Miss Red Lips appeared like a ghost, slapped Su Yubai until he spun like a top, blood spraying out in a rush, and poor Ning Wang never dared to secretly study behind others’ backs again—nothing of the sort happened.
Su Yubai looked around. The stairwell was quiet and peaceful, Ning Wang cooperatively held his breath, and only the little puppet’s footsteps gradually faded into the distance. He had undoubtedly violated the taboo set by Red Lips, but that stalker had not come out to cause trouble.
Was the female clothing unexpectedly effective? Or was it…
“Ding.”
A QQ notification sound rang out cheerfully. Su Yubai took out his phone from the hidden pocket of the pleated skirt. He clearly remembered that he had muted it.
A stranger had sent him a message.
The stranger’s avatar was a solid red, like blood or a bride’s veil, and the ID was also a string of garbled characters. The message she sent had no text, only a picture that seemed to have been taken on a tidal flat.
At first glance it was just a landscape photo, but Su Yubai quickly saw a small distant figure, a woman wearing a wedding dress.
There was no one else on the nighttime tidal flat. The woman stood alone between the mud and the ocean, her slender figure with her back to the camera.
The pure white lace skirt hem was slightly raised, her hands placed in front of her chest as if praying… her severed head hung tilted on her shoulder, and dirty blood had stained a large area of her chest red.
Su Yubai felt a pang of sympathy. This was the terrifying aspect of consumerism. Even a weird entity like Miss Red Lips had started checking in and taking photos at scenic spots. Speaking of which, this was the abandoned embankment to the east, right? It used to be a clam farm, but it had been abandoned decades ago due to environmental pollution. The only scenery was smelly clam shells and a beach full of black mud.
“What’s wrong?” Ning Wang looked at the suddenly stopped Su Yubai. “Weren’t we going to chase the puppet?”
“I’ll explain to you later. For now, do as I say,” Su Yubai took out another glass bottle and tossed it to Ning Wang. It also contained a lock of broken hair. “Catch.”
Ning Wang confusedly caught the small bottle. “Whose hair is this?”
“Mine.” Su Yubai answered truthfully.
Ning Wang’s wrist twitched, and he almost dropped the small bottle. Su Yubai revealed a mischievous smile. Oh my, are you that happy just from getting a beautiful girl’s (?) hair?
“…Why give it to me?” Ning Wang asked.
“Because next I might fall into a state where I can’t move freely, such as crawling around on all fours, opening a window to do a leap of faith, or hugging you and singing happy birthday or something,” Su Yubai shook the phone at Ning Wang, signaling him to come look, “anyway, if that kind of thing really happens—”
“Ding.”
The notification sound rang again. The stranger with the blood-red avatar sent a second message, still a photo, but the background had changed to a street.
The woman in the wedding dress was a bit closer to the screen. She had her back to the camera, facing a red-brick white-tile foreign-style building. Su Yubai recognized it as Guiyu Building. Guiyu Building was also to the east of the school. If coming from the abandoned embankment toward the school, one would very likely pass by there.
Wait, this direction…
“Ding ding ding—”
The notification sound suddenly rang continuously without end, a bit like the famous scene from Breaking Bad season four. Photo after photo surged out of the screen like boiling bubbles, all of them Miss Red Lips checking in at various scenic spots.
In the third photo she stood in the seafood wholesale market, in the fourth she stood in front of the cinema not far from the school, in the fifth she stood at the gate of Dan’ao No. 2 High School, and with each photo she got a bit closer to the camera.
The latest photo was almost completely black, with only a small bright little square in the upper diagonal. The dim light illuminated the gray-white stairs and the dark blue pleated skirt. That was Su Yubai’s phone screen glowing.
The photo had been taken in the stairwell.
Ning Wang reacted faster than Su Yubai. He immediately turned his head to look below the stairs, and his expression suddenly became as pale as paper.
His gaze locked onto a certain foreign object, then rapidly moved upward. Urgent footsteps accompanied Ning Wang’s gaze as they approached at high speed, and a rotten, damp, fishy smell suddenly blew Su Yubai’s hair.
Then, a huge shadow reached out above his head, shading the steps in front of him into a dark color like the shade of a tree.
The stairwell quieted down at this moment, and the soft rustling of swaying leaves drifted over from afar. Ning Wang stood frozen in place, dazedly looking up at the girl and the monster behind the girl. The world once again lifted its secret veil for him, revealing a dangerous and beautiful face.
Su Yubai had no time to take care of the honor student’s confused feelings. He reached out and snapped his fingers beside his ear, the sound crisp like a whistle. Ning Wang suddenly came back to his senses, and his gaze toward the girl changed from half-believing to full of trust.
“I told you not to stay, right? If you go back and have nightmares, don’t blame me,” Su Yubai said softly. “Now, pretend you didn’t see anything, put away the glass bottle, then slowly walk down the stairs, and go drink at a wedding banquet—tch.”
Su Yubai tsked his tongue unhappily. He was a glorious lifelong single pure yang body, a hundred and eight thousand li away from wedding banquets. Miss Red Lips had altered his words. This guy intended to influence his thoughts and mold him into another person like kneading clay.
To resist this kind of spiritual pollution, one needed a very strong obsession with the shape of the “self.” To put it bluntly, the more narcissistic and confident one was, the safer one would be, but Su Yubai happened to have no good feelings toward himself.
This damn spiritual constitution was useless except for sounding cool. Every few days he had to set up a bunch of weird rituals like today to resist evil spirits, which had always caused him to be alienated and teased as a super-nuked chuunibyou. Sometimes he even hurt people who kindly approached him, and even had to have his mom and dad apologize on his behalf… he wished he could abandon the “self” and switch to a plain and ordinary identity.
