Warm orange yellow light filled the ramen shop. On the table sat a large bowl, about eighteen centimeters in diameter at the rim, with roughly one third of its outer surface carved with delicate floral patterns.
Golden broth, snow white noodles and an orange red prawn blended together inside the bowl, forming a harmonious whole. After finishing the soft boiled egg, Lin Huai lifted the noodles with his chopsticks, only to spot a single emerald green floret of broccoli resting quietly at the bottom of the bowl.
…Why is there broccoli in here?! In his mind, he let out a cry as dramatic as “Why is there a car here?!”
Lin Huai silently lowered the noodles back down, attempting to bury the evidence and pretend nothing had happened. The steam rising from the soup warmed his pale profile, flushing his skin slightly under the glow of the lights.
The faint redness gave him a softness close to warmth, like a living painting of the human world, someone filled with the ordinary smoke and fire of daily life, rendered vividly alive.
Warm noodles entered his mouth, were chewed, slid down his throat and settled in his stomach. There, they were dissolved and stirred by gastric acid, eventually transforming into tiny traces of sugar that merged into his bloodstream, carried joyfully along by flowing blood into every single cell.
Lin Huai didn’t know whether his body was still faithfully following this entire process but he thought that perhaps this was what it felt like to be alive.
…Alive.
Everything he had experienced over the past year drifted through his mind. Those memories were happy, warm and brilliantly colorful.
But,
“…When I was still a fierce ghost, no, when I still thought I was a fierce ghost,” he reflected, “I always wanted to become human. Not just because it seemed fun but also because…”
I wanted to live.
I wanted to step into the bustling, glittering world, to go where it was lively, to stand amid blooming flowers and bright sunlight and also to descend into abysses heavy with dark clouds.
I could be a protagonist who stirred up storms and upheavals or a cynical supporting character who toyed with the world. I could reach out and disrupt the tides of fate or stand aloof with cold brows, watching indifferently. I would dominate myself, delight myself, drive myself mad, regardless of how others saw me.
That was what it meant to live.
Not remaining alone in one place, not staying trapped in a silent well. Not lingering in a false past or a future shrouded in mist.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were dazzlingly bright.
“Have you ever thought about what the meaning of your life is?” he suddenly asked.
“So, are we getting philosophical again?” Chu Tianshu replied. “That’s really not like you. Living, huh…”
“The mundane details of everyday life. Three meals a day, nine to five. A good morning kiss at dawn, lofty ideals, research topics steadily advancing each day and the starry sky, distant yet within reach?”
That was his answer.
“No.” Lin Huai shook his head.
He closed his eyes, set down his chopsticks and looked at the young man across from him with a seriousness he had never shown before. “It’s freedom.”
“I used to think I just wanted to live but only now do I realize…”
Not being controlled by others, not being suppressed by others, living a life that is real, free and unique,
That was what he wanted most.
And so, the question that had once troubled him the most, that had left him lost and in pain, was finally resolved.
That question was his own existence.
“In fact, from beginning to end, I’ve never changed.” Lin Huai finally smiled again. “As a human, I chose to enter the ‘door’ and make a wager with the ‘god’ in order to obtain freedom that could not be controlled.”
“As a fierce ghost, I left Wen County and entered this body in pursuit of the freedom to indulge and play as I pleased.”
“And now, as Lin Huai, for the sake of freedom, I’ve decided to tear away the veneer of peace and expose this world and its false reality.”
“If I had never discovered any of this, I might have continued onward smoothly in the game as ‘Lin Huai,’ advancing to higher level arenas and enjoying carefree gameplay. In reality, I would have cooperated with Chen Shu, become close with wealthy second generation heirs like Cheng Yu’an, secured a good job after graduation, gone out occasionally to scare people and lived a perfect life that wasn’t excessive but was happy and fulfilling but…” He bared his teeth in a grin. “I will never regret shattering the ‘false happiness’ I could have had.”
“And I will never stop pursuing the truth just because of the dangers I might face. Because understanding reality, living within reality and being able at any moment to act according to my own principles, laughing without restraint, that is the ‘freedom’ I want, even if it means bleeding, even if it means standing alone. Living inside a dream woven by others is a future I will never accept.”
