Blood-Red Dusk

(My new story, Under the Lamp, is now underway and will update daily. Please come check it out!)

I walk through the world in a daze. I happen to look up at the sunset horizon, where a fading silhouette draws an arc across the blood-red sky, as if for one fleeting moment it is dancing with the evening glow.

Blood splashes across my skirt. In the instant before darkness falls, I see the bloodied sky and the body of Luo Changwu.

Cold water soaks through me. The pink evening clouds look just like the dusk of the day he died, but somehow I've returned to that afternoon.

Should I save him? Can I save him? Is it impossible to save him? I...

I can save him, right?

I have to.

A white shirt sways in the loop, like a building about to collapse, like virtue fading away, like a bicycle teetering on the brink as it tears through the past.

But what is truly looping: endless time, or boundless obsession and pain?

After a long, long time, though perhaps it was only an afternoon, I saw that blood-red sky again.

Everything was over. I slowly closed my eyes. In the instant before darkness fell, I saw the bloodied sky and half a white shirt.

"It's too late, I know. It's too late, but, Azǐ, I love you."

"Maybe this story will be sealed away, or maybe one day in the future someone will happen upon it and read it. So let it be. Let everything be left to time and the wind."

Theme: Save yourself in the past flowing against the current.