The Other Su Wan

After entering Mirror Surface A, Lin Shen discovered that everything in this world was subtly similar yet different from his original world. He found Su Wan here, but she didn't recognize him. When he took out that half piece of torn paper—the final trace of Su Wan that even the Correctors couldn't erase—the moment she saw that little sun, her expression changed.

Lin Shen knew she wasn't the one the moment she turned around.

Same long straight black hair, same oversized hoodie, same coffee cup in her left hand. But when the girl turned, he saw clearly—sharper features, calmer eyes, lips habitually pressed into a straight line. The mole at the corner of her left eye was slightly smaller than Su Wan's, and its position was a little off.

The girl frowned. "Who are you looking for?"

Lin Shen stood in the lobby of the Institute of Quantum Physics, surrounded by researchers in white lab coats hurrying past, the fluorescent lights overhead humming a steady white noise. His hand was still frozen mid-air—he had almost grabbed her wrist.

"Sorry." He withdrew his hand and took a deep breath—that same habit he had before entering a door, which had somehow been preserved even in this unfamiliar place. "I was looking for the wrong person."

"Who are you looking for?" The girl didn't leave. She studied Lin Shen, her gaze lingering on his clothes for a few seconds—they were from his original world, their style somewhat different from what was popular here. "You're not from our institute. How did you get in?"

"The door wasn't locked."

"The door has a keypad lock."

Lin Shen was silent for a moment. When he came in, he had pressed his hand on the access panel, and the door had opened directly—as if the institute's system recognized him. He hadn't thought much about it at the time, but now he had to face the fact.

The girl tilted her head, seemingly waiting for his explanation. Lin Shen noticed the callus on her left index finger from years of holding a pen, and the trace of blue颜料 that wouldn't wash off on the side of her middle finger—exactly the same spot as Su Wan.

He suddenly knew who she was.

"You're Su Wan?" he asked, his voice calmer than he expected.

The girl's expression changed. It was subtle—not alert, not guarded, but the look of someone who had been touched by something. She took a half step back, switching her coffee cup to her right hand. "I don't know you."

"My name is Lin Shen," he said. "I'm from the other side."

The lobby was quiet for a few seconds. An intern carrying materials passed by, gave them a curious glance, then hurried away. Su Wan stared into Lin Shen's eyes for a long time, as if confirming something. Then she turned and said in a very soft voice, "Follow me."

The institute's hallway was long, flanked by floor-to-ceiling glass windows that showed the city's skyline outside. Lin Shen looked as he walked—the outlines of the buildings were roughly similar to what he remembered, but a few had different shapes, and there was one logo he had never seen before. The date on the billboards showed a month name he didn't recognize.

Su Wan pushed open the door to a small meeting room, gestured for him to enter, then closed the door and locked it.

"How did you get here?" she asked directly, without pleasantries.

"The experimental equipment at the hydropower station. The transfer pod."

"Impossible." Su Wan's frown deepened. "The equipment on that side was abandoned ten years ago. The energy source has long decayed. Unless—"

"Unless someone was maintaining it," Lin Shen finished her sentence.

Su Wan fell silent. She leaned against the conference table, arms crossed over her chest. The posture made her hoodie sleeves slide down, revealing a faint ring of discoloration on her right wrist—like the mark of something worn for a long time that was no longer there.

"A transgressor helped me," Lin Shen said. "Her name is Jiang Fei. She said your experiment here had an accident two years ago."

Su Wan didn't respond, but her fingers tightened slightly.

"On the day of the accident, a Su Wan was projected to the other side." Lin Shen's voice was steady, but his left hand was clenched into a fist under the table, nails digging into his palm. "She lived in that world for two years. Lived with me for two years. Then the Correctors activated their mechanism and started erasing her traces."

"I know about the Correction mechanism," Su Wan finally spoke, her tone softer than before. "It's automatically triggered. Bidirectional Conservation—when one world gains something that doesn't belong to it, another world loses something."

"So you knew from the beginning?"

"I deduced it afterward." Su Wan walked to the window, her back to him. "After the accident, I checked all the data and found a tiny perturbation in the energy field—too small for any instrument to detect. But this is what I do. I knew what it meant. Something went out, and at the same time, something came in. Like the two ends of a scale."

Lin Shen remembered what the Su Wan from the other world had told him. She said they were doing quantum research—two parallel reality surfaces would interfere under extreme conditions. She never talked about it willingly, afraid Lin Shen would find it too abstract, but every time she brought it up, her eyes would light up, as if they held a small piece of starry sky.

"That 'something,'" Lin Shen said, "was a person."

"I know." Su Wan turned around, meeting his eyes. "But I didn't know who that person was. Or... where they had been projected to, who they had met."

The silence in the meeting room grew heavy. Footsteps echoed from the distant hallway, approaching and then fading away.

Lin Shen reached into the inner pocket of his coat. He felt it—a small piece of paper, repeatedly reinforced with tape, kept in the innermost layer of his wallet. The Correctors had erased almost every physical trace Su Wan had left in the original world, but this piece—he had kept it on him, never once let it go.

He placed the scrap of paper on the conference table and pushed it with his fingertip.

Su Wan looked down. The paper was only the size of a thumbnail, its edges already yellowed. On it was a crooked little sun drawn in blue paint—the mark Su Wan always drew on her sticky notes. To the lower right of the sun, one could still make out part of a character: half of the character "Wan."

Su Wan's pupils suddenly contracted.

Her hands trembled slightly as she picked up the scrap and brought it closer. Then she jerked her head up, staring at Lin Shen's face, her breathing becoming rapid.

