When Bright Moon Encounter the Dark Clouds

Somewhere in my heart, I felt a sting when she said that.

Then I continued to tell her about the events that transpired. “On the ship, I even saw Wu Yu’s younger sister. She is supposed to be dead in a month's time, yet she’s somehow alive on that ship?”

“Younger sister?” Zhuang Yu asked. Realizing that Zhuang Yu did not know anything about Wu Yu’s younger sister, I went through everything with her. From how Wu Yu was previously a brilliant student, to the ship, to how we lost our memory. Then how his younger sister was murdered, their mother’s death, and how he gave up on his studies to hunt the killer before ending up as a repairman. Finally, how we appeared back on the ship and back to the present again.

Zhuang Yu was no doubt a salacious lady. After finally explaining everything to her and telling her so many strange events that had occurred to us, her immediate reaction was to give me a weird look before she said, “Tan Jiao, when you talk about Wu Yu, you seem pretty pent up and horny.”

Damn it, how is she picking up on the things I am trying to hide!

I put on my there’s-nothing-going-on face, let out a chuckle, and asked her, “Let’s not talk about me. What about you and Shen Shiyan? He seems to be treating you differently?”

Thinking that she would at least show a second of awkwardness, I instead saw her taken aback. “Shen Shiyan? That detective guy you previously went on a date with? How is he related to me?”

I was somewhat shocked by her reaction. She did not seem like she was pretending, and that was not her style. Was I thinking too much into it? Was there no spark between them? Or at least on Zhuang Yu’s side, there was no reaction?

“Anyway, let’s talk business now. Could you help me make sense of the situation?”

Putting on a serious look, Zhuang Yu picked up her pen and drew several lines on a piece of paper. However, the lines were not aligned and were expanding out like steps. “Here, time is like a straight line and only moves toward one direction. I drew it into sections so that you could better understand this.”

I nodded my head.

Then she drew a dot on the bottom-most line and the top-most line. Finally, she connected the two dots and explained, “Like how you said it, you’ve gone from this point to this point. Then you came back again. This means Wu Yu and your timeline have become intertwined. We always thought that this is outrageous because we thought time is something fabricated and only moves forward. However, time is actually three-dimensional. Just like how space works, where we can travel from one point to the other; from Dali to Kunming, from Kunming to Shanghai. As such, if time is three-dimensional, then why wouldn’t we be able to travel through it if the conditions are correct?”

Even though the explanation hurt my brain, I understood what she said. After taking some time to think through it, I asked, “Then what would cause something like this to happen?”

Zhuang Yu took a drink from her beer and gave me an enigmatic look. “Cause? Hard to say. Wormholes could be one possibility. You’ve heard of wormholes in the past, right? They are able to connect the fabric of time and space. Not only that, 26% of the universe is composed of dark matter, and scientists have no knowledge about it yet. Or, have you heard about parallel universes? The possibility that there are actually many parallel universes and maybe you just went to another universe… That’s why even a scientist would not be able to answer your questions.”

Out of nowhere, she grabbed my shoulder and said, “Damn! I still can’t believe something like this happened to you. Why can’t something like this happen to me? I want it! I want the hands of time to toy with me! Do you know how much of a miracle this is to a Sci-Fi geek like me?”

I placed my hand on her overly excited face and said with a disinterested tone, “So, you don’t know the reason?”

“It’s not like that. Even though we don’t know the specifics, there are still some basic speculations.” Her face turned serious again. “To cause time to go backwards, there must be some powerful forces involved. Not only that, something like that would be well hidden. It can’t be that you were struck by lightning in broad daylight and still knew nothing about it, right? That’s why, Tan Jiao, think about the things that have happened. Was there anything that seemed out of place?”