However, there was just one problem: I didn't have any cousins at all.
——
In a daze, the scenery around me shifted abruptly. I found myself back at the very spot where I had saved Brandon all those years ago. When I had my hair braided into two pigtails and I was carrying a basket of hazelnuts I had just gathered on the mountain. And, not so far ahead, a man covered in blood lay. It was the young Brandon.
It was at that moment that I realized I had been reborn.
I walked over to him and kicked him twice. Seeing that he didn’t wake up, I squatted down and slapped him twice across the face. Finally, he woke up.
When he saw the young me, confusion flashed across his face, then surprise and finally anger.
“Don’t save me! Stay away from me!”
I realized he was too, had been reborn.
I thought of what he said to me before he died. “If time could be turned back to forty years ago at the foot of the mountain, you must not save me. That day, she also passed by the mountain. If you hadn’t taken me away, I would have met her first.”
Seeing me freeze, he roared, “Get lost! Are you deaf? Don’t touch me!”
I immediately stood up and walked away without looking back.