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墨書 Inktalez
Raindrops traced tear-like patterns on the glass curtain wall as Zhou Hang pressed his face against the cold display screen, his pupils reflecting the flickering lines of code. The internet café booth was filled with the mixed scent of instant noodles and cigarettes. At that moment, Third Loop finally remembered the verification question from that dark web forum—he had to input the score of the UEFA Champions League final from twelve years ago within ten seconds.
His fingertips danced across the mechanical keyboard, leaving behind ghostly echoes. Just as the page transitioned, a crisp sound of a crushed soda can echoed from behind him. Three figures wearing baseball caps blocked the entrance to the booth, and the one in front twirled a Butterfly Knife, its handle adorned with glowing stickers that shimmered a ghostly green in the dim light.
"Bro, you gotta pay a protection fee for searching things," one of them said. Zhou Hang suddenly laughed; he had experienced this scene twice in the previous loops. Intentionally spilling coffee onto the main computer, he took advantage of the ensuing chaos from the short circuit and slipped out through a hidden door in the fire escape.
Rainwater poured down from a rusty drainpipe onto his shoulders as he fished out a backup phone from his waterproof bag and sent Lin Xue his eleventh warning text—this time including the characteristic code for the malicious software prepared by Hacker Organization.
On the top floor of the library, in the electronic reading room, Lin Xue stared at her suddenly blacked-out computer, her eyelashes casting shadows on her pale face. Amidst the humming sound of the backup power kicking in, she turned to look at a boy passing by with textbooks in his arms. "How did you know there would be a system failure today?"
Zhou Hang swallowed hard; Lin Xue was wearing a cherry blossom-shaped hairpin today—a look he had never seen before. In the last loop, she always tied her hair back with a black rubber band, like a white camellia that could wilt at any moment.
"I saw similar attack cases in the computer club," he lied, subconsciously rubbing his wristwatch, its surface cracked from being cut by shattered glass during the last loop.
In a 24-hour convenience store late at night, Oden's mist blurred the surveillance camera lenses. Zhou Hang watched Lin Xue dip the last piece of radish into her soup when she suddenly spoke up: "They said when my father was embezzling, his office computer also blacked out like this."
The plastic spoon scraped against the bottom of her paper cup with an ear-piercing sound. "All evidence... is Electronic Data."
The torrential rain changed when Seventh Cycle arrived. Zhou Hang didn't go to the internet café; instead, he appeared soaked at Lin Xue's part-time café job. As he shook off droplets from his umbrella, he noticed a miniature camera hidden behind a potted plant in the corner.
"Don't touch the mocha," he said, stopping Lin Xue's hand as she reached for a cup of coffee.
"You are allergic to hazelnuts today."
Lin Xue's fingers tightened around the edge of the tray until they turned white. "How do you know..."
Before she could finish, a sharp sound of shattering glass came from the kitchen, and Zhou Hang pulled her into the storage room.
In the darkness, their breaths echoed back and forth. He caught a whiff of the lavender scent lingering in Lin Xue's hair, the fragrance of her mother’s favorite shampoo from her lifetime.
"Death is not redemption!"
Zhou Hang stopped Lin Xue as she tried to head to the rooftop during the twilight of the twelfth cycle. The dusk stained her white shirt crimson, and he blurted out words from her diary: "You said you wanted to see the deer in Nara, to eat matcha ice cream in Uji..."
Lin Xue suddenly turned around, her backpack knocking over a fire hydrant in the corridor.
As water gushed out, Zhou Hang saw a flicker of light like sparks in her eyes.
"How do you know..."
Her voice was cut off by the alarm, but amidst the chaos, she reached for his wrist.
On the evening of the thirty-first cycle, they discovered an abandoned stray cat on the hillside behind the school.
When Lin Xue wrapped her school uniform jacket around the shivering kitten, Zhou Hang noticed the overlapping scars on her wrist, old and new.
"They're just scared; they didn't mean to scratch you."
He said as he handed her an iodine swab, his fingertip brushing against her cold skin.
In the deep night after the heavy rain had stopped, Lin Xue sent him a message for the first time.
Zhou Hang watched as his phone screen lit up beside his pillow; she shared a link to a piano adaptation of "Underwater."
Moonlight seeped through the gaps in the blinds, and amidst the melody, he noticed a pot of mimosa on the windowsill—something he had casually mentioned in last week’s cycle.
During their morning run, Lin Xue suddenly stopped under a ginkgo tree, catching a swirling yellow leaf in her palm.
"Electronic data can be tampered with,"
her voice was lighter than the morning mist,
"but tree rings do not lie."
Zhou Hang gazed at the dew droplets clinging to her eyelashes and suddenly recalled that encrypted document about the Municipal Hall's landscaping project on the computer of the Hacker Organization's leader.
As the sun rose for the forty-ninth time, Lin Xue appeared at the convenience store where Zhou Hang worked, carrying a bento box. The rice balls were shaped into crooked little rabbits, with bits of seaweed sticking to her fingertips.
"I signed up for the University Student Programming Competition," she said, lowering her head to wipe her glasses. "Would you... be willing to be my teammate?"
The glass door chimed as a gust of early autumn wind swept through, rustling the fallen leaves that danced past the shelves.
Zhou Hang looked at the newly healed scab behind her ear, a remnant from when she had been scratched by a bookshelf in the last cycle. Suddenly, the monitor by the cash register flickered, and he caught sight of a familiar figure turning away on the street across— the man with the Butterfly Knife, now dressed in a Municipal Hall Cleaner uniform.
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