Lu Qinglian had never eaten an Oreo, but she could tell that Zhang Shutong was messing with her.
She frowned. "What I was actually trying to ask is, why are they stuck together with this white thing? Do you have to take them apart to eat them?"
Amazingly, Zhang Shutong understood what she meant.
By "they," she probably meant the two black chocolate cookies.
And the white thing... she must have meant the cream filling in the middle.
How are sandwich cookies supposed to stick together without a cream filling? Through the power of love?
Zhang Shutong also noticed something else: whenever Lu Qinglian frowned, it was a precursor to her "transformation."
But could you please not ask such a common-sense-defying question in that mature, authoritative tone of yours?
Zhang Shutong had no choice but to explain patiently.
"You can eat it however you like."
But Lu Qinglian said seriously:
"I've bought the same kind before, but they were only the black cookies."
"Er... what do you mean?"
"Literally what I said. They didn't have this white layer."
"Are you sure you bought Oreos?"
"Mhm, blue packaging."
"Where did you buy them?"
"The little shop at the foot of the mountain."
"Oh, that place," Zhang Shutong nodded, the pieces clicking into place.
"Then that explains it. You probably bought the knockoffs."
That little shop at the base of the mountain was a tourist trap. They charged three yuan for a single bottle of water; the overpriced goods were one thing, but they also sold fakes.
One time, his dad asked him to go out and buy cigarettes. He happened to be playing nearby, so he bought a pack there. His dad took one puff and immediately spit it out.
From then on, Zhang Shutong blacklisted the place.
But how did you, a local, get scammed? Isn't the foot of the mountain your turf?
"Are you saying what I bought before was a fake?" Lu Qinglian wasn't slow; she understood immediately.
"Mhm. Don't go there anymore."
"So this white stuff is edible too?"
"Of course, it's cream." Zhang Shutong wasn't sure if he needed to explain what cream was, and the question itself was just too strange.
"Why would you think... I mean, what made you think it wasn't edible?"
"I bought a sausage there once that was covered in chili powder, but the powder was actually on the outside of the plastic wrapper," she said, apparently still hung up on the incident.
"Does that description make sense to you?"
"I understand. I've been burned by that one myself." Zhang Shutong was suddenly speechless.
"So you thought the cream filling was the same as that plastic wrapper?"
"Mhm. Those were the only two times I ever bought snacks."
So in her mind, snacks were things that required a degree of disassembly before they could be eaten.
"You should probably go to a bigger supermarket next time."
"It's fine. That was all a long time ago.”
As she spoke, Lu Qinglian took a small bite of the cookie. While her face remained expressionless, her brow smoothed out, as if she found it quite delicious. She didn't forget to add a comment.
"It's just too sweet."
"I told you to twist it open before eating."
"So that's what 'twist' means?"
"What else?"
Zhang Shutong was suddenly reminded of an old joke about a country bumpkin trying an Oreo for the first time. Seeing the slogan, he started twisting his hips while he ate...
"You must have seen the TV commercial, at least. It's a classic."
Lu Qinglian just nodded without speaking, seemingly completely immersed in the flavor of the cookie.
No wonder she could be so focused while drinking a simple carton of strawberry milk. Although he used to like it himself, with his current palate, the artificial flavoring was so strong it was almost cloying.
But for Lu Qinglian, who had barely ever eaten snacks and whose only two experiences had been disastrous scams, it was no wonder she was still hung up on it.
Moreover, strawberries weren't grown on the island, and things like fresh-fruit bars hadn't become popular yet. For most people, eating fruit just meant buying apples and oranges at the supermarket. Even the bland Red Delicious apples were a rare holiday treat. It was possible she thought the flavor of the student milk was what strawberries tasted like.
Zhang Shutong may have been a man of few words, but he knew when he ought to speak up.
"Wait here, I'll go get some more from Ruoping."
