Early morning, the red sun breaks through the dawn, everything feels new. Femi Foster is driving down the road. No Jack Young—he's gone. No Kevin, Julie, or Wendy—they decided to spend some time back in their hometowns. The only companion in the passenger seat is a cat, the one Jack Young rescued from the roller coaster tracks. Femi plans to adopt it.
Traveling solo, but Femi Foster feels a kind of peace she's never felt before.
Death won't be coming back. What could be better than that? Sure, maybe one day I'll die—maybe from some random accident—but that's just fate, not some murder orchestrated by supernatural forces.
Of course, Kevin, Julie, and Wendy tried to persuade Femi to stay, hoping to treat her right in their hometown. But unlike the three, who were totally relaxed, Femi still had work to do. Everything she'd been through lately had sparked a million ideas in her mind, and those wild inspirations were driving her straight back to her studio to write. She'd even picked a title: "How to Survive When Death Comes."
Thud—her car stalls out and stops by the roadside. A moody car can't ruin a writer's mood, though. Standing by the road, ready to hitch a ride, Femi jots a note under the ninth tip in her survival guide: "Where death strikes, life follows—this method is proven, it really can repel Death. Survivors of Death incidents: go back to where it all started and relive the event. If you make it through safely, you can finally sleep easy. Related survivors: Wendy, Julie, Kevin, and myself."
Screech—a bus pulls up. The driver, a Black guy, pokes his head out: "Ma'am, where you headed?"
"I'm going to the South District!"
"Perfect, we're headed there for an event too. Hop on, we'll give you a lift."
Good things just keep happening lately. Femi, cat in arms, climbs aboard. This isn't a city bus, but there are a couple dozen people inside. After thanking the driver, Femi finds a seat, pulls out her pen, and takes another look at tip nine in her guide—then suddenly frowns.
She notices something off. For this whole 'where life follows death' thing, she wasn't actually the main person involved. The roller coaster incident was Kevin, Julie, and Wendy's story—not hers. Her true starting point should've been on Train Car 081.
Hesitating for a moment, Femi Foster carefully recalls what happened after her brush with Death. Turns out, after she nearly drowned—well, it wasn’t even 'nearly,' she basically died and only got lucky because Jack Young saved her—she never had another run-in with Death. Sure, the elevator crash scared her, but looking back, that attack wasn’t aimed at her.
Thinking it over, Death seemed to ignore her after that. So she adds a tenth tip to her guide: "Another way to interpret 'where death strikes, life follows'—just die once, and when Death crosses your name off the list, you’re safe. Verified. Related survivor: myself."
Satisfied with her own explanation, Femi gives herself a nod and teases the black cat. Suddenly, she notices its pupils spreading wide, like a shadow creeping outward.
She blinks, shakes her head, and looks again—the cat’s pupils are just thin slits. Maybe it was all a trick of the eye, some weird hallucination.
Femi feels a chill in the air. She looks around the big bus—twenty or thirty passengers, but everyone’s silent, faces heavy with sorrow. Something’s off in the mood. Femi quickly asks the driver, "Sir, you mentioned an event, right? Mind if I ask what kind of event?"
"Oh, we’re going to the Supermarket Victims Memorial," the driver says, steering the bus. "You probably saw it on TV—the rainy night, that supermarket flooded. We’re the survivors from that night. I was the security guard there. I still remember it like yesterday. If it wasn’t for that guy from the East, we’d all have drowned. Since then, I swore to be kinder and help everyone I can. My life now is snatched back from Death, so I’ve learned to be grateful."
As the driver speaks, the mood in the bus gets even heavier. Some people start quietly sobbing.
Femi gets a bad feeling and presses on, "So, everyone on this bus survived that night?"
"Yes," the driver nods. "Every survivor is here. Except for you, everyone on this bus lived through that incident."
So basically, everyone here should’ve died, but didn’t—thanks to Jack Young? That uneasy feeling keeps getting stronger.
Femi squints, quickly circles the 'verified' part of tip ten and adds a question mark. Then she scribbles down tip eleven: "Death Sequence. By building secondary, tertiary, and even more layers of survivor networks, you create a massive Death Sequence. With this, you can precisely track Death’s attack pattern and order, and pool your strength to get through tough times—unverified."
Then, pen flying, she jots down tip twelve: "Hypothesis: If someone Death wants to kill is in a totally accident-proof environment, does Death skip them and attack the next person, or get stuck? Take this seriously—it's a crucial theory!"
Just as Femi pauses her pen, a girl in the back—maybe thirteen or fourteen—suddenly snaps out of the gloomy silence. She looks terrified, breathing hard, tears streaming down her face, and screams at the top of her lungs: "No! There’s going to be a huge crash, a giant accident—we’re all going to die!"
Everyone is stunned—except Femi, who snaps her notebook shut, a sharp glint in her eyes.
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———————————Back to reality———————————
Jack Young wakes up, back in this world.
He stretches his arms and twists his waist. Jack finds that every time he dream-travels, he sleeps like a baby and wakes up full of energy. Looking around his place—from early April to the end of May, he’s left and come back to this house. Not even two months! In his old life, that’d be two paychecks—well, checking today’s date, it’s one day short, so just one paycheck.
One paycheck, four digits, and that first digit definitely isn’t a big number.
But now, ever since the dream-travel adventure started, everything’s different. Forget the superpowers—let’s talk money. He opens his computer, logs into online banking, checks his balance—whoa! Eight digits! And the first digit is huge, almost nine digits!
That’s the cash from selling gold—quick money, straight from the other world. If that number doesn’t feel real, there’s another account: Jill Young’s earnings from underground fights and gambling—whoa! Seven digits, and the first number’s big too!
If that still doesn’t seem real, there’s Jack’s original account. That’s two years of hard-earned savings, plus bonuses from martial arts tournaments—eh, six digits, maybe two hundred grand. The first two accounts might look a little shabby, but this is honest, hard-earned cash. Feels pretty good, right?
Ah—Jack sighs with satisfaction, sprawling in his spinning chair and twisting all over. Two months ago, he was a broke guy who couldn’t even afford a decent apartment. Now he’s got three accounts to check and can laugh his way through them.
Ring ring, the phone buzzes. Jack looks down—yep, it’s his mom.
"Hey, Ma—what’s up?" Jack’s voice is full of joy.