Chapter 2
2038words
How beautiful. Lily was right—she really had put the stars inside.
"Dad, look, look! Isn't it beautiful?" Her childish voice echoed deep in my memory, so clear it was as if she were sitting on the floor beside me, tilting her head up, looking at me expectantly with those brown eyes identical to mine. I could vividly recall her chubby little hands grabbing my arm, shaking it vigorously, sharing the pure joy of every new pattern she discovered. That joy was once the entire meaning of my life. Now, it was a wound on my soul that would never heal.
My longing for her was no longer like the tide. The tide still ebbed and flowed, but my longing was an endless, stagnant Dead Sea. I was drowning in it, suffocating every second. I closed my eyes, but the dazzling patterns from the kaleidoscope were imprinted on my retina, wildly overlapping and merging with that gray, drizzly afternoon etched in my mind.
I saw it. I saw that scene again. Every detail had been ruthlessly polished by my memory, over and over, until it became more real than reality itself. The neon light of the bakery on the corner flashed a cheap pink under the gloomy sky. The wet pavement reflected the lights of passing cars, like a greasy, glowing snake. The air was filled with the smell of damp earth and car exhaust. My left hand held a briefcase, while my right hand was holding a phone—a damn work call, a stupid question about the library budget, consuming all my attention. And Lily, my seven-year-old Lily, wearing her favorite yellow raincoat, like a cheerful little duck, was just a step away from me.
Her little hand, which should have been firmly held in mine.
"Daddy, look, it's the ice cream truck!" Her voice was filled with excitement.
I heard it. I swear I heard it, but my response was swallowed by the noise on the other end of the phone and my own half-heartedness. "Mm, Lily, wait a moment..." I said, my eyes still fixed on the faint reflection in the shop window across the street, trying to make sense of the complicated budget sheet on the phone.
"I'll just go take a look!" she said.
Then, everything happened. That small yellow figure, like a planet breaking free from its orbit, suddenly escaped the safety zone I had set for her. She bounced and ran toward the ice cream truck, parked slowly on the opposite side of the road, playing cheerful music. In that moment, the entire world seemed to switch to slow motion. I saw her tiny figure darting into the street, saw the eager, innocent smile on her face. I saw the massive blue truck roaring around the corner, the driver's terrified face flashing past in the cab. I saw...
If. If I hadn't been answering that call. If I had held her hand like I always did. If, at the moment I saw her running out, I had summoned all my strength to call her back, would everything have been different?
"Lily!"
This thought, this silent scream that had replayed millions of times in my mind over the past three hundred and sixty-five days, suddenly became unbearably real. I was no longer a bystander, a sinner repeatedly judging myself in the court of memory. Something had been ignited. That remorse, pain, and desperate yearning, suppressed for an entire year, reached its breaking point at this moment. It transformed into pure willpower that transcended the laws of physics.
With my eyes closed, I poured out my entire soul and issued a command to the distracted version of myself standing at the street corner in my mind.
Shout! You damned fool! Shout now!
—If I had called her back then…
"Lily!"
At this very moment, an indescribable, intense dizziness suddenly seized me. This was no ordinary lightheadedness; it was a deeper sensation, as if my soul were being forcibly ripped from my body. I felt as though I had been thrown into a rapidly spinning washing machine, with the entire world spinning around me. The familiar, dust-laden sweetness of Lily's room vanished, replaced by cold, damp air mixed with the smell of gasoline. The firm texture of the kaleidoscope in my hand disappeared, replaced by the cold leather feel of a phone and a briefcase.
My consciousness was being pulled and twisted, like an overstretched rubber band, traversing the barrier of a year. I was no longer the grieving father sitting on the chair in Lily's room. I was that damned bastard standing on the street corner, holding the phone. I felt the coldness of the rain hitting my face, heard the noisy urban clamor in my ears, and the incessant voice on the phone. My eyes, or rather, the eyes of my consciousness, were looking through the retina of that "me," watching the small yellow figure rushing toward death without hesitation.
No!
I used all my strength, my thoughts, everything I had at that moment, to break through the numbness and distraction of that "me." I condensed all my regret and love into a single, pure command, a syllable that transcended time.
"Lily, be careful!"
This scream did not come from my current throat, but from the voice of the "me" from a year ago, roaring out with heart-wrenching intensity. The sound was enormous, hoarse, and filled with unprecedented panic. It was like a bullet, instantly piercing through the clamor of that afternoon. I saw the small yellow figure suddenly halt in her tracks, startled by the sudden, deafening roar. She turned around in confusion, her face still bearing a trace of grievance.
Just as she turned her head, the blue truck, with a screech of brakes and the acrid smell of burning rubber against the ground, rushed past the spot where she had just stood. The wind pressure blew her raincoat hood off, revealing her stunned little face.
