One of life’s greatest pleasures is to run into an old friend in a new town.
Qian Ai quickly removed the chain lock from the door and swung it wide open, giving both his former classmates each a hug that lasted about ten seconds, filled with sincerity.
Xu Wang felt the breath nearly squeezed out of him by the time Qian Ai let go. He inspected the man up and down and marveled incredulously at his 1.9 metre tall figure. “I remember in high school, you stood in the first row, you were one of the cutesy ones. This change is a little dramatic.”
“Just be straight and say I’ve gotten fat!” Qian Ai laughed easily. “Back then, I had a good appetite and only grew meat but not taller. After college I started getting taller; I kicked my legs every night and could never get a good night’s sleep!” As he spoke, he gestured the other two inside his room, “Let’s not stand around out here, come in, come in.”
Upon entering the room, Xu Wang discovered that there was no one else there, just a cellphone mounted on top of a selfie stick, in front of which was a table covered in all kinds of food. Amazing, enticing smells swirled in the air.
After shutting the door, Qian Ai ran before his phone and said, “That’s it for today, it’s so great to run into old classmates when you’re out traveling, so I have to play host. I’ll keep eating for you guys tomorrow!”
Xu Wang finally understood what their classmate had been doing. He turned and exchanged a look with Wu Sheng.
The latter read his mind. “Food vlogger.”
“Is this okay?” Xu Wang asked as he watched Qian Ai cut the broadcast short. “Won’t you lose fans from this?”
“Oh hey, you understand how it works!” Qian Ai moved his duvet to the side and plopped onto his bed. “The prerequisite for losing fans is to have fans in the first place, people like me don’t really have to worry about that.” He gave a little laugh, his eyes thinning into crescent moons, making him resemble what he’d looked like in high school.
“Although real talk, Wu Sheng is pretty impressive,” Qian Ai turned to Wu Sheng as he spoke and as if to question him again, asked, “You still recognised me even though I look like this now?”
Wu Sheng shrugged casually. “I’m the class representative, after all.”
A hard to describe expression flashed across Qian Ai’s eyes. “Class representative, you really haven’t changed much at all.”
“That’s why it’s understandable that we wouldn’t recognise you,” Wu Sheng agreed, “but it’s surprising you didn’t recognise us.”
“I was too busy worrying about the threat of two men knocking at my door in the middle of the night,” Qian Ai protested. “Do you think I had the mind to pay attention to what you looked like? If I made eye contact with you and we did the whole, ‘What the hell are you lookin’ at?’, ‘You got a problem with me?’ charade, it would’ve started an unnecessary fight.”
“You don’t have to be so jumpy,” Xu Wang said. “No one would mess with you with your size.”
“It’s absolutely necessary to be cautious when you’re traveling,” Qian Ai said in all seriousness. Then he seemed to realise something and turned a puzzled gaze on Wu Sheng and Xu Wang, jumping between them. “Are you two… traveling together?”
His inquiry stumped Xu Wang, who’d only randomly brought up “traveling” earlier and hadn’t expected the situation to turn into a giant reunion. “Erm, not just us two. There’s also… a little cousin from my aunt’s family,” Xu Wang said, pulling lies out of his arse on the spot. “He’s on vacation and wanted to come out, and his parents are busy, so I took him on.”
“What kind of school has holidays in November?” Qian Ai mumbled to himself, although he didn’t press the issue. Instead he asked, “You and your cousin… traveling with class representative, what kind of a group is that?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Qian Ai didn’t suspect a thing. He looked at Xu Wang, then at Wu Sheng, with wistfulness and envy. “Back in the day you two were always together. I’m surprised your relationship is still so strong after all these years, how nice.”
“Strong or not,” Wu Sheng muttered under his breath with a trace of despondency, “depends on what angle you look at it…”
These words made Xu Wang uneasy; it sounded wrong somehow, and he also didn’t know what Wu Sheng was referring to. He took the opportunity to cut him off and take back control over the conversation. “Money Lover, what about you, what brings you here?”
Qian Ai stopped for a few beats and then hurriedly grabbed his phone, waving it. “I’ve just established a new career. My ID is ‘Old Qian Eats the Divine Land.’ so obviously I’ve got to live up to it and do it for real.”
