Puzzle Madness

Chapter 102 I Love Taro King, I Want to Be Friends with Him
Are you still worried about the noisy environment and lack of places to relax? Welcome to Mong Cai City—a perfect place to slow down and enjoy life!
Here you can find clean streets and welcoming neighbors; life is down-to-earth and prices are affordable.

No need to rush to buy groceries early; they're fresh and affordable year-round. Need your kids to go to school? Need medical care? Everything's right at your doorstep.

The two logistics networks of Asia-Europe Post allow you to buy, ship quickly and use products comfortably: your life will be stable and smooth.

Shouzhu 151 Commercial Building, the tallest building in Southeast Asia, bears witness to the rise of this city, showcasing not only the prosperity of commerce but also the warmth of daily life for its citizens.

Mong Cai City is a safe haven for you and me. Come here and let life become a beautiful dream!
-
In the fall of 1996, the promotional video began to be broadcast during prime time on Southeast Asian television stations.
-
I heard that if you see the dead body of an acquaintance on the street, you will either be unable to sleep all night or be haunted by nightmares.

But Doudou slept very well; and as usual, he didn't dream at all.

When I arrived at school the next day, my classmates were still the same as usual, and the principal at the school gate was also the same.

It was as if the incident of the math teacher jumping off the building in the middle of the intersection had never happened.

Doudou was very sure that the person who fell down was indeed the math teacher - and after him and a woven bag of waste, no other people or objects fell from the sky.

Last night, Doudou was glued to the TV, playing Phantasy Star IV on MD while adjusting the radio station and waiting for the news report about someone jumping off a building at an intersection. This prevented Doudou from doing his homework properly.
In the end, I didn’t finish my homework and didn’t get the news; even the morning’s Mong Cai Daily didn’t have any news about the strange jumping incident.

However, Ruan Jingbo still stayed in the classroom, with flies swarming around the ham bread in the drawer; and his classmates seemed to be used to it.

Today, he once again, guilt-ridden, grabbed the homework book from Ai Xi's desk and hurriedly copied down the answers. He wasn't even in the mood to talk about the math teacher, let alone Ruan Jingbo, who was still acting like a statue.

"Ah, you bought some taro king to eat today."

In addition to her homework book, Ai Xi was also holding a bag of hot breakfast in her hand - she came early again today.

Ai Xi circled around the motionless Ruan Jingbo twice, looked at him for a while, and then walked back.

She lifted the plastic bag, twisted it, and tied it in a knot. The steam condensed into beads of water on the inside of the bag:

"Brought it for you."

Doudou wrote furiously, then shook his head. Eating in the morning was a major waste of time, reducing the efficiency of copying homework.
"No, no, I don't want to eat breakfast."

Click!

The plastic shell of the ballpoint pen shattered in Doudou's hand; so he took out a new one from his pen bag and continued copying.

Ai Xi casually stuffed the broken ballpoint pen into the drawer, held the plastic bag in front of his face, and carefully examined the triangular purple head of the Taro King:

"I know. Are you free at noon? If you're fine, let's go somewhere after school. I found something interesting—I found it last night."

Doudou finally finished copying every answer and let out a long breath:

"Ah, aren't you going to eat lunch?"

Ai Xi stuffed the plastic bag of fried taro cakes into Doudou's drawer, raised her elbow and nudged him, her face full of mystery:

"Let's have this Taro King for lunch. Let me tell you, I don't know how to describe this brand of Taro King: it's definitely something you've never seen before."

She frowned and repeated:
"Absolutely not."
-
The time after school is always much more lively than the time before school; the emotions contained in the noise are also different.

On the playground, the ball hit the basketball hoop, someone grabbed a volleyball and tried to slam dunk, and there was the sound of bicycle bells ringing continuously.

The students chirped like a flock of birds in the midday heat; the air was filled with the smell of vegetables.

The utility room is in a corner deep in the corridor of the mezzanine floor of the teaching building, like a small cubicle: during the morning school hours, no one usually comes here, as it is in the opposite direction of the school gate.

Ai Xi was sneaking around the utility room before opening it. He peered around for a while, making sure no teacher or other students had noticed.

Bang! She opened the iron door.

A dozen or so heads, their faces covered in sweat, turned around in unison:

[Huh?! So many people? ?]

Doudou could recognize that these were all familiar faces from the same grade as him, but none of them were in his class.

They were both men and women, filling the small storage room to the brim - when the iron door opened, a heat wave mixed with the smell of sweat, moisture and mildew rushed in from the storage room.

There were no lights on inside, and every face was vaguely visible; some people carried flashlights, beams of light illuminating the fluffy dust:

"Newbie! From Class 3. Ai Xi has brought the newbie here."

"Oh, that handsome guy from Class 3."

"Great! I saw him in the cafeteria. He looks very handsome in his raincoat."

If it was whispering, then in this utility room, there was clearly no privacy at all—
Doudou understood that they were expressing their compliments in a shy way: This is quite embarrassing.

