Ch3 - Stationery Box

Xu Wang’s original plan was to distract them with another topic so that his stupidity from the day before wouldn’t be brought up again, but then the bizarre events of the last two days seemed to creep up on their conversation.

The string of questions Xu Wang popped out one after another like firecrackers seemed to make Wu Sheng lose his bearing. All he could do was shake his head helplessly. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have dressed so casually at our reunion yesterday. I’d at least have gone for something more formal, to show my respect to a former classmate.”

“Oh, stop bullshitting. You were straight up wearing pyjamas, please.” Xu Wang found that although ten years had passed, neither of them had changed much. The man before him still possessed the inane desire to put on a front at all costs, while he himself could hardly suppress the instinctive desire to ridicule the whole situation.

Suddenly, a deliberate cough sounded nearby, breaking the “peaceful” atmosphere between the two men. “Are the two of us literally invisible?”

Xu Wang jumped, all at once noticing that there were two additional people standing behind Wu Sheng. A middle-aged man in his forties, and a boy who seemed in his early twenties. The older man had a buzz cut and a sallow, thin face that bore no expression. His hands were stuck in his pockets, agitation brimming in his eyes. The younger man had short hair and a round, fresh-looking face. He was about Xu Wang’s height, and handsome, with an honest air of simplicity. When Xu Wang met his eyes, his face relaxed instantly into a friendly smile, his eyes turning into half-moons. It was trendy these days to label men into different categories; this boy was definitely the epitome of a “puppy boy,” as they called it.

“You guys… have been here the whole time?” Xu Wang hadn’t noticed them at all.

The boy nodded. “Yup, yesterday too, we were there the whole time,” he answered cheerfully. “Except you refused to see us–”

“Hold up,” Xu Wang cut in, then gulped. “Yes… Yesterday?”

The boy rubbed his head, embarrassed. “Yeah, you were so into it, we felt awkward making our presence known,” he mumbled.

Xu Wang was speechless. He should be the one feeling awkward, what did a bystander have to feel embarrassed about?

Meanwhile, the young man seemed to have brought Wu Sheng back to his senses, who stepped forward and said, “Yesterday–”

“Yesterday you all fell for my charade, huh?” Xu Wang cut him off, smirking, a deviously satisfied expression on his face.

Wu Sheng stiffened, his composed gaze suddenly wavering.

Xu Wang turned to him, feigning a look of astonishment that was so real he figured it was worthy of a Palme d’Or or an Oscar. “Shit, don’t tell me you actually fell for it too, I was just kidding around with you yesterday!” He gave Wu Sheng a forceful slap across the shoulders, his familiar tone and mocking smile exactly the same as they had been back in the day–“Obviously I had to do something special for our special reunion to leave a strong impression.”

Wu Sheng stared at him for a long time before gradually lowering his eyes.

Xu Wang knew Wu Sheng believed him. The clouds gathering in his face was proof of it; but the other man’s silence made his heart start pounding, because according to what Xu Wang remembered of him, Wu Sheng was not the type to take anything in silence, be it bullying or mocking. Whatever people threw at him, he always had more than a hundred comebacks waiting, and thus, seeing the light extinguished in his eyes made Xu Wang especially uneasy.

At long last, Wu Sheng let out a drawn-out sigh and bent down into a squat, head lowered, aimlessly drawing circles on the ground.

It made Xu Wang feel a tad guilty. After all, he was the one who’d confessed like an idiot, then took advantage of him, then taken it all back and made it out to be a joke. For all he knew, Wu Sheng was no longer the stubborn, snobbish boy from back in the day. Maybe time had softened him…

With that thought, Xu Wang felt his heart ache and immediately bent down, intending to make amends in a cajoling tone, “Actually… Fuck!!!”

A fist-sized snowball slid from the back of his neck straight into his clothing, making him screech from the bone-chilling iciness piercing his skin. The tediously accumulated snowball shattered instantly into countless grains of snow, passionately kissing every inch of skin on his back.

The perpetrator shook the melted snow off his hands and smiled at Xu Wang, feeling refreshed.

“Wu Sheng, are you eight?!” Xu Wang yelled, gnashing his teeth, his own childish “something special for the reunion” escapade completely forgotten. He lifted up the hem of his clothing and shook, trying to get the snow on his back to fall out. He was so intent on dealing with the snow that he forgot about the wound on his shoulder; one excessive move later, he let out a hiss of pain, sucking in a mouthful of cold air.

“What’s wrong?” Wu Sheng stood up, his delight in Xu Wang’s misfortune vanishing instantly, replaced by a touch of concern in his furrowed brows.

Xu Wang pulled the collar of his clothing down irritably, revealing the gauze that covered his shoulder.

Immediately connecting the dots, Wu Sheng asked, “The bear from yesterday?”

“What do you think? I’m already so fucked up and you had to throw a snowball at me! Do you even have a conscience?” Xu Wang grit his teeth, vexed. In truth, the stinging of his wound had already passed — he was just pissed that he’d fallen for such a childish ploy from Wu Sheng.

