Traveled through time (1/2)
Late at night, everything was silent.
In the faint moonlight, the curtains cast blurry shadows that swayed like ghostly figures.
The air was heavy and stagnant, suffocating in its stillness. In the darkness, something seemed to surge like a tide—cold, viscous, and pulling Su Zesui deeper into the nightmare.
In the illusory dream, Su Zesui saw himself sitting at a desk piled with letters, holding a voice recorder in his hand.
Outside, the wind howled, yet his heart felt warm.
He poured himself a cup of hot water, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Only after completing this small ritual did he press “play” on the recorder.
A calm, magnetic voice flowed from it, like the deep strings of a cello, slowly unfurling—
“Sorry, I’ve been so busy lately. Is the money enough for you? I’ll transfer the next few months all at once, but I might not be able to contact you for a while. Stay strong—maybe a change is coming soon. I’ll do my best too, okay?”
He listened to the recording over and over, then, familiar with the device, pressed a few buttons and tapped “record.”
In the dream, Su Zesui heard himself say, “I’m fine. You focus on your work first. Thank you, Mr. Gu…”
He tried hard to catch his own words, but in the next moment, the world spun, and the dream dissolved.
After flashes of blinding white, Su Zesui felt his soul drift out of his body. Yet his body seemed to act on its own, moving freely.
“Who do you think you are, acting like your family’s money makes you special?” A few high-school-aged boys sneered at his body. “You’re just lucky to be born. Does anyone in class actually like you?”
“Exactly. Even your own family’s fed up with you, or else why wouldn’t you go home every day?” Another chimed in. “Giving you money is just so they don’t get bad reputations. That money’s nothing to them anyway.”
“Just die already. You’re annoying.” One spat.
Su Zesui hovered in the air, stunned, watching it all unfold. He saw “himself” verbally bullied by the group, then retreat to a corner to silently cry after they left.
His numb heart throbbed painfully. Instinctively, he floated toward his curled-up body, wanting to embrace it.
But the moment he opened his arms, it was violently pushed away: “Go away! Get lost! You already took over my body—why are you pretending now?! Are you mocking me?!”
Light as he was, Su Zesui lost his balance and plummeted into the boundless darkness.
At the brink of death, a hand grabbed him, pulling him into an embrace, patting his back gently, silently comforting him.
The surrounding darkness receded, replaced by sudden light.
Su Zesui awoke instantly, his forehead drenched in cold sweat, heart pounding, stomach churning with nausea.
“Ugh—”
He pushed Gu Yilan away and turned toward the trash can at the bedside, retching.
Having eaten little the night before, he brought up only some stomach acid.
“Nightmare?” Gu Yilan immediately poured him a cup of hot water, offering it for him to rinse his mouth.
But Su Zesui didn’t take it. His gaze was vacant, his whole body trembling with cold, his mind consumed by a single word: nightmare.
Based on all the information so far, there were two possibilities—
The first: he had gone mad.
He had truly known Gu Yilan before, but when the other person stopped contacting him, his mind broke. Everything he was experiencing now was just a figment of his own imagination. When the dream ended, he would still be the same lonely, abandoned self.
The second: he was dead.
And his soul had taken over someone else’s body. That someone else was… another version of himself from a parallel universe.
Dizzy and weak, Su Zesui realized he couldn’t bring himself to vomit anything, so he let go entirely, tilting his head back, wanting nothing more than to collapse onto the soft bed and never see this world again.
But at that moment, a strong hand held him, preventing him from sinking onto the mattress.
“Lying down right after vomiting will make the stomach acid flow back—it’ll be even worse,” Gu Yilan said. “Listen to me. Drink some warm water and sit for a while.”
Su Zesui’s gaze was dim.
His body was in pain. But what was far worse—far more desperate and agonizing—was his heart.
He listened blankly as Gu Yilan spoke, mechanically rinsed his mouth, and sat on the bed in a daze.
“Did you remember something?” Gu Yilan asked, sitting in front of him and brushing away the stray hairs from his forehead.
Su Zesui nodded weakly.
“If it still hurts, you can rest again later.”
Watching the boy’s odd state, Gu Yilan’s dark eyes narrowed slightly, sensing something unusual. He added, “You said last night that you wanted to tell me a secret. You don’t have to say it right now. Or if you regret it, you don’t ever have to.”
Su Zesui kept his eyes down, silent, still trapped in the aftermath of the nightmare.
Gu Yilan stood, picked up the glass from the bedside table, and intended to pour him some more warm water.