It was just because they were too close together and the light from the flashlight was shaking, making them look like some kind of hybrid monster with multiple heads and bodies; it gave the compliment an inexplicable atmosphere.

The whispering continued for a while; the students were all huddled together and had no intention of coming out of the cannery.

Ai Xi patted Dou Dou's shoulder and squeezed into the small can-like room with him.

Once inside, the smell of paint mixed with rat droppings became even stronger—I really don't know how these students could stand it. Someone curled up their arms, squeezing out a little space to reach for DouDou; but their head was completely hidden behind the other clumps of torsos and shoulders.

"Welcome, very welcome, classmate."

Doudou placed his hand on the palm that was covered in sweat due to the heat, then put it back.

"Is this some kind of club? Do I have to pay dues?"

A low laugh spread out--
“He has such a great sense of humor!”

"If I had known this, I would have spoken to him earlier. I thought he was a girl."

"Don't be nervous, just follow what we say."

Doudou withdrew his hand and chuckled in agreement:
Everyone was very enthusiastic, but it was a little awkward.

Boom!
Ai Xi yanked the door shut—the iron gate slammed shut behind them again, cutting off the midday light.

"Everyone, be quiet! There's still half an hour left before lunch break and roll call. Let's get started."

Her voice was cold, and it caused a small echo in the utility room - the low hum caused by whispers disappeared.

The utility room was plunged into near-darkness. Doudou scanned the faces and carefully counted the number of people.

Including myself and Ai Xi, there were a total of seventeen students crowded here.

"Three, two, one, raise your hands!"

A voice shouted from the corner: Everyone raised their arms in unison - including Doudou, who knew what to do when he saw the muscles in Ai Xi's shoulders and back tense - and put them together, touching their palms.

They seemed to have formed a triangular pile of firewood with their arms.

The students standing in the middle stretched their hands vertically upwards, and the angles of their positions became more and more inclined as they moved to the outside; the hot steam from their breath rose, making the storage room even more stuffy.

"Start! Shout together!"

Another voice rang out. It was a petite girl standing at the edge. Doudou could see her eyes were wide open; they almost popped out and fell to the ground in her high-pitched roar:
"We are—friends of the Taro King!"

Some sporadic roars were a beat slower, and they were hoarse:

"Friends of the Taro King!"

Doudou was mixed in, feeling a little awkward:
"what?"

The shouts of the crowd were difficult to understand, but their passion was comparable to the entrance of a sports event; after one shout, they fell into silence.

After waiting for a while, nothing strange happened. No one spoke, only the intermittent gasps of everyone:
Squeak!

Doudou turned his head and looked around: the mouse in the corner of the utility room was startled and was running along the crack in the wall.
But the mouse suddenly disappeared halfway through its run.

【Eh? 】

Doudou wanted to raise his hand and point out the missing mouse to Ai Xi:
But the utility room seemed even hotter.

The heat was so intense that the air became distorted and the walls began to melt; the cement slid down drop by drop.

This is not a metaphor - Doudou can see that the gray-white water droplets are increasing in number; until they become small streams and slide into the cracks in the wall.

The crowded figures around him also became blurred in the steam; Doudou raised his hand to his face, but he could not make out the lines on his palm.
There was a crash.

The walls completely melted into mud and fell to the ground; the utility room was missing its walls, like an opened cardboard box.
Outside the room lay an endless darkness, thick and pitch black, like closing your eyes in the dead of night; not a single light could penetrate from outside.

Even Doudou, who could see at night, could not see a single thing in his field of vision.
-
When the walls fade away——
Snapped.

The sound was faint, as if someone had pressed the channel change button on the remote control.

And the surroundings lit up in an instant:

Sunlight poured in from nowhere, and Doudou found himself standing in a completely new place—
The classmates in school uniforms around him had disappeared, replaced by a group of "crystal people" with glowing and fluorescent bodies and polygonal torsos and limbs.

"Yeah! It worked this time too!"

Ping ping ping ping.
The glittering silhouettes lowered their hands and began to clap and cheer; the sound of the collision was very crisp.

Doudou found that they were still the same classmates: their height, body shape and general outline were the same as before, except that they were covered with a layer of frosted glass.

There is a mirror embedded on the top of the crystal-like body; a long handle and a round mirror surface.

Doudou turned his head and happened to see [Ai Xi] beside him——
The reason why he could recognize it was because there was a photo sticker on the smooth mirror, which was Ai Xi's face.

The edges of the sticker were charred and uneven, as if it had been burned, with gray debris on it. The woman inside was frowning, and it was unclear what she was thinking.

The body structures of other students are roughly the same, the only difference is the decoration on the mirror--
Not all of them are like Ai Xi's photo albums:
There were also stacks of Polaroid photos, cartoon-style quick sketches sold for two yuan a day on the street, family photos with all other family members cut out except for the person in the photo, simple facial features drawn with crayons, and blurry outlines pieced together from butterfly specimens and transparent tape.
Every object that carries a "face" is completely different.

(End of this chapter)