He was about to get up, but Lu Qinglian shook her head. She was surprisingly easy to satisfy.
"No need, one is enough."
So Zhang Shutong nodded and said no more.
But his silence had nothing to do with Du Kang or Lu Qinglian. It was just his personality; no matter who he was talking to, the conversation would easily stall.
It wasn't that he was slow on the uptake. For instance, he knew he could make a girl laugh by teasing, "Still on a diet?"
He even had a special edition tailored for Lu Qinglian: "Oh, that's right, I forgot you're a celestial cultivator."
These were all decent jokes, but he just didn't see the point in saying them.
In the silence, however, Lu Qinglian answered his earlier question.
"There's no TV at the shrine. I don't know the commercial you're talking about."
"You usually live at the shrine?"
"Mhm."
"..."
Okay, he felt he should probably say something else.
"We went to play in the mountains once... isn't there a big tree behind the shrine?"
"A Chinese fringe tree," the girl explained. "It won't bloom until March. Many people come to see the blossoms."
In truth, Zhang Shutong knew little about the shrine itself. His family wasn't from the island, and his parents were more or less researchers, not the superstitious type. They had no custom of burning incense; for his high school entrance exams, the most they did was have him eat an extra fried dough stick for good luck.
He had never visited the shrine himself. He thought about bringing up the time he tried to scale the wall during a festival and ended up falling down the mountain, but that hadn't happened until after graduation.
"I heard there's a rack where you can hang wishing plaques?"
"There wasn't one in the early years. It was originally a rack for drying clothes. Then one morning, a few plaques appeared on it, and it just grew from there.”
Zhang Shutong nodded.
"It's probably a trend from the internet. It's mostly young people and students, or tourists who come specifically for that."
"Mhm. Most of them say something like 'so-and-so and so-and-so, together forever.' It is a bit boring."
Lu Qinglian nodded in agreement, her expression just as sparse.
Zhang Shutong gave her a strange look. "You actually go through people's wishing plaques?"
But her expression remained unchanged. "I'm the shrine keeper."
Not a hint of a blush, her gaze perfectly steady.
You're really something.
But that wasn't the important part. The important part was that he remembered Du Kang himself had gone to the shrine to hang a plaque. The thought made Zhang Shutong feel embarrassed on his friend's behalf.
After a moment, he asked again:
"What's it like inside the shrine?"
"One main hall and three side halls."
"What's it like?"
"Nothing much to see. There are no lights, so it's very dark."
"Oh."
Their way of communicating was certainly odd. Both of them stared at the water in front of them; Zhang Shutong was watching the ripples on the surface, while Lu Qinglian watched the fish beneath them.
One would casually ask a question as it came to mind, and the other would answer. It was a simple back-and-forth, sometimes consisting of only a few words instead of full sentences, but they understood each other perfectly. Other times, the conversation would just fizzle out, all very nonchalant.
But Zhang Shutong didn't feel uncomfortable at all.
"So the god you... sorry, the deity you enshrine at your shrine is?"
He still had no idea, not even whether it was Taoist or Buddhist in nature. But one look at Lu Qinglian's long, silky hair suggested it probably wasn't the latter.
"The God of Wealth? Lord Guan? Or someone else?"
But the words were barely out of his mouth when he realized how rude the question was. She was a shrine keeper, after all. It might not be a grand title, but asking her which "great god" her shrine had managed to "get" was a huge faux pas.
But Lu Qinglian was completely unfazed.
"None of the above. A green snake."
Zhang Shutong froze for a moment.
"Er, a green... snake?"
He knew it was called the Green Snake Shrine, but just like how the White Horse Temple doesn't actually enshrine a horse in its main hall, he had assumed the name was just part of its history.
But Lu Qinglian nodded calmly.
"The very animal you're thinking of. A large, green snake. A sculpture, though."
"Are you really the shrine keeper?"
Zhang Shutong was surprised.
