Chapter 21
His home is in a county under the jurisdiction of this city, and it takes less than an hour to drive there. His parents were out attending a banquet and were not home.
After moving the items from the trunk and back seat into the living room and arranging them, and then taking the suitcase into her room to unpack for a while, she heard the sound of a car entering the yard outside the window. Then, Jiang's mother's slightly surprised voice rang out: "Oh my, my son is back."
Jiang Lan went downstairs and saw his parents looking at the few extra plants in the house. "Dad, Mom."
Upon seeing her son, Jiang's mother quickly pulled him over, pointed to the tangerines, and asked, "Did you buy these?" She then pointed to several other pots, "Did you buy these too?"
Jiang Lan shook his head and then nodded: "It's considered that I bought it, but actually it was my girlfriend who bought it."
Upon hearing this, Ms. Huang became instantly excited, looked up at the building, and asked Jiang Lan in a suppressed voice, "You brought your girlfriend back? Son, you're something else!"
Hearing this, Jiang's father, who was sitting on the sofa, also turned his head to look over.
Jiang Lan felt guilty and rubbed her nose. "I didn't bring them back. She went back to her hometown. We bought them yesterday when we went to the flower market together. I thought you were going to buy some for the New Year, so I brought them all back."
Jiang's father, who had been watching this side, spoke up: "It's not enough to just bring back flowers, you also need to work harder and bring the person back. Your cousin is two years younger than you, and we've already attended his son's one-month celebration today."
Jiang's mother rolled her eyes at Jiang's father and said earnestly to her son, "Your father and I used to think you were... something, because we were afraid of hurting your feelings, so we didn't dare to ask or urge you. Now that you have a girlfriend, your father and I are very happy. Your father isn't pressuring you, we're just happy and want to see your girlfriend."
What? Jiang Lan didn't react for a moment, but after thinking for a while, she suddenly realized, oh, homosexuality.
I was both touched and speechless. I had no idea that my parents had kept this secret for so long, and that they could tolerate my son even though he was a nobody.
Xiao Ming saw Zhou Zaiming and his nephew Yuan Yuan waving at him from the exit, and quickly walked over with his suitcase.
Yuan Yuan looked at her and called out, "Auntie."
Xiao Ming patted his head, called Zhou Zaiming "brother," and Zhou Zaiming nodded, took the luggage and put it in the trunk, and said to Xiao Ming, "Get in the car, let's go home."
Back in town, it was already dark. Zhou Zaiming drove to the back door of the supermarket, and the family ate in the kitchen on the supermarket side.
Zhou's mother was already waiting at the door. When she saw her daughter return, her eyes reddened a little. She smiled and said to her, "You're back. Go wash your hands and eat."
Xiao Ming walked up to his mother and hugged her: "Mom."
Several supermarket employees finished their lunch and were on their way to the front to hand over their shift to Zhou's father and sister-in-law when they saw Xiaoming come in. They all greeted him with smiles: "Xiaoming is back! Oh my, you've become even more beautiful."
These employees were all acquaintances from his hometown or town. Xiaoming smiled at them.
The family sat around the dinner table. Zhou's father was a somewhat serious and old-fashioned man. When Xiaoming called out "Dad," he nodded and said, "Let's eat."
The eldest sister-in-law sat next to Xiaoming, eating and chatting with him. After all, she had watched Xiaoming grow up, and the two were not only sisters-in-law but also close friends.
The whole family has been incredibly busy these past few days. With the front shutters closed and all the employees off work, Xiaoming stayed behind with his older brother and sister-in-law to clear out the inventory and prepare for tomorrow's business. His parents took Yuanyuan home first.
Back home, chanting "Dororo, dororo, the cold wind is freezing me to death, I'll build a nest tomorrow," I put on a cold-weather protection shield and took a shivering shower.
Xiaoming snuggled into bed and checked his phone. It was almost 11 o'clock. There were several messages in his inbox. He opened them, read them, and replied to them one by one.
Jiang Lan's chat window contained a message she sent before getting out of the car: "Arrived home."
After that, Jiang Lan would post a message every now and then: "Are you done with your work?"
Xiaoming had told her that she would be busy helping with chores at home and might not be able to reply to his messages promptly, but she would contact him when she had free time.
He got up, opened the door, and looked outside. All the lights were off; it seemed everyone in the family was asleep. Xiaoming turned off the lights, turned on the nightlight, pulled the covers over his head, and started a video call with Jiang Lan.
Jiang Lan's phone, which she had been waiting for all night, finally rang, and she answered it instantly. Looking at the dark screen with only a faint outline, Jiang Lan asked Xiao Ming, "Are you stealing something?"
"Everyone in the family is asleep, and I don't want to disturb them, so I'm talking to you in bed."
"Let's speak in a low voice, don't keep it in there, you'll suffocate."
Yes, inside the blankets, my breath sprayed onto the screen, making my phone all wet.
Jiang Lan finally saw the person on the screen clearly. Her nose and cheeks were red from being covered by the blankets, which softened her somewhat cold expression when she wasn't smiling. He missed her terribly even though they hadn't been apart for more than a day.
"Are you going to be busy again tomorrow?"
"Yes, we'll probably close at 1 p.m. tomorrow and then take a break for two or three days."
"That's good. I thought your place was like a supermarket in the city, open all year round."
“My place is nothing like those supermarkets. My family wants to rest for a few more days and visit relatives, but if you don’t open, people can’t buy anything and they’ll call you, so we just open the store and leave two people to watch over it.”
"And you, what do you do at home?"
“My mom just retired early and she’s always busy at home. I help her out; I do whatever she tells me to do.”