In other words, Red Lips wanting to brainwash and control Su Yubai was even easier than an uncle hypnotizing the heroine in a thin book.
Su Yubai picked up the phone and opened the notepad, quickly typing out the words he wanted to say, but before he could show Ning Wang, the typed characters all uniformly turned into “囍” one after another. He then bit his fingertip intending to write on the wall, but two cold and damp hands suddenly crossed over his cheeks and gently hugged his neck.
His limbs and body immediately and expectedly lost all strength, as if he had become a puppet for others to manipulate at will.
Su Yubai smiled helplessly. There was even sensory shielding and forced love… eh, this was not the time for jokes.
“Glass bottle, go downstairs, and then?” Ning Wang was still waiting for instructions, beads of sweat covering his forehead. “Then what should I do?”
“Don’t do anything anymore. Go home.” Su Yubai sighed softly.
Ning Wang was stunned for a moment, then looked up behind the unfamiliar girl. “What are you saying—”
“I’m telling you to go home quickly,” Su Yubai calmly interrupted him. “Drink a cup of hot milk before sleeping, or do a few more of your favorite Olympiad math problems. Remember clearly that you are yourself, and forget everything you saw and heard tonight.
“Forget it completely, otherwise it might be your turn next.”
At least this passage had not been altered. Ning Wang was silent for a moment, then a strange light suddenly appeared in his eyes. After that he turned and went downstairs, the urgent and flustered footsteps fading into the distance and disappearing. Only Su Yubai was left in the corridor.
Su Yubai smiled lightly. Honor students were obedient.
He closed his eyes, intending to think of last words while his body and head were still connected, but Miss Red Lips actually suddenly released him. For a few seconds, he even thought she had looked down on him and left. But the teaching building’s broadcast immediately sounded hoarsely, playing a intermittent wedding march.
His body immediately began to move comically, turning in a crooked manner like a puppet controlled by a beginner, slowly walking into the seventh-floor corridor and arriving at the classroom of Senior Year Class Five.
Forty desks were neatly arranged in the classroom, piled with senior year textbooks, test papers, and stationery. Behind the desks sat dozens of crudely pasted paper figures dressed in formal attire.
The male paper figures had energetic blue khaki uniforms drawn on them, the favorite of elders when attending weddings. The female paper figures had festive red cotton-padded jackets drawn on them, with exaggerated smiles stretching to their ears on their faces.
Several mostly rotten corpses were mixed among the paper figures, still wearing dirty school uniforms, all their necks broken into strange shapes. They and the paper figures looked up at the podium together, their damaged faces also laughing heartily, as if welcoming Su Yubai to join their ranks.
No humans could be seen on the podium either. There was only a simple cream cake, two rusty white copper rings stuck with algae, and Miss Red Lips in full formal attire standing there.
She stood obediently on the left side of the podium, her twisted tall figure facing Su Yubai, her face still wearing that ecstatic expression as if newly married, quiet as a strange stone sculpture… but stone sculptures did not move, yet her empty eye sockets were rotating and moving following Su Yubai.
Su Yubai immediately understood this bride’s intention.
In order to pierce through his female clothing defense, she intended to force him to play the role of the groom that only a male could take on… as long as he put on the ring, his life as “Su Yubai” would completely end. From then on he would either exist as Miss Red Lips’ husband, or be played with and manipulated by Red Lips like the several corpses below the stage.
However, there were many things that only a male could do. Why specifically a wedding? And why a Western-style wedding? Why was there algae stuck on the rings?
…Eh, considering these things at this point was meaningless. Su Yubai lowered his head a bit gloomily. Mom, I’m sorry. My skills were insufficient. I didn’t even make it to Dad’s age.
He uncontrollably walked up to the podium, stopped in front of Miss Red Lips, and slowly picked up the ring. The moment it was put on the ring finger, the rusty old ring suddenly became as bright and new as if polished, the intermittent wedding march suddenly became melodious and beautiful, and Su Yubai’s gloomy mood also instantly became extremely refreshed, floating as if on clouds.
He looked down in surprise and found that he had changed into a men’s suit with a boutonniere, looking exactly like a happy groom.
No, why be surprised? Today was originally his wedding.
He collected his inexplicable mood and raised his head again. The bride wearing a pure white wedding dress was standing in front of him, her powdered face bright and her black hair like a waterfall—
“The solitary, unknown female classmate who always wears male clothes on ordinary days! I remember you now, wake up quickly!”
Ning Wang’s voice exploded behind him. A puppet with hair tied on it flew through the air and smashed hard onto the bride’s face, making a muffled sound of hitting rotten meat. The bride’s pretty face caved in like clay and changed back into the city-defacing Miss Red Lips.
All the illusions disappeared in an instant. Su Yubai suddenly fell from the clouds, only feeling his consciousness abruptly dragged back into the heavy body… even the cool wind blew evenly between his thighs again, making her let out a small “Eek” for a moment, completely failing to use a fake voice in time.
She turned her head in surprise and happened to meet Ning Wang’s eyes at the classroom door.
She had no time to care whether she had been exposed. While pulling off the ring and stuffing it into the glass bottle to seal it, she opened her legs and ran wildly with large strides!
“Thanks for waking me up! But there was no need to emphasize how bad my popularity is!”
“Didn’t you tell me to remember clearly who I am? I just thought emphasizing your identity a bit should help you wake up,” Ning Wang answered breathlessly. “Also, I wrapped the hair you gave me onto the puppet. I guessed that way I could make a substitute to ward off disaster for you—”
“Full marks on reading comprehension! But today’s test isn’t only Chinese!” The girl grabbed the boy’s wrist in one go. “Alright, stop standing there and run!”