Chapter 51 Old Campus Three Two One Wooden Man.
Adhering to the central idea of "blaming others more and reflecting less on oneself," Xue Chao countered with: "Didn't you destroy someone else's painting first? Every cause has an effect, and your effect has come."
The little boy pressed all the buttons at the bottom of the remote control at once, as if pursing his lips. His voice, which came from the charging port, rang out as the joystick swayed slightly: "I will apologize to her." Then he stared intently at Xue Chao, expecting his apology.
Xue Chao nodded, feigning ignorance: "Then I'm done. Where's the exit?"
Little Qian Liang seemed to realize that the person in front of him wouldn't do what he wanted, so the red indicator light on his head lit up, flashing like a time bomb in the quiet and eerie pool hall: "Don't you feel like you're missing something?"
He held a paper house folded from yellow cardstock in his hand, and Xue Chao remained calm: "I've seen it."
“You didn’t see it all,” Qian Liang said confidently. “Jiang Ming crossed out the words, but I know what he wrote.”
"You peeked?" Xue Chao looked at his guilty gesture of lowering his head and smirked. "Oh, you're such a little rascal."
"It's his fault for sneaking around and not showing us. I was just curious..." The little devil, who was usually so annoying, suddenly blushed. He pointed to the red indicator light on the remote control and said it was getting hotter and hotter. He shouted, "I don't care. You have to play a game with me, and then I'll tell you what he wrote!"
The only window was too small, just big enough for Xue Chao's head to squeeze through. With no way to leave for the time being, Xue Chao casually nodded: "What do you want to play?"
“We’re playing ‘Red Light, Green Light.’ You’re the Green Light. Every time I shout ‘Red Light, Green Light,’ you can’t be caught by the Joker until I turn around again five seconds later.” Qian Liang stood on the checkered white tiles at the very front of the pool, looking at Xue Chao in the pool one last time across half the pool, and slowly turned around. “You win when you get a card that hits me.”
As soon as the little boy turned around, the whole scene changed as if overexposed. Xue Chao found himself in a warm and whimsical classroom. Perhaps because the sun was too bright, the white gauze curtains with lace stars were drawn.
Qian Liang had vanished, replaced by a row of children with sunflower bud heads. A teacher with an alphabet head stood in the back, pointing to his own head and teaching them to read pinyin: "Repeat after me, a—"
The children in the very last row drew out their syllables, and the sunflower petals trembled slightly as they uttered: "a—"
Xue Chao was standing on the podium when he saw the simple snake pattern on the back of the teacher's neck—the teacher was a joker!
The children's seats were facing him, and as soon as he appeared, they quickly noticed him. One by one, the sunflower heads turned from the teacher to him, full of doubt and curiosity. Some were already pointing at him, as if they wanted to say something.
The shrunken Jiang Ming was among them, his normal human head standing out prominently among a group of sunflower buds. Upon seeing him, everyone's smile was brighter than the sunflowers, and they would wave and greet him.
Xue Chao narrowed his eyes, his fierce aura like the demonic light that naturally emanates from a drawn sword, making people's hearts tremble for no reason. To him, "cold" was an understatement; even the slightest change in expression was considered impolite. If he deliberately gave people a bad look, it would be even more dangerous, making people tense from head to toe. Stopping a child from crying at night was the simplest thing in the world.
Although the little ones don't have faces, the effect is evident from their simultaneous stiffening, but they soon look like they're about to cry, ready to burst into a wail at any moment.
Xue Chao glanced strangely at Jiang Ming, who seemed equally frightened and on the verge of tears. Then, as the words "Three, two, one, freeze!" suddenly rang in his ears, he silently and quickly pulled open the curtains and hid back under the podium.
The teacher, finally realizing something was wrong, turned around and saw all the children looking out the window, their sunflower heads instinctively facing the sun, enjoying the sunshine. So he also subconsciously looked over.
Five, four, three...
But the teacher still felt something was wrong. She curled the edge of the paper with her alphabet-shaped head, lifted her foot towards the podium, but something caught her. Turning around, she saw Jiang Ming raising his innocent little face, somewhat flustered as he retrieved the pencil from the desk: "I'm sorry, teacher..."
one.
The entire scene was exposed again, now transformed into a lounge. Heavy curtains were drawn, making the room as dark as night, but a sizable gap remained, just wide enough for a person's head, through which a sliver of dim sunlight, tinged with a brownish hue, peeked in.
In each little bed, the children were covered with blankets, their sunflower petals closing towards the center, taking a quiet nap.
Someone grabbed his leg from behind. Xue Chao looked down and met Jiang Ming's teary eyes. He raised an eyebrow but didn't ask what was wrong. He waited for the suddenly sentimental player to tell him himself.
