Chapter 18: She Wasn’t Afraid At All
As the end of class approached, students began packing up their sports equipment and leaving the gymnasium in groups.
Jiang Xue and Xie Xitong, however, remained in the stands, discussing in hushed tones.
“Only two dreams, the sample size is too small!”
“I can’t help it! I don’t dream every day, and dreaming about the same person is even less likely!”
“It would be great if we could identify a pattern.” Xie Xitong tapped on her phone. “But from your description, it seems completely random?”
“If we could dream at the same time and wake up at the same time, that would be a pattern, right?” Jiang Xue said. “But I woke up while the Third Princess was still sleeping, so that pattern doesn’t hold.”
She had specifically asked the Third Princess about this after the second dream, and the answer she received was a decisive “No.” The Third Princess wouldn’t lie to her, would she?
Xie Xitong didn’t answer, flipping through the diary and quickly finding the point in time Jiang Xue was referring to. She stared at the marks left by the correction fluid and the content before and after for a long time.
“…No!” She suddenly raised her voice in certainty, startling Jiang Xue. “Your conclusion might not be accurate!”
But she didn’t elaborate, instead asking, “Assuming the Third Princess woke up from the dream at the same time as you, what do you think she would do first?”
Jiang Xue answered without hesitation: “Tell me!”
“Right, so, assuming she eagerly opened the diary and saw your message, but you finished writing… or only wrote half of it, and then erased it, what do you think the Third Princess would think?”
At first, Jiang Xue didn’t quite understand, but then her eyes lit up in realization.
“She would think that I didn’t want to talk about it, so she didn’t ask!” she immediately said. “To avoid embarrassing me, if I asked later, she would lie and say she hadn’t seen what I wrote. In reality, she probably watched me write it, and then watched me erase it!”
Xie Xitong nodded vigorously.
“Then there is a pattern!” Jiang Xue became excited. “Although it needs to be verified, we can make hypotheses based on the existing clues!”
She opened the notepad app on her phone and, while explaining to Xie Xitong, recorded her hypotheses:
【Hypothesis 1: The conditions for entering the dream are related to the degree of our interaction.】
【Like intimacy or affection levels in games, there’s an invisible value between us. When it reaches a certain level, we can enter the corresponding stage and trigger the corresponding interactive plot.】
【Hypothesis 2: Synchronized dreams, entering and exiting together, affect the degree of interaction in the dream.】
【More samples are needed to verify this hypothesis. I boldly speculate: When the synchronization reaches a certain level, our interaction will upgrade again—the current interaction has already upgraded from being observers of each other to one-sided interaction.】
“The sample size is too small. These are the only hypotheses for now.” Jiang Xue pressed the save button, put away her phone, picked up the diary, and stood up, holding the remaining half-bottle of Red Scream. She smiled at Xie Xitong. “Thank you for helping me organize my thoughts! You’ve been a great help!”
“Don’t mention it!”
After sending Jiang Xue the drawings related to her elder sister, Xiao Luohan realized that she could use this method to tell Jiang Xue about things that were difficult to describe.
Anything related to her elder sister, whether good or bad, was difficult for her to talk about, or she didn’t know how to describe it to convey her emotions to the listener. But drawings could.
Drawings could store emotions.
She had to record everything about her elder sister while she could still remember, and when she and Jiang Xue were closer, she would slowly send these drawings over.
Since her casual chat with Jiang Xue had paused for now, she spread out the drawing paper, called for Shizhu to help grind ink, and prepared the paints she needed.
The first drawing was…
Xiao Luohan gazed at the blank paper and glanced at the red bottle of drink beside her.
Red, that was her elder sister’s favorite color when she was alive, and now it was her favorite color.
She had liked the red-clad woman fishing on the MP3 player Jiang Xue sent, as if she had seen her carefree elder sister.
Thinking this, when Xiao Luohan put her brush to the paper, it was also a dazzling red.
She continued sketching calmly.
After her elder sister’s death, she had appeared in her dream, dressed in blood-stained clothes.
Her elder sister had stroked her face, telling her not to cry. Looking at her elder sister like that, she had opened her mouth.
She had really wanted to talk to her elder sister one last time.
She had wanted to hug her elder sister tightly and tell her that she wasn’t afraid of the blood on her, nor was she afraid of her elder sister staying by her side as a ghost, even if she was a ghost riddled with arrows and mangled beyond recognition, she wasn’t afraid at all.
—As long as her elder sister could come back, it didn’t matter what she looked like.
But she wasn’t a child anymore, and she knew that no matter how tightly she hugged her, her elder sister wouldn’t come back to life.
In the end, she hadn’t seemed to say anything.
She didn’t know what to say. Knowing that her sister was gone, it seemed like nothing mattered anymore.
Her fingers trembled as she sketched the lines. Xiao Luohan had to put down her brush, clasped her hands tightly, and closed her eyes.
She… couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t remember what she had done to her elder sister in the dream. If she hadn’t hugged her, how had she finally sent her elder sister away?
Besides comforting her, had her elder sister said anything else?
“Princess Zhuìyù? Princess Zhuìyù!”
Shizhu’s voice rang in her ears, sounding a little urgent.
But Xiao Luohan seemed not to hear, her consciousness falling into a bottomless abyss.
Until…
The aroma of beef suddenly filled her nose.
Xiao Luohan snapped back to reality and heard Shizhu exclaim, “Princess Zhuìyù! A ghost, a ghost has sent a bowl of noodles!”
A large bowl of steaming beef noodle soup sat on the open booklet nearby, along with a small empty bowl and a small dish filled with fresh green herbs.
Ink characters appeared:
【I didn’t know Your Highness’s preferences, so I didn’t add the garlic chives or cilantro. I sent them separately.】
【The owner was very generous and made too much. Your Highness, just eat what you can, don’t force yourself!】
【By the way, you have to return this bowl! It belongs to the shop. I think I mentioned it to Your Highness before, the noodle shop on the third floor of the school cafeteria, the one with the dairy cow cat.】
Xiao Luohan paused, quickly picked up another brush, dipped it in ink, and replied:
【Thank you for the noodles. I’ll eat them right away!】
As she wrote, she said to Shizhu, “Let’s eat together. This portion is too big. It would be a waste if we can’t finish it.”
Shizhu hurriedly waved her hands. “Not to mention the difference in our status…”
“This was sent by a ghost or spirit who lives in a very, very good world. If you eat it, you’ll also be accumulating merit for your daughter.” Xiao Luohan gently interrupted.
Knowing that she was truly being kind, Shizhu sighed repeatedly, and finally took some noodles into the empty bowl.
Xiao Luohan smiled faintly as she watched her, thinking of the ghost or spirit, her thoughts drifting again.
Her elder sister had died on Daying soil, and now she was in Daying. If her elder sister hadn’t reincarnated, would she come to visit her?
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