Chapter Text
“ There is 3 hours 17 minutes and 45 seconds left until your journey to the Past is over. ”
Yun An stiffened as the mechanical voice echoed in her mind, cold and clinical. A soft blue countdown flickered to life on the edge of her left vision, like a ghostly sundial winding down. The weight of inevitability pressed against her chest. Lin Buxian noticed the shift in her posture: “What’s wrong?”
“It’s almost the time limit.”
Lin Buxian reached up, her fingers trembling as she cupped Yun An’s cheeks with the tenderness of someone holding something too precious, too fragile. Her thumbs brushed across the skin slowly, reverently, memorizing the texture. She searched Yun An’s eyes—dark pools usually filled with certainty—now troubled with storm clouds. Her heart clenched at the sight. Hesitation. She believed Yun An, that she won’t leave anymore but she also knows that Yun An was sacrificing a lot by doing so. “Do you… regret it?” Lin Buxian whispered, her voice barely audible as she bit her lip, the taste of fear bitter on her tongue. The silence stretched, cruel and taut. What if she says yes? What should she do?
“No.”
Yun An grasped Lin Buxian’s hands and brought them to her lips, kissing them softly, her warmth blooming across Lin Buxian’s knuckles like sunlight breaking through winter fog. “I want to be with you, Yixi.”Relief washed over Lin Buxian in a wave that made her knees weak. She hadn’t realized tears had welled up until they spilled freely down her cheeks, warm trails of emotion too long held back.
“Wife…Why are you crying?” Yun An asked gently, wiping away the tears with Lin Buxian’s wide sleeve.
“I won’t leave,” Yun An continued, her tone firm but fond: “It’s just that I hope the researchers won’t get angry with me and accept the ‘gifts’ I would give them…I failed my mission after all” she whispered the latter end of the sentence so quietly even Lin Buxian who was so close to her did not hear it.
Yun An hugged her tightly and nuzzled her head in Lin Buxian’s neck: “This husband won’t leave you, Wife.”
“Mm.”
Lin Buxian embraced her just as fiercely, her fingers digging into the fabric of Yun An’s robe as if terrified she’d dissolve into the air like mist. She trusts Yun An, but she does not trust that ‘machine’. What if it still forcefully takes her Yun An away from her? Lin Buxian decided that she will protect her even at the cost of her life, as long as her Yun An is alive. If it had the power to take Yun An away, what could a promise do against a force like that?
But if it did come for her… then she would go too. To Earth. To wherever. If Yun An had been brave enough to leave her world, her family, and everything familiar for love, then why couldn’t she?
No one knew how long they stayed there, locked in that desperate stillness, hearts beating in quiet rebellion against time itself. Eventually, the two of them sat again beneath the tree where the ‘transmission machine’ was buried. “I’ll put the letters in now, Wife.”
“Alright.”
Yun An gently took the live chicken she’d caught the day before and, with practiced ease, tied the letters around its body—letters for her family, for the researchers. Alongside them, she secured the lost instrument and a handful of handwritten musical scores Lin Buxian had composed per her request.
All the videos, recordings, and digital files she had worked so hard to collect were now useless, she was going to stay after all. But she hopes this se instrument and the music would be enough. A sliver of value to repay the theft of time.
“Wife~”
“Mm.” Lin Buxian rose and wandered toward her, her shadow stretching long across the forest floor. She peeked curiously over Yun An’s shoulder, watching as her hands toyed with a small, icy object that shimmered faintly even in the filtered morning light.
“This is what’s going to send these back to Earth,” Yun An murmured, her fingers brushing the surface of the device, cool as starlight. “It’s so little. I wonder what it's made up of, being able to survive this whole time whilst being buried…” The unease in Lin Buxian’s gut twisted. She didn’t want Yun An handling that thing any longer—it pulsed with unnatural energy, something otherworldly.
“I, I’ve got it… Put it back now.” She reached out and gently pulled Yun An up by her arm, guiding her away from it. Yun An chuckled and stole a peck from her wife, which made Lin Buxian’s face utterly red: “All as Wife says~”
“ 3 minutes 14 seconds left. Please prepare accordingly. ”
The voice returned—stern, almost scolding—and the air around them seemed to grow heavier, as if the moment itself were holding its breath. They sat down again, wrapped beneath a single blanket, warm against the creeping cold. Lin Buxian leaned her head on Yun An’s shoulder, her eyes half-closed, listening to the rhythm of Yun An’s heartbeat.