"This is just a persona. Although I'm sunny, I'm also a coward." Jiang Ming whispered, burying his face in Xue Chao's knees. "Sentimental" had turned into "embarrassed," making him look like a little boy with a wounded pride.
He was also a little mischievous, wiping all his tears on Xue Chao's pants.
He wouldn't look up, pointing instead to the cabinet in the corner.
Xue Chao struggled to wear the leg accessory and found a child huddled in a corner with a blanket over his head, looking frightened. Judging from the outline of his head, it was also a "little sunflower".
He moved Jiang Ming from beside his legs to behind them, covering him completely, then lifted the blanket to cover the sunflower's open petals and made a "shh" gesture.
Jiang Ming peeked out from behind Xue Chao's legs. The appearance of his friend comforted the frightened child, and the trembling petals stabilized, but they were still listless and seemed very scared.
Jiang Ming and Xue Chao exchanged a glance, then Jiang Ming stepped forward to try and get information out of him, asking in a soft, childlike voice, "What's wrong?"
The child seemed to want to say something, but seeing the menacing Xue Chao behind him, he timidly shook his head and shrank back into his blanket.
Jiang Ming almost burst out laughing, but to maintain his composure, he patted Xue Chao's thigh and then said in a serious tone, "Don't be afraid, he's my guardian angel. He can protect us. What are you afraid of?"
Xue Chao secretly found the two kids troublesome, but on the surface, he still dutifully played the role of a cold and dangerous guardian.
The child hesitated and stole a few glances at Xue Chao. Although still scared, the thought that Xue Chao was a good person who protected his friends and posed no threat to him turned his fear into admiration. He said enviously, "Your guardian is so cool. I want to be as cool as him in the future."
Jiang Ming, who thought the child was going to say "I want one too," laughed and said, "Mine is mine, not mine."
"..." The child wanted to cry but had no tears, and silently shrank back into the blanket.
Xue Chao slapped Jiang Ming on the back of the head. Jiang Ming exaggeratedly covered his head and cried out in pain. Seeing that his guardian angel was unmoved, he could only pout and say reluctantly, "But I can lend it to you for a moment... just for a moment!"
"...A ghost," the child whispered. "There's a ghost."
"Could you be more specific?" Xue Chao rarely gave people a "gentle" feeling, but when he slowed down his voice and described something, he could always calm people down, like cool water touching the cheek. Jiang Ming glanced at him with an inscrutable expression.
The child didn't know how to answer for a moment and stammered for a while, so Xue Chao guided him to think and asked, "What does a ghost's mouth look like?"
“It’s very long.” The child clenched his fist, placed the palm against his mouth, and pulled it outwards, like playing a trumpet, “like a stick.”
Where are the eyes?
"It's very big, extremely big." The child spread out his small hands, covering the sides of his flowerpot. "It's black, there's no white."
No whites in the eyes? And the position of those eyes makes them look more like an alien than a ghost.
The child, getting into the story, continued, "It's covered in fur and has two horns. It's right around here, waiting to eat me. If it finds me, I'm doomed... Waaah, I don't want to be eaten by Mr. Buzz..."
"Mr. Buzz?"
This time, the child made a "shh" gesture and then pointed tremblingly to the window. Xue Chao first heard a faint buzzing sound, like an annoying insect flying by his ear. He looked in the direction the child was pointing and saw a huge insect shadow on the curtain. It had a head that was round at the top and pointed at the bottom, two soft antennae on its head, a long proboscis, and dense hairs that were clearly visible. The tips of its two wings vibrated rapidly, almost creating afterimages, and the buzzing sound was incessant.
The thing was outside the window. As it turned from the side to the front, the only light suddenly dimmed—its long, dark, teardrop-shaped eyes were peering through the cracks into the window.
Its long snout trembled slightly, emitting a terrible slurping sound, more like a human's eager craving when discovering a delicious meal than an insect's.
Most people in the room were asleep, but the three who were awake huddled in a corner, holding their breath.
The insects couldn't be seen through the curtains, and soon their shadows left the window. Jiang Ming seemed a little frightened. Seeing that the insects had finally left, he tried to move around a bit, but Xue Chao grabbed him and pulled him into his arms, covering his mouth.
The shadow suddenly returned, and its huge, dark eyes peered back through the gap, clearly trying to trick them.
But no one fell for it. Undeterred, the thing moved closer, its face pressed against the glass, squeezing and expanding, its wings flapping against the glass with a crackling sound, like a not-so-sharp chainsaw cutting through stone, a chaotic, disintegrating sound that was especially terrifying in the dark and quiet lounge.
Jiang Ming, small as a child, was embraced by Xue Chao, who was kneeling on one knee. He nestled against Xue Chao's cool chest, as if he had found a safe little nest.
