10 Chapter 10 qu n⑥ 8 4 8 ㈧ 5 ⑴ 5 6
◎Song Jinyu had sleepwalking disorder as a child◎
After they had said so much, Song Jinyu finally came to her senses.
He had forgotten most of what happened when he was a child, and when he heard Zhou Qingwen say this, he felt that her biological mother was spreading rumors about him.
That's nonsense. He's always been a cool guy since he was a kid.
He looked at the dark circles under his mother's eyes, thought for a moment, then stood on tiptoe and grabbed his mother's hand that was resting on the table.
Zhou Qingwen was taken aback, looked down at the doll, and for some reason, a feeling of inexplicable emotion stirred within her. She suppressed it and instead showed a curious expression, "This doll is really obedient?"
Xiao Ji covered his mouth and coughed softly, "It might have been a system malfunction just now."
Song Jinyu shook her hand, tilting his head slightly. His hair was a new one Xiao Ji had bought; it was short and light chestnut brown, which made the doll's face look very cute.
Zhou Qingwen's heart softened instantly upon seeing this. "Then why don't you nod and see?"
Song Jinyu nodded.
Zhou Qingwen then asked, "Walk a couple of steps?"
Song Jinyu strode confidently several steps in front of his mother.
"Play dead."
Song Jinyu collapsed onto the table with a thud.
"Playing the victim?"
Song Jinyu raised her hand and begged, "Please, please."
"And a salute?"
Song Jinyu stood upright, her eyes solemn, and gave a standard salute.
...
The gloom in Zhou Qingwen's eyes finally dissipated a little, and she revealed a genuine smile, saying to Xiao Ji, "Thank you for bringing such a doll to make me happy. It's really interesting. How much did you buy it for? I want to buy one for Jinrou after she finishes her college entrance exam."
Song Jinyu turned her head to look at Xiao Ji.
Xiao Ji remained expressionless. "This is for internal testing and has not yet been released to the market."
Hearing him say that, Zhou Qingwen sighed regretfully and didn't ask anything more.
Xiao Ji and Xiao Ji sat with Zhou Qingwen for the entire morning, until Zhou Qingwen finally kicked Xiao Ji out.
“You young people all have jobs to do. What’s the point of spending all day at the hospital with me? Go to work when you’re supposed to, and do what you’re supposed to do. If anything happens to Jinyu, I’ll let you know.”
As he was leaving, Xiao Ji stood at the door and looked inside.
The person in the hospital bed was still breathing evenly. He raised his hand and touched the doll in his palm, speaking with certainty.
"It will be alright, he will definitely wake up."
Zhou Qingwen paused for two seconds, then turned her head to look.
"Yes, he will wake up."
-
After leaving the hospital, Xiao Ji was going to her maternal grandparents' house.
Song Jinyu sat on the platform in front of the car, not in a very good mood.
Xiao Ji started the car and said, "In a couple of days, I'll take you to see someone. He might know how you can get back."
He said he would return in a couple of days, but under the pressure of money, Jiang returned the very next day.
Before taking Song Jinyu there, Xiao Ji had investigated him. He had been raised on Fuxian Mountain since childhood, and his master was an old Taoist priest who had been retired for many years. He had seen a lot in their line of work. As long as it didn't break the law, they could get things done for money.
Li Muyuan was also present when they met.
He was frail from a young age and suffered from nightmares every night, so his parents sent him to live on Mount Fuxian for several years. He was considered an outer disciple, but unfortunately, he was of mediocre talent and hadn't learned any skills over the years.
The meeting place was chosen by Xiao Ji, in the house his mother had given him in the city. Because he didn't live there, the house felt deserted and more like a show flat than the one in the suburbs.
Jiang Hui, wearing brightly colored floral shorts, sat down on the black leather sofa, raised her hand to brush her somewhat long hair aside, and said, "Speak, what do you want to ask me?"
