Chapter 28 (Previous Chapter 27): Noah's Ark: Alice in Wonderland...
If the sky is dark, then live in the dark.
—Mandela
But Zhuge Tongzhi had been wandering around in the dark for a long time, and apart from the rabbit hole that haunted her and kept a certain distance away, there was no living thing or any other object in this boundless space except for her.
The girl, still wearing the clothes from the day of the bombing, tried looking in several directions. After confirming that she couldn't find anything, she stopped, reached out and tugged at the ends of her hair, which seemed to have grown a bit longer, and glanced back at the rabbit hole that was still a few meters away.
The cave, with its green grass overhead, seemed to be illuminated by unseen sunlight, shimmering in this ethereal light, its entire body seemingly bearing the words: Come on.
But Zhuge Tongzhi remained unmoved. She engaged in a subtle standoff with the rabbit hole for a while, and finally walked toward the rabbit hole as if in compromise.
The rabbit hole, which had kept a certain distance from her during their earlier exploration, was now still. The grass on the top of the hole swayed merrily in the breeze, and a white light slowly began to illuminate the once dark depths of the hole, urging the girl to go inside.
So Zhuge Tongzhi plopped down in front of the rabbit hole, sitting cross-legged and motionless.
The grass that was swaying happily above the rabbit hole froze instantly.
After a standoff between the two for more than ten seconds, the rabbit hole tentatively moved forward a little. The girl, who was just a step away from the hole, calmly moved back, perfectly expressing her "I'm not going in" attitude.
Rabbit Hole: ...
“My dad said, don’t go home with strangers when you’re out and about.” Zhuge Tongzhi started to reason with it in a gentle tone, “Look at you, you don’t explain anything to me and you want me to crawl through the dog hole, I’m not stupid.”
The rabbit hole that was forcibly designated as a dog hole: ...
"I've downloaded the National Anti-Fraud Center app, I'm not going in." After stating his position, Zhuge Tongzhi reached out and patted the stiff little grass on top of the rabbit hole, advising, "Isn't this stand still? Gou Dan, you'd better call out the person behind you and talk to me."
Just two sentences and it's downgraded to Dog Egg's Rabbit Hole: ...
Faced with the question, Rabbit Hole remained silent for a moment, then suddenly rushed towards Zhuge Tongzhi, intending to resort to force if soft tactics failed.
But the girl, who was prepared, pushed off with her hands and feet and ran quickly behind her, preventing the rabbit hole attack from happening.
The two began chasing each other in the pitch-black space of consciousness, one person and one cave. The girl's hair was swept back as she ran at high speed, revealing her bright eyes underneath.
Even though she was in a hurry, she didn't forget to turn around and shout at the rabbit hole that had already chased after her in a streak of light: "The ancients said: 'Isn't it a pleasure to have friends coming from afar?' Is this your way of treating guests?"
The rabbit hole responded by speeding up, and the opening widened and stretched as it got closer, until it finally pressed against Zhuge Tongzhi's hem like a gaping maw.
Seeing that she really couldn't escape, the girl simply stopped abruptly, turned around to face the big, dark mouth, and said with great determination: "Thirty years west of the river, thirty years east of the river, don't underestimate me because of my short legs!"
In response, Rabbit Hole swallowed Zhuge Tongzhi whole in one gulp. In the pitch-black space of consciousness, only a passionate and ruthless remark still echoed.
"I will be back!"
"They'll be back!"
"of!"
The rabbit hole closed its gaping maw, having achieved its goal, and slowly shrank back to its original delicate and adorable form. Finally, like burnt-out ashes, it crumbled into nothingness, and the girl it had swallowed disappeared.
Current route: Alice in Wonderland (1%)
The moment Zhuge Tongzhi was swallowed by the rabbit hole, she lost her footing. The sudden feeling of weightlessness that enveloped her made her heart pound. As her body was being battered by the uncontrollable gale, she felt a piece of gauze brush against her calf.
