Chapter 53 Old Campus "May our family live forever..."
A woman carried a birthday cake from the bedroom to the table. A cluster of sunflowers sprouted from the cake's frosting, their petals burning with tiny flames that illuminated the woman's head, which resembled a floral ceramic teapot.
She was as gentle, elegant, and fragile as her head. She hummed a birthday song, like a lullaby, and happily placed the cake in front of Jiang Ming.
The man with the briefcase-shaped head sat on the other side, filming with a camera, his smile barely concealed: "Our little darling is five years old this year. You can't cry all the time anymore, okay? Mom and Dad hope you grow up safe, happy, and strong."
Jiang Ming wrinkled his nose cutely: "I won't cry, I can protect Mom and Dad now!"
"Yes, yes, my darling is all grown up now, so I'm entrusting him to your protection, okay?" The woman patted the little boy's fluffy head. "I wish my darling eternal peace and happiness, and that he enjoys life to the fullest. Make a wish, and then blow out the candles..."
Suddenly, the shrill ringing of the telephone rang out, sharp and urgent, completely out of place in the warm and cozy atmosphere.
The three people present seemed oblivious. The teapot and briefcase "looked" at their child, their expressions tender even without facial features. The child clasped his hands together, closed his eyes to make a wish, seemingly struggling with what to wish for, and did not open his eyes for a long time. The sunflower petals were burning, the flames gentle.
Xue Chao's hand could not pass through the mirror, and the image of the wish in the mirror was frozen in time, only the ringing of the telephone refused to stop.
He turned to answer his own unringing phone, and the child in the mirror suddenly spoke: "May our family be together forever..."
The sunflower's flame was extinguished, plunging both the world inside and outside the mirror into darkness. Simultaneously, angry screams rang out from the receiver, as if trying to rip Xue Chao's eardrums apart: "I'll make sure your whole family never has a moment's peace! You bastard and your whore! You two shameless scum! Open your dog eyes and see what day it is! Where's the money? You'd better pay it all back before you die, understand?!"
Applause erupted from the mirror, celebrating the child's birthday. The mother turned on the light, and both worlds were illuminated again. But the room in front of Xue Chao had changed drastically. Compared to the other side of the mirror, many valuable items were already missing. Now, the remaining items had been smashed by someone. Broken wood, broken glass, a dented bed and iron cabinet, and odds and ends from the drawers were all scattered on the floor, mixed with the water from the fish tank, winding all over the place like a raging storm.
The wall with the words "Family Reunion" was splashed with red paint and covered with layers upon layers of "Pay back your debts," almost oozing blood.
In the mirror, a family of three nestled together, the child clinging to his parents' arms as if embracing his entire world: "I love the watch Dad gave me! But where is Dad's watch?"
The briefcase chuckled and said, "I forgot to wear it. I wish my precious one had it."
The bedroom door to Xue Chao's room quietly opened a crack, and the shadows of a man and a woman crept out along the dim light, twisted and ghostly. From inside came the same male voice screaming, "I sold the watch, I sold the TV, I sold the house, I sold the car, what the hell can I do? I'll sell my life to you, okay?"
The child in the mirror asked again, "What about the necklace and ring that Mom always wears? I watched your wedding video, and Mom looked so beautiful when she smiled."
The woman's voice in the bedroom suddenly burst into tears, each word laced with tears, sharp and shrill like a sea breeze, stinging like a knife cutting into your face: "Didn't I do anything! Mom needs to see a doctor, Mingming needs to go to school, I'm the one taking care of everything at home! What could I do? Did I force you? I might as well die with you, so I won't have to suffer your resentment after I die before you!"
In the mirror, the briefcase-shaped head swayed smugly: "Of course, Mom is the most beautiful woman in the world. I pursued her for a long time before she agreed to marry me."
Jiang Ming chuckled like a little adult: "I know, this is called 'love,' Daddy loves Mommy!"
The man with the briefcase-shaped head gently stroked the child's nose: "Daddy loves you and Grandma too."
The man in the bedroom seemed to be reminded by the woman's words. He stopped yelling and instead began to complain venomously: "You have the nerve to say that? That doctor is just a money-grubber! There's nothing wrong with you at all. He just dragged you here for a checkup and prescribed a few boxes of medicine. It's all for their own sales targets. They treat these cowardly idiots like easy ATMs! Besides, they're in their seventies or eighties, halfway to the grave. It's normal for them to have one or two illnesses. They'll die of old age—and then there's your good son. He's the most precious one. All the money I've spent working so hard to fill that bottomless pit for him!"