Li Muyuan looked around the house, where every inch of land was precious, and then he heard Xiao Ji speak.
"I want to ask you about Song Jinyu."
Jiang Hui paused for two seconds, then understood.
"That's true, otherwise what else could you want from me?"
"To tell you the truth, the parents of the person you mentioned came to Fuxian Mountain. They found one of my junior brothers. My junior brother went to see him and said your friend is strange; his soul seems incomplete, yet also incomplete. If it's incomplete, his soul shouldn't stray too far from his body. If it does, it will either be devoured or become increasingly weak..."
“But he searched the area and found nothing. His breathing was steady and long. The missing part of his soul didn’t look like it had been eaten. Rather than being eaten, my junior brother said… it looked more like it had been kept by someone.”
Xiao Ji moved his hand that was hanging by his side.
Jiang Hui scratched his head. "He said he couldn't understand it either, and could only wait for my master to come back and ask him to take a look."
"Logically speaking, a person missing their soul should only become more and more fragile, until the remaining portion of their soul within their body can no longer sustain them, turning them into a complete ghost. But your friend is different; despite lacking his soul, his condition is gradually improving. It's so strange..."
Xiao Ji didn't reply to him.
The tea on the coffee table was steaming, and the aroma of tea was mixed with a few wisps of osmanthus fragrance coming from outside the window.
Finally, Xiao Ji spoke up, asking, "If we find his soul, can we send him back?"
Jiang Hui looked up at him, as if she understood something, and the expression in her eyes changed slightly, but she still spoke truthfully, "Not necessarily, we have to see what the situation is."
...
The fragrance of osmanthus flowers is even stronger now.
Song Jinyu stood on the coffee table, with Xiao Ji behind her and a boy with a naturally grumpy face opposite her. Xiao Ji's roommate, whom she seemed to vaguely remember, sat to her right, tilting her head and looking at her.
Li Muyuan looked left and right. "This...this is really Song Jinyu?"
Song Jinyu was also very nervous, holding the tablet pen and walking a little awkwardly.
He typed haltingly.
Hello, my name is Song Jinyu, and I'm the goldfish that's raining today.
[It's raining today.]
Jiang Hui chuckled and curiously reached out to poke the small figurine on the table, but Xiao Ji quickly pulled it back into his arms.
He withdrew his hand. "Can't he speak?"
"No," Xiao Ji answered for him. "He can hear, see, and smell, but he can't speak."
Jiang Hui stared at it for a moment, then said, “I understand. Logically speaking, a soul possessing a body should not have the five senses, but this doll is so realistic, with a nose and eyes, that it has invisibly opened the five senses for him. As for speaking, it is probably because the doll's mouth cannot open.”
Xiao Ji asked him, "Can he speak?"
"Sure, just a lip tint will do."
As he spoke, Jiang Hui took a pen out of his schoolbag, which was placed to the side.
Li Muyuan asked, "Can you use a fountain pen to apply lipstick?"
“That’s not…” Jiang Hui shook the pen in his hand, “It contains cinnabar prepared using a special method, which I put in the ink bag of the fountain pen.”
He reached out and held the palm-sized doll, lowered his eyes, and examined it carefully for a while. Then he raised his hand and drew a thin slit on the closed lips, which were painted with red lipstick.
After finishing the drawing, he stopped and said, "Okay, tell me about it."
The next second, a slightly crisp voice rang out in the air, "Can you really hear me?"
When Xiao Ji heard this voice, he froze on the spot. It had only been a week, but to him it felt like an eternity.
"Holy crap!" Li Muyuan exclaimed, "You can really hear it!"
Song Jinyu also exclaimed "Damn!" and her eyes lit up as she looked at Jiang Hui. "A master!"
He took a couple of steps, trying to get closer to Jiang Hui, but Xiao Ji pulled him back as soon as he got there.
He turned around in confusion.
Xiao Ji asked, "What's wrong with him? Can he go back?"
