23 Chapter 23: Allies in the Same Situation
◎Both of them share the same problem, and it's easy for them to be mistaken for mental disorder◎
"Not only that, when I returned to my dorm from the hospital, I discovered that the cat's litter box, cat food, and everything else were gone. Only the photos of the cat stored on my phone were still there."
Xie Yun took out his cell phone and showed Wu Yahua the photos of Goudan and the cat in the album.
After seeing this, Wu Yahua thought to herself, this is what she looks like. She is the same cow cat that is Xie Yun’s WeChat avatar.
"My recent calls included a call from the man who found the cat. I called him back, and like Hong Cangkang and the others, he didn't remember the cat. Oh, and he's the man we met outside the teaching building last time, doing landscaping. He's dark-skinned and carrying a potted plant, about to move it somewhere else. You call him Xiao Hei, and I call him Lin Yaonan."
In late September, the weather had not yet fully entered autumn and turned cool. On her way to the Amber Restaurant, Wu Yahua was wearing a short-sleeved dress and had some sweat on her back.
At this time, Wu Yahua was sitting in the Amber Restaurant without air conditioning and having dinner. When she heard Xie Yun's words, a chill rose from the soles of her feet. The pores all over her body opened, filled with wind, and goose bumps densely multiplied on every part of Wu Yahua's body.
She thought her own experiences were mysterious enough, and Xie Yun's experiences were equally strange.
Xie Yuncheng wanted to understand why Wu Yahua could remember the cat, so he asked Wu Yahua to meet him alone in a restaurant with few people and laid out the whole story in exchange for the truth from Wu Yahua.
"Of all the people I've met, you're the only one who remembers that cat. Can you tell me your memories of it? I want to combine our memories to find out why things turned out this way. The prerequisite is that you don't lie. Xie Lili did come into contact with the cat, but she can't remember it now, so she can't tell you anything about it."
Faced with Xie Yun's sincere request, Wu Yahua had a moment of thought and wanted to tell him the truth that the cat was transformed from herself.
The words were on the tip of her tongue, but Wu Yahua swallowed them back.
"My experience is similar to yours, but also different. I said I saw a cat. It was on the morning of July 21st. I saw Xie Lili and you arguing about a cat downstairs in the girls' dormitory..."
"Excuse me for interrupting," Xie Yun said. "You just said you left school on the 20th, but now you're describing yourself as still at school on the 21st, witnessing Xie Lili and I fighting over the cat?"
Wu Yahua lied slightly, "That's the weird part. My memory seems to have been tampered with."
Wu Yahua made up a blank memory of the time when she turned into a cat, saying that she woke up one day and found that her grandmother, who should have died when she was in her second year of high school, had now "resurrected". The album on her mobile phone contained many photos of her summer vacation trip to her grandmother's house in the countryside.
The originally happy family of three, after waking up, found that she and her mother were dependent on each other. Her father and mother divorced ten years ago and had remarried and had children.
"There's another crucial person. Her name is Chen Xi. She lives in the same dorm as me and is a classmate. After returning to school this semester, her bed became empty. Everyone denies the existence of a person like Chen Xi. Ever since she moved into this dorm at the beginning of freshman year, that bed has been empty. There's no Chen Xi in the class group chat, and she's not on the roster either."
After Wu Yahua said these words, she felt much better. At least Xie Yun, who was sitting opposite her, was listening carefully and did not doubt or refute her.
After all, both of them share the same problem and could easily be mistaken for mentally ill.
"Last semester, when our two classes were in the same class, had you seen Chen Xi? Do you have any impression of her?" Wu Yahua asked, and gave Xie Yun a general description of Chen Xi's appearance and characteristics.
Xie Yun began to recall, searching his memory for the person Wu Yahua mentioned.
Wu Yahua said: "She has no friends and keeps to herself. She has average relationships with the people in the dormitory and with the female classmates in other dormitories. She doesn't get along well with me. She always finds things to argue with me, and we've had a few unpleasant arguments."
When Wu Yahua remembered that she was a cat, she fell unconscious on the bank of the Youqing River and saw herself sitting in a place similar to a movie theater. The screen showed her walking into the dormitory and turning into a cat. Chen Xi just walked out of the dormitory.
After drinking water from the dormitory's water dispenser, Wu Yahua felt something was wrong and then turned into a cat.
If this is true, then Wu Yahua must have drugged Shen Xi. Now Shen Xi has disappeared from everyone's memory, except for his own memory. Wu Yahua feels that if Shen Xi has special abilities, then Shen Xi would not be a god or something like that, but a monster or demon.
Xie Yun vaguely remembered that there was a special figure, but he was not sure if it was Chen Xi unless he had a photo of Chen Xi as a reference.
Xie Yun's phone was still the same one, but Wu Yahua's phone was not the same one. Even if Wu Yahua's phone was still the same one, it was impossible for her to have stored photos of her mortal enemy, so it would be a waste of time.
"I remember that last semester we had group assignments in our classes, and the groups took turns reporting on stage. The teacher asked me to take photos of each group going on stage and then send them to him. There might be a photo of Chen Xi among them." Thinking of keeping photos of Chen Xi, Xie Yun flipped through the photo album on his phone.
When Wu Yahua heard Xie Yun say that there might be photos of Chen Xi left in his phone, she moved from opposite Xie Yun to sit next to him and watched Xie Yun flip through the photos of the group report from last semester.
There were three people in a group. Wu Yahua remembered that she, Xie Lili, and another classmate formed a team, but she had no impression of who Shen Xi was in the same team with.
Xie Yun's fingers were scrolling across the phone screen.
The first photos were all of Xie Yun's class. After quickly flipping through them, when I turned to the group of Wu Yahua's class, Wu Yahua's head and shoulders were tilted towards Xie Yun's side.
