Puzzle Madness

Chapter 98: Maximum Surprise

[Wow, the movements are a bit alien. So cool!]

If I hadn't been sharp enough to see the nameplate on Ruan Jingbo's schoolbag, I would have thought Sadako had crawled out of "The Ring" to attend morning reading:
How could I not have had any impression of her before? This classmate is obviously very cool!

Tap-tap--
Doudou walked around the stunned classmates, walked quickly to the front row, and carefully observed the girl who had just crawled into the classroom.
-
Ruan Jingbo was still spinning his forearm like a fan; after a while, he slammed it heavily on the concrete floor.

呲味——
The right forearm dragged the body and moved slightly forward; the other hands and feet rubbed against the ground, making strange noises.

Although its posture resembles that of a giant locust, it does not have the locust's movement ability at all.

[Are you practicing the Locust Pictographic Fist?]

Doudou quickly raised his arms, placed his hands on his chest and patted them to express encouragement and appreciation:

"That's amazing! Very difficult."

No one agreed with him.

Most of the students were stunned or standing there shaking; the rest had already slipped out of the classroom, and even in the toilet, the sound of buckets being overturned when someone slipped could be heard.

The only sounds in the classroom were Dou Dou's lonely applause and Zhang Yusheng's singing; even the noise of people writing, drawing, and copying homework had disappeared.

Some people backed away until their school uniforms stuck to the blackboard at the back of the classroom, blurring the chalk drawings; some people shrank under their desks without saying a word, with only their eyes still protruding above like a submarine.

But no one spoke except Doudou.

Doudou looked around—even Ai Xi was stunned in her seat, and she had knocked the fried taro cakes off the table.

【Why are you all so scared?! 】

At this moment, he finally realized:

[So she wasn't like this last semester? I was wondering why I couldn't remember.]

But for Doudou, this is very reasonable——
【That's normal, we've already had our summer vacation.】

Because that's what summer in middle school was like. Every July and August was like a time travel capsule:

Some students will grow rapidly during the summer vacation, becoming half a head taller, some will become dark and strong after soaking in the swimming pool, and more people will begin to cross the vague boundary of adolescence and become more like adults.

It seems that many boys and girls want to break out of their cocoons and become butterflies in the summer and transform into a brand new self.

In Doudou's eyes, his classmate, Ruan Jingbo, was probably the same; and he was doing quite well:

[I think I've been completely transformed during the summer vacation. I'm going to give my classmates a surprise!]

Even though Ruan Jingbo was hunched in this weird posture, Doudou could still see that she was much taller than the boys; her limbs were strangely slender, making Doudou guess that she was a member of the school women's basketball team or the women's volleyball team.

【Maybe he's the star player? 】

After all, there are very few people on campus who can touch the desk with their elbows in this position; their arm span is comparable to that of Michael Jordan on TV or Liu Xuande in picture books. You can tell at a glance that they are extraordinary.

pat.

There was another crisp sound, which shook the whole class and made the tables and chairs creak.

His forearm finally stopped rotating, and Ruan Jingbo's palm slapped against the classroom's cement floor, making a crackling sound. At the same time, one of his lower legs began to rotate around his knee.

There were a lot of people blocking the front door of the class, and the number was increasing - these were students who arrived after Ruan Jingbo.

At the same time, they all stopped and piled up until they blocked the corridor.

Even though there was enough space behind Ruan Jingbo for several people to move back and forth, no student was willing to enter the classroom.
-
Some people still took action.

To the sound of "My Future Is Not a Dream", Ai Xi strode up to the podium and took out the floppy disk containing the answers from the terminal; he then slapped the speaker on the wall and pulled out Zhang Yusheng's tape.

Then she walked to Ruan Jingbo's seat, shook the modified school uniform and put it on the table.

The movements are smooth and flowing——
No students complained about the answers to the homework being turned off:
Anyway, looking at the current situation, probably no one is interested in continuing to copy summer homework.

Unlike Doudou, who was not at all shocked, Ai Xi adjusted her mindset quickly; but she also had no intention of getting involved in this strange incident.

Before the morning reading bell rang, Ruan Jingbo finally crawled to his seat.

It's like the game of "One, Two, Three, Stupid" is finally over -
The students who were originally blocking the door and those who had rushed out of the classroom in a panic, all rushed in from the front and back doors and took their seats.

The silence was broken again, and the classroom was filled with chatter again:

For a moment, there was laughter and playfulness, and the stationery clattered against the table; it was as if the horrific incident just now had never happened.

Doudou's seat was in front of Ruan Jingbo's left: morning reading was about to start, so he didn't run over to talk to him.