…Therefore, even if it meant stripping away every gentle illusion, even if it meant recognizing that he stood utterly alone, even if it meant discovering that both ahead of him and behind him lay nothing but blood, with no way forward and no path back,
He would still laugh loudly and run through the endless night, pouring all his madness and all his life into that sprint.
Because a clown will never accept arrangements, never accept hypocrisy or fate.
“Only actors need to follow a script. A clown needs only to joyfully tear every rule and boundary to shreds.”
Though traces of confusion about the unknown still lingered in his heart, Lin Huai had never felt so light and at ease.
He even began to feel grateful that he had uncovered these truths. If he hadn’t,
He would have lived his entire life within an illusion.
Living in an illusion he believed to be happiness, like a clown put on display for the audience’s amusement.
Chu Tianshu sat beside him, watching his animated expression and smiled.
It was the same look he’d had when he sat in his office, watching through the surveillance cameras as Lin Huai effortlessly shattered one glass enclosure after another and rescued each potential offender.
It was as if he were gazing at the most difficult riddle to solve and at the same time, at every small ordinary joy that appeared in daily life.
“Ah… but even after saying all that…” Lin Huai slumped back onto the table in renewed gloom. “I still have absolutely no clue about everything that’s happening to me… Forget it. Instead of thinking about all this, I might as well seriously consider this semester’s big assignment and Chen Shu’s haunted house… As for this thing called ‘freedom,’ it’s still a long, long way off.”
Thinking this way, he let out a sigh.
“Actually, these questions aren’t that complicated.”
“Huh?”
“Look,” Chu Tianshu said, very naturally picking the broccoli out of Lin Huai’s bowl and placing it into his own. “For example, right now, you’ve freely allowed me to take away a piece of broccoli that you hate-”
Then he picked up the braised egg from his own bowl and put it into Lin Huai’s. “And in return, you’ve freely gained a braised egg that you like.”
“You might not meet someone who loves broccoli and hates braised eggs,” Chu Tianshu said. “But you’ll always meet someone who likes you and who’s willing to do things like this for you. Those people are the small pieces of ‘freedom’ you have right now.”
The braised egg landed in the bowl, splashing up a tiny bit of oily broth.
“…Likes?” Lin Huai looked at Chu Tianshu suspiciously.
“Like between friends,” Chu Tianshu said with a perfectly straight face. “Don’t misunderstand.”
“Oh…” Lin Huai said, then picked the braised egg back up and put it into Chu Tianshu’s bowl. “Then I’ll give you a bit of ‘friendship style liking’ too.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t pretend. I know you like this.” Lin Huai teased him as he looked at the noodles in Chu Tianshu’s bowl, only a few strands left, along with very conspicuous shrimp and slices of char siu. “You’re the type who saves the food you like most for last.”
“Generally speaking, people like that are cautious and thoughtful,” Lin Huai said, propping his chin on his hand and narrowing his eyes at him. “But somehow… I really don’t see that in you at all.”
“Maybe because being an idiot is also part of my freedom?” Chu Tianshu joked with a grin.
They finished their bowls of ramen and only stepped out of the ramen shop’s orange yellow lights when it was close to closing time.
October nights were already a little cold. They walked down the street with no one else around them. All along the way were bleak, dark gray street scenes. Lin Huai’s previously cheerful mood cooled down again as the cold wind blew against him.
“Ah…” He sighed softly.
Life wasn’t just poetry and distant horizons, it was also filled with endless compromises and barely getting by. He looked at the street ahead and the iron gray curtain of the sky, then closed his eyes.
Then he heard Chu Tianshu’s voice.
“Do you want to try experiencing more happiness and freedom?”
“What?”
Chu Tianshu grabbed Lin Huai’s arm and pulled him up. “Let’s go.”
“Go… where?”
Lin Huai looked utterly confused. Then he heard the other man say, “To happiness.”
“What are you doing? I’m a college student, hey…” Lin Huai clung to a utility pole. “I’m not going with you to places full of champagne, brandy, pretty girls and beautiful gay men- ”
This time it was Chu Tianshu who narrowed his eyes. “Hey, hey. Is that how you see me?”
“…There are only two hours left before curfew,” Lin Huai said. “I’m a law abiding college student… But seriously, what exactly are you taking me to do?”
He was expecting a clear answer but instead, the man spoke lightly and cheerfully.
