Cold rain smashed against her face, making Wendy Lynch shiver and snapping her completely awake.
She fumbled to pull a raincoat from her scooter’s seat compartment. Her fingers trembled from nerves, and it took her several tries before she managed to tie the straps. By the time she had it on, the pea-sized raindrops had merged into a continuous sheet, splashing densely as they pounded the ground.
Staring at the aggressive night rain, Wendy wasn’t in a hurry to head home anymore. She had never been oblivious to her surroundings, and the current situation was clearly wrong.
She quickly recalled the contents of the message. According to it, she was supposed to encounter a fallen elderly person on her way home. Knowing her own personality, she would most likely step in to help. However, the result of her kindness would be extortion by the senior and their family. The family would even make a scene at her company, causing her to lose her job.
Although the whole thing seemed utterly absurd, she was now beginning to hesitate. She wondered if the timestamp and sender information on the message could be the work of a hacker. But could this sudden, torrential downpour also be a coincidence?
One coincidence was just a coincidence, but a string of them was terrifying when thought about closely.
After only a moment of deliberation, Wendy made her decision. It was better to be safe than sorry!
Without any hesitation, she hopped onto her electric scooter, turned it around, and rode toward the mall she had just passed. After parking in the open-air lot, she opened her umbrella and ran inside. Pulling out her phone, she booked a premium ride-hailing car to go home.
Her logic was simple: if the accident was supposed to happen while she was riding, then not riding at all would nip the problem in the bud. As for what would happen to the supposedly fallen elderly person? That was no longer her concern. In her view, having fewer people who bit the hand that fed them would actually help cleanse society.
When she pushed open the door to her apartment, the motion-sensor lights in the entryway flickered on. Exhausted, Wendy peeled off her rain-soaked clothes.
Twenty minutes later, she pushed the bathroom door open.
The steam hadn’t fully dissipated as she walked over to her desk, towel-drying her damp hair. She pressed the power button on her computer and sank into her newly bought ergonomic chair. The contents of that bizarre message from earlier were still spinning in her mind.
The moment the screen lit up, she immediately opened WhatsApp. Once the login loaded, the familiar inbox interface popped up. She quickly clicked into her read messages list.
However, as she got a clear look at it, a look of absolute astonishment washed over her face.
It was gone!
The message marked [Time Mailbox] was completely gone.
"Did I accidentally delete it?" she wondered.
Wendy frantically opened her deleted folder.
Nothing!
The eye-catching [Time Mailbox] message from this morning had vanished without a trace.
"How is this possible..." Wendy muttered to herself as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
A moment later, the search bar popped up a prompt: "No matching results found."
She slumped back in her chair, staring blankly at the empty search page. She wondered how it could just disappear. She had opened the message with her own hands that morning and carefully read the timestamp and contents. Was she really just hallucinating from being overworked?
Outside the window, the rain continued to patter gently. It wasn’t until two or three in the morning that Wendy finally drifted off into a restless sleep.
When her alarm went off the next day, she dragged herself out of bed with heavy dark circles under her eyes.
Remembering that her electric scooter was still parked at the mall, she decided to open a ride-hailing app. Since she still had plenty of time, she opted for a carpool rather than a premium ride.
Her ride arrived quickly, and Wendy opened the door to sit in the passenger seat. The car had barely pulled out of her residential complex when the driver accepted another carpool request. Two minutes later, the car pulled up to a neighboring community and picked up two fairly handsome young men.
THUD.
The back door closed. As soon as the two settled in, the guy in the white t-shirt pulled out his phone. A moment later, he let out a sigh and turned to his friend.
"Did you check our company group chat? Someone said something happened over on Stallion Road."
"Something happened? Like what?" the other guy in the black hoodie asked, fishing out his own phone.
After a brief moment, he shook his head. "Who would dare get involved with that?! Wasn’t there just a case recently where someone got extorted for helping an elderly person up?"
Listening to their conversation, the previously drowsy Wendy instantly snapped to attention.
Stallion Road, which they had just mentioned, was the route she had to take every day to get home from work. In an instant, she connected it to the message. A layer of cold sweat broke out across her back, and her palms grew clammy.
Suppressing the rising panic in her chest, she turned slightly, her voice carrying a barely perceptible tremor. "Excuse me... the Stallion Road you’re talking about, is it the one next to Apex Plaza?"
Seeing the girl in the passenger seat initiate a conversation—and a pretty one at that—the guy in the white t-shirt immediately put down his phone. He flashed what he thought was a charming smile.
"Yeah, that’s the one! You know about it too?"
"I... I pass by there every day after work. You just said something happened there. What exactly happened?" Wendy’s heart began to race.
The guy shook his head gently, his tone full of disbelief. "What else could it be? Just an old lady who fell by the side of the road. Some say she was lying there since last night, but absolutely no one called the police or helped her. She wasn’t found until a sanitation worker spotted her this morning."
Wendy’s pupils shrank violently.
The heavy rain, Stallion Road, the fallen old woman—every single detail matched the vanished message perfectly. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up one by one.
It wasn’t a hallucination. The vanished message was real. The fallen old woman was real too!
"And... what happened then? Was she rescued?" Wendy felt her heart beat faster and faster, to the point where she could faintly hear it thumping in her ears.
"Not sure, I think so! My colleague just took a picture and said he left in a hurry because he was afraid of getting into trouble."
Amidst their conversation, the car soon arrived at the building of Wendy’s company. She thanked them repeatedly before rushing out of the door.
The morning breeze, carrying the post-rain chill, blew against her face, but it failed to calm her chaotic mind even the slightest bit. After taking the elevator up, Wendy walked into the office in a daze.
"Lynch? Are you sick? Why do you look so pale?"
Her colleague, Reah, reached out and touched her arm, her eyes full of concern.
Wendy snapped back to reality. She quickly forced a smile and shook her head. "I’m fine, Reah. I just didn’t sleep well last night."
After politely brushing Reah off with a few more words, Wendy walked quickly to her cubicle and sat down.
She wondered if she would have run into that fallen old woman on Stallion Road yesterday if she hadn’t temporarily changed her route because of that message. Knowing her old habits, she definitely would have rushed forward to help without hesitation. And if she had, would she have been met with the exact fate described in the message—framed by the family, fired from her job, and perhaps even facing a massive compensation lawsuit?
Lost in her wild thoughts, Wendy subconsciously turned on her computer. Staring at the abruptly brightened screen, her eyes were inexplicably drawn to the WhatsApp icon on her desktop.
After a moment of hesitation, she clicked to open WhatsApp. A few seconds later, it finished loading.
The next moment, her pupils constricted violently.
[Time Mailbox: You have a message from September 16, 2025]