Chapter 21: The Second One

Wang Jiexiang returned to Little Rabbit Island.

After finally ending this long journey in another world, she felt lost and helpless, both mentally and physically exhausted.

Still reeling from the last scene in her hometown, she sat dazed, surrounded by complete silence.

Looking down…

The white rabbit lay on its back beside her.

It was small, with its eyes tightly shut, so thin that its bones were almost visible.

Its dry nose, its chest motionless, a few flies feeding on its lifeless body.

Nightmares from the illusion followed her here, and the pain was far from over.

The moon in the sky had disappeared, and all the plants on the island withered. They sat on what was once the Employee Dormitory’s empty lot, where she could see the shattered streetlights scattered across the area.

Tears she had fought back started flowing again. Wang Jiexiang tossed the two keys she had been holding and gently cradled the unmoving rabbit.

“Mom is gone.”

“Yin Xian is gone.”

She sobbed loudly, her throat choking with grief as immense sadness surged within her.

Hot tears fell without time to wipe them away, soaking into the rabbit’s dull fur.

Heartbroken.

Regret.

And helplessness.

Many times, we tell ourselves we can do it, even when we actually can’t.

At fifteen, Wang Jiexiang lost her mother. At eighteen, she went out to work alone. In the city, she was like a grain of sand lost in the sea, with no way forward and no way back. She lost her job, lost her only friend, and couldn’t pay her rent. That was when she met Yin Xian and followed him for five years.

She knew he had many flaws, that they weren’t suited as lovers. Yet, when she was at her lowest, it was Yin Xian who stayed by her side, giving her a place to stay in the heartless steel forest.

Wang Jiexiang wanted to show Yin Xian she could succeed, to make him acknowledge her ability. She worked hard, straightening her back over and over, hoping that one day, she would stand before him, no longer looked down upon.

The truth was, she couldn’t do it.

She was never prepared for parting.

She couldn’t help him. She hurt him.

The rabbit, the dead rabbit.

In the midst of her crying, he struggled to open his eyelids, squinting through a small crack.

He looked at her tear-streaked face, like a momentary flash of light, recognizing her instantly.

“Feifei.”

His breath was faint, his voice hoarse.

It was distant, so far that it was barely audible.

He said, “I bought a rabbit.”

Yin Xian always remembered that Wang Jiexiang wanted to keep a rabbit.

One day after work, he ran into her near a footbridge by their neighborhood.

A vendor selling pets had a large cage with rabbits in it, and Wang Jiexiang was squatting in front of it, looking at the rabbits.

The young girl was small, her hair dyed and soft yellow, looking very malnourished.

The cold wind blew through, and she shivered in her thick white scarf.

Her face was hidden behind the scarf, with only a pair of smiling eyes visible.

When he got closer, he heard Wang Jiexiang talking to the rabbits.

“Are you cold?”

“Did you eat enough?”

None of the rabbits in the cage responded, but she still babbled on, asking questions that couldn’t possibly be answered.

The vendor, seeing her lingering for so long, became impatient.

“Hey, if you like them so much, just buy one.”

She shrunk her neck into the scarf, stood up, and walked away from the stall.

Later that night, as they were heading home, Wang Jiexiang suddenly tugged at his sleeve excitedly.

He asked what she was doing.

She made a “shh” motion, annoyed at the sound he made.

Wang Jiexiang looked especially happy, her round eyes gleaming with strange light.

She leaned close to him, whispering mysteriously in his ear, “There’s a rabbit over there.”

“No way,” he instinctively doubted, “You have night blindness, didn’t you see wrong?”

“I didn’t see wrong, it’s a little white rabbit.” She grabbed his hand, trying to pull him over to see.

On tiptoe, crouching down, Wang Jiexiang approached the edge of the grass.

“Little rabbit, little rabbit, why aren’t you going home at this late hour?”

She spoke softly and gently, as if not wanting to disturb it, standing a little away.

“Is it hurt?” Wang Jiexiang turned to him, looking worried. “It’s not moving!”

“Want to take a closer look?” Yin Xian, having already figured out what it was, suppressed a laugh and wanted to watch her make a fool of herself.

Following his suggestion, she cautiously bent over. Just as her hand nearly touched the “little white rabbit,” she saw clearly.

“A plastic bag?”

Wang Jiexiang felt both embarrassed and angry. “Who is it, really? No public morality, throwing trash into the grass.”

“Who’s throwing trash? Only you could mistake a plastic bag for a rabbit.”

Yin Xian didn’t let her off easy, laughing loudly and teasing her.

She angrily walked away and didn’t speak to him for the rest of the night.

The next day, he casually brought it up.

“How about getting a rabbit?”

Unexpectedly, Wang Jiexiang disagreed.

“Not possible.”

She firmly opposed, with a well-thought-out reason.

“With our jobs, we can barely afford ourselves, let alone a rabbit. No one’s home to take care of it, it’ll starve, locked in a cage, so pitiful.”

