Nothing Special, Just an Empty Cavity

Years later, Xin Yuan wondered whether there had ever been a way to avoid what happened, so he could have lived out his life in peace as an ordinary person. He imagined what he would need to change if he could be reborn on the day it all began, and where he would have to start to prevent the chain reaction that followed. Should he have taken a different route home after hot pot? Or eaten faster or slower, anything to shift the time he got home? Or maybe he should have skipped the pig brain at the hot pot restaurant? Or perhaps he should simply have turned down his unreliable friends' invitation, stayed home, and ordered delivery instead? Yue Shi helped Xin Yuan analyze the situation objectively. “If you really wanted to avoid it, you might have needed to suspend your rental business much earlier. “Or just sell the building you own to someone else. “Because I hope you remember that I had planned to come talk to you about renting a place that day. “My goal was to ‘meet you.’ I had decided that several days beforehand. “The only coincidence was that I ran into you on the way there. “If you were reborn only to the day we first met, without going back several days earlier, then you would still be well-known as a landlord when I went looking for a place. “I would still have gone to the building you owned to find you. “So on the day we first met, everything you did could at most change the time and place of our meeting, but it couldn't stop us from meeting in the first place. “Our meeting was inevitable.” Xin Yuan said: “No. Changing the time and place of our meeting is the key. “Because the only inevitable thing was that ‘you and I would meet.’ “But seeing your empty skull wasn't inevitable. That was pure chance. “If we had met at a different time or place, maybe I could have been like everyone else in my neighborhood and always thought of you as an ordinary person who liked to play little pranks. “So the real question is, why did you think to go see your landlord about renting a place at almost ten at night?” Yue Shi stated the facts: “Because I have no brains.” Xin Yuan: “...” Additional note: This story may be a little strangely frightening. About 100,000 characters in total. It will update daily until completion, at 10 a.m. every day. Theme: There may be little surprises hidden beneath the ordinary.