“Of course, To run. To live.”
An hour later.
Lin Huai sat in the passenger seat, drowsy with sleep. Chu Tianshu was driving and in the trunk of the car were fireworks Chu Tianshu had bought on a whim.
They drove for a long time before reaching the sparsely populated outskirts. On an abandoned stretch of road, Chu Tianshu hauled out the fireworks and began fiddling with them enthusiastically.
Lin Huai squatted beside him, watching, puzzled. “It’s not a holiday. Why are you setting off fireworks?”
“You’ll know in a moment.”
Desolate wilderness, no people in sight, abandoned road, heavy clouds overhead. This should have been the perfect setting for exploration, courting death, investigating highway ghosts and cars wrecks. Instead, two grown men were squatting there messing with fireworks… Seeing how excited Chu Tianshu looked, Lin Huai didn’t disturb him.
He folded his arms and stood to the side. When he noticed a few mangled ghosts drifting over from the roadside, he gave each of them a red eyed glare and scared them away.
…When you thought about it, becoming a fierce ghost really did have plenty of advantages. Just as that thought crossed his mind, he heard Chu Tianshu say, “All done.”
“What-”
Chu Tianshu pulled him over to the other side of the abandoned road and covered his ears with both hands. At the moment the warm, human heat wrapped around his skin,
The fireworks in the middle of the road began to shoot white streaks of light into the sky.
One streak after another soared upward like rockets, bursting open one by one against the lead gray night sky. Some were green, shaped like dahlias; some were golden, glittering like stars; some were pink, blooming like peonies. Dense and brilliant, they filled the heavens.
At that moment, Lin Huai stared at the sky, his originally pitch black eyes lit up by the fireworks.
“Lin Huai!” Chu Tianshu shouted beside his ear. “Happy birthday!”
“It’s now 12:00 a.m. on October 21, 2019. From this moment on, you’re a brand new person!”
Amid the dazzling fireworks, the two of them stood on the abandoned road, the lead gray sky as their backdrop.
Like a grand rebirth and an escape.
The night wind was a little cold. Sitting in the car, Lin Huai opened the window.
They sped through the early autumn night, like two bandits indulging in a final, reckless revel.
“Actually, I still have one more question…” Lin Huai said as he looked at Chu Tianshu’s profile.
“Hm?” Chu Tianshu held the steering wheel, glanced at the time and said, “It’s already one in the morning now. The dorm has a curfew, so…”
Lin Huai: “So… I’m going to sleep at your place?”
Chu Tianshu: “So you can only crawl back into the dorm along the water pipes. Hahahaha, hahahahahahaha!”
Lin Huai: “……”
Chu Tianshu laughed with undisguised schadenfreude. After laughing his fill, he turned back to Lin Huai. “Don’t worry. You won’t die from falling anyway. If you can’t climb up in one go, just try a few more times. Hahahaha.”
Lin Huai: “……”
He forcibly swallowed the words “Why are you so good to me?” back down into his stomach. After a while, Chu Tianshu finally asked, “What was it you wanted to ask just now? Were you going to ask me why I’m such a nice person?”
“No.” Lin Huai narrowed his eyes. “My question is: how did you find me on the library steps?”
“Actually, in this day and age, finding someone isn’t all that difficult,” Chu Tianshu said. “When a person wants to be alone, to stay away from others yet doesn’t want to go too far, their range of activity is basically fixed. From a certain perspective, I didn’t do much searching at all, I simply carried out a basic process of elimination and judgment…”
Lin Huai: “……”
“However,” Chu Tianshu continued, “there’s actually an even simpler answer to this question.”
“What?”
“Because I was looking for you and…”
Lin Huai’s eyes widened slightly.
He watched as the wind lifted his own hair and the hair of Chu Tianshu, who was sitting beside him.
Under the night sky, Chu Tianshu’s profile looked tall and sharply defined.
“And that set of steps faces the parking lot,” Chu Tianshu said. “So the moment I got out of the car, I saw you sitting there.”
“……”
“And besides, ever since you were little, you’ve liked sitting alone on high steps.”
He tossed out the remark casually yet it stirred a tempestuous wave in the depths of Lin Huai’s heart.
“Did we… meet each other when we were children?”
