all his heart. But of course, the words still came.
Ever since waking up here, in the past, and realising what was still to come, Yu Tu had laid awake restless nights wondering how he would do this. Could he even do it? Let her down gently in a way that would not break her heart? Surely he didn’t need to give the thoughtless answer to her question of why.
But…his Jing Jing had told him once, his words had made a great mark on her, and had been her motivation to work hard at everything else in her life since. At her school work, in the attempt to get into Qinghua with him, and even though she would not achieve that, it still got her into one of the top universities, which had been how she had been scouted for a career that had allowed her talents to shine. Without the way he rejected her, and her determination to prove it to him, and herself, that she could be someone who would work hard for a higher goal, she might never become the Jing Jing he fell in love with.
A part of Yu Tu wondered to himself if he was being too narcissistic, to attribute so much of her becoming to himself, but if there was a risk at all…he couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t that he feared he could not learn to love another version of Jing Jing if she did not become the Qiao Jing Jing in his heart, but seeing as it had been that Jing Jing that he fell in love with, that Jing Jing that loved him back despite him breaking her heart once, and twice - for how much she heartbreak she suffered from him, how could he not want to ensure the best way to find her again and have her back in his arms, so that he could make it up to her?
Even if, perhaps, hopefully, this time he might not need to break her heart a second time. But that was many years in the future.
Right now, it was only the first.
He did not want to say what he knew he must say. Instead, he wanted to fold her into his arms and tell her to wait, wait for a day when she would become the most important person in his life. Because she already was. Wait for the day when he could feel free to love her as he wanted, to become hers for as long as she would have him.
But it would only make him sound insane and then she might not want him anymore.
Besides, in the days that he had been here, for lack of better things to do when academic study into time travel showed up little of use to his present predicament, Yu Tu had been going down a rabbit hole of watching time-travel movies as research. And wasn’t it a rule of time travel to preserve the timeline?
So in the end, he said what he must, killing the light in her eyes, and breaking his own heart into a thousand pieces. Like the first time, he walked away from her, this time not having the courage to watch the full effects of his reluctant words.
How had he missed it the first time around, Yu Tu wondered? Before, Jing Jing had never been the type to volunteer to give answers in class, but now that she clearly was on a campaign to prove herself, academically at least, she was clearly more determined than ever to show off her efforts in class. So she wasn’t exactly looking back to watch his reaction whenever her improved grades were commented upon by the teachers, but from his vantage point at the back of the class, Yu Tu could see her sit a little straighter each time.
He wished he could tell her that he was proud of her.
He wished he could tell her how much he loved her and missed her.
Having taken this year’s gaokao already once didn’t make it any easier. It wasn’t as if Yu Tu still retained the test information after so many years. If he did, it might even count as cheating and it would feel like an insult to do well on the basis of that.
Jing Jing had told him once that she only applied to universities in Beijing because of him. This time, he applied to all the same universities as her, and Yu Tu almost wished he didn’t get into Qinghua again, so that he could choose to go to the same university as Jing Jing. After all, what other amusement did he have now that he was having to put himself through university a second time?
In the end, he still got into Qinghua, mostly because the idea of just doing less well on his gaokao on purpose was still hurtful to his pride. This time around, however, he was more up front with his parents, and told them from the beginning that he would double major, instead of telling them only halfway into his first year.
Perhaps realising his determination for the aerospace industry properly for the first time, his mother gave in and told him, if he really was so set on it, she would not pressure him into studying finance any longer. But if eighteen-year-old Yu Tu only took on finance as a compromise to his parents, thirty-something Yu Tu understood that it taught him invaluable things that made him who he was nevertheless, even when he would ultimately go to work in another field altogether. Besides, as much as he wanted to avoid Qu Ming as a classmate, he also wasn’t quite so ready to lose the friends he did make studying finance either.
Yu Tu only smiled bittersweetly as he scanned the class’ QQ group chat for Jing Jing’s ID as everyone started sharing their gaokao results and university plans, and then watched her set off to a different university again. At least, she was still on track to become the Jing Jing in his dreams…
Sometimes, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing them both a disservice, waiting for her like this. After all, she might become a different person regardless, and was he simply being unfair, keeping a hold onto the woman in his mind and in his heart after all these years? Would he be disappointed, or even resent her, if she did not become that person this time around?
But what was the alternative? To give up on them? The very thought was unbearable.
He could only watch from afar, as seventeen became eighteen, then nineteen, and then twenty, which still seemed impossibly young. But he also told himself that she deserved all those years of growth, away from him, otherwise as she said once, she would never have become the beautiful and interesting girlfriend he would eventually have.
Maybe it was a good thing that his life only seemed to repeat the same beats, now with the constant hum of missing Jing Jing in the background. So Yu Tu wasn’t surprised when Xia Qing sat down next to him in the library that day.
“Qu Ming asked me out,” she declared.
Yu Tu raised an eyebrow, resisting the urge to ask what that had anything to do with him. He already knew, anyway.
“I turned him down, and I told him I already had someone else that I like,” she continued.
Yu Tu put down his book, as if to focus on her next words. Xia Qing seemed to take this as encouragement.
“It’s you, by the way.”
When he was twenty the first time, Yu Tu had thought that since they had known each other for so long, it seemed only natural that they came together. At least, he would not have to spend so much time figuring out who she was and what she wanted. She was smart, she understood the need to work hard towards one’s goals, and she was independent, so he could count on her to not constantly act coquettish to steer his attention away from his study and he would not have to coax her out of silly tempers or pamper her to make up for it, when such attempts would inevitably not succeed. Such games had seemed so childish in the face of his loftier goals. It had all seemed so simple then, what Xia Qing could give him, and Yu Tu had been enough in his head then that he did not consider what she wanted from him, and whether he could give it. Or perhaps, he had thought, given that she had asked him, she must know what he could give her and was already satisfied with it.