How can you, the actual shrine keeper, use more casual wording than an outsider like me?
He knew he would never dare to refer to his own object of worship as "that kind of animal."
This time, Lu Qinglian gave him a strange look. "I didn't mention it before?”
"You mentioned it, yes, but I assumed it would be called the Green Snake Deity or something."
"I'm outside the shrine right now," she said casually.
...She really does think of herself as an employee on break.
"You can go have a look if you're curious," Lu Qinglian added.
I'd better not.
That place, and the mountain it was on, had been firmly added to his list of places-to-never-visit-again. While it wasn't certain that gaining his strange ability was connected to falling off that mountain, when something like time travel has already happened, it's hard not to become a little superstitious.
He could, however, take this opportunity to ask Lu Qinglian about it.
"So what's the deity at your place in charge of?" Since she herself was being so casual, he figured he could be too.
"Correction, it's not 'my place'," she said with a frown. "Birth, old age, sickness, and death; marriage and childbirth. It oversees everything you'd find in an almanac."
"Is it efficacious?"
"Even outside the shrine, I am not permitted to answer that question."
Fair enough. You're quite dedicated to your job.
"Last question. Are there any legends about the mountain behind the shrine, or was anything buried there?"
"Nothing behind the shrine, but I know a legend about the whole mountain." Lu Qinglian paused, then continued in that same detached voice.
"Legend has it that long, long ago..."
Her delivery had an odd, practiced familiarity to it.
Zhang Shutong's eyelid twitched.
"Wait, is being a part-time tour guide also one of a shrine keeper's duties?"
"Sometimes. Are you going to listen or not?"
Zhang Shutong gestured for her to proceed.
He listened for a long time, mentally filtering out the flowery, atmosphere-building language, and was left with a run-of-the-mill myth.
It was about the origins of the green snake, why the mountain was called Green Snake Mountain, how the Green Snake Shrine came to be, how the snake protected the island... just the kind of legend you hear everywhere. In any case, the snake sounded pretty damn impressive, and Lu Qinglian was telling the story with such earnestness that Zhang Shutong didn't dare make a sound.
At this point, he had said all he wanted to say and lapsed into his habitual silence. But then he heard Lu Qinglian ask if they had gone fishing the day before. Zhang Shutong asked how she knew.
The girl told him not to worry about it, she just knew. Not only did she know they had gone fishing, but she also knew he had been "skunked" because he'd lent her his gloves—of course, "skunked" was his own translation for her words.
It seems there's really something to this shrine keeper business.
So Zhang Shutong asked, puzzled, "So what are you trying to say?"
Lu Qinglian replied, "Since you didn't catch anything yesterday, I figured I'd come and catch a few for you today as compensation. That's the important matter I wanted to talk to you about. How about it?"
With that, she cast her line out again gracefully.
"...That's not the version you gave just now."
"You can also understand it that way for the time being."
He really wanted to ask just how temporary "for the time being" was, but then Lu Qinglian pointed to the bucket, where five large fish were swimming merrily. She asked him if that was enough; if not, she could catch more.
Zhang Shutong pouted. "Then go on, fish. Let's see how many you can pull up today."
The words were barely out of his mouth when the bobber dipped again.
This time, when Lu Qinglian went to lift the rod, she couldn't move it. Whatever she had hooked was much bigger than the previous catches. The rod was pulled taut into an arc, and the thrashing on the surface of the water was enough to draw the others over.
Zhang Shutong snapped back to reality and was about to go help her, but then he heard Lu Qinglian ask an abrupt question.
"Will your fishing rod break?"
"It's carbon fiber, it's fine." But this wasn't the time to worry about the rod; girls usually didn't have much strength.
"I meant you should be careful. Don't cut your hand..."
"As long as it doesn't break, it's fine," the girl said, cutting him off with a frown.