“Eating your way around the country?” Xu Wang heard the sincerity in his words. “You’re really doing this as a career?”
Qian Ai nodded. “I’ll eat till I’m old.”
“Yup, this really matches one of your characteristics,” Xu Wang laughed.
“One of?” Qian Ai asked. “What other characteristics are there?”
“Money Lover.”
“Character traits are only charismatic when they’re concealed, the way you just hang it so easily on your lips makes me seem so shallow!” Qian Ai protested.
“Oh please, hiding one’s traits is also a trait. It’s not like if you hide them, they’re not there.” But since his old classmate brought it up, Xu Wang decided to give way: “So what am I supposed to call you instead of Money Lover? Qian Ai? But that sounds so formal…”
“Old Qian,” Qian Ai said with a smile. “That’s what all my fans call me, it’s friendly!”
“…Sure.” Xu Wang felt he needed someone to remind him how he became this person’s “fan.”
As with any classmate reunion, the group had plenty of things to say to each other, but time waits for no man. When the clock ticked close to 11:30 PM, Xu Wang had to put an end to things, and after whipping out his “little cousin” as an excuse again, got up to leave.
Thankfully, Qian Ai didn’t keep them.
When they returned to their room, Kuang Jinxin was still asleep. Xu Wang let out a nod at what an impressive feat that was, then walked up to yank the sheets off the boy. “Ole brother, wakey wakey!” he hollered.
As Kuang Jinxin crawled up from the mattress in a daze, Wu Sheng was in the midst of calculating the distance between the hotel and their destination. “It’s less than two kilometres. After we go in, we just have to keep moving north.”
Xu Wang was already fully dressed in his winter jacket. He looked out the window. “I really hope this stage doesn’t involve bears,” he prayed.
Finally fully awake, Kuang Jinxin quickly dressed, then grabbed three bags of fish snacks from his hiking bag. He stuffed one into his own pocket, then tossed the other two to Xu Wang and Wu Sheng. “Just in case we do, we can just toss these into the air like the fish tornado!”
The two of them each stuffed a bag in their pockets. Xu Wang opened his mouth to say something but then stopped; Wu Sheng, less tactful, went straight ahead: “Let’s just save these to eat ourselves.”
23:59:00
Their idle chitchat died out, leaving the three of them staring at the time on their phones, waiting for the coming of midnight.
Knock knock—
The sound of the door knocking in the middle of the night was significantly more horrifying than Owl’s call. The three of them started all at once as if caught red-handed doing something wrong, their hearts pounding wildly in their chests.
Knock knock—
“Kids, are you all in there?” It was the front desk lady who’d helped them out earlier in the day.
Xu Wang reacted first, running towards the door. “Yes, we’re sleeping, what’s going on….” He pretended to sound half-asleep, drawing his syllables out lazily.
“Stop kidding me, the guests upstairs called the front desk and complained that you people keep talking and making noise so they can’t sleep!”
Xu Wang slapped a hand against his forehead. Even though half an hour earlier they were chatting amongst themselves waiting for the time to pass by, wasn’t the hotel’s awful sound insulation to blame for this?
Hoot hoot—
It was midnight.
The owl’s call came from somewhere far away. Bleak and cold, like a cry from the underworld.
Purple light emitted from behind him. Even without turning around, Xu Wang knew the “entrance” was open. It sent his mind spinning as he searched high and low for something to say to the clerk outside the door so she’d go away, but the more stressed out he became, the less he was able to maintain any train of thought.
The woman on the other side of the door had no idea what was going on inside the room, but all that could be heard was silence. And in these kinds of situations, silence usually meant either “understanding” or “guilt.” Immediately, her senses came on alert. “Hey, you kids wouldn’t happen to be doing something bad in there, are you?”
“How could we?” Xu Wang gave up looking for the right words and decided to simply pour all the sincerity he could into his answer. “We promise not to say another word, we definitely won’t bother any more guests!”
The woman was absolutely not having it. The knocks became more forceful. “Open the door!”