Jiang Hui stroked his chin. "Tell me what happened first?"
Overjoyed at being able to speak, Song Jinyu rattled off the recent events without Xiao Ji even having to say a word.
After listening, Jiang Hui said, "A soul that leaves the body won't follow another person for no reason. There must be something about him that attracts you, making you unable to leave him."
Song Jinyu was stunned, and Xiao Ji was also stunned.
The two people looked at each other, both somewhat bewildered.
Jiang Hui then asked Xiao Ji, "Or do you have any other items on you? Anything related to him?"
Xiao Ji paused for a moment, then raised his hand to fold his sleeves.
His hands were very white, and as his sleeves were folded up, the cinnabar mark hidden between his wrists was revealed, making the red stand out against the white.
"This is all we have."
-
Song Jinyu suffered from sleepwalking as a child.
At first, no one noticed this.
When he started elementary school, he became even more energetic. He liked the kindergarten because there were many activities and few classes. But when he got to elementary school, he found that there were only two physical education classes a week, which felt like the sky was falling to him.
But children can't stay in kindergarten forever.
Primary school teachers are stricter and have more rules than kindergarten teachers. Students must sit up straight, keep their hands on the table, and are not allowed to talk or look around.
Song Jinyu was completely restricted, so he could only write and draw in his notebook.
He drew a flat circle, then a long circle. The long circle had two hands, and the flat circle had two eyes. He then wrote the word "Ling Yu" in a crooked way with a pencil.
Next to the long, flat circle was another identical circle. Xiao Ji's name was complicated for him, so he wrote "Little Chicken".
The goldfish and the chick were good friends. When the goldfish was in kindergarten, the chick was already in elementary school. He naively thought that as long as he went up to elementary school, he could sit with the chick. Unfortunately, not only could the first graders not sit with the third graders, they weren't even in the same building.
Song Jinyu spent an entire class period drawing him and Xiao Ji. Holding the notebook, he happily thought that after school, he would give this gift to Xiao Ji.
But he didn't get to finish school.
The teacher found the notebook.
He was always the most disobedient student in the class. He would daydream in class, which made the teacher very angry, and she tore up his drawings on the spot.
Song Jinyu held the notebook and cried very sadly.
Until Xiao Ji came to pick him up after school.
The small classroom was empty; all the students had left. Song Jinyu squatted by the trash can, picking up the torn pieces of his drawing piece by piece. Tears welled in his eyes, and one fell onto the shattered paper with a plop, blurring the black eyes of the chick into a blob of ink.
He asked Xiao Ji, "Was I too naughty? I tried my best to listen to the teacher. I didn't move or look around. I just wanted to draw a picture of you and me. I had already finished drawing it. I was thinking that I could give the drawing to you so that you could treat me to an ice cream."
Xiao Ji patted his head, unsure how to comfort him, "It's okay, I can still treat you to ice cream even if you don't draw."
Song Jinyu lowered her head.
His hair was naturally curly, softly lying on his ears, leaving Xiao Ji with a rounded back of his head.
Song Jinyu sniffed. "Is it because they all like people like you? I'm stupid and disobedient, but you're different. You're smart and obedient, and you can stay still in class without the teacher having to tell you what to do."
"No..."
Xiao Ji, a third-grader, felt a sense of helplessness. "That's not how it is."
“Many people like you. My grandparents like you, your parents like you…”
"It's just that this teacher doesn't like you. He's a bad person, so he doesn't like you."
Song Jinyu was very naive; she believed whatever others told her. "Really?"
Xiao Ji nodded.
"Do you like me?"
"like."
"My favorite is Song Xingxing."
...
Xiao Ji picked up the painting that had been abandoned in the trash can and pieced it back together little by little with glue. Then, he secretly got out of bed in the middle of the night.
He was going to put it under Song Jinyu's pillow.
He wanted to give him a surprise.
He saw Song Jinyu standing on the second-floor balcony with her eyes closed.
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