With that, she grabbed the rod with both hands. In a single, fluid sequence, she stepped back, squared her shoulder, and twisted her waist. As if unleashing all her strength at once, she heaved a large fish—as long as his own head—through the air in a graceful arc, and it landed with a heavy thump on the grass behind them.
"Is this enough to repay you?" Lu Qinglian asked nonchalantly as she picked up the huge fish, not even glancing at it.
"Enough..."
Zhang Shutong came to his senses, feeling a bit helpless.
He wiped a splash of water from his cheek. Never mind him, even his friends had been completely stunned by that display.
Besides, that's not how you fish. You're supposed to play a fish that big first. She must have gotten lucky and used some kind of leverage by accident, otherwise the rod would have snapped for sure. Her luck was just too good.
Zhang Shutong, feeling sorry for his fishing rod, just wanted her to stop.
"I was just joking earlier, don't take it so seriously..."
But before he could finish, he heard Qingyi's surprised voice from behind him.
"Whoa, a silver carp."
"What?"
The two of them turned their heads at the same time.
But Qingyi ignored them, aiming his flashlight and staring only at the fish.
"This has to be a silver carp, right? It's my first time seeing one. How on earth did you catch it? Do we even have this species here? Or maybe it's a bighead... Hold it up for a second while I search..."
Zhang Shutong also leaned in for a closer look.
"It does look like a silver carp. Slender body, mouth positioned forward, short tail. A bighead carp would be fatter than this..."
But catching a silver carp in the winter was indeed strange; this type of fish was supposed to be inactive when the weather turned cold. Just as the two boys were about to study it more closely out of curiosity, Lu Qinglian suddenly picked the fish up.
"Silver carp?" she asked bluntly.
"Should be..."
Her response, however, was even more direct. The girl deftly unhooked the fish and tossed it back. It gave a cheerful flick of its tail, splashing water. As the ripples subsided, her placid voice rang out.
"A silver carp can't be your compensation."
Qingyi gave Zhang Shutong a puzzled look, and Zhang Shutong just shrugged.
After that, Lu Qinglian stopped fishing. She handed the rod back to Zhang Shutong and just sat there by herself, looking like she was meditating.
It was hard for Zhang Shutong to say he was still in the mood for fishing, either. He casually cast his line, propped the end of the rod under his stool, and stood up to walk around.
He had been thinking about going to console Du Kang, whom Ruoping had just pulled aside to "reflect on his mistakes," but it turned out the boy was already cheerfully digging for frogs at the water's edge.
That was true. It wasn't the first time he'd been shot down, so what could he do without a strong coping mechanism? Or perhaps it was just that he'd always been resilient. As the old saying goes: How does one dispel sorrow? He'd just have to do it himself.
Besides, getting rejected at graduation hadn't stopped him from crushing on Lu Qinglian for another eight years.
Zhang Shutong decided to just ignore him, to save himself from another round of questioning.
He checked his phone. It was 7:15. An hour had passed without him realizing it.
He looked from side to side. Qingyi was focused on fishing. At some point, Ruoping had sidled up next to Lu Qinglian, and the two were chatting in low voices.
"Let's head out at 7:30. Don't want to stay too late."
Zhang Shutong called out to the group, not waiting for a reply.
The sky had turned completely dark. The moonlight was dim tonight, and the darkness was thick.
There were no streetlights out here. Without a flashlight, it was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. It reminded Zhang Shutong of the hopping vampire movies from his childhood; maybe an ancient corpse would pop out of the reeds at any moment.
Soon, a wind picked up, sending faint ripples across the lake's surface. When he shone the beam of his flashlight across it, tiny motes of dust danced in the light.
Everything around was pitch-black, except for the deathly-white circle of light on the water. Within the circle, he could see some blades of grass drifting by on the wind. Good thing it was just grass; if a dead fish had floated by, it would have been quite terrifying in this gloomy atmosphere.
