Hot flashes

Zhou Heng's last memory was the cool air from the ice bucket on the yacht deck and the clinking of glasses as he clinked glasses with his friends. He remembered tilting his head back and gulping down the amber liquid, the sunlight so bright it made him squint.

Last night's party was crazy; champagne was poured like it was free. He only remembered collapsing onto the yacht's soft sofa, with a swaying starry sky and blurry smiling models in front of him.

When I opened my eyes again, the headache was still there, but something felt wrong.

It wasn't the dull ache of a hangover; it was... like being hit on the back of the head with a blunt object, a throbbing pain. And the thing beneath me was hard and cold, definitely not that Italian-made sofa on the yacht.

He tried to raise his hand to rub his temples, but his arm felt as heavy as lead. He opened his eyes wide, his vision clearing from blurry to sharp—

Low, cobweb-covered wooden beams. Drafty, adobe walls, cracked and filled with dust.

There was a complex smell in the air: the smell of stale mold, dust, sweat, and... the smell of some kind of animal excrement.

Zhou Heng slowly sat up, his bones cracking all over. Looking down, he saw that he was wearing a drab, coarse cloth garment, the rough material chafing his skin, with a hole in the cuff revealing his thin wrist.

His wrist was bare; his mechanical watch, capable of diving to 300 meters, was gone.

"This..." He opened his mouth, his voice hoarse and dry, but the tone... still seemed to be his own?

He staggered to his feet, rushed to a broken earthenware pot filled with murky rainwater in the corner of the room, and peered inside.

A face that was both familiar and unfamiliar to him was reflected in the water.

It was his own face. The eyebrows, eyes, and nose were exactly the same, down to the tiny mole under his left eye.

His face was now sallow, his cheeks sunken, his chin so sharp it could poke someone, dark circles under his eyes, and his lips chapped and peeling. His hair, on the other hand, was outrageously long, a messy, disheveled mess, covered in bits of grass and dust.

Zhou Heng stared at his haggard reflection in the water, and the haggard reflection in the water stared back at him.

He raised his hand, and the person in the water also raised their hand.

He touched his face—it felt real, the skin was rough, and the beard was stubble.

"I..." Zhou Heng opened his mouth, but only managed to squeeze out two words, "...I've lost weight."

I've lost at least 20 pounds. Not the kind of lean that comes from deliberately losing fat at the gym, but a sickly thinness from starvation. My clothes hang loosely on my body, and my collarbones are so prominent you could put an egg on them.

He stood there for a long time, his mind struggling to process what he was thinking. First, he was still Zhou Heng, at least on the surface.

Second, he was in a place that looked very, very, very ancient. Third, he seemed to be... destitute and half-starved.

Just then, my stomach started growling loudly, the sound echoing even in the empty room.

Hungry. The kind of hunger that feels like your stomach is being scratched by a hand.

Zhou Heng clutched his stomach and turned the dilapidated house upside down—actually, there wasn't much to search; besides a pile of dry grass and a few broken tiles, there was nothing else.

Finally, I found half a black flatbread in the corner, as hard as a rock. I don't know how long it had been sitting there, but it had mold spots.

He stared at the pie, hesitated for three seconds, then closed his eyes and took a bite.

"Ptooey!" He spat it out the next second. It was bitter and astringent, with a musty taste, and tasted like sawdust in his mouth.

But his stomach was still cramping. Zhou Heng looked at the remaining pancake in his hand, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and swallowed it down like a pill.

The rough crumbs scraped his throat, and he almost vomited again, so he quickly covered his mouth.

After finishing the half-eaten, deadly pancake, Zhou Heng leaned against the wall and stood up. No matter what happened, he had to go out and check it out.

He pushed open the creaking, broken wooden door, revealing a narrow dirt alleyway outside.

Several people dressed in coarse cloth hurried past, none of them giving him a second glance. In the distance, there were shouts, indistinct but definitely in some kind of dialect or Mandarin.

Zhou Heng walked slowly along the alley, observing as he went. The houses were made of mud bricks with thatched roofs, and the stone path was full of potholes, stained with rainwater from the previous two days.

The air was filled with a complex smell of firewood smoke, horse manure, and some kind of food. There were no telephone poles, no glass windows, and no trace of modernity he was familiar with.

He walked to a slightly wider street corner and saw several vendors carrying loads on shoulder poles. A stall selling steamed buns was steaming, and a plump old woman was wiping her hands with a cloth.

Zhou Heng swallowed hard, walked over, and forced a smile: "Auntie, this pancake..."

The old woman looked up at him, her gaze sweeping over his tattered clothes and haggard face. Her brows immediately furrowed. "Go away! Go beg somewhere else! They're fresh out of the cage, two copper coins each!"

Copper coins? Zhou Heng touched his empty pockets and silently stepped back.

He wandered the streets for half a day, gradually figuring out the situation: First, it was an ancient town, though he didn't know which dynasty it was from; second, he was penniless, without even a copper coin; and third, nobody knew him, as if he had appeared out of nowhere.

Around noon, he was starving and saw stars. He squatted behind a vegetable stall and, taking advantage of the stall owner's inattention, picked up a few wilted vegetable leaves that had fallen to the ground. Just as he stuffed them into his mouth, he heard a furious roar: "You filthy beggar! Get lost!"

The stall owner rushed over with a broom, and Zhou Heng took off running, still holding a piece of vegetable in his mouth.

In the afternoon, he tried to help an old man pulling a cart of firewood uphill. The old man glanced at him and sighed, "Young man, with your physique... forget it."

Zhou Heng was unconvinced and went to push the cart. But the cart wouldn't budge, and he was panting heavily, his vision blurring.

The old man shook his head, took out half a dark, grimy pancake from his pocket, and stuffed it into his hand: "Eat this, you look so weak."

It was another pancake. Zhou Heng looked at the half-eaten pancake, then at his trembling hands, and took it.

This time he didn't vomit; he broke off small pieces and ate them all. The old man slowly pulled his cart away, and he squatted by the roadside, looking at the crumbs in his hand, his nose stinging with tears.

When has Zhou Heng ever been so embarrassed over half a pancake?

At night, he found a dilapidated temple. The temple was already crowded with people, all of whom were as destitute as he was.

He was just about to find a corner to sit down when an old beggar with a missing front tooth glared at him: "New here? Don't you know the rules? That spot is taken!"

Zhou Heng hesitated for a moment, then retreated and spent the night huddled in a corner outside the temple. The night was bitterly cold, and he shivered uncontrollably, wrapping himself in his tattered clothes again and again, but he was still cold.

Unable to sleep, he stared at the sparse stars in the sky, his mind a complete blank.

The next day, he found a place with puddles, washed his face haphazardly, and hastily gathered his hair with his fingers—he didn't know how to tie his hair up, so he could only tie it up casually.

The face reflected in the water still looked haggard, but at least it was a little cleaner.

He wandered the streets, trying to find some work. Carrying bags at the docks? People saw his thin arms and legs and simply waved him away.

Restaurant helper? The innkeeper covered his nose: "We don't need beggars here!" He had even tried writing letters for people—surely that would work? But as soon as he picked up the pen, he realized he had forgotten how to hold a calligraphy brush, let alone the characters of this era.

On the afternoon of the third day, he was ambushed in a secluded alley.