The black-haired girl leaned on one side of her body, and then the gust of wind lifted her from a head-down position to a standing position. In the instant the fabric tumbled, she saw that her dark blue dress had suddenly changed color, and a white apron was tied over the dress.
The unscientific anti-gravity skirt was not lifted by the gale; instead, it unfolded softly like a fluffy umbrella, slowing Zhuge Tongzhi's fall like a parachute, turning it into a slow, dandelion-like descent.
The once empty space around it transformed into a wide well, with all sorts of strange things embedded in its walls.
A mahogany tea table missing a leg, an unbelievably large teapot, several dusty books stacked at an angle that seemed about to topple over at any moment, and a cabinet with no support points that seemed to float in the air, with clean cans placed on it.
What the hell? Zhuge Tongzhi lifted one side of her skirt with one hand, controlling the direction of her fall. In the instant she bypassed the cabinet, she reached out and randomly grabbed what looked like a canned food from the cabinet.
But when she got the glass jar, it transformed into a sealed experimental conical flask containing two fireflies chasing each other, their warm yellow tails illuminating the girl's dark eyes.
But the beautiful fireflies soon reached their end, and the fluorescence on the tails of the two fireflies began to dim. Zhuge Tongzhi subconsciously reached for the backpack on her back, where she had prepared a small hammer, but when she reached out, she only touched an empty back.
Suddenly, amidst the sound of the wind in her ears, she realized that she should be falling from the heights of Qingchuan Tower, not wandering among strange objects in this strange deep well, wearing an inexplicable princess dress.
Inside the bottle, the fireflies' fluorescence had almost completely disappeared. Zhuge Tongzhi gritted his teeth, grabbed a fork from the table beside him, and smashed it hard into the narrow opening of the conical flask.
Amidst the crisp sound of shattering glass, Zhuge Tongzhi tilted his head to dodge the flying shards. When he looked again, all that remained was half of the conical flask in his hand and a flickering firefly rising slowly towards the wellhead above his head.
Where exactly is this place? She tossed aside the conical flask in her hand and watched as the items in the well gradually changed from tea party utensils to many modern objects.
The wooden wardrobe flickered, replaced by a locker from middle school. The notebook, its pages yellowed with yellowing, was filled with dense handwriting, which blurred into an illegible blob of ink as it was quickly swept across, and in the blink of an eye, it became a flat surface with a shattered center.
Zhuge Tongzhi desperately replayed the events that followed the explosion in her mind—she took out her grappling hook and lassoed Hagiwara Kenji, she leaped into the sky, she pulled out her parachute under O's guidance, she... was engulfed in flames!
Suddenly, many stained glass pieces appeared suspended in mid-air in the well. As they fell and were enveloped in color, Zhuge Tongzhi felt his vision flicker as if there was a signal problem.
Then, the familiar blue and white notification box reappeared in the center of her field of vision, and the semi-transparent page displayed the progress of the current path:
Current path: Alice in Wonderland (5%)
Alice in Wonderland? Zhuge Tongzhi frowned, unable to figure out where she was using the O-D navigation system. But the objects around her began to change again, and she quickly grabbed her skirt with both hands, carefully controlling her falling trajectory.
A robot missing limbs, a small refrigerator with its door half-open revealing its internal wiring, an old-fashioned but well-maintained classic Mazda, and several partially dismantled bombs of different models passed by her one after another.
At the same time, a clear male voice rang out from overhead: "Excuse me—is anyone here—?"
It’s Kenji Hagihara.
Zhuge Tongzhi instantly understood that everything in the well had a designated owner. She looked up and saw a man with medium-length hair, wearing a dark blue shirt and trousers and a light blue vest, falling rapidly towards her.
Just like on the Skytree, the girl instinctively reached out and grabbed Kenji Hagiwara, who had fallen in front of her. The pulling sensation on her arm made her want to frown, but the pain that was about to strike her subconsciously did not come.