He wandered aimlessly along the shore. Having nothing to do, his mind grew cluttered. He plucked a reed and waved it around, sometimes looking at the ground, other times gazing toward the opposite shore—
—the position of this spot relative to the "Forbidden Zone" was like the 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock positions on a watch. Unfortunately, it was too dark to see a thing.
He wondered how his "traps" were doing. Then he thought about how, if he successfully caught the killer, the course of the island's history might just change.
—He'd forgotten to mention something. Ever since Gu Qiumian's death, all construction on the island had halted. With his daughter murdered, Father Gu had likely disregarded all profit and loss and simply left that heartbreaking place.
When he came back to the island eight years later, he had seen a sizable unfinished building from the bus—it was probably the shopping mall that was being built right now.
This was also why he had transferred away after graduating from junior high— his family was from the provincial capital and had only moved to the island for Father Gu's project. Once Gu Qiumian was murdered, the project was shut down, his parents' work assignments were transferred back to the city, and he, in turn, went to high school in the city instead of the county seat, as he and his friends had planned.
Thinking about it that way, perhaps even his own life would change because of this.
But that was thinking too far ahead. First, he had to confirm the killer's movements. He decided to bike over for a look tomorrow morning before school.
When he snapped out of his thoughts again, the reed in his hand had been nearly stripped bare.
After a few more minutes, Zhang Shutong walked back to his fishing rod.
Given the rate Lu Qinglian was catching fish earlier, there should be some action by now.
Or were the fish just refusing to give him face?
He shone his flashlight on the water. It seemed they really weren't.
Dejected, he picked up his rod and sat down. Beside him, Ruoping and Lu Qinglian were chatting away animatedly—or, to be more accurate, Ruoping was chatting away animatedly.
"I'm really sorry about earlier. It wasn't all Du Kang's fault; I'm the one who egged him on. Please don't be mad..."
In that moment, she was truly like a big sister to them all, not forgetting to make excuses for Du Kang and shouldering all the blame herself.
Lu Qinglian shook her head and said it was nothing. Ruoping double-checked a couple of times, and only after confirming that the other girl wasn't just being cold did she relax and start smiling and talking about other things.
Sometimes friendships between girls were just that strange. After only a few minutes of conversation, it seemed Ruoping had already accepted the other girl as one of her own. And of course, good friends share Oreos—that last part was his own assumption. Lu Qinglian, however, declined, though he wasn't sure if she was just being shy.
Zhang Shutong watched his still bobber.
Actually, Ruoping is also the type who responds to reason but not to aggression. Otherwise, she wouldn't dislike Gu Qiumian so much. If those two ever faced off in a staring contest, that would be a sight to see.
Then he heard Ruoping say from the side.
"...Let's leave in a bit, then. If you want to come again in the future, just come. Let me see, it's already 7:27. I'll go round them up."
Then she stood up, shedding her gentle tone from a moment ago, and yelled with her hands on her hips:
"Time to go, time to go! You all planning to sleep here? Qingyi, if you keep pretending you can't hear me, I'm tossing your earmuffs in the lake!"
Then she turned her fierce gaze on him. "And you, Shutong! What are you still doing sitting there?"
"I haven't caught a single thing all day," Zhang Shutong sighed.
"I'll give you three last minutes. If you can't catch anything by then, tough luck."
Then she turned and yelled at Du Kang, "Especially you! What did I just tell you? Didn't you have something to say to Qinglian? Get over here, now!"
Wait, when did it become "Qinglian"?
Then he saw Du Kang mumble an "oh" and shuffle over, his head hung low. Zhang Shutong listened in and realized he was apologizing. Du Kang would never have thought to do that himself; Ruoping must have smoothed things over for him.
Zhang Shutong was now focused solely on the bobber in the water.
Three minutes left. He refused to believe he couldn't catch a single fish.
He stared at the rippling surface, the voices of the others in his ears.
"I'll be more careful in the future..." That was Du Kang, his tone sincere.