This being a privately-owned hotel, Xu Wang had a sneaking suspicion that given the commandeering presence of the lady outside, she was the owner’s wife. But never mind the owner’s wife, even if the owner himself came it would be of no use. They would all be sucked away in about ten seconds, and if the door opened… Hold on. Xu Wang suddenly realised that he’d fallen towards an illogical conclusion. Why not let someone witness them being sucked into Owl? Just because they couldn’t call the cops didn’t mean someone else couldn’t.
With that thought in mind, Xu Wang went straight ahead and raised his hand to open the door.
And then a bone-shattering pain that he’d never felt before in his life wracked his body, making him double over in pain. He brought both hands to his head. It hurt so much that he felt like he wanted to die.
“Xu Wang!” Wu Sheng, who had no idea what just happened, immediately paled and went over, wanting to check on Xu Wang, but before he could do anything, a powerful gust of wind rose over his head. It pulled him, the still-bent Xu Wang, and Kuang Jinxin into the purple vortex.
Someone’s phone clattered to the ground; the time illuminated on its screen read 00:02:00.
There was a bout of spinning, and then all three of them landed on solid ground.
The splitting headache was gone, leaving behind only a lingering shadow of pain, but that was quickly replaced by dizzying nausea. Suddenly, Xu Wang felt his body being righted by someone, followed by Wu Sheng’s concerned voice. “What happened to you?”
“My head.” Xu Wang’s voice came out thin and frail, still not recovered fully from the torturous pain he’d suffered.
Wu Sheng suddenly remembered Xu Wang’s hand raised to the door right before they were all sucked away and instantly understood. “You wanted the clerk to see us getting sucked in?”
Xu Wang nodded, his eyes gleaming with frustration at having nearly succeeded.
“It’s pointless. If Owl could stop Sun Jiang and Xiao Kuang from calling the cops, it can stop you from opening the door….” Wu Sheng’s voice suddenly trailed off as he squinted. When he spoke again, his voice was thoughtful. “No one’s going to respond to her with our sudden disappearance. Even through the closed door I’m sure she’ll notice something’s wrong. I don’t know if Owl is capable of resolving that issue.”
If Xu Wang had been listening carefully and watching closely, he would’ve noticed that Wu Sheng in this current moment resembled what he’d looked like when he faced a difficult exam question in school. The harder the question, the more energetic he got. The natural-born desire to constantly puzzle over difficult problems was something far beyond Xu Wang’s comprehension.
But at the moment, Xu Wang was not paying attention to Wu Sheng; instead, he was flipping through the menu on his arm—In , all his items were still there. The knowledge set him at ease, although he was confused.
According to Kuang Jinxin and Sun Jiang, after they’d called the cops intending to reveal the secret of Owl, they’d been assaulted by a splitting headache and then found after coming back to Owl that the items in their stationery box were all gone. He’d briefly considered confessing to Qian Ai earlier, then his head had split with the door incident, so why were his items still here?
Before he could come up with an explanation, he heard Kuang Jinxin say, “Brother Xu, Brother Wu, this place is so… strange.”
Xu Wang and Wu Sheng instinctively took in their surroundings, and then were just as dazed as Kuang Jinxin.
Bright, transparent floor-to-ceiling windows; a solid, steel dome roof; throngs of people passing to and fro, rows and rows of baggage check-in counters. No snow field, no bears. They were in a completely ordinary, air-conditioned airport. Flight attendants smiled all around them.
Xu Wang swept his gaze back and forth the scene, not believing what he was seeing, that this wasn’t all a mistake. In the end, he could only ask his teammates, “Are we four in Owl, or are we…. huh? We four?”
Noticing something off, he quickly did a silent head count. Wu Sheng, Kuang Jinxin, Qian Ai, himself, yup. Four of them, but there shouldn’t have been four…..
“Old Qian?!” At last he discovered the problem. The thing was, Qian Ai stood next to Kuang Jinxin posing in such a natural, candid way that his presence had been completely unnoticeable, like when “Big White Mian” sneaks into a nest of “big white rabbits.”¹
I knew he was gonna be the teammate!
I wonder what is gonna happen with the hotel lady
thanks for the chapter! <3
Thank you for the chapter 💛
I knew it!
Thank you for the chapter 🥰
I worry about this guys’ low spatial awareness lol.