"This little sun," she said, "I drew it. Starting ten years ago, I drew it on every sticky note. It was my habit. But no one knew except me. Because everyone who saw it would say—it's so ugly."

She laughed, a short laugh carrying an indescribable bitterness.

"She gave this to you?" Su Wan asked.

"It was the last thing she left behind from the original world," Lin Shen said. "The Correctors erased all her paintings, diaries, photos, chat records. I found this piece of paper in a crack in the wall. That night, I was about to take a photo of it, and it slowly turned white on my phone screen. But since then, I've kept it in my wallet, and it never changed again."

Su Wan gently placed the scrap back on the table, tapping her index finger three times lightly on the surface—the exact same three-beat rhythm as Lin Shen.

"Do you know what this symbol means?" she asked.

"She said it was the sun. Because her surname is Su, and Su means sunrise."

Su Wan laughed again. This time the smile was deeper, but there was a watery glint in her eyes. "She didn't tell you the second half. Su is sunrise, so after the sun sets, the moon—'Wan'—comes out. I made up this word riddle for myself. Growing up, no second person ever knew."

She took a deep breath and carefully pushed the scrap back to Lin Shen.

"The accident two years ago," Su Wan said, her voice returning to that researcher-like steadiness, "I was conducting the third phase test of the Mirror Experiment. The energy field became unstable, and the passage opened briefly—only a fraction of a second. But in that instant, an exchange did occur. One 'me'—an identical me—was replicated at the quantum level and projected to a parallel reality. As the price of energy conservation, that world had to have an equal-mass matter swapped in."

She paused.

"Who that person was, I never knew. Until just now—I checked the displacement records from that accident. The person who was projected over here... his name was Lin Shen."

Lin Shen was stunned.

"He's here too?" His voice was hoarse.

Su Wan nodded.

"He's been living here for two years. When he first arrived, he said exactly the same things as you—the details of your world, your work, the apartment you live in, even the ginkgo tree at the entrance of your Firm. At first, I thought he was crazy. Later, I helped him rebuild his identity. He became an architectural designer here."

She looked at Lin Shen.

"Do you want to meet him?"

Lin Shen's fingers tightened around the scrap of paper. The feeling was bizarre—knowing that there was another version of yourself in this world, with the exact same face, the exact same voice, maybe even the exact same memories. He had fallen into a strange world in your place, and you didn't even know he existed.

"Where is he?" Lin Shen asked.

Su Wan walked to the cabinet in the corner of the meeting room, pulled open a drawer, and took out a folder. She opened it. Inside was a photo—a man standing by a lakeside bench, Su Wan beside him, both smiling like any ordinary couple. The man in the photo wore a light gray trench coat, his hair slightly longer than Lin Shen's, but the face—it was him.

"Central Park," Su Wan said. "He passes by there every day after work. Sits on the bench for a while, looks at the lake."

She closed the folder and looked at Lin Shen.

"Do you want to meet him?"

Lin Shen didn't answer immediately. He looked down at the scrap in his hand, the little blue sun unusually vivid under the fluorescent light—as if Su Wan had just finished drawing it. He remembered the Su Wan from the original world, sitting on the windowsill every morning painting, light hitting her face from the side, a pencil between her teeth, brows furrowed, then suddenly looking up, smiling at him, and saying, "You're awake."

That Su Wan was gone. But in this world, there was another Lin Shen, another Su Wan. They were alive and well, together for two years, taking photos by the lakeside bench, going on dates in cafés.

What was he, then? An intruder?

"I'll meet him," Lin Shen said, putting the scrap back into the inner layer of his wallet. "Tomorrow."

Su Wan watched him for a while, as if confirming he meant it. Then she nodded, pulled out her phone, and sent a message.

"His name is Lin Shen," she said. "Same name as you. But you should call him—"

"Lin Shen of Line A," Lin Shen finished.

Su Wan didn't correct him. She put away her phone and walked toward the meeting room door. Before opening it, she looked back.

"There's something about you... that feels very familiar to me," she said. "Not your appearance. Something else."

Lin Shen didn't answer. He wanted to tell her, you too, actually. The way you stand there, the habit of biting your lip, the way you twirl your hair with your fingers—all exactly the same. But not you. He could tell the difference. Their eyes were different. When Su Wan—the Su Wan he knew—looked at him, there was always a hint of cautious tenderness in her gaze, as if afraid he might break. But this Su Wan's gaze was sharp, carrying a researcher's detachment and distance.

She wasn't his Su Wan.

But she might be the only one who could help him find a way back.

"Where will you stay tonight?" Su Wan asked from the doorway.

Lin Shen shook his head. He hadn't even thought about it.

Su Wan sighed, pulled a key card from her pocket, and handed it to him. "There's a guesthouse behind the institute. Use this card to open a room in Building C. The password—" She paused. "Your fingerprint. The access system can recognize it."

"Why?"

"Because another Lin Shen's fingerprints were already registered in the system," Su Wan said. "You two are the only case in the entire universe with identical fingerprints."

She opened the door, and light from the hallway flooded in.

"Get some rest, Lin Shen. Tomorrow you'll meet—a version of yourself you've never known."

The door closed behind her. The meeting room fell silent again. Lin Shen sat in the chair, took out his wallet, opened the innermost layer, and looked at the crooked little sun on that half piece of torn paper.

He had been here.

The other him.

In another world, loving another Su Wan.What about his Su Wan? Was she still alive? Was she waiting for him in some crevice between the two worlds?

Lin Shen stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the city lights were gradually coming on. This world was the same as the original one—there were traffic flows, crowds, and thousands of glowing windows. But among these lights, there was one he was looking for.

He pressed his hand against the cold glass.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would meet another version of himself.

He needed to figure out what questions to ask.