"I already said, you guys don't have to do this." That was Lu Qinglian, a hint of helplessness in her voice.
"So we'll consider the matter settled. See? Qinglian's not an unreasonable person, got it?" That was Ruoping, hinting frantically.
Zhang Shutong suddenly saw the bobber twitch.
"Got it, got it, got it. Oh, right, Classmate Lu, do you like frogs? I saw one just now. You could take it home and raise it, just find a warm spot..."
Hearing this, Zhang Shutong wanted to cover his face, but what he needed to do right now was stare intently at the water, hold his breath, count to three, and then yank the rod up hard.
"Get lost, get lost, get lost!"
One.
"No, wait, what's wrong now?"
"I swear... Why don't you offer her a toad while you're at it?"
Two.
"Actually, I really did hear a toad when I went back for the stool just now…”
"You really heard a toad? Where would you even find one in this weather?" Qingyi entered the battlefield.
Three!
Zhang Shutong pulled hard, sending water flying. He looked at the end of his line, but what met his eyes was... a wrapper?
His expression darkened instantly. They say the only thing more depressing than catching nothing is catching trash, and that perfectly described his feelings at that moment.
How could he have possibly hooked a plastic wrapper?
To be honest, this thing was rarer than a fish. His group never littered after eating, so this stretch of water was very clean. The only explanation was that it must have floated over from the opposite shore.
People should really have more civic sense...
But he still had to unhook it.
He sighed, shone his flashlight on it, and blinked.
It looked like a snack food wrapper, red at the top and bottom with a clear section in the middle. It had the words "Wang Wang Breakfast Sausage" printed on it. On closer inspection, he could see chili oil floating inside the clear part.
At this point, Zhang Shutong didn't know what kind of expression to make.
Should he call it a coincidence?
He wondered if it was the same brand Lu Qinglian had bought. He was tempted to show it to her, just to see if she would remain calm or if she'd frown and unleash her full fury. But the conversation over there was still going on, so he thought better of it.
"It was definitely a toad, I heard it clearly..."
"What is all this?" Ruoping was losing her mind.
"How did you go from an apology to frogs and then to toads? If you're that desperate to go, then go! Go catch them all night and don't come back, I dare you! If Qinglian doesn't want them, I'll take them!"
Zhang Shutong really wanted to ask,
Besides frogs and toads, anyone want to see a breakfast sausage wrapper? I've actually got one right here...
But for the sake of keeping his hair unruffled, he decided it was best not to press his luck.
So he packed up his things, stretched, and stood off to the side, waiting for them to finish talking.
He would have to remember to ask Ruoping for a trash bag later. It wasn't that he was a neat freak, but holding a sausage wrapper was a bit gross. He didn't know if the other person had eaten it straight from the package, and besides, his hand was now all oily...
He frowned and raised his right hand, realizing that the chili oil from inside had leaked out.
Chili oil...
Leaking...
His movements suddenly paused.
"I'm telling the truth! It's right nearby, just a five-minute walk up the dirt path. If you don't believe me, I'll take you there later..."
"Who's going to go catch toads with you?!"
Zhang Shutong moved the flashlight beam directly over the plastic wrapper.
"I was really going to go, but just as I was about to, I saw someone coming. I thought it was the police, and it scared the crap out of me, so I ran back..."
"The police? Why didn't you say so earlier?"
Directly above, there was a string of numbers—
20121129
1129
"....."
"Because it wasn't the police! I hid and watched for a while. It was just some guy, heading west. I was wondering what he was doing wandering around at this hour. Didn't smell like he'd been drinking or anything, just seemed... off..."
Zhang Shutong's head snapped up.
"Where did you say he went?"
"Er..."
Before the words had faded, the sound of footsteps echoed in the distance.
It was the sound of shoe soles scraping against the dirt and gravel path.
The group instinctively turned their heads.
At the edge of their vision, the white beam of a flashlight cut across the entire path.