This was a fairly good vantage point; although the other students in the class had deliberately looked away from this direction. After carefully examining Ruan Jingbo's face several times, Dou Dou realized that she was indeed her classmate.
Even though she was extremely terrifying at the moment, Doudou still found some impressions deep in his mind:
He could see Ruan Jingbo's eyes were wide open, staring forward - a few strands of hair hanging from her bangs were stuck right on the whites of her eyes which were covered with bloodshot, but her eyelids showed no intention of closing at all.

Her schoolbag was still hanging on her chest, and she seemed to have no intention of taking out her textbooks and homework; the school uniform that Ai Xi had drawn was still placed on the table.

His mouth was wide open, but his lips were drawn inward, pressing against his teeth; he made a funny expression - perhaps Doudou was the only one who found it funny.

His hands were folded in a strange manner, as if he wanted to shrink them as close to his body as possible: his right hand was curled up like a chicken claw, folded back and pressed against his shoulder blade; his left hand went around his ribs and tightly wrapped around his waist.

Her deskmate was holding the textbook high up to cover his face; his fingers were trembling as he dug into the book cover, making crackling sounds.

Ruan Jingbo maintained this posture, like those street performers disguised as sculptures on TV shows.

[There's definitely a change! Wasn't she this quiet last semester?]
-
"Wow, it seems like the start of school isn't so boring after all. My classmates are all making progress and are unwilling to be ordinary."

After turning around, he patted Ai Xi, who was busy putting money into his schoolbag, and said:

"She wasn't like this before, was she? But, eh. The other people's reactions are weird too."

"Speaking of being surprised and scared, no one went to find the teacher!"

"If it's not a big deal, someone just fell down in the toilet out of fright."

"She didn't have the Dean with her when she came in. She couldn't have climbed over the wall into the school, could she?"

Frowning, Ai Xi opened her bulging pencil case, shook all the stationery inside onto the table, and then stuffed it in one by one:
"Yes, he was still walking normally at the end of last semester. When he called me earlier, it didn't sound like anything unusual."

"School starts like this—what weird thing could have happened?"

She tidied her pencil case, patted it twice, and began to answer Doudou's questions one by one:

"But, let's leave this for later study."

"You're right, Doudou. The other students' reactions are indeed strange. Jingbo looks like he's about to turn into the Licker from Resident Evil, except he can't climb walls. No matter how you think about it, someone should have been frightened to the point of incontinence."

"The most important thing is that no one tried to intervene, no one tried to control the situation; no one asked for help."

"It's like there's a ceiling to the level of shock, and no matter how scary it is, it won't exceed the level of the weird things happening at school. So everyone's tolerance is so high, almost as high as in cartoons."

Ai Xi raised his palm and pressed the huge scar on his face:

"Me too; it's a very subtle experience."

"I felt it myself: it was about as stuck as if she had brought a live mouse to play with and was swinging it around by the tail?"

"It was scary, but not to the point of running away. And I didn't need to go to the teacher for help. That's kind of how I felt."

Doudou picked up the fried taro cake that had fallen on the ground, stuffed it into his mouth, and swallowed it without chewing.
"Eh—really? That must be my obsession: it makes my classmates and teachers more resilient and mentally stronger? What's the word for that?"

"Threshold? Yes, threshold. Their thresholds have all become higher; this might really be part of my superpower."

Ai Xi took out a napkin from his school uniform pocket, took one out and handed it to Doudou:

"Well, if I hadn't already guessed this, I might not have felt it. At most, I just felt it was a little strange."

"It's so scary, and the whole scene didn't collapse: that's definitely not right. Last semester, during military training, someone broke their leg, and the bone was exposed. It scared half the class and made them cry—"

[Ring, ring, ring, ring—]
Before Doudou could answer, the morning reading bell rang.

He quickly sat up straight, grabbing the thick stack of textbooks in his hands:

"Let's do our morning reading first; we can figure it out later!"

Doudou’s new semester began like this.
-
During the radio gymnastics after two classes, Ruan Jingbo did not go downstairs to do the exercises - in fact, she had not moved since she climbed onto her seat.

After the radio gymnastics ended, Doudou's homeroom teacher followed the crowd up:
He and his math teacher each covered their mouths and whispered for a long time; their facial features were twisted and they looked as if they were suffering from constipation.

If their eyes were not fixed on the motionless Ruan Jingbo, Dou Dou would have thought they were sharing the secret of curing stomachache.

But Ruan Jingbo's parents did not come to the school to take her home.

During math class, a crumpled paper ball passed from the back row to Doudou's hand, instantly waking him up from his drowsiness.

The first line reads:

[Ruan Jingbo is an alien. Be careful not to be alone with her.]
The second line is in a different handwriting, with a horizontal line crossing out the first line:

[Jingbo has been replaced by an alien. This is fake. (The teacher can't believe it either. He might be an alien too.)]
This isn't just for him.
Because there are three words written at the end: "Pass it on to the future."

(End of this chapter)