After chatting about trivial things for a while, Jiang Lan noticed that her eyelids were starting to droop, so she urged her to go to sleep and then hung up the phone.
He leaned against the headboard and flipped to the photo of the two of them taken today, looking at it repeatedly.
Before entering the station today, Jiang Lan had to persuade Xiao Ming to agree to have a passerby take a group photo of them.
In the photo, Xiaoming has a serious expression, his hands are clasped together and hanging down in front of him, and he stands straight with his legs together.
He naturally leaned towards her, one arm around her shoulder, the other on her arm, looking at the camera with a faint smile on his face.
Jiang Lan, who hadn't entered the Dream Cube in a long time, somehow triggered a mechanism and was pulled into the cube.
This must be a market day in a southern town. This time, the dream featured warm, white sunlight that I had never seen before.
The market was teeming with people, shoulder to shoulder, with vendors hawking their wares everywhere. There were just too many people. Jiang Lan looked closely at the crowd and realized, good heavens, it was the Dream Weavers who had hired extras. They were all strangely transformed into human form and mixed in with the crowd.
He walked along with the flow of people. Rows of sausages hung on the roadside stalls, still steaming. Soon the sausages turned into braised meat, and then into roast duck. Jiang Lan stopped walking. He wanted to see what else they could turn into.
Sure enough, the shelf turned into a frying pan, from which the vendor fished out unfamiliar food, which emitted a strong aroma of sugar and oil after being deep-fried.
Even someone with a relatively shallow appetite like him was tempted, which shows how delicious this snack must have been in the dreamer's mind.
You cannot take things from a dream, because they are all conjured from the black mist of the dream. If you try to take something, it will turn into the black mist and disappear.
Therefore, Jiang Lan did not attempt to reach for it.
Inside a two-story steel shed, white mist swirls around rows of long dining tables with stoves behind them. Diners sit in front of the tables, enjoying bowls of vermicelli, noodles, and wontons, their mouths filled with spicy red broth, sprinkled with scallions and cilantro, the aroma of which is irresistible.
Jiang Lan looked around, searching for the dream weaver. He had previously suspected that the halo was the warm sun, but when he climbed to the top of the building, he discovered that the warm sun in this dream did not have a boundary like the halo, indicating that it was not a halo.
There was nothing strange inside the building; it's likely that everything was requisitioned and used as temporary actors.
Without a halo and without seeing the dream maker, Jiang Lan began to wonder if he was inside the Dream Cube or in his own dream.
But people's dreams are reflections of what they see and hear in reality. He was quite certain that he had never seen these scenes or been to a similar market.
The sounds of chickens and ducks chirping and puppies barking filled her ears again. Jiang Lan turned her head and saw a row of round bamboo basins filled with tender yellow chicks and ducklings, and a few white puppies in an iron cage next to them.
Feeling lost and confused, Jiang Lan decided to go with the flow, following wherever there was change. Some of the people around him spoke in dialects he couldn't understand, chattering away incoherently. Occasionally, he would hear Mandarin. He knew it was Mandarin, but he still couldn't understand its meaning; perhaps the Rubik's Cube had set some kind of restriction.
I wandered around for what seemed like forever, and suddenly it got dark, so dark that I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.
Suddenly, beams of light shot into the sky, exploding with deafening bangs. Huge fireworks burst open, and the shattered light fragments fell slowly like wisps of silk. Then, another row of beams shot into the sky.
Jiang Lan looked at the shadowy figures of people of varying heights around her. In the dark gap between the fireworks, a disturbance suddenly broke out.
The strange creatures in the crowd seemed to have found their target, and they gathered around certain people. After a series of wails and roars, the fireworks in the sky exploded again, illuminating the scene below.
Many previously crowded areas have become empty, as if the ground has developed bald patches.
Jiang Lan's heart was pounding. He understood the screams and cries for help that the person had just yelled at.
He calmed his breathing and tried to observe his surroundings, hoping to find out the characteristics of the person who had been attacked.
As the shattered sparks of fireworks slowly fell, Jiang Lan suddenly realized what was happening and shouted, "Everyone get out of the way of the bright spots! Don't let the falling light hit your bodies!"
No wonder there's no halo. The dreamer wants to see fireworks, but how can they see them with a halo? Usually, the light in a dream means survival, but this light actually represents death.
As Jiang Lan reminded them, the surrounding crowd panicked. The already crowded people became even more disorganized as the light approached, causing the human wall to tilt and collapse.
Someone screamed shrilly: "Get out of the way! Don't push me, the light is falling down!"
Someone cried out, "Help me! I can't breathe!"
Seemingly realizing they could finally communicate with others, everyone on site was talking, with panicked shouts and various other sounds mingling together as people tried to avoid the flashing lights.
"Where am I?!"
"I want to go home! Help me!"
"Call the police immediately!"
There were too many people, and Jiang Lan's urgent shouts of "Keep quiet! Don't move!" were drowned out by the crowd.
After the light fragments fell into the crowd and disappeared, there was an eerie silence for a moment, followed by a series of mournful howls and roars.
The crowd fell silent. Fireworks exploded again in the sky, and after the loud noise subsided, Jiang Lan shouted to the crowd once more, "The light fragments are moving slowly, so everyone has plenty of time to dodge. If you're sure the light fragments won't hit your head, don't move or make a sound. Slowly clear the area where the light fragments will fall, don't panic or crowd! It's okay, everyone can dodge them!"
The fireworks burst into bloom twelve times, but the eerie creature failed to find its target again. As it dissipated, it emitted a resentful, inhuman roar that could penetrate eardrums, and Jiang Lan felt a warm sensation inside her ears.
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