Before anything had even happened, Chen Wen was already suffering the aftereffects.
He would feel inexplicably guilty around strangers, find places he had never visited strangely familiar, and experience emotions that did not belong to the present before anything had happened at all.
At eighteen, he opened a small office to investigate things for people.
His first client only wanted to ask about an investment, but Chen Wen felt as if he had owed him a great deal for years.
His second client said that his father, who had been dead for three years, had left behind an empty house. Yet for seven days in a row, trash that matched his father's habits in life appeared outside the door.
Only later did Chen Wen realize that the real trouble was not why these feelings came early.
It was that some things should never happen at all.