“Bingchu~”
“Hm?”
“I’m so glad I married you.”
Yun An smiled, radiant and sure. Her arms tightened protectively: “I love you, Yixi.”
“ 5 seconds… ”
“4..”
.
.
.
The ground groaned. A low tremble built from the earth, then erupted into a violent quake. Birds scattered from the trees. The soil seemed to scream. “Ah!” Lin Buxian clung to Yun An’s robes and buried her face in her chest, trembling.
Yun An, however, was anything but fine.
Her body felt hollow, her limbs like vapor. Her mind buzzed with static, her vision distorted—the countdown now a stuttering mess of flickering numbers. Every inch of her screamed with pressure. Her thoughts were scrambled, pieces of herself dislodging. She wanted to cry, scream, speak—but no sound emerged. She can’t even feel her body anymore.
Right then, Yun An knew. It did not matter where she was or whether she was holding the locator when the time limit ended. The researchers made sure she will be going back to Earth no matter what.
Yun An forced her remaining strength into the arm still wrapped around Lin Buxian and shoved her away, desperate. If she held her now, even for one second longer, the machine might take her too. Lin Buxian still has her family, and the estate depending on her, she cannot take her away.
“Bingchu?” Lin Buxian’s voice cracked with confusion and fear. She saw Yun An’s eyes staring blankly into space. Her mouth didn’t move. Her body didn’t respond.
“Bingchu, please…” Lin Buxian shook her gently, then harder, panic taking root. “Wake up.”
No response. Fourth Lady Lin who was raised to always control her emotions, to always look composed and to never cry, fell apart.
Yun An was not responding no matter how loud she called for her or how strong she was shaking her, Yun An was not moving…..She knew deep down in her heart that the machine still took her Yun An but Lin Buxian did not want to believe it even for a second. She did not want to separate from Yun An.
They have separated before, but only for a couple of months and it already took alot to get through the nights where she wished that Yun An was beside her, hugging her. The fact that Yun An was only one province away and that she will be back soon was the only thing keeping her hope. But this time…Yun An will be very far away. Lin Buxian did not even know what Earth was not until months ago. She did not know how to go there or how to send letters there. She would never see Yun An again if she leaves now.
So she holds her tighter, keeping Yun An’s body close. If it was going to take Yun An away then they must take her with her too.
“Bingchu! Wake up, please!” She was sobbing now, her voice ragged and raw. She shook Yun An harder. Slapped her cheeks. Clung. Prayed. Begged. And still… silence.
Then—
“Leave… mom… lone…”
Lin Buxian froze. Her breath caught in her throat. She leaned closer, lips barely an inch away from Yun An’s, listening with her whole being.
“Leave me be… your mom will be alone.”
The words were faint, broken. Like someone dreaming—or dying.
Her heart shattered, Was Yun An telling her to go away? To leave her here? Are you going to leave me, Yun An? Lin Buxian cried even more: “What nonsense are you talking about!? I won’t leave you!”
Yun An was still trying to push her away, her hands trembling, barely able to move. Her face had gone pale. Her breathing, shallow. Lin Buxian clutched her closer, refused to let go. “If you’re going away…then take me with you, Yun An!”
And Yun An lost consciousness.
Lin Buxian held her in a fierce grip, white-knuckled, biting her own lip so hard it split. Blood trickled down her chin, unnoticed.
A beam of white light erupted from the device, cutting through the sky like lightning frozen in time. Lin Buxian’s eyes widened as the brilliance consumed her entire vision. Lin Buxian looked at the locator and the next moment her vision was all white.
She shut her eyes and screamed inside her heart. She did not let go.
No matter where they were going. Even if they were going to die…
She would not let go.
… …
A cluster of people in pristine white lab coats—researchers, scientists, cold-eyed observers—stood silently around a hospital bed. On it lay a young woman, still and pale, her chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm beneath a thin blanket. An oxygen tank hissed beside her, its sound steady, like the ticking of a slow and solemn clock.