In a world devoid of science, she effortlessly caught the falling Kenji Hagiwara. Her princess dress easily supported the weight of both of them, carrying them slowly through the gap of a Ferris wheel with a horizontal railing in the middle of the shaft.
Zhuge Tongzhi raised his head, his gaze lingering on the Ferris wheel whose rims were partially blackened and dilapidated for a moment, before turning to look at Hagiwara Kenji, who was also looking up at the Ferris wheel beside him. Hagiwara was touching his temple with his free hand.
Noticing her gaze, Kenji Hagiwara turned around, giving her a casual and lazy smile, his voice carrying a calmness that showed no surprise at his surroundings: "Hi, Kiri-chan."
"Hey, what a headache!" Zhuge Tongzhi, who had experienced time travel once before, was having a bit of a headache. "What if saving someone resulted in that person being dragged into another world with me?"
The officer with the medium-length hair, who had not received a response, narrowed his deep purple dog-like eyes, scrutinized the girl with the pained mask on her face, and then took a closer look at the object on the well wall that was a fusion of the two people's subconscious fantasies. His expression changed.
"Zhuge Tongzhi, is that you? This isn't my dream?" Kenji Hagiwara asked seriously.
He casually picked up a book that looked like an illustrated book, and as he pinched the spine and turned the pages, countless colorful transparent cards were swept up from the book like fluttering butterflies in the wind, brushing past Kenji Hagiwara's hair that was blowing upwards.
“It’s me, and I don’t think I’m dreaming.” Zhuge Tongzhi carefully examined the O-D navigation page in front of him and found that this useless system was only providing a broken route plan without any route suggestions.
"Hiss... Let me think, were you on the 25th floor that day?" Kenji Hagiwara searched for fragments of memory from that chaotic escape. The subsequent fire occupied most of his memories and seemed to have burned away some of the earlier events, so he was a little unsure for a moment.
"Ah, yes, that day I went with Conan and the others to help Inspector Nakamori set up the scene. Then, when I went to the restroom, I accidentally discovered the trail of Kaito Kid and chased him all the way to the 25th floor."
Zhuge Tongzhi naturally shifted the blame to Phantom Thief Kid, and, in keeping with his own script, showed a puzzled expression, saying with a look of confusion, "I remember, there was an explosion in the back, right?"
"I have no memory of it." The black-haired girl gripped the hem of her blue skirt tightly, her voice trembling in the strong wind. "When I opened my eyes again, I was here."
“Hmm, me too, but I had some… strange? Or rather… dreams like black and white photographs.” Kenji Hagiwara recalled those chaotic dreams that inexplicably made him feel suffocated, only to find that those memories had been completely erased, leaving only that sorrowful and suffocating emotion in his chest.
It slowly fell silent, like a dull, painful knife that couldn't be pulled out.
"Well, don't be afraid." Kenji Hagiwara exhaled, still trying to calm the girl who seemed a little scared, and quickly took on the responsibility and mission of a police officer: "We'll deal with whatever comes our way."
"Okay, sure." Zhuge Tongzhi listened to the other party's vague description, his mind still lingering on the Ferris wheel that had disappeared from sight—was he dreaming about the original plot?
However, Kenji Hagiwara didn't have a script. She was multitasking, controlling her skirt and pulling Kenji Hagiwara around a silver device whose purpose was unclear. So... is that why she can't remember the details of her dream?
After falling into this seemingly endless well for about ten minutes, the two, having figured out each other's situation, talked and reached a consensus that this place was very much like Alice in Wonderland.
Soon, Zhuge Tongzhi felt the speed of the descent slow down significantly. The scattered items on the well wall gradually disappeared completely, turning into an ordinary stone wall with the texture of red bricks. Meanwhile, a beam of light, as if leaking from inside the door onto the ground, was getting closer and closer to them from the bottom.