“Not only did we meet, we were very familiar,” Chu Tianshu said. “Otherwise, what do you think I was opposing when you wanted to enter Chenxing for?”
“Because… you were worried about my safety?”
“No.” Chu Tianshu said sternly. “Because I understood your unruly, freedom loving nature and wanted to prevent you from secretly stirring up trouble. Who would have thought fate would play such a joke…”
Lin Huai: …It seems I really did forget my past completely. Childhood, adolescence, all of it…
However, before he could ask any further questions, another thought suddenly flashed through his mind.
A question that filled him with extreme panic, one that frightened him even more than his own existence or the falseness of the world itself.
“Sorry, I need to ask one more question,” Lin Huai said cautiously. “This could be a question that affects my entire life.”
Chu Tianshu: “?”
“The past me, ‘the Crow’.” He felt as though he had never been this terrified before; cold sweat even broke out at the back of his head. “Was… was I male?”
Chu Tianshu: Pfft!
Chu Tianshu: “Hahahahahahaha, hahahahahahaha!”
“All right, that was me being stupid,” Lin Huai said, twitching at the corner of his eye. “Then my second question…”
“How did we get to know each other?”
“Didn’t you say that talking about the past was meaningless?” Chu Tianshu countered.
“Uh…” Lin Huai was rarely this embarrassed. “I’m just suddenly a bit curious…”
“Although I’d really like to say that the first time I saw you was beneath a ginkgo tree, you wearing a straw hat adorned with flowers, looking like a cute little girl, leaving me with a beautiful first impression that caused me to remain unmarried for life, such a romantic beginning…”
“Hey, hey…” Lin Huai narrowed his eyes. “Do you think you’re Professor Agasa?”
“Or perhaps it was a legendary beginning, where I was already the world’s number one assassin at the age of seven, injured during a mission and you, young master of the world’s second richest family, picked me up and took me home. P.S. My family would definitely have to be the world’s richest.”
“…Is a dreamlike opening like that really possible in this novel…?”
“But our meeting was neither romantic nor legendary. If anything, it was so ordinary it bordered on dull.” Chu Tianshu drove the car into a residential compound near the university.
“It was also an autumn afternoon with rain falling. I had just entered my first year of high school and was walking out of school with my backpack on my shoulders. Because a month earlier, I had accidentally ignited a block of magnesium in the residential garden and had been chased by security guards all the way to the garbage dump, all my pocket money had been confiscated as punishment. Taking into account the need for further chemistry experiments, I decided to save the bus fare home and walk instead.”
“From school to home was about three bus stops away, taking roughly forty minutes on foot. At the ten minute mark, I happened upon two cats fighting, so I squatted down to watch for five minutes and lost my first intact pant leg. At the twenty minute mark, I flipped through the latest issue of ‘Watching the World’ at a roadside newsstand and after reading the jokes section, promptly ran away before the owner could chase me. At the thirty minute mark, a street cleaning truck playing ‘Orchid Grass’ passed by as it did every day. Although I dodged in time, I still lost my second intact pant leg but this was already the result of maximizing benefits through calculation…”
“So why do you remember all these details so clearly…?” Lin Huai complained. “What kind of boring and mundane daily life of a male high school student is this supposed to be…”
“At the thirty fifth minutes, I arrived near a public middle school,” Chu Tianshu said. “Just as I was imagining how miserable I would look when I got home, an image I believed might successfully evoke my sister’s sympathy and allow me to borrow a certain amount of experimental funding from her, I realized that I had taken a wrong turn.”
“……”
“What stood before me was a low wall. I thought for precisely 0.01 second, then decided to turn around, while simultaneously realizing that I still had enough time to get home within ten minutes.”
“……”
“Then I saw the sinking sun and at the entrance of the alley, a dirty looking child who appeared to be a sixth grader, running straight toward me,” he said. “He ran at me with his eyes fixed firmly on mine, as though I, living such an ordinary, dull life as a male high school student, were something extraordinarily precious.”
Lin Huai’s heart gave a sudden, inexplicable thump.
“I was stunned by this decidedly non routine scene. For a moment, the only action I could think of was to stand still. I thought: we were complete strangers and he had never appeared in my plans for the return trip, so why was he appearing here at this very moment? What meaning did his arrival have? Why did he look so thin and frail yet his eyes were so bright? I was certain I had never seen him before,
“Yet he was like an unobservable double slit experiment, appearing here so abruptly, so unpredictably and I had no way to deal with it, nor could I speculate on his motives.”