But just as he turned, a soft body suddenly wrapped around his waist, stopping him.
“I—I’m a… traveler,” the young voice trembled.
As if fearing he hadn’t heard correctly, Su Zesui raised his voice, repeating shakily, “I’m not from this world. I… I came from another parallel universe!”
Gu Yilan’s hand gripping the glass tightened instinctively, his pupils shrinking as he spun to face Su Zesui.
“I—I’m not lying to you,” Su Zesui said, his face pale, eyes vacant, staring at the sheets, lips trembling, voice pitiful.
“Take a deep breath,” Gu Yilan suddenly instructed.
Though his mind was still foggy, Su Zesui’s body obeyed instinctively, exhaling slowly.
The next moment, Gu Yilan pulled out a small oxygen cylinder he had prepared earlier, holding it gently to the boy who was on the verge of fainting. “Breathe slowly,” he guided.
In those few seconds the boy breathed in oxygen, Gu Yilan’s gaze sharpened, and his expression returned to calm, though the knuckles of the hand holding the cylinder remained white.
“Here, hold it yourself,” Gu Yilan said, sitting on the edge of the bed and placing the cylinder in the boy’s arms. “If you can’t catch your breath, take a few puffs. Press the valve on top to release the oxygen.”
Su Zesui nodded but didn’t examine the novel little device. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on Gu Yilan.
A thousand words were written in his moist eyes.
Gu Yilan exhaled lightly, trying to steady his tone. “You… really came from another universe?”
Su Zesui pressed his lips together and nodded. Seeing Gu Yilan frown in thought, he whispered, “Believe me. It’s true. I… I really took over someone else’s body.”
Hearing this, Gu Yilan no longer hesitated and asked bluntly, “Why do you say you’re occupying someone else’s body?”
Su Zesui was taken aback.
——Wasn’t that obvious? How could he even explain it?
He could only ask, “You… don’t believe me?”
Gu Yilan frowned, silent, pondering.
For a moment, the air seemed frozen, silence stretching like an invisible net, pressing down on Su Zesui’s heartbeat.
Just as he felt he might suffocate, Gu Yilan finally spoke, voice deep: “I believe you. Even if science can’t explain it right now.”
“What… is science like now?” Su Zesui asked in confusion.
He knew Gu Yilan had reached the forefront of human technology, pushing the limits of human knowledge, and was among those who understood the possibility of traveling through time and space.
“Now, by manipulating energy, we can open a ‘door’ that allows tiny particles to jump from the quantum field of one universe to that of another,” Gu Yilan explained. “In short, traveling between parallel universes is possible—but only for microscopic particles.”
Su Zesui murmured to himself, “Then… why did I travel through time…”
Compared to the travel itself, Gu Yilan seemed more troubled by another statement: “Why claim that your body belongs to someone else?”
But Su Zesui didn’t want to speak of the painful truth again. He only whispered, “I travel through time on my birthday. Why? Am I… crazy?”
Gu Yilan rubbed his fingertips together, countless thoughts flickering across his eyes.
“Before traveling through time, were you in some kind of extremely high-energy state… like… an explosion?”
The speed at which the man regained his composure was astonishing. Not only did his expression remain calm, giving Su Zesui a reassuring sense of safety, but he was even able to rationally analyze this absurd situation.
Su Zesui parted his lips, staring at the man in stunned silence. “Y-you… how do you know?”
“Different universes are connected through distinct dual descriptions in low-dimensional quantum field theory,” Gu Yilan said. “To travel through time and space, you must transition from one low-dimensional quantum field description to another to ‘jump’ into a different universe.”
“Mathematically, this kind of time travel can be seen as a ‘jump’ of the entire quantum state to another vector—that is, from a quantum state |Ψ₁〉 in one universe to a quantum state |Ψ₂〉 in another universe via some mechanism. It is similar to a quantum leap between two states.”
“And the trigger for such time travel is an extreme physical environment—like a strong magnetic field or extraordinarily high energy.”
“Of course, all of this is purely theoretical analysis. In practice, there would be countless obstacles, making it essentially impossible,” Gu Yilan added.
Su Zesui didn’t fully understand. He murmured, “Oh… I see.”
He nervously fiddled with his fingers.
He thought that after Gu Yilan learned the truth, he would either scoff at it and tell him to rest a bit and stop overthinking; or, if he believed it, he would give him a peculiar look and grab him to ask about the details of the time travel process—after all, those were all valuable research materials.
If that had happened, Su Zesui would have explained everything and then suggested—Let’s find a way to return this body to its original owner!