Symbiosis - Chapter 2

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on a large bed.

My own bed.

I looked around. Every furnishing was painfully familiar.

I was certain, and utterly shocked: this really was my home in Jinque Harbor.

A hidden passage behind my room led to the basement where I kept Xie Zhao.

But I had just died there!

What was going on?

I should have been dead. Instead, I’d woken up in my bedroom.

My first thought was that Xie Zhao had saved me.

He didn’t want me to die so easily. He meant to keep me alive and take his time tormenting me.

I had tortured him for three years. Three whole years.

How could he let me off so lightly?

Cold spread through my body. My heart ached faintly. I was so frightened I could barely breathe.

Yes, I had done all manner of terrible things. Words like “kind” and “good-hearted” had nothing to do with me.

But I was still afraid of pain.

Afraid of torture with no end in sight, even though I had done exactly that to someone else.

I threw back the covers and clambered shakily out of bed.

The moment my feet touched the floor, my knees gave way. I fell straight down.

A heavy thud. Pain tightened my brow, and I clung to the edge of the bed.

But that fall did me a favor.

It knocked a little sense into my muddled head.

I froze, then slowly looked down.

Pulling open my collar, I stared at my chest.

At last—at last—I realized what was most wrong.

There was no wound over my heart.

With shaking hands, I reached for my phone, then checked the computer.

Finally, I even dug out a watch I’d stopped wearing ages ago, one with a year display.

They all showed a date three years in the past.

A ceramic necklace lay on my desk.

I had made it myself as a birthday gift for Xie Zhao.

He hadn’t even looked at it before throwing it into a corner, where it shattered.

Then he’d coldly signed at me: “Get lost.”

Now the necklace sat on my desk, perfectly intact.

Everything pointed to the same impossible fact.

I really had returned to three years ago.

I checked the month on my phone again.

December. December three years ago…

By now, I had already poisoned Xie Zhao mute.

But I hadn’t broken his legs or begun keeping him prisoner yet.

He didn’t know. Perhaps he suspected, but he still wasn’t sure whether I was the one who’d poisoned him.

I told him I could cure him and brought him home with me, putting him in my spare bedroom for the time being.

The Xie Zhao of three years ago was so sweet, so willing to listen to me.

Even though he’d lost his voice after drinking water I gave him, even though I was the obvious suspect, he still followed me home because of some story I made up on the spot.

Suddenly I remembered his fingers covered in blood when he stabbed me.

The venom in his eyes as he looked at me.

Waves of phantom pain wrung my heart, almost beyond my control.

I pressed hard against my chest. At that moment, I thought: forget it.

If I went down the same path, broke his legs and locked him away again, wouldn’t he find a way to kill me again too?

So I would let it go.

I still loved Xie Zhao. I still hated that he wouldn’t love me, whatever I did.

I didn’t want him to leave.

But I really didn’t want another knife through my heart.

And I didn’t want him to kill me some other way, either.