Spring Embroidered in a Pocket Watch

What if death wasn't the end, but a return to the rainy night when the story began?

On her wedding anniversary, Su Wan is pushed down the stairs by her husband and best friend. The pocket watch engraved with “To Wan, 2015.9.1” shatters on impact. When she opens her eyes again, she's seventeen, back in a summer filled with deafening cicada cries. Her deskmate is smiling as he hands her an altered college entrance exam application.

This time, she calmly gathers evidence and changes her family's fate of bankruptcy. Yet whenever danger looms, Shen Jizhou, the top student in her grade, quietly shields her. His sleeve is stained with blood, an obituary from the future is tucked inside his textbook, and when her cramps hit, he awkwardly brings her a cup of ginger cola.

Then, one stormy evening, she catches him in an abandoned classroom, speaking fluent German to thin air: “Cicada Plan, reboot number 17. This time, I won't let her die at 4:28 p.m. on Thursday.”

As he turns around, the blue hair tie wrapped around his wrist is the very one she lost yesterday.

It turns out that pocket watches can rust and springtime can be rewritten, but someone will always race against time for you, embroidering an entire April that never ends into the rusted gears.