It wasn’t until he had already been cajoled into travelling halfway across the city to fix the air purifier of a girl he’d never met, and was a week into buying Jing Jing’s daily breakfast simply because she asked, did Yu Tu realise that such requests did not have to be a chore and he could feel even happy fulfilling them, when the other person opposite him was fascinating enough to draw him in, to solve the puzzle that she was. Because it had been curiosity as much as it had been professional pride that took him to Jing Jing’s door that night - he could not help but wonder about this girl who randomly appeared in his QQ friends list that he could not remember adding, who acted so helpless but showed a strange determination and dedication to progressing in her career even if it was through the unorthodox method of trying to win a company-wide gaming competition. And then when he found out she was Jing Jing, the wonder never stopped, and eventually he could only come to the conclusion that getting to know the changing constellation that was Qiao Jing Jing was a lifelong endeavour that he enjoyed only too much.
The truth was, he did not enjoy rejecting Xia Qing either. Even if perhaps it was better this way, because then at least she could learn to let go now, instead of holding on to whatever delusion of hope that they were compatible and meant for each other that he had unwittingly given when he accepted her the first time.
“I am sorry,” he said sincerely, “but I have someone else that I already like as well.”
He watched her face fall, and then her expression close off into careful neutrality. And yet, it seemed despite her best efforts, she could not help asking, “Who is it?”
Yu Tu could only smile to himself. “I am sure you will hear about it eventually.”
And hopefully, by then, you would have already learned to move on.
Jing Jing’s acting career grew like green sprouts in the spring. Yu Tu had followed her Weibo from the start - before she became famous, it was the same as her main QQ ID and so was easy to find. Sometimes he wondered if she noticed his account among her followers, and if she wondered why he followed her at all. He could hide behind an alternate account, of course, but that felt much too close to cyberstalking. With his Jade Rabbit account, he could just say it was a casual follow of an old classmate.
He noticed the day that the account changed to her name and got rid of any trace of anything personal. Eventually, her follower count rose so high that she would not remember that his alter ego had ever been among them.
He was at the train station, moving from Beijing to Shanghai, when he saw her face on a billboard for the first time. He took a photo of the billboard with his phone, and wanted to send it to her, to both congratulate and tease her about it.
But it wasn’t like she was in his WeChat list anymore.
Reliving his life was mildly annoying, but it was not without its benefits. Navigating adult life was less stressful now that he more or less knew what he was doing. Repeating his undergraduate degrees was a little tedious, even with shaking up some variation in his elective subjects, but by the time he came to Shanghai for his postgraduate degrees, he had decided to pivot to a new research direction to at least provide some new challenges to himself. Who knew, it might even help him make some earlier breakthrough with Search for God later.
He made more efforts to come back to Yixing more often to see his parents, or at least call them when he could not. And when his parents would eventually come to Shanghai for his mother’s medical check, while Yu Tu still could not avoid being away on a work mission at the time, he had the foreknowledge to call his parents in time so that they could not avoid telling him what was going on. Yu Tu was thus able to ask to have his parents stay with Zhai Liang, who was living closer to the city centre then and thus had more convenient access to the hospital. Yu Tu hoped that at least this meant that the whole situation was slightly less stressful for his father this time, having a more convenient place to stay while they were in Shanghai and being able to talk to Yu Tu about it all. Yu Tu wished he could tell both his parents that everything would be okay, to save them the worries altogether, but how could he explain that knowledge? Besides, he didn’t want to be too careless, because there was no guarantee that things would happen exactly the same way twice. In the end, Yu Tu couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief still when his mother’s tests came back without unforeseen bad news.
Sometimes he wondered if he should have made more efforts to keep in touch with Jing Jing. It would only make it easier for himself later. But he had also rejected her in high school, what right did he have to continue to impose his presence on her? He also feared, without the time and space to move on after high school, the trajectory of their future possible relationship would only change, and perhaps not for the better.
After all, it was a crucial principle of scientific experimentation that one should try to replicate all the variables as much as possible if one wanted the same results. And how desperately did he want the same results!
Now that the date of their possible reunion was drawing close, Yu Tu wondered when it had become like this, that it became so natural for him to spend so many hours putting things into place, planning the moment when they would meet again. His teacher, Director Hu, Guan Zai and all his other colleagues had been baffled when Yu Tu requested a month off work half a year in advance, and only explained it off as a family matter. Which wasn’t entirely untrue. Wasn’t his end goal here that they could reach a point where she could become his family officially in the end?
Oh Heaven, how long had it been since that evening, when they stood in front of this very research institute, and he had so off-handedly proposed in such an almost careless manner? It had felt funny and fitting then, but now, if they ever reached a place where he could do it all over, he was sure he would do it differently. Properly. If only to make all longings of the years in between, the first time around and the second time over, feel worth it. After all, they should be married long before now. They should be sick of each other now, if such a thing was possible. Before he was sent back here, to relive his life for purposes that was still unknown to him. Yu Tu had turned the question over in his mind for so long, for so many years, that he no longer knew if he believed in any of the conjectures. It couldn’t just be to show him how precious Jing Jing could be to him, he was no less aware of that when he first arrived in this second life than he was now, having waited all these years for her.
Whatever the purpose, after all these long years, he could not wait to see her again.