The man had a very faint fragrance, not a carefully crafted perfume, nor a clean, pale laundry detergent, but a very natural plant scent, like the bouquet of flowers he slept with every night. The flowers seeped into his lonely dreams, enriching his soul. You had to get very close to him to smell the scent hidden in his soul.
Jiang Ming then shrank further in, as if trying to crawl into the collar of Xue Chao's shirt. Xue Chao couldn't make any big movements lest he alert the "ghost" outside, so he could only tug at the player's round, soft face and give him a threatening look.
Jiang Ming no longer cared about his "cowardly" persona. He glanced back with a grin, stood on tiptoe, and rubbed his fluffy head against Xue Chao's chin, acting cute and trying to please him.
This time, the ghostly thing outside the window really left. Xue Chao let go of Jiang Ming, who asked curiously, "Was that a mosquito? How disgusting."
The little sunflower didn't know what it was either, and just believed everything it heard: "Waaah, the mosquitoes are going to eat me!"
“It will come again. If you don’t want to be eaten by the ‘ghost,’ go to sleep now.” Xue Chao pointed to his open petals. “Those aren’t mosquitoes, they’re bees—they’re here to collect nectar. The other kids are asleep, so the petals are closed and it can’t get any. But you’re still awake, so who else would it eat if not you?”
The child became even more upset: "Waaah... But, but I can't sleep..."
The stalemate continued, but Xue Chao was the one racing against time. He sighed helplessly, "Come here."
The little boy was led back to his crib by Xue Chao, climbed under the covers, and pitifully looked at him with half of his sunflower head sticking out.
Just then, footsteps sounded in the corridor outside the door, coming from a distance, accompanied by a very faint buzzing sound—the strange thing was not a giant bee, but a person with a bee's head. Seeing that it could not enter through the window, it circled around and prepared to enter through the door.
The child and Jiang Ming, who followed closely behind, both became visibly nervous.
"Lie down." Xue Chao seemed not to hear him. He helped him pull the blanket up, then sat on the floor with his right elbow on his knee and his hand supporting his chin. He was thinking about how his sister coaxed him to sleep while gently patting the child's back with his left hand, humming a nursery rhyme. He looked a little listless.
His voice was low and soft, like a whispered tale. That quiet magic replaced the moonlight in easing the child's tense nerves, and soon he drifted into a dream.
Jiang Ming sat close to him and fell asleep leaning against him at some point. Unlike other children who were like little stoves, he was a little cool and icy.
Before Xue Chao fell into a deep sleep, he vaguely heard shouts of "Three, two, one, freeze!" and the buzzing sound of the door being opened.
Five, four, three, two, one—
Its shell-like eyes looked down at Xue Chao, and its long snout snaked upwards, almost touching his skin before disappearing in the sudden exposure.
The children's cheerful laughter woke Xue Chao. Jiang Ming was hopping across a long log bridge made of chairs and came up to him. He looked at Xue Chao's still sleepy face with curiosity: "You can actually fall asleep in such a tense situation. Impressive. But we don't have any fancy brains. It's fine if the child falls asleep, but what if he doesn't fall asleep and doesn't listen to you?"
Xue Chao showed no patience whatsoever for humming a lullaby to a child, his face cold: "Knock him out."
Jiang Ming laughed heartily as he leaned close to him, took his hand, and led him to an open space on the playground. The children, their heads like sunflowers, were gathered together, discussing something. There were dozens of them. When they saw them, they waved happily and handed each of them a playing card: "Come on! We're playing hide-and-seek, and we're drawing the joker card."
The leader of the children announced the rules: "You can only see your own cards. After confirming your identity, everyone hides. The person who draws the joker card will start catching others after one minute. The person caught is out!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the children scattered with laughter, each hiding away. Their clear laughter echoed and surrounded them, creating a chilling effect.
Xue Chao flipped over the playing cards; it was the "Big Joker," and Jiang Ming's was the "Small Joker"—all the jokers in the deck were there.
The comment section, which had just recovered from the thrilling scenes, was filled with "hahaha" laughter at the two people's misfortune.
"It's intentional, isn't it? They just want to grab a couple of 'tools' to enhance their gaming experience." Jiang Ming's cute little face was serious for a moment, but then it changed instantly, and he raised his hand more excitedly than the group of kids, "So who should we grab first! I think..."
Xue Chao skillfully covered the little brat's mouth, scooped him up, and ran to the back of the building. He used the water tank and steps to climb onto the second-floor balcony, then climbed over the sealed-off gate into the teaching building. He first hid in the children's reading room: "Stop dreaming. We're not Jokers."
He pulled out another playing card, which he had taken from another child. It was a diamond 1, but the four sides of the diamond were surrounded by a snake: "It means that everyone except us is a joker."
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