Zhuge Tongzhi casually grabbed the playing card gun that had last appeared beside him, stuffed it into the intricate pleats of this retro long dress—the only useful part of it—and strained his nerves as he looked down into the well at the increasingly slow descent.
Kenji Hagiwara casually grabbed a pair of sunglasses and tucked them into his chest pocket. Looking down, he released her hand when they were about ten meters apart. With the help of an invisible force, he landed steadily on the smooth stone floor.
After quickly assessing the situation at the bottom of the well, he raised his arm upwards, supported the girl who was a step slower in descending, gently placed her beside him, and then held the child's hand tightly.
Zhuge Tongzhi and Hagiwara Kenji exchanged a glance, then pushed open the half-closed wooden door in front of them. They stepped inside into the brightly lit room and looked up to see the beautiful glass dome on the ceiling, through which bright light streamed down.
Looking out, there was a vast, clear blue lake in front of me. A small two-person boat was drifting on the shore. There were no oars or sails. On the ground next to where the boat was moored, the words 'DRIVE ME' were carved on the stone bricks. Next to the words, there was a small bottle of red and white biscuits.
Zhuge Tongzhi wanted to sit down immediately upon seeing the invitation, but remembering the rabbit hole's forced swallowing of people, she could only reluctantly be dragged by Hagiwara Kenji to check the ship's condition.
Upon approaching and picking up the bottle, Zhuge Tongzhi noticed that it was also engraved with words that read "EAT ME TURN SMALL," with an "A" above the cursive English letters. Furthermore, the oval-shaped biscuits inside the bottle were made to be half red and half white.
The capsule-like shape instantly sparked a connection in her mind.
In fairy tales, Alice seems to have eaten all sorts of desserts that could make people grow bigger or smaller, so this bottle of cookies... it can't be such a coincidence, can it?
Zhuge Tongzhi's heart skipped a beat, and then he saw Kenji Hagiwara, who had been crouching down to carefully examine the small print on the front of the boat, stand up and have already found the answer.
"The only way to cross the lake is by boat." Kenji Hagiwara casually pulled out a plastic color card he had stuffed in his pocket and placed it on the water. The light color card was swallowed up by the lake the moment he let go. "This boat can only seat two people, and they must be children."
“Eat this cookie and you’ll turn into a child and ride in a boat.” Kenji Hagiwara, who had almost designated the recipient, took the cookie jar from Kirito Zhuge’s hand, pinched out a whole capsule-shaped red and white cookie, and laughed, “Rejuvenation, huh? Interesting.”
Yes, the two participants I know were quite interesting too. Zhuge Tongzhi watched as Hagiwara Kenji deftly popped the cookie into his mouth, and with a burst of white smoke, the once tall man vanished.
Instead, there was a little boy wearing a blue shirt and vest, with a pair of large sunglasses stuck in his chest, curiously examining his suddenly shrunken hands and feet.
The mini version of Kenji Hagiwara's face is still childlike, and his rounded puppy eyes have lost all their deep affection, leaving only pure cuteness. Now, he looks at the girl who is a little stunned beside him with a smile.
Kohagihara gave Zhuge Tongzhi a sweet smile that seemed to have a devastating effect, then stretched out an arm toward the swaying boat on the shore. Like a gentlemanly butler, she calmly invited in a clear, childlike voice, "Please come aboard, lovely lady."
No, you're the really cute one, little Alice, Kenji.
The girl silently pulled her gaze away from Kenji Hagiwara, letting out a soft breath. Although she had some idea of what he would look like as a child, she was still deeply amazed to see him at six years old.
Time, you have sculpted such a cute little boy into such a handsome and dashing figure.
Zhuge Tongzhi sighed inwardly with a sense of vicissitude, but on the surface, she slightly lifted the hem of her skirt with both hands, took a very elegant half step back, curtsied to Hagiwara Kenji, and said, "Thank you for your invitation, I am very happy to accept."
The girl with black hair and black eyes looked up and met the gaze of Kenji Hagiwara, who had suddenly become her 'peer', and burst out laughing at the same time.