From the angle behind, it looked like Wu Yahua was leaning on Xie Yun's shoulder, and their bodies were very close.
It was Wu Yahua's team's turn to go on stage to report. The speaker was Xie Lili. Wu Yahua and another classmate stood on the side of the podium. After Xie Lili finished her speech, the teacher took turns to answer questions from the three of them.
When the photo was taken, Xie Lili was standing in the center of the podium, with the blackboard screen behind her reflecting the PPT. However, at the moment when the photo was taken, the focus of the photo was Wu Yahua standing at the edge of the podium.
The center of the photo is Wu Yahua, and the speaker Xie Lili is only captured in a corner.
Um?
The moment this biased photo appeared on Xie Yun's phone, Xie Yun looked up in surprise, and Wu Yahua turned her head to look at him.
Not only did their eyes meet, but their heads also bumped into each other. Their two hard foreheads collided with each other, and they cried out in pain at the same time.
Anyone can have wild thoughts.
Wu Yahua, the person involved, covered her forehead with her hands, a line of words popped up in her mind: Why is he filming me specifically? Could it be that he has a crush on me too? Are we secretly in love with each other?
Xie Yun closed his eyes and didn't dare to look at Wu Yahua. He had not experienced embarrassment many times, and this was a rare one.
He couldn't remember how he felt during the shoot.
In the previous group photos, the center of the photos was the speaker on the podium. Why was the focus of the photo placed on Wu Yahua's group who was standing on the edge?
Could it be that he couldn't stand Xie Lili, so he turned the camera to Wu Yahua?
It was revealed that Xie Lili was also his cousin. They had no hatred or grudge against each other. It was just that Xie Lili disliked him and treated him as a stranger, but he didn't dislike Xie Lili.
The group took photos for the report, and it was the teacher who asked them to do so. He wouldn't be so stingy as to deliberately not take a photo of Xie Lili.
Xie Yun had no choice but to lie to cover up his embarrassment, "I didn't take this photo. The presentation took a bit too long that day, and when your group's turn came to an end, I went to the bathroom, and I gave my deskmate my phone to take the photo."
"Oh oh oh, it's okay." Wu Yahua followed Xie Yun's words.
But in Wu Yahua's memory, when their group was reporting, not at the end of class, she remembered clearly that she saw Xie Yun sitting in his seat holding up his mobile phone and taking pictures.
Either Xie Yun was lying, or her memory was faulty.
Suddenly realizing that she was sitting too close to Xie Yun, Wu Yahua distanced herself from him and quickly stood up and sat back down opposite him.
After looking through all the photos of the group report that day, he didn't see any photo of Shen Xi. Xie Yun asked, "How many people are there in your class?"
Wu Yahua: "Including Chen Xi, there are 43 people."
"There are 45 people in our class, which is just enough to form 15 teams. Your class plus Chen Xi makes 43 people, so each team needs one more person. Or, did Chen Xi not participate in the group discussion?"
"This is linked to academic credits. There's no way Chen Xi wouldn't want these credits." Wu Yahua shook her head. "The teacher won't allow her to be alone."
There is only one possibility, one team consists of four people.
Wu Yahua fell into memories, frowning as she thought about which team Chen Xi was assigned to.
It's normal that he can't remember it for the time being. Xie Yun believes what Wu Yahua said about the existence of Chen Xi.
Xie Yun gained a lot from this private dinner meeting with Wu Yahua. It greatly improved his cognitive ability and made him realize that Wu Yahua and he were both "victims".
It is not clear who "harmed" them, but at least they found "allies" in this isolated and helpless world.
Xie Yun pushed the untouched dishes on the table in front of Wu Yahua.
After chatting for some time, he was ready to start eating.
"Now that things have come to this, let's eat first, Wu Yahua."
In the evening, Wu Yahua drank some Chinese medicine and lay on the bed with one leg crossed. Just as she was thinking about Xie Yun, a head popped out from the bed. Xie Lili asked curiously about her date with Xie Yun.
Wu Yahua glanced at the empty bed where Shen Xi was sleeping, turned her gaze back, and said, "It's not a date, we just had a simple meal."
"What college student would go to Amber Bistro for a simple meal? It's obvious that Xie Yun takes this date very seriously, which is why he chose that place. Tell me, what did you two talk about? When are you getting married? When are you meeting your parents?"
What does this have to do with that?
If Wu Yahua had been told this in the past, her face would have turned red as if she were burning. But now she didn't blush or feel embarrassed, not because she had become thicker-skinned, but because she no longer regarded Xie Yun as her secret crush.
Through repeated conversations and meals, her interactions with him have overcome the awkwardness and discomfort that people feel when they first meet.
Now she is very calm.
The cell phone rang.
Xie Lili leaned on the edge of the bed and stood on tiptoe to read Wu Yahua's cell phone messages.
"Is it from Xie Yun?"
Wu Yahua picked up the phone and saw that what Xie Lili said was right.
After unlocking the screen, Wu Yahua opened WeChat and saw that Xie Yun had sent her a photo and a text message.
[I seem to have found someone named Chen Xi. Can you see if it's her?]
Wu Yahua clicked on the photo.
That was a photo of Xie Yun's group reporting on stage. Xie Yun was the speaker. On the right side of the photo was the front door of the classroom. Behind the door in the dark, there was a figure who seemed to be deliberately avoiding the camera, not wanting to be photographed.
If you don't look closely at the photo, it's hard to notice that there is a person hiding in the dark.
Wu Yahua saved the photo and adjusted the parameters and brightness of the photo on her mobile phone.
As the color of the photo brightens, the faces of other people in the photo are exposed, and the face of the person in the dark gradually becomes clear.
Little by little, Chen Xi's face appeared in Wu Yahua's eyes.
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