He didn’t press the issue.

Later, when the company held an event and some low-value gifts were left over, he brought one home.

Among the pile of unwanted items, Wang Jiexiang found a rabbit-shaped keychain.

She was overjoyed, clutching the keychain and spinning around in their rental apartment.

He was annoyed, telling her to stop spinning.

But she pulled him along to spin together.

“Yin Xian, Yin Xian,” shaking his hand, her voice full of the joy of a child, as if she had received the sweetest candy in the world, “When you make money, when you earn big money, can we get a rabbit?”

What did he say at the time?

It seemed like…

“Wake up!”

A hand rubbed his face, played with his ears, pulled his beard, and rubbed him all over.

“Wake up, wake up.”

The noise and the harassment doubled, and Yin Xian had no choice but to open his eyes.

After a brief moment of dizziness, his vision slowly focused.

He saw that he was lying in his rabbit’s nest, the room’s layout inexplicably disordered.

“Are you awake?”

Following the voice, Yin Xian looked up at the ceiling of the rabbit nest.

There, a large human face appeared—Wang Jiexiang, red-eyed, resting her cheek on her hand, staring expressionlessly at him.

“The ceiling?”

He noticed his voice had returned to normal, no longer the weak tone from before.

“I slapped it off,” she said seriously, “I found that without the ceiling, I can observe you better, so I didn’t put it back on.”

Yin Xian didn’t have time to care about the ceiling. He was more curious about how he had come back to life.

“How did you bring me back to life? I thought I was definitely dead.”

“…Back to life?”

Her choice of words confused him.

“Long story. But it’s not really me saving you. You weren’t going to die.”

She recounted the events of Yin Xian’s near-death escape.

Just like in the previous houses, Wang Jiexiang came in with the rabbit, and for as long as she was trapped in the other world, he was trapped in the room. Wang Jiexiang suffered hunger and exhaustion, and so did Yin Xian. The difference was, she had chances to eat and sleep in the other world, while Yin Xian was trapped in endless darkness.

He realized that this room was different. The time she spent clearing the world was unusually long.

Exhausted, having tried every possible means, he walked endlessly, but the end of the darkness was still darkness.

In the end, unable to wait for Wang Jiexiang, he fainted from hunger.

Then, after who knows how long, he heard her crying, almost gasping for breath, calling his name.

A force outside his body took over Yin Xian’s voice. He was like a burnt-out oil lamp, speaking the last words just as his life was extinguished.

“I thought you were dead too. Actually, at that time, you were dead beyond doubt, even the flies had come.”

Wang Jiexiang wiped her nose and added, “Crying to the point of almost passing out wasn’t necessary! I was crying because I was scared of your terrifying corpse. Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t crying because you died. I’m not guilty or sad.”

According to Wang Jiexiang’s story.

Back at Little Rabbit Island, she was scared to tears by the rabbit’s dead body. When he suddenly spoke, she realized he still had a chance to be saved. Wang Jiexiang calmly walked around Little Rabbit Island with the rabbit.

The plants on the entire island had died, and the streetlights were shattered, with only one left intact—that one beside “Feifei’s Home.” She followed the light and came to his rabbit nest.

“Your house is too small, I couldn’t get in. I didn’t know where to put you, so I slapped off the ceiling.”

Yin Xian interrupted her: “So, according to your theory, everything on Little Rabbit Island, including my life, is connected? The fact that one light didn’t break means I have a chance at life? That’s why I came back to life?”

“Yes, but not entirely.”

Wang Jiexiang narrowed her eyes, lowering her voice.

“The key is, when I slapped off the ceiling, guess what I saw?”

“What?”

“I saw…”

She touched his face.

“A new rabbit, exactly like you.”

The new rabbit lay on the small bed in Feifei’s Home. When Wang Jiexiang lifted the ceiling, he sat up, alert, staring at her.

Fluffy white fur, a plump body, dazed eyes, ears upright.

Its eyes were black, with pretty double eyelids and a circle of pale yellow around them, like it had eyeliner on.

“Who are you?”

He asked Wang Jiexiang.

He spoke in the voice she would never mistake, the unmistakably Yin Xian voice.

Wang Jiexiang’s words, with their bizarre direction, made Yin Xian more and more confused.

“How could… it be exactly like me…”

“Did you later chase away that fake new rabbit, letting me return to my home?”

Wang Jiexiang shook her head.

“After the new rabbit spoke those words, the last streetlight went out, and the entire Little Rabbit Island was engulfed in darkness.”

“I hurriedly held you in my arms, but your body… just disappeared in my hands, in my arms.”

Yin Xian furrowed his brows. “So, now I am…”

“The next moment, my vision was filled with light again. Everything on Little Rabbit Island returned to its original form, like the light was switched back on. The streetlights were intact, the plants full of life, and the new rabbit lay with its eyes closed on the bed in Feifei’s Home.”

Her smile was cold and eerie: “Therefore, now you are that new rabbit.”