After Zhuge Tongzhi finished his pretense, he deftly tucked the somewhat cumbersome skirt into his arms, put on his close-fitting white leggings, and lightly hopped into the small boat with his little leather shoes.
After Kenji Hagiwara boarded the boat, the wooden two-person boat moved automatically without wind, cutting two ripples that slowly spread outwards on the mirror-like, calm lake surface, and swam towards the distant opposite shore.
Zhuge Tongzhi looked up at the dazzling, bright dome. The light, refracted through the glass, transformed from white light into a rich array of colors, shining into her eyes and making her slightly dazzled.
"Kiri-chan, do you know the name of this lake?" Kenji Hagiwara's childlike voice remained unchanged, still carrying that same calm and slightly smiling tone. His question immediately drew the girl's attention back.
“Ah… I don’t remember the details very well.” Zhuge Tongzhi shook her head. She only remembered that it was a fairy tale with absurd adventure as its main theme, but the people who actually read it were often adults, and for hundreds of years people have been tirelessly giving their own interpretations.
"Actually, I don't remember either, but the stone slab just now said that this is the Lake of Tears." Kenji Hagiwara turned his head to look at the lake surface beside him, which was constantly creating new waves. His young face reflected in the water was distorted by the waves. "It is said that the water here is the tears that flow into your heart."
"Tears accumulating inside?" Zhuge Tongzhi looked at the lake surface noncommittally, but couldn't see anything different from the slightly rippling water. So he stared blankly at the edge of the wooden boat.
Soon, the wooden boat came to a stop. The two people, who had calmed down, came to their senses and saw a brand-new wooden door on the wall. A girl with rabbit ears was standing next to the door, waving excitedly at them.
"Bu Mei?" Zhuge Tongzhi was taken aback and subconsciously took two steps towards her. "What are you doing here?"
The short-haired girl wore a black suit and a monocle with a gold chain attached. Her white rabbit ears stood up high and trembled slightly as she spoke, as if they were real long ears listening attentively to her.
Ayumi Yoshida, transformed into Alice the Rabbit, was full of excitement. Upon hearing her question, she instinctively tried to say something, but her trembling vocal cords failed to produce any sound.
Ayumi Yoshida paused for a moment before realizing what was happening. She cleared her throat with a cough and said, "I can't tell you, Zhuge. This is a rule from Alice in Wonderland: 'No messages are shared within the team.'"
Huh? Zhuge Tongzhi raised his eyebrows, and after Yoshida Ayumi finished speaking, he seemed to remember something, took out a pocket watch from his pocket, stood next to the wooden door, waved the gold pocket watch in his hand at her, and shouted, "You'd better hurry up and come after me!"
After saying that, the short-haired girl with rabbit ears darted through the wooden door and disappeared.
"What does 'no communication within the team' mean? Are Alice and the rabbit on the same team?" Zhuge Tongzhi was a little confused. She vaguely felt that this rule was meaningful, but her thoughts were disrupted by the illogical plot.
"Hmm..." Kenji Hagiwara rubbed his chin, a mature expression appearing on his childish face, but his round, earnest eyes made him look like a child playing a detective game.
"According to Alice's storyline, our destination should be the Red Queen's trial. If this is actually a game instance with rules, then we need to follow the pre-set storyline and go to the end."
As he spoke, he recalled the order of Alice in Wonderland and said uncertainly, "We've already come up from the Lake of Tears, so the next stop should be... the rabbit's home, the forest?"
“I remember Alice didn’t cross the lake by boat, and her Wonderland didn’t have these rules.” Zhuge Tongzhi shook her head, indicating that there was no need to refer to the original plot. She straightened her skirt and walked towards the wooden door. “I think, just like you said, this is a completely different game instance.”
A crisp sound rang out from the hem of her skirt. The girl paused slightly, crouched down, and pulled out a glass bottle containing a clear liquid. A pale red five-pointed star was marked on the bottle, and below it was written 'DRINK ME TURN BIG'.