Provoked, the woman echoed his sarcastic tone: "My son, my son, what? Isn't he your son? We can't raise him anyway, so why not just dump him on the street after school tonight? Maybe it's better for him to be with human traffickers than with the two of us!"
Their shadows became increasingly distorted, almost turning into lines and bumps scribbled with black ink, slowly spreading outward from the gap in the light, like an octopus spreading its arms across the sky, crawling all over the room, trapping the air inside, and continuing to spread into the other side of the mirror.
Jiang Ming, oblivious to his reflection in the mirror, asked, "Will we be together forever?"
The slender, dark figure had already climbed onto the dining table, and the man inside and outside the mirror spoke simultaneously:
"Of course, we are family and will always be together."
“That won’t do. He’s my son… Even if I die, he still has to pay off my debts.”
The shadow instantly devoured everything, and fairy tale and reality were plunged into darkness once again.
Xue Chao slammed his hand on the mirror, and the mirror lit up again. The orange-yellow light, like a birthday candle, illuminated the headless father and mother. A layer of melted cream was sticky on the cut on their necks, and blood dripped down in a sticky consistency. Their arms, one on each side, tightly hugged Jiang Ming, who was bowing his head, like two chains.
All the balloons tied to the table flew up and touched the ceiling, while the thin strings hanging down became nooses for hanging, lined up in a row.
On the table, the cream cake had melted into a puddle, the floral ceramic teapot was open, and the briefcase was crumpled and stuffed inside, with bits of flesh and skin torn from the neck still attached to the end.
The bag contained sunflowers of varying heights, their heads split open from the middle, their eyes snapping open and staring at him in the firelight of their petals.
"Jiang Ming, wake up!" Xue Chao kept slapping the mirror. "Stop pretending! You know that's fake! Get out here right now!"
Jiang Ming looked up, his silence equally enigmatic, yet completely out of place with the eeriness around him. Even his strangeness was unique: "If I don't play dumb, the 'dreamy childhood' will end. Can you predict the dangers of the future?"
Xue Chao retorted, "If you keep playing dumb, it's over. What's the point of talking about the future?"
Jiang Ming suddenly raised the corners of his lips, as if a soft spot had been touched, yet with a strange and sinister undertone, like a paranoid person looking at their lover: "You're right, I'll listen to you."
He blew on it, and the flames of the sunflower petals went out again. The petals drifted like ashes and landed on the cream, white mixed with a little reddish ash.
On Xue Chao's side, the bedroom door opened a crack again, but the eerie, sky-devouring shadow had receded, leaving only the shadows of a man and a woman arguing, entangled, and collapsing, revealing a realistic, pale life.
The little boy stood in the doorway, stepping through the crack of light, glimpsing a corner of the darkness.
Xue Chao rushed to hug the troublesome little brat for the umpteenth time. The "parents" inside and outside the mirror were suddenly startled. The headless couple suddenly stood up, stepping on the cream on the table and their own heads as they pounced. The shadow on this side also rose from the ground. Just as the four hands were about to touch Xue Chao's shoulders from both inside and outside, he smashed the mirror in one fell swoop. Cracks spread out, and the two worlds instantly fell apart, shattering into pieces on the ground.
But the sound was strange; it wasn't the crisp sound of a mirror shattering, but rather a creaking sound, like an old door or window being pushed open, all alone. Compared to the noisy sound of a mirror breaking apart, it had a quiet eeriness.
A yellow card floated down from where the mirror had been, and it read: "Today I learned to fold paper, and I made a huge golden house, so Mom and Dad won't have to argue anymore!"
The pinyin for "die" was drawn around with a red crayon, staining half the paper red.
A new line of text appears below, different from the rounded font above, with a very flowing handwriting: "It seems that only in my distant childhood did I experience such dreamlike warmth."
However, this statement has now cracked, like a mirror that is difficult to mend and has "shattered".
Once outside the mirror world, Jiang Ming reverted to his youthful appearance, picked up the cardstock, glanced at it perfunctorily, and stuffed it back into his pocket.
Meanwhile, in the tea party room, little girls in lace princess dresses stood around. Their bodies were human, but their heads were all made of toy plastic, with cheap plastic eyeballs rolling around in their sockets, surrounding them.
They rushed out the door, and green moss grew from the corners of the once clean corridor floor. Sunflowers on the ceiling grew down the walls, almost covering both sides. Large and small flower pots were crowded together, and each flower pot was filled with dense flower seeds. They grew until they reached the children's photos.
All the photos are half-body shots starting from the neck. The sunflowers grow right at the top of the photos, as if filling in the missing heads of the children. The photos have wrinkles like plant roots and stems, and the people in the photos begin to move, as if they are "growing" out of the wall with roots and stems as bones and flowers as heads.
