Winter Time Rendering

At 6:50 AM, Zhang Shutong was woken up by his alarm, right on time.

He opened his eyes.

It was an unfamiliar ceiling.

His heart skipped a beat. He lay there for a good while before he realized where he was.

He really had gone back eight years. None of this was a dream.

All traces of sleepiness vanished.

What’s the first thing a person who’s returned from eight years in the future does upon waking?

Zhang Shutong figured it was to check his phone.

It wasn’t that he expected anyone to be looking for him; it was just a habit.

He squinted as he entered his password, already missing fingerprint unlock. Yawning, he slipped on his slippers and padded out of the bedroom.

He lit up his phone screen only to find there was nothing much to see. No work to deal with, not many entertainment apps. All he could do was open QQ, where he didn’t even have many friends.

The small, four-person group chat had been active until well past midnight.

Zhang Shutong then noticed the group chat had a rather cringey name.

It was called "The four."

’Right, I think I was the one who named it.’

A person’s memory is sharpest in the morning. As he washed up, he tried to recall how that group name came to be.

He seemed to recall Du Kang originally wanted to name it "The Fish Nest," but Ruoping vetoed it, saying it was too tacky.

Then Qingyi suggested they just call it "The Dragon Nest" so the four of them could each claim a title:

The King of Bronze and Fire, the King of Earth and Mountain, the King of Ocean and Water, and the King of Sky and Wind. With that, their grand assembly of masters would be complete.

But since the four Dragon Lords were almost all dead, it was far too ominous, so Ruoping shot that down too.

In the end, he was the one who came up with the compromise, and it passed with a unanimous vote.

He glanced through the chat history. The conversation had long since gone off the rails, ending with Du Kang spamming panda head sticker-memes. Finding it completely mindless, Zhang Shutong couldn’t be bothered to scroll up any further and started to wash his face.

The face in the mirror was sharply defined, with a broad forehead, a straight nose, and thin lips. Its only flaw was its utter lack of expression. Zhang Shutong never used to understand what people meant when they said he looked aloof, but after a night of dealing with Lu Qinglian, he suddenly got it. He tried raising an eyebrow at his reflection, but it only created a look of disdain, making him seem even more unapproachable. He gave up.

He wasn’t always like this, though.

When Zhang Shutong was little, he looked like a girl. His mom loved to pinch his cheeks while calling out, "Tongtong! Tongtong!" He once had a bright red hat with a Mickey Mouse face on it, complete with two ears. His mom had nodded in approval in front of the department store’s fitting room mirror, while Zhang Shutong had tugged on her hand, staring longingly at a nearby Ultraman hat.

"But the requirements for becoming Ultraman are very strict. You have to believe in the light," his mom had said with a straight face. "You don’t meet the criteria yet. You’ll have to wait a few more years." Zhang Shutong bought it. He waited until he was a teenager, and from that point on, he never asked for her opinion on clothes again.

He then remembered Du Kang mentioning how he always wore black. He thought about it and realized it was true. In fact, it was more like the fashion torture of his childhood had been so severe that you wouldn’t find a single bright color in his closet now.

Zhang Shutong considered his mom a very refined person. Not in a vain way, but in the meticulous way she lived her life. For instance, she made him eat an egg every day, chew his food slowly, and only drink warm water. These habits had unintentionally left their mark on him, like a stake propping up a sapling to keep it from growing crooked. But the stake couldn’t be there forever, and eventually, he grew crooked anyway.

He didn’t use face wash, only soap. It left his skin a little dry, but that was all. After patting his face dry, Zhang Shutong stared for a moment at the bottle of almond lotion beside the sink.

For years, he had tried to pinpoint a single, symbolic milestone that marked a boy’s transition into a man, but every candidate had felt unconvincing on its own. Now, however, he thought he’d found it. A teenage boy would never give a second glance to anything resembling a "skincare product." Spending an extra minute washing your face was already doing it a huge favor.

But now, he poured some almond lotion into his palm and rubbed it on his face. He instantly felt scented and clean, and a wave of melancholy washed over him.

’How did I end up like this?’

Still, he had to go to the "Restricted Zone" this morning. If he didn’t put something on, the wind would chap his skin.

He wasn’t in a rush, but he never dawdled. Ten minutes was more than enough to get himself cleaned up and dressed. Just as he was about to leave, though, he remembered something. He ran back to his desk and pulled open a drawer.

There were comics, books, crayons, and even Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on his desk, but Lu Qinglian’s notebook wasn’t among them. ’It must be at school, then.’ He bolted out the door, bounded down the stairs, and got on his bike, heading for the "Restricted Zone."

He’d eaten the steamed bun last night, so he’d have to grab breakfast on the way.

A fish fillet flatbread. It was probably an island specialty; Zhang Shutong never saw them sold anywhere else in his later life. A snakehead fish fillet, coated in breadcrumbs and fried to a golden brown, was stuffed into a flatbread along with some fried vegetables and soy products. A dark sauce was spread inside the bread, which was a handheld size. But the truly unique part was the crushed salted duck egg yolk tucked inside.

It was pale red with a grainy texture—like a sauce, but not. One bite filled your mouth with a uniquely rich, savory oiliness. The island was not only rich in fish and shrimp but also Ma ducks, making salted duck eggs one of its specialties. When they were in eighth grade, they had studied Wang Zengqi’s "The Dragon Boat Festival’s Duck Eggs" in class. Kids from other places might have drooled reading it, but the island kids never thought it was anything special.

A faint white mist filled the morning air—vapor rising from the surrounding lake after the cool night. It felt invigorating, but the biting cold also made your nose ache.

That was why he wore a scarf today. It was black, of course. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn one, and his neck felt a little itchy. After finishing his flatbread in front of the food cart, Zhang Shutong continued on his way, the clamor of the crowd rapidly fading behind him.

When he could no longer see a single soul, he knew he had arrived.

The mist around the "Restricted Zone" was even thicker, a vast expanse of white. The sky was high and distant, the landscape wide and open. Reeds swayed gently in the wind. He walked to the lakeshore and saw his fishing line was still tied securely in place.

Zhang Shutong was now starting to have doubts about what Du Kang had said. It wasn’t about the credibility of the information itself, but rather: who had the fishermen seen a few days before the incident?

The murderer? Or was it just the two poachers?

The bald one had an electric fishing net. ’Maybe they’ve been electro-fishing in the Restricted Zone over the last few days?’

’Did the actual murderer ever even come to the Restricted Zone?’

This one clue wasn’t nearly enough to go on, but he had no other decent leads.

’If only I could go back to eight years from now,’ he thought, ’I’d definitely use the internet to do a proper investigation.’ As far as this murder case was concerned, it was the only time Zhang Shutong felt the "future" was more useful than the "past."

He’d have to look into it after school today.

He mulled it over as he biked back. At 7:25 AM, Zhang Shutong arrived at the school gate right on time, and reluctantly squeezed his brakes.

His school’s main gate was a bit too small. He wasn’t saying this to knock his alma mater; as the saying goes, a son never thinks his mother is ugly, and a dog never minds that its home is poor. And, apparently, a black Audi never minds blocking the road for everyone else.

A black sedan was blocking the entrance.

A girl in a red scarf got out of the car, and a charm at the end of her hair swayed with the movement.

The time was 7:25 AM, the second day since his return.

The young man stopped his bike, waiting for the young heiress to exit her car, completely unaware of what awaited him back in the classroom.

If he had known, he absolutely would not have worn a black scarf.