Zhuge Tongzhi looked at the eerie red five-pointed star on the bottle and immediately realized what it was.
She twitched her lips and pulled out the glass jar containing the capsule cookies from the folds of her skirt. The two jars, both engraved with cursive English, were placed together. Apart from one being smaller than the other, they were clearly from the same manufacturer.
Wow, Zhuge Tongzhi thought expressionlessly, APTX4869 biscuits paired with Red Star Erguotou liquor, Mom no longer has to worry about whether I'll become a child or an adult.
Because now, I will be Schrödinger's elementary school student.
After showing the newly found glass bottle to Kenji Hagiwara, and discussing it, in order to prevent the limited number of cookies from running out because the later plot is still aimed at children, Kenji Hagiwara decided to temporarily maintain his childlike state.
The two of them pushed open the wooden door together. The moment they stepped inside, they stepped from the hard stone path onto the soft green grass, and the fresh scent of the forest mixed with the damp smell of the soil filled their noses.
Kenji Hagiwara cautiously surveyed his surroundings, about to beckon Zhuge Tongzhi to continue exploring, when suddenly a hand grabbed the back of his collar, and the child-sized man easily lifted him off the ground.
He instinctively kicked forward with all his might, but the moment he saw who it was, he released all his strength. A stunned expression appeared on his childlike face as he murmured, "Little Zhenping?"
"Hmm." The man in the black trench coat responded lazily, his raised tail tail revealing his good mood without any attempt to hide it. A pair of black cat ears popped out from his fluffy curly hair, twitching easily from time to time.
The Cheshire Cat, Matsuda Jinpei, who had been lying in wait there, was carrying a child version of Kenji Hagiwara in one hand and taking out a pair of sunglasses that hadn't shrunk along with the child's vest from the other. He chuckled and put them on his nose.
Wearing jet-black sunglasses, a black trench coat, and calf-length black leather boots, Matsuda Jinpei, whose demeanor instantly transformed into that of a gangster, held up his childhood friend, now a miniature version of himself, and spoke in a deliberately low, magnetic voice with a hint of inscrutable emotion.
"Ah, I don't know why, but my fists feel so itchy whenever I see you."
Seeing the dangerous smile on Matsuda Jinpei's face, Zhuge Tongzhi's mental radar immediately went off. She watched as the cat ears, which had been twitching easily on the curly-haired head, slowly straightened and lowered, turning into two airplane ears that clung to the curly hair, with the fine downy fur slightly bristling.
Matsuda Jinpei looked at the person who seemed not to have reacted yet, his voice turning cold and hard, and said, "Is it difficult to wear a bomb suit, hagi?"
"Do you really want me to avenge you?"
Kenji Hagiwara, who had been in a daze, seemed to be suddenly turned on by these words. The six-year-old boy subconsciously denied it, then looked up at Jinpei Matsuda, whose expression was hard to read, and his mouth moved slightly.
But before she could admit her mistake, apologize, or retract that terrible joke, what was expressed first, before any words, was a sudden avalanche of tears rolling down her cheeks.
As Kenji Hagiwara looked at Jinpei Matsuda, who was dressed in black, the heavy, suffocating sorrow and self-blame gripped his throat once again, leaving him speechless for a moment.
I'm sorry, Kojinpei
I wasn't serious, it was just a joke.
Really, really, it was just a joke, you know that perfectly well...
The intense emotional impact instantly broke through the body's emotional threshold, and scalding tears gushed out like a burst dam, rolling down the cheeks heavily like falling stones and landing on the black cloth.
Ahead of Kenji Hagiwara, he gave Jinpei Matsuda a belated hug.
Current path: Alice in Wonderland (21%)
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Author's note: Getting bigger and smaller is truly amazing (sorry for the title).
Ahem, guess what the rules are in Alice in Wonderland? (Pulls out a magnifying glass)
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