Chapter 3

I circled around to the back and found a repair shop that hadn't cleared out yet.

The owner heard the words "Old Rob" and his wrench clattered onto the table.

"What do you want with him?"

"To pay back money."

"He owes you?"

"I owe him."

"Your last name Swanson?"

"Get out. I don't know him."

"You knew him a second ago."

"I said I don't know him."

"Does he go by another name?"

"Miss, some people, finding them isn't a good thing."

"Better than marrying the wrong man."

The owner stared at me a while, then took a metal box out from under the counter.

"He left this three months ago."

Inside was a stack of order receipts.

On the back of the first one:

【She'll slit her wrists in the bathtub tonight. The wedding video got out and she became a joke to the whole internet.】

The eighteenth.

【She jumped from the twenty-seventh floor. Couldn't stop her.】

The forty-sixth.

【She found the insurance policy. Ann Swanson pushed her off the building.】

The eighty-third.

【She called off the wedding, vanished the next day. Body never found.】

The one hundred twenty-sixth.

【She opened fire at the wedding, took two people with her. She didn't make it either.】

"He comes back every so often."

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes half a year, sometimes two years. His face changes a little each time, but the scar on his hand between the thumb and finger is always the same."

"What does he say?"

"He says he's stuck in a wedding."

"Every time you die, he goes back to seventy-two hours before the wedding."

"You don't believe it?"

"I can already see the last words floating over people's heads. What's left that I can't believe."

"You can see them?"

"Yes."

"Then it's too late."

"How many have you read?"

"Six."

"Stop. Now."

"Why?"

"That's not the power to see the truth."

"It uses your love for fuel and burns your life review early."

【Hold a gaze longer than three seconds, and you can read the last true words a person means to say to you before they die.】

【When the balance hits zero, the emotional bond between the two of you breaks for good.】

【Every person you read lowers the total amount of love you have received.】

【Read them all, and you lose the ability to love and be loved.】

【The only one the rules don't touch is a time-rewinder.】

I asked: "Who is Old Rob, really?"

"He never said."

"Why does his face change?"

"He told me once that rewinding isn't free."

"What's the price?"

"Every time he comes back, there's one less person in the world who remembers him."

The one hundred twenty-seventh time.

By now, probably no one remembers him at all.

Except me, who hasn't even met him yet.