Chapter 20

Chapter 20

After sleeping until noon, Nan Mu took some time to clean himself up properly before heading to a telecommunications service center to get a new SIM card.

As soon as he got the card, he sent a message to Wen Miao.

Nan Mu: [How many classes do you have this afternoon?]

After a short wait, a reply came back.

Wen Miao: [? Who is this?]

Nan Mu: [Nan Mu. Save this number; use it to contact me for the time being.]

Wen Miao: [Okay. I only have one class this afternoon.]

Nan Mu: [What time does it end?]

Wen Miao: [3:15 PM.]

Nan Mu: [OK. Then I’ll wait for you at the school gate at 3:30.]

Wen Miao: [???]

Seeing Wen Miao’s three question marks, Nan Mu frowned. She wasn’t going to stand him up, was she?

Wen Miao: [I had lunch with Tang Tang. She told me she has two classes this afternoon…]

Nan Mu: …

He had actually forgotten to get a copy of the Biology Department’s schedule. What a major oversight!

Before Nan Mu could reply, Wen Miao sent two more messages in quick succession.

Wen Miao: [Don’t skip class!]

Wen Miao: [Let’s meet at the school gate at 5:00.]

Nan Mu thought about it and decided to let it go; the misunderstanding worked in his favor. He replied: [Okay.]

=

Nan Mu checked the time. There were still over four hours until 5:00, so he decided to head over to Gu Zhishu’s house first.

Following the address he had visited before, Nan Mu arrived at the Gu Family home once again.

As soon as he pressed the doorbell, he heard someone shouting, “Who is it?” while rushing out from inside.

A young Gu Zhiyu opened the door. When he saw Nan Mu, a look of visible disappointment washed over his face.

“Is Xiao Shu back?” a woman’s voice called out from behind Gu Zhiyu.

“It’s not Brother.”

Gu Zhiyu turned around as a middle-aged woman stepped out from behind the door. She was likely Gu Zhiyu’s mother.

“And you are?” Mrs. Gu looked at Nan Mu outside the door with confusion.

“Hello, I’m a friend of Gu Zhishu. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him lately, so I was wondering if he was home today?” Nan Mu greeted them politely. “He borrowed a book from me a while back.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Gu hesitated before opening the door wider. “Xiao Shu isn’t home… Why don’t you come in first?”

“Thank you.”

Nan Mu entered the house. Seeing that the place was almost exactly the same as it would be ten years later, he breathed a secret sigh of relief.

He was fortunate that all of this was happening in City A, where land was worth its weight in gold. Aside from a small minority, most people couldn’t afford to change houses their entire lives. Otherwise, he would have had to search the whole world to find where Gu Zhishu’s family lived.

=

Gu Zhishu should have been dead by this point, but the Gu Family still believed he had left without saying goodbye because he couldn’t bear the pain of his treatments.

Therefore, when Mrs. Gu mentioned that Gu Zhishu was missing, Nan Mu had to feign a look of surprise.

His current status was delicate; he couldn’t afford to get involved in a criminal case, or the secret of the Time Machine would surely be exposed.

Upon learning that Nan Mu hadn’t been able to contact Gu Zhishu for a long time either, Mrs. Gu sighed. She then forced herself to brighten up and asked, “What book did Xiao Shu borrow? I’ll go to his room and help you look for it.”

Nan Mu thought back to the items Gu Zhiyu had eventually handed over to the police among Gu Zhishu’s effects. “‘Brain Diseases.’ It’s a medical book. It’s not particularly valuable, so it’s fine if you can’t find it, but I did have a lot of my old notes in it.”

“Let me look for it first.”

Mrs. Gu led Nan Mu to Gu Zhishu’s room.

Gu Zhishu’s room was still quite different from how it would look ten years later.
Books stacked in the corner of the desk, ballpoint pens and erasers scattered across the surface, and a half-finished model kit on the nightstand-all of these left behind traces of Gu Zhishu’s life and the lingering scent of his presence.

A 2022 calendar planner was even taped to the front of the desk.

Wait… Nan Mu leaned in closer.

The planner was for April, which should have been the month Gu Zhishu went missing.

Old Mr. Gu had mentioned before that after Gu Zhishu fell ill, his brain condition flared up frequently. The school, worried that something might happen to him on campus, had arranged for him to take a medical leave of absence quite early on. Gu Zhishu didn’t go out much and spent most of his time at home reading.

Consequently, most of the entries on the calendar planner were reading schedules and plans to post book reviews or reflections online. His frequency was roughly one book per week, followed by a review. Even if something unexpected cropped up, he would quickly make up for it within the next day or two.

Nan Mu took particular note of several specific dates.

April 2nd: Posted review for “Theory and Technology of Cloned Genes.”

April 5th: Zhaodi?

April 9th: Posted review for “Malice.”

April 10th: Wen Miao, Botanical Garden.

April 12th: Su Yu. (Gu Zhishu had even drawn an extra star in red pen on this square.)

April 17th: Posted review for “The Windup Girl.”

April 18th: !!! (Gu Zhishu hadn’t written anything, but he had drawn three exclamation marks in red pen. It was clear that whatever happened was incredibly important and needed to be kept secret.)

From April 18th onward, Gu Zhishu hadn’t written another word.

Judging by the planner, Gu Zhishu’s interests were quite eclectic. “Theory and Technology of Cloned Genes” was a medical text, “Malice” was a mystery novel, and “The Windup Girl” was the winner of the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novel.

In the month of April, Gu Zhishu had only come into contact with three people he deemed important: Zhaodi, Wen Miao, and Su Yu.

What did the question mark after Zhaodi mean? Did he want to ask her something? Or was he confused by her behavior?

Only Wen Miao’s entry included a location. Did that mean the meeting places for Zhaodi and Su Yu weren’t anything special? Was it at home? Or the hospital?

“That’s Xiao Shu’s schedule calendar. He was always very methodical about things,” Gu Zhishu’s mother explained with a sigh of nostalgia, noticing Nan Mu staring blankly at the calendar. “This calendar was originally hanging in his hospital room. Later… after we brought his things back, we hung it on the wall for him. Sometimes, looking at these things, it feels like he never really left us.”

After she finished speaking, she suddenly remembered something and handed the book in her hand to Nan Mu. “Oh, right. See if this is the book?”

“Yes. This is the one. Thank you for the trouble.”

Nan Mu took the book, but as he pulled his hand back, his elbow knocked against the stack of books on the desk.

The books scattered across the floor, and he hurriedly crouched down to pick them up.

As he was gathering the books, an empty manila envelope fell out-the large kind used for mailing documents.

=

When Nan Mu left the Gu Family home, Gu Zhishu’s mother repeatedly implored him to contact them immediately if there was any news regarding Gu Zhishu.

He hailed a taxi, and while inside, he transcribed Gu Zhishu’s calendar entries one by one into the small notebook he carried with him.

Then, he wrote a string of numbers after the names of Zhaodi and Su Yu respectively. These were the numbers Gu Zhiyu had provided when Nan Mu had visited the Gu Family with Qiu Ziyu earlier.

He checked the time and saw it was nearly 5:00 PM, so he tucked the notebook into his pocket.

He would pick up Wen Miao first. Tomorrow, he would try calling those two numbers to see if they would go through.