“…And then?” Lin Huai said.
“Then he ran right up to me and only then did I realize that he was more than a full head shorter than I was. Perhaps because he felt he was too short, he tiptoed, leaned close to my ear and said eight words.” Chu Tianshu parked the car inside a residential compound.
“Which eight words?”
Chu Tianshu turned around and looked at Lin Huai.
“Hello, classmate. This is a robbery.”
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
A mysterious coffee offering may increase translator happiness by 37%. Probably.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
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← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 111 · Although the author really didn’t want to writeChapter 112 · An explanation of the main storylineChapter 113 · Lin Huai’s QuestionChapter 114 · Hello classmateChapter 115 · Let me introduce the protagonist’s family backgroundChapter 116 · The innocent and naive Lin XiaohuaiChapter 117 · The Trisolarans ArriveChapter 118 · He Isn’t Fighting AloneChapter 119 · Why Here?Chapter 120 · A World Where Everyone Is Sculpted in ClayChapter 121 · How Could It Be YouChapter 122 · I want to sell my carChapter 123 · The Mysterious Transfer StudentsChapter 124 · Gu BeichenChapter 125 · The Male Lead of This StoryChapter 126 · A Voice Never Heard BeforeChapter 127 · You’re Tomie, aren’t you?Chapter 128 · I’ll give youChapter 129 · I just want to be with youChapter 130 · The Principal’s OfficeChapter 131 · Chu: I Disbanded Your Hate GroupsChapter 132 · Speak ProperlyChapter 133 · A Trisolaran Enters the Grand View GardenChapter 134 · Ji FengjianChapter 135 · About Me and YouChapter 136 · Kayako Likes ItChapter 137 · YouChapter 138 · I’ll Beat MyselfChapter 139 · I Want to See MyselfChapter 140 · The Trisolarans’ First Experience of Love and SexChapter 141 · The Trisolarans Try Romance Once MoreChapter 142 · The Trisolarans Try Romance for the Third TimeChapter 143 · It’s All This Buff’s FaultChapter 144 · The Way You Straight Men TalkChapter 145 · Why are you taking it so seriously?Chapter 146 · Chu Tianshu Shows Off His MusclesChapter 147 · Enter the DreamChapter 148 · Leave a little secretChapter 149 · Shadow StreamerChapter 150 · Don’t Look at MeChapter 151 · The Trisolarans betrayed StalinChapter 152 · Then I WillChapter 153 · The Trisolarans rewrite the Book of Life and DeathChapter 154 · What Career Could Be More Important Than Your Wife?Chapter 155 · Aren’t We Already Together?Chapter 156 · MVP of the Entire FieldChapter 157 · Meeting the FamilyChapter 158 · A Phone Call Across Time and SpaceChapter 159 · Lu Jin, You’re So MiserableChapter 160 · The Lands Of DaughtersChapter 161 · The So Called Pregnancy StreamChapter 162 · The Street Where Only the Two of Us ExistChapter 163 · No bare faceChapter 164 · Question 1: Do you have hair loss?Chapter 165 · LaxativesChapter 166 · Where Exactly Do You Exist?Chapter 167 · Seven ZeroChapter 168 · The issue of 0 and 1Chapter 169 · Wind ChimeChapter 170 · Visa and Wind ChimesChapter 171 · Continue to persecute Lu JinChapter 172 · Examiner: I’ve fallen in love with himChapter 173 · Lin Huai intimidates scalpersChapter 174 · Night of EvilChapter 175 · Congratulations to the Male Guests on Successfully Finding Their PartnersChapter 176 · Before ThisChapter 177 · The gong says he is terrifiedChapter 178 · The Tasker CampChapter 179 · I’m So ScaredChapter 180 · The Final Transitional ChapterChapter 181 · Four Beauties Among the FlowersChapter 182 · Plum FragranceChapter 183 · Dry Weather and Flammable ThingsChapter 184 · The Heartless Sword ManualChapter 185 · Only MeChapter 186 · The North PoleChapter 187 · Let Brother Lin Learn to Meow Like a CatChapter 188 · Good Night