The room appeared, at a glance, to be one of those luxurious VIP suites reserved for the rich and powerful. Polished floors, clean white sheets, soft lighting. But beyond the door, past the guarded halls and the locked security panels, it was clear this was no ordinary medical facility. This was one of many clinical chambers designed for observing—or, more truthfully, experimenting on—“subjects.” And now, Yun An was one of them. No longer a researcher, no longer a volunteer. Just one of the ‘things.’
The silence hung heavy until one of the researchers finally spoke, his voice precise, clinical, almost excited:
“In about 5 minutes… she will be waking up.”
The others nodded, pens already poised, notebooks half-filled with anticipation. All eyes were fixed on Yun An.
And they were right. Five minutes later, as if summoned by some silent countdown, Yun An stirred.
“Ugh…”
The sound that left her lips was not quite human—more like the dry scrape of wind through brittle leaves. Her voice was hoarse, brittle from disuse, her limbs sluggish and uncooperative. Every nerve felt like it was waking from a long winter.
She forced her eyes open, only to be met by a sea of others. Cold, calculating. Not faces, but masks. Not humans, but instruments of study. All of them watching her, not with concern, but with curiosity.“Congratulations for being the first human to have ever gone to the past.”
Oh. That’s right. She was back. Back on Earth. Back to her own time. The weight of that reality settled on her like frost. “Yixi…” Yun An murmured, barely audible, a name so softly spoken it dissolved into the air. A memory trying not to fade.
“What was that?”
Yun An blinked and snapped out of it. She noticed the pens in hand, the notebooks already dancing with scribbles. Every twitch of her fingers, every blink, every breath—they were recording it all.
“I said water.”
And so began the "observation." It dragged on for two, maybe three hours—time melted and stretched in that sterile room. Yun An sat propped up like some ancient relic unearthed for study. Her voice, still ragged and raw, rasped through their questions. Her throat burned with each syllable, but they didn’t stop.
She could feel their excitement. Their disbelief. Yun An hadn't just traveled to the past—no, she had gone sideways, to another world entirely. A parallel universe. A place they had only dreamed of in equations and sci-fi fiction. Now, it was real, and she was the proof.
They crowded her like moths around a flame, eager to know more. Bombarding her with questions—what was the political structure? Were there other nations? What languages did they speak? What did their ships look like?
Yun An, more tired than annoyed now, answered everything. Maybe if she told them enough, they’d go away. She told them about the foreign ships, the cultural intricacies she encountered, even that she was matrilocally married to the head of the south Lin estate. Her voice trembled as she said it, but they didn’t notice. Or maybe they did and just didn't care.
She suggested additions to the travel inventory, improvements to their planning. She listed everything she could think of, watching them jot it all down eagerly. Only when she finally fell quiet did they leave, their footsteps fading down the hallway like the receding tide.
The room was silent once more.
Yun An lay still, feeling the strange emptiness creep in. Now that the voices were gone, the only one she heard was her own—whispering memories, tugging her heart.
Lin Buxian .
What was she doing now? Was she angry? Yun An hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye. Was she with Niuniu now?
She hoped Buxian would stay in the residence they bought together and never return to the cold halls of the south Lin estate. She had Youyi and the four bodyguards. She would be safe… wouldn’t she? Was she sad?
“Yixi… I’m sorry.”
The words came out in a choked whisper, like petals drifting from a dying flower. Yun An’s chest ached—not from the physical weakness, but from something far deeper. A wound that no medicine could treat. She had wanted to stay, to protect Lin Buxian. She had planned to. But the researchers… they were too cautious, too afraid. They had programmed her return like a timer on a bomb. No matter what she felt, she would be dragged back. And she had been.
She placed her arm over her eyes, shielding herself from the ever-present cameras. Let them think she was asleep. Let them think she was fine.
Silent tears slipped down her cheeks. She would never see Lin Buxian again. Never hear her soft laughter. Never catch those little glances over account books, never feel her touch, her warmth. She would never fall asleep in her arms again. Never wake up to her beside her.
She tried to cry without a sound. She knew the microphones were still on. The cameras still rolling. If they knew she was crying, they would only come back. More questions. More analysis.
So she buried her face under her arm, and wept quietly. For a world now out of reach. For a love torn apart by time and science.
She cried until her tears ran dry and sleep—unfeeling, indifferent—finally came to take her once more.
… …
“...Has she woken up?”
“1 month ago…”
“And her foods?”
“Exactly 3 bites per food tray. No more, no less.”