Xue Chao kicked open the stairwell door, revealing the previously blocked rooftop passageway. The staircase transformed into a cloud-like structure, with the word "HEAVEN" written on a glowing gold-edged archway. Behind the open door lay an unobstructed view of the sky, where an angel dressed in a pristine white robe stood, spreading his beautiful six white wings and embracing the head of his cross.
He saw them, made the sign of the cross in prayer, and uttered "Amen." The head of the cross opened its eyes, one horizontal and one vertical, one next to the other, staring at Xue Chao.
Xue Chao almost cursed. He quickly ran down the slope, but the pile of ocean balls hit his calves, creating resistance. The slope got deeper and deeper until Xue Chao couldn't see any steps at all. With one more step, it felt like stepping into ice under thick snow. He fell directly into the ocean balls and into the pool.
Practice makes perfect, and Xue Chao grabbed the ladder and climbed up into the water: "Is this 'your' mental world? That's too crazy."
Jiang Ming, kneeling on the checkered tiles, looked out the window, his face dripping with sweat: "There's something even crazier."
The only small windows in the pool hall have been replaced by rows of high arched windows. Outside the windows, on the kindergarten playground, countless balloons float. Bright, frameless sunlight shines through their thin skins. Inside each balloon is a small sunflower, with its stem extending from the bottom end to serve as a rope. Leaves spread out on both sides, extending about a meter, and then piercing into the children's rough necks, suspending them in the air, swaying like wind chimes.
The sunflowers inside the balloon also face the sun, but their stems, hanging down, all raise their hands, pointing at them.
"[Jiang Ming]...There's clearly no blood or monsters, but it just feels more terrifying than other books. Does anyone understand?"
"[Jiang Ming] This is the real investigation team challenge! I feel like my sanity is about to be reset, my brain cortex is constantly being electrified..."
"[Jiang Ming] has been giving me goosebumps ever since the show started airing... It's just too crazy..."
"[Jiang Ming] This book is too bizarre!"
Jiang Ming tilted his head, as if thinking about something, and finally said cautiously, "Don't you think... this red and green combination is too tacky? Aren't there any other colored balloons?"
Xue Chao and the audience, who thought he had some brilliant idea for clearing the game: "..."
Xue Chao slapped him on the back of the head: "Did you manage to get the water out of your brain?"
Jiang Ming was shoved into the water, then climbed back up resentfully, shaking his head: "It feels like even more went in."
He lay flat, his long arms and legs spread out in a "big" shape. His light-colored clothes, soaked through, clung to his beautiful muscles. Lifting one corner, water droplets rolled over his smooth V-line. His long hair was loose, so white it was almost translucent. He looked like a clear pool of peach soda. Even the rise and fall of his body with his breath felt sweet. Lying there on his back, from a low angle that he could completely control, he spoke of an alluring, unspoken desire.
But those eyes, with their overly bright and almost malicious smile, seemed to say, "If you keep looking at me like that, I'll think you want to sleep with me... So, my dear host, what are your thoughts?"
Xue Chao sat cross-legged next to him, disdainfully covering the corners of his fluttering clothes, completely ignoring his double entendre: "This time there are no east, west, south, or north, and you don't need to pretend to be anyone's parents, but you've turned back into an adult, and the whole kindergarten has collapsed. It's very likely that 'your' story has come to an end."
“But the story doesn’t have a standard ending yet, so as the protagonist, I have to leave the story to end it—we have to escape to the school gate?” Jiang Ming recalled his situation when he arrived. “There was an invisible wall on the street behind, and the buildings could be used as a pure background. I was standing on the road near the gate at the beginning, and there was no other way to go except to enter the kindergarten.”
In this sense, the area outside the school is a starting point, providing players with the condition that "entering the school means starting the game."
Jiang Ming looked out the window at the extremely bizarre scene: "There's no door here. The only way out is to smash the window..."
“Then smash it.” Xue Chao met Jiang Ming’s surprised gaze. “Otherwise, why stay here for the rest of your life? Those plant roots look like they can hold their own—have you ever played Tarzan?”
This suggestion instantly ignited a light in Jiang Ming's eyes. He sat up excitedly, as if he had met a kindred spirit, and grabbed Xue Chao's hand, shaking it up and down: "I've discovered that you're a very thoughtful person, just like me."
"Stop swearing." Xue Chao shook him off, took a few steps forward, and smashed the window again with his elbow. The nearby balloons carried the child's body. He dodged the child's grabbing hand, kicked off the ground and jumped, grabbing the sunflower's stem. He swung forward a long distance in the air, glancing at Jiang Ming in between, "If you can't keep up with me, I won't wait for you."
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