When I first launched that ability, I thought time was my ally.

Press and hold the button, and the world will be silent. I controlled Imë retreated, and a translucent shadow of her just now was nailed in place, maintaining a swinging posture. Let go of the finger, time resumes flow, and the afterglow completes the blow. And I have stood in another position. As smooth as breathing.

Until the first time I watched “her” die.

I left myself three seconds ago at the narrow entrance to attract firepower, and controlled my current body back. The plan is as precise as a clock. Then, a new enemy gushed out from the side and rushed to the isolated and helpless me in the past. I turned around to save him, and my fingers hung on the button — but the rules were cold: I couldn’t touch myself in the past. I could only watch the shadow being hit, fluctuated, and disappeared like the reflection in the water being scattered by a stone. The screen vibrated, and now Imë snorted, and her blood volume plummeted. The pain was strange. It was not like being injured by the enemy, but watching myself being killed three seconds ago and being helpless. I can’t protect myself in the past.

From then on, the puzzle of the temple became a negotiation with himself. It’s not “need two people”, but “need you and you three seconds ago to stand in the right position”. I’m like an anxious director, previewing in my mind: run over, stop, activate the ability, leave an afterglow, and then run to the switch. Then pray that in these three seconds, the afterimage will not dissipate in advance because of any accident — an unexpected wind, a loose brick. When it fails, there is no prompt sound. There is only an empty hall, and I stand alone at the “now” point. Loneliness has a shape for the first time: it turns out that even if you can copy yourself, you still bear the consequences of all your choices alone.

Battle is a lonely symphony. In the face of the colossus, the perfect series of moves requires four “I” to relay on the timeline: the first one jumps to break the armor, the second one follows the provocation, and the third continuous cut in the air. Now I give the end. When the four figures were connected like choreography in the slow motion, and the colossus collapsed, there was no cheer. Only four “I” disappeared one after another, and finally one Imë was left, panting slightly in the center of the silent battlefield. The gorgeousness is not the special effects, but the arrangement of loneliness itself into a grand banquet.

Later, I could leave three shadows. The last puzzle requires four “I” to complete the ceremony together at four different points in time (-9 seconds, -6 seconds, -3 seconds, now). Four small avatars appeared in the corner of the screen, indicating their status. I am like a conductor, in absolute silence, mobilizing a band composed of myself at different moments and destined to disband. When the door opened in the precise pace of a quartet, what I felt was not victory, but exhaustion. I have just completed a great cause that requires four people, but I know better than ever that I have never been the only one here.

At the end of the game, no companions joined. It just made me practice over and over again, how to cooperate with myself at different moments, and then send them away with my own hands. It turned the warm word “collaboration” into cold space-time geometry.

I quit the game, and the room was so quiet that there was only the sound of a fan. It suddenly occurred to me, isn’t each of us like this? Play the remorse of the past, the choice of the present and the anxiety of the future in the mind at the same time, trying to reach a consensus on these different times. We have been learning how to dance with our own shadows all our lives, and how to look back at the lonely self who has been left in the past forever after making a choice.

Lysfanga doesn’t give me the pleasure of controlling time. It gives me a mirror, which makes me see that every “moment” of myself is bound to be isolated, must make a choice alone, and then bear the consequences of all timelines and all “I”.

And the so-called courage, perhaps knowing this, still pressing that button, leaving a shadow, and then running to the next moment without looking back — believing that the “self” left behind can bear everything, and also believing that the “self” running forward will not need to look back in the end.