“.....”
Their conversation fizzled into silence like smoke dispersing in a windless room. The words melted away behind the sterile wall, too thick to let sound travel but just thin enough for curiosity to press its ear against. That curiosity belonged to a woman clad in soft white linen, her body curled up in a room as colorless as a snowfield in midwinter. No windows. No doors. Only a rectangular slit near the floor where food trays came in like offerings to a shrine.
The young woman was Lin Buxianl The locator’s job was to locate Yun An’s coordinates and bring her back, along with everything she is holding Incase she wants to bring back some materials from the past. Coincidentally, Lin Buxian was holding Yun An the moment the locator located Yun An and thus she was also taken.
“Yun An…where are you…?” Lin Buxian murmured while sitting on the lone bed on one of the corners of the room. She has been stuck here for a month already, the always dignified Fourth Lady Lin was now gone. Lin Buxian’s eyes had black marks under them, her hair unkempt, with just one glance you would know that she has been crying herself to sleep every night by the way her eyes were red and swelling.
“Yun An… where are you…?” Lin Buxian whispered, her voice like brittle porcelain threatening to crack. She sat on a lonely cot tucked into one corner of the room, legs drawn to her chest as though she were trying to fold herself out of existence.
It had been a month.
The always-poised Fourth Lady Lin—famed matriarch of the southern Lin estate—was now a silhouette of who she once was. The light in her eyes had dimmed into ash. Her once-sleek hair now tangled like overgrown vines, her pale face marked by the dark bruises of sleeplessness and tears. The red that ringed her swollen eyes told stories the walls would never speak of.
When the lights clicked off, signaling sleep time, darkness blanketed the room with a familiar chill. Lin Buxian usually surrendered to her grief then, letting silent sobs wash her away. But not tonight. She had spent her life solving problems that would make lesser leaders crumble. She had made high-stakes decisions, calculated risks with unflinching logic. If there was even the faintest crack in this prison, she would find it.
And she did.
It started small—one observation blooming into a plan. After a week, she noticed something peculiar: her empty trays vanished even when she left them nowhere near the tray-slot. No sound. No warning. Just gone.
There had to be a door.
So she stopped sleeping. She sat awake in the stillness, a statue carved from suspicion and resolve, clutching a blanket like it might anchor her sanity.
Then—finally—footsteps. Muffled but distinct. Her pulse quickened. Her hand trembled slightly as it gripped the blanket tighter.
“How could she survive with just eating this little?” a voice murmured, creeping closer.
“No idea, maybe that world has different human anatomy. Even the time traveller had a small appetite after coming back when she usually had a big one before.”
Lin Buxian’s heart skipped. The phrase *“time traveller”* echoed like thunder in her mind. Yun An. It had to be her. Her Yun An, who would always call herself that—half in jest, half in truth. Lin Buxian swallowed the knot rising in her throat. *She’s already so thin… she should eat more…* The thought pierced her like a needle, leaving behind a sting of helplessness.
She couldn’t wait any longer. Her mind screamed to hold still, to think, but her heart—her stubborn, faithful heart—had already made the choice.
And so she moved.
Fourth Lady Lin had never needed to fight. Diplomacy was her battlefield, words her weapons. But Yun An—ever unpredictable, ever preparing—had insisted she learn basic defense. Lin Buxian had refused at first, afraid that by preparing to be alone, she was inviting it.
But now… now she was grateful.
The researchers didn’t stand a chance. Before they could even register her presence, Lin Buxian struck swiftly—deliberately—applying pressure to the precise acupuncture points Yun An had shown her. Bodies crumpled soundlessly to the floor like puppets with their strings cut. Lin Buxian exhaled, only then realizing she had been holding her breath like it was the last one she’d ever get.
There it was—a door. No grand frame, no flashing lights, just a plain exit half-tucked behind a stack of files and metal drawers. But to Lin Buxian, it was salvation.
She ran.
She didn’t know where it led, nor how far she was from Yun An. But every step away from that white tomb was a rebellion. She had no map, no assurance—but she had hope. And that was enough.
Somewhere beyond sterile hallways and locked chambers, Yun An was walking too. Unaware. Unknowing. She was returning to the world she called home, leaving behind the ghost of the woman she ached for.
Unaware that the very woman she missed, mourned, and dreamed of every night... was just a few steps behind.