The Other Side of the Bridge

Zhai Jia stood in her doorway in shock, holding a blood-red envelope. This was a delivery for A Cheng — she didn't normally open his packages. But today she was overwhelmed by a strange feeling: this envelope and the delivery man who had just left must be connected somehow.

She tore it open. Inside was a white card: "Tonight. I'll be waiting for you on the other side of the bridge."

Zhai Jia's mind instantly leapt to the string of killings at school over the past month. A pattern seemed to form in her thoughts: after Huang Lu died, her voice appeared in the Class 4 classroom — and Xiao Jin, who heard it, was soon killed. After Wang Qin died, a text went to Jia Shi — and Jia Shi was soon killed. The dead seemed to pass some message to whoever was going to die next.

The thought frightened her. Jia Shi was the most recent to die. Did that mean she herself was the next one? Was this card Jia Shi's way of passing a message to her from beyond?

"The other side of the bridge" — what did it mean? Three words came to her: the Bridge of Forgetfulness. In her mind the underworld suddenly felt very close: the living and the dead are separated by two worlds, between which runs the River of Forgetting, and over the river arches the Bridge of Forgetfulness. The card said Jia Shi would be waiting for her on the other side.

The other side of the bridge — a place only the dead can go.

The thought made her cold through to the bone. This card wasn't A Cheng's package. It was her own death notice. The "notice" gave a time: tonight. When the King of Hell summons you at the third watch, no one keeps you until the fifth. Zhai Jia was almost certain she would not survive the night. So she began to consider a different question: with the last fragment of time she had left, what should she do with it?

Zhai Jia had grown up in a small southern town. Her relationship with her parents, who had always preferred sons to daughters, was distant. She didn't consider the boyfriend she had thought of as close — he had abandoned her in her greatest hour of need. She didn't want to waste the final stretch of her life talking to either of them.

So she made the bravest decision of her life: she was going to run after the delivery man and find out for herself whether it was really Jia Shi. If it wasn't, she had nothing more to fear. If it truly was Jia Shi — then waiting at home to die was no better than following him and dying with an answer.

She grabbed a coat and ran downstairs. Outside it was fully dark. Zhai Jia lived far from the city center, the streets here quiet, only pale white streetlamps casting thin light. "Jia Shi" hadn't gone far — he had no car, no bicycle. He simply walked, step by step, through the night. Zhai Jia wanted to catch up and call out to him, but every time she nearly reached him, her nerve failed. She began to picture what she would see when he turned: a face with no color, lips gone blue, eyes red, a vicious smile.

She couldn't bring herself to close the distance. She followed from behind. She didn't know how long they had walked when the streetlights grew fewer. The road under her feet had changed from asphalt to dirt. She realized "Jia Shi" had led her out of the city — they were in the hills, she thought she recognized the area. There was supposedly a mountain nearby called White Stone Mountain, with a graveyard in it for people who couldn't afford proper burial plots. After more walking, the dirt path disappeared; they had reached a field of broken rubble. Among the scattered white stones a few gray headstones stood at intervals. She understood: she was already inside the graveyard.

A cold wind swept through. The old trees overhead swayed in the gusts, like the hands of death reaching down toward her. The wind seemed to pass straight through Zhai Jia, raking along her bones. She had reached the absolute limit of what she could endure. She wanted to turn back and run.

At that moment she noticed "Jia Shi" had vanished ahead of her. And where he had disappeared, she could see a coffin lying on the ground.

Zhai Jia stood frozen, staring at the coffin. Whether her life would end here seemed about to be answered. After a long time she finally summoned her last reserves of courage, lifted a heavy stone from the ground, and walked toward it, one step at a time.

First she saw a hand resting on the edge of the coffin. Then, closer, she could see someone lying inside. She stepped up and leaned over to look. The person inside was indeed Jia Shi. At the exact moment she recognized his face, the Jia Shi in the coffin opened his eyes.