At that moment, the world split into two. One continued moving forward, while the other was forcibly redirected by me.
Then, that powerful force that had pulled me away vanished in an instant. The dizziness receded like a tide, slamming me back into reality.
I opened my eyes abruptly, gasping for air, my heart pounding like a drum in my chest. Cold sweat soaked through my shirt, clinging tightly to my back. I found myself still sitting on the small chair in Lily's room, my hands still holding the kaleidoscope in the same position. Everything in the room remained unchanged—the pink walls, the teddy bear by the bed, the specks of dust-filled light streaming through the window. It was all exactly the same as it had been a few minutes ago.
It was an illusion.
This thought immediately surfaced in my mind. The immense sorrow and intense self-suggestion had conjured up an incredibly realistic hallucination. I felt an indescribable sense of exhaustion and disappointment, as that newly ignited, wild hope was extinguished in an instant, leaving behind only cold ashes. I wanted so desperately to change the past, so much so that it was driving me mad. I let out a bitter smile and shook my head in self-mockery.
My gaze fell back onto the kaleidoscope in my hands. It was then that I noticed something. On the small, light-permeable plastic lens at the bottom of the kaleidoscope, there appeared an extremely tiny, almost imperceptible crack. It was like a delicate spider's thread, stretching from the edge of the lens to its center.
I was certain it hadn't been there before.
My heart started to beat uncontrollably again. Was it an illusion? Or...? I stretched out my trembling fingers and gently touched the crack. It was a real, destructive sensation. My mind was in chaos. The boundary between reality and illusion began to blur, and I couldn't tell whether the heart-wrenching scream and the roaring truck belonged to this world or another.
Just as I was staring blankly at the crack, the room's door was suddenly pushed open from the outside.
"Dad! My leg is so itchy!"
A clear, lively, and achingly familiar voice rang out. Like an electric shock, I turned my head stiffly, frame by frame.
A girl stood at the door. She was wearing a pink nightgown, with a hint of childish irritation and complaint on her face. Her left leg was encased in a thick white cast, stretching from her ankle all the way to her knee. She stood on one foot, using her other hand to hold onto the doorframe for balance, trying hard to push a pencil into a gap in the cast.
It was Lily.
No, it couldn't be.
My mind froze in an instant. The world before my eyes lost its color and turned into a blank void. I looked at her, my daughter who was supposed to be lying in a cold grave, the daughter I had missed for an entire year, the daughter whose absence had twisted my insides with longing. And there she was, alive and standing right in front of me. She had grown a little taller, her hair was a bit longer, but that face, those eyes, that expression… it was definitely her.
"It's so itchy! When can I finally get this darn cast off?" she complained, hopping on one foot into the room, completely oblivious to the ghostly expression on my face.
Something seemed to clog my throat, rendering me speechless. I could only stare at her, greedily drinking in the sight, trying to etch this surreal moment into my mind. Was this a dream? Was this a deeper, persistent hallucination born from overwhelming grief? Or was I dead? Was this heaven?
"Dad, what are you doing? Why are you just sitting in my room?" She hopped over to me, eyeing the kaleidoscope in my hand with curiosity. "Huh? Are you playing with my kaleidoscope again? Let me see!"
She reached out, trying to take the kaleidoscope from my hand. Instinctively, I tightened my grip on it, as if it were the only tangible link to some unspoken truth.
At that moment, a soft, regular rolling sound came from the doorway. I looked up and saw a scene that I found even more incomprehensible.
Sarah, my wife, was wheeling herself in a wheelchair, slowly entering the room. Her legs were covered with a thin blanket, her face somewhat pale, bearing the weariness of a long coexistence with illness, but a gentle, resigned smile lingered at the corner of her mouth.
"Lily, stop it, let your father have some peace," she said softly, then turned her gaze to me. "Mike, on the anniversary of our 'accident,' don't lock yourself in the room."
Her words, each one like a heavy hammer, struck hard against my skull.
Our... accident... anniversary?
My world, at this moment, completely collapsed. I stiffly lowered my head, my gaze shifting between Lily, who was bouncing around with just a cast on her leg, and Sarah, who sat in a wheelchair, unable to move her legs. That blue truck, the moment I altered... I saved Lily. With all my willpower, I pulled her back from the brink of death.
But that out-of-control truck didn't disappear. It just... changed direction.
I looked into Sarah's gentle but weary eyes, at the blanket covering her legs, and a truth more cruel and terrifying than death itself, like a cold, endless abyss, instantly cracked open beneath my feet. I had succeeded. I had gone back in time, I had changed the outcome.
I had traded my wife's legs for my daughter's life.
