Chapter 3: The Hope Hidden in Her Backpack
1510 Words
My diary is missing.
Maybe Mike and the others threw it away.
Who knows?
They can’t read, and they hate people who can.
They hate Eric too.
But they never dare provoke him.
I don’t want to be beaten anymore.
Why don’t they hit Eric instead?
The old woman hit me so many times.
So many.
She said my hands were too slow.
She told me to watch Eric.
He didn’t even touch that person, yet he took the wallet away.
How is that possible?
It must be witchcraft.
Otherwise, why does he always wear a mask?
No one else here wears one.
Only him.
I was beaten again.
Why is it always me?
Why is it always me?
I keep getting beaten.
Beaten.
Beaten.
I can’t take it anymore.
Why me?
Why?
Why?
The old woman praised Eric again.
Mike hates him, but he rarely bullies him.
I really hate him.
I hate Eric.
Mike’s watch disappeared.
Only Eric could have stolen it without anyone noticing.
We want Eric to hand over the gold pocket watch.
Eric said nothing.
I don’t know if it was my imagination…
But during dinner, he looked at me.
What is he looking at?
He is the best thief here.
Why is he always looking at me?
Why?
Why did it come back to my bed even though I buried it?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
I’m going crazy.
He is still watching me.
He is always watching me.
His eyes glow.
He is a monster.
He wants to kill me.
He will definitely kill me.
Those are the eyes of someone who kills.
What should I do?
I have to fight back.
But how?
Mike?
The manager?
The old woman?
No.
No.
None of them will work.
How long has he been standing behind me?
One minute?
Two minutes?
Half an hour?
Or…
Has he always been there?
He is a madman.
A madman.
A madman.
I clearly threw it into the swamp.
There were crocodiles everywhere.
Why did it still return to my hands?
What does he want?
What does he want?
What does he want?
The final page was filled with increasingly messy handwriting.
The strokes became heavier and more chaotic.
The ink had even soaked through several pages underneath.
Bo Li felt a chill rising from the depths of her heart.
The original owner clearly had very little education.
Her vocabulary and sentence structure were simple.
But precisely because the descriptions were so straightforward and raw…
Bo Li couldn’t stop herself from shivering.
A cold sensation crawled from her spine all the way to her scalp.
It felt as if someone was truly standing behind her.
Should she believe what was written here?
Bo Li read the diary again.
The original owner and Eric were both at the very bottom of the circus hierarchy.
The only difference was that Eric was far more talented than her.
He could steal faster.
He could do more tricks.
Meanwhile, she had become the lowest of the low.
The old woman and Mike both disliked her.
Over time, jealousy turned into hatred.
She began resenting Eric.
She even wished Eric would take her punishment for her.
So…
She stole Mike’s gold pocket watch.
Then framed Eric.
The original owner had been cautious.
She did not keep the watch on herself.
Instead, she buried it in the ground.
But after some time passed…
The gold pocket watch suddenly returned to her.
And that was when her mental state began to collapse.
She became convinced that Eric was watching her.
That he wanted to kill her.
Terrified, she threw the pocket watch into a swamp.
But the next morning…
It came back again.
The diary ended there.
Either the original owner had completely lost her sanity…
Or that was when Bo Li had arrived.
Anyone who read this diary would naturally come to one conclusion.
Eric was a patient hunter.
Calm.
Silent.
Like a cat playing with a mouse.
He had toyed with the original owner until she broke.
But what Bo Li couldn’t understand was this:
If Eric truly had the ability to drive someone insane…
Why had he allowed Mike to tie him behind a horse and drag him across the ground?
If he didn’t have such abilities…
How could she explain the diary?
How could she explain the words written all over the tent?
The original owner had described Eric as terrifying.
But what benefit would she gain by lying?
Most importantly…
Why had the gold pocket watch returned to its original place?
Or perhaps…
The thing mentioned in the diary—the thing she had “buried”—
was not the gold pocket watch at all.
Bo Li couldn’t reach a conclusion.
No matter what, she finally learned the era she was living in 1888.
The end of the nineteenth century.
The Second Industrial Revolution had already begun.
No wonder the original owner could write a diary.
Paper factories clearly already existed during this period.
Bo Li put down the diary.
Her expression was blank.
So…
What should she do now?
The original owner had stolen Mike’s gold pocket watch and framed Eric.
Eric had then been tortured by Mike until he was barely alive.
Most importantly…
The gold pocket watch was still in her possession.
She was trapped.
No matter which way she chose, there was danger.
If she sided with Mike, the gold pocket watch would become a ticking time bomb.
If she tried to win Eric over…
Bo Li lowered her eyelashes.
Every word written by the original owner was warning her:
Do not trust Eric.
Eric might kill her at any moment.
But after calmly analyzing everything…
Bo Li felt that Eric was more valuable than Mike.
More valuable than anyone else in the circus.
He was the only person worth winning over.
The only problem was…
How could she win him over?
At that moment, a burst of noise interrupted her thoughts.
Bo Li was startled.
She quickly hid the diary and walked toward the entrance of the tent.
Peeking through the gap in the curtain, she looked outside.
A group of people was pushing and shoving their way over.
The smell of alcohol, sweat, and cheap tobacco mixed together in the air.
The stench was almost unbearable.
“Are you sure this thing really fell from the sky?”
“You think there’s magic inside?”
“If there was magic, would you have been able to pick it up?”
“I mean the kind of magic they have in the city.”
“Have you ever been to Fifth Avenue?”
“There’s someone there who put lightning into a glass ball…”
“At night, the whole street lights up. It’s incredible!”
“Putting lightning into a glass ball? Isn’t that just a gas lamp?”
“You i***t. I’m talking about electricity.”
“Electric lights. They’re far more advanced than those useless gas lamps!”
The widespread use of electric lights did indeed begin around 1888.
So she really had traveled back to the end of the nineteenth century.
Good.
Bo Li silently let out a breath of relief.
If she had traveled to the Middle Ages instead…
Where people smeared poison on their faces for beauty treatments or used leeches for whitening…
She might have chosen death instead.
But the next moment—
She suddenly saw what those people were holding.
Her eyes widened.
Wait…
Wasn’t that her hiking backpack?
What was going on?
She had traveled into the body of this girl disguised as a man…
But her backpack had come with her too.
Did that mean…
She could still go back?
In the darkness, the group gathered around a campfire.
They were carefully examining her backpack.
Someone pulled out a dagger and slashed at it a few times.
But because the backpack was made from cut-resistant material, the blade only left a shallow mark.
The person stared at it suspiciously.
Then he spat to the side and walked away.
However, there were still some people who refused to give up.
Driven by curiosity, they kept trying to figure out how to open it.
Fortunately, the backpack used a hidden locking mechanism.
Even modern people would have difficulty opening it without knowing how.
The nineteenth-century people had even less of a chance.
Half an hour later, they finally gave up.
Cursing, they threw the backpack aside.
Then they grabbed their rifles and bottles of alcohol and fell asleep around the fire.
Bo Li watched them.
Her breathing gradually became faster.
Her chance had come.
There was everything inside that backpack.
A first-aid kit.
Snacks.
Canned food.
Tissues.
A spare phone.
A power bank.
And more.
She didn’t need to worry about most of those things right now.
The most important thing was the first-aid kit.
If she remembered correctly, it contained:
Bandages.
Water purification tablets.
Energy bars.
Ibuprofen.
Electrolyte drinks.
Antibiotics.
Hemostatic powder.
Iodine swabs.
An emergency blanket.
And other supplies.
With those things…
She could save Eric.
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