“Seeing as how you appear full of middle qi, your wound probably isn’t too bad.” Despite what he said, Wu Sheng still found it difficult to look at the gauze.

Xu Wang wasn’t in the mood to keep bickering with him. All he wanted to know now was: “What are we supposed to do now? Are there any other ways back to reality that don’t include getting attacked by a bear?”

Wu Sheng’s face became grim, his eyes solemn. He was the same as he used to be — As soon as it was time to get down to business, he immediately brushed all distractions from his mind and emitted an aura of extraordinary concentration.

“First of all, this isn’t a dream. You, me, and those two are all real, I’m sure we can all agree on that. Secondly, from the roster, it’s evident that the four of us make up a team. Thirdly, we currently don’t know what happens after we reach the designated coordinates, because after you disappeared yesterday, the three of us reached it, but nothing happened. I suspect that the entire team has to be there to trigger the next sequence of events or notification. Fourth–”

His speech was making Xu Wang’s head spin. He raised a hand in the air and asked, “Can I request time to find a notebook to write this all down?”

“There’s only one more thing,” Wu Sheng continued, unfazed. He lowered his head, looking into Xu Wang’s eyes. “Fourth, if you end up getting attacked by a bear again and struck back into reality, stay where you are and don’t move.”

“Why?”

“Because as a team, we have to meet in reality. Yesterday, Xiao Kuang and I drove around the entire city of Beijing looking for you. We nearly got lost on Xizhimen Bridge and couldn’t find our way back out.”

“Xiao Kuang?”

The young, clean-shaven man stuck his hand out with a hearty smile. “Kuang Jinxin.”

Xu Wang grasped his teammate’s hand promptly and introduced himself, “Xu Wang.” Then he turned back to Wu Sheng, to the issue at hand. “I’m really supposed to stay where I land without moving? It was the middle of an intersection and so awkward, with all those cars passing by…”

Wu Sheng frowned. “Don’t you want this to be over as soon as possible?”

“Of course!” Xu Wang responded without hesitation.

“Then stop complaining so much.”

“What I mean is, wouldn’t it be more efficient and reliable if I gave you my number right now?”

This time, Wu Sheng was the speechless one.

The other, older man, who had been silent up to this point and was standing with a sullen look on his face, finally lost his patience and kicked at the snow beneath his feet. “Say, can we get to work already? I don’t want to get dragged here every single night, I’m about to go bloody mad!”

His frustration was understandable. Anyone who got dragged randomly into a bizarre, fantastical place like this would feel similarly. Xu Wang was just about to console him and introduce himself, plus exchange contact information with his fellow teammates, when suddenly, his sixth sense sent a warning up his spine.

The air around them had gone so still that they could hear the landing of each individual snowflake that had been sent flying with the man’s kick.

Xu Wang looked about himself nervously, but before he could make heads or tails of the situation, someone pounced on him and he fell, the back of his head hitting the snow with a clunk. He stared up at Wu Sheng on top of him, unable to decide at the moment whether this was the start of something good or a calamity about to be brought down upon them.

The two men next to them didn’t need anyone to shove them down. They plunked down into the snow one after another as if they’d rehearsed it a million times before.

From his position, Xu Wang couldn’t see anything other than Wu Sheng, but he could certainly hear the nearing footfalls, as well as the low, animalistic rumbling sound coming from the black bear’s throat.

And there was more than one bear!

His entire body tensed up, not moving an inch. Above him, Wu Sheng suddenly grabbed his arm and tapped it twice with force.

A fierce gale started up amid the roaring of the bears. The sound of the wind was so loud that it even managed to cover the thunderous roars of the creatures.

Wu Sheng seemed prepared for all of this; without sparing a glance at the situation developing around him, he pulled Xu Wang up, tapping on his arm a third time.

This time, Xu Wang saw that Wu Sheng had clicked open one of the four choices in the menu — <Stationery Box>. It revealed a list of items similar to that of an inventory found in a game. He had no idea what Wu Sheng had chosen that cause the sudden gusts of wind, but the third item he’d tapped on bore the name of【Jingle Bells】.

As soon as he tapped on it, it disappeared, leaving <Stationery Box> completely empty. And then all of a sudden, four reindeer materialised on the ground pulling a sled lined with bells and lavishly decorated with Christmas garlands.

Yes, a sled materialised on the ground out of nowhere.

“Stop staring!” Wu Sheng jumped up and hopped onto the sled with expertise.

Xu Wang came back to his senses and scrambled up after him, settling himself into the sled. Following behind him were Kuang Jinxin and the sullen-faced man. The reindeer seemed to know as soon as all four of them were settled and started galloping off. The sled drifted over the snow like a ship at sea, sending torrents of snow and ice flying.

Xu Wang stared at the row of reindeer antlers in front of him, then commented from the depths of his heart, “I really don’t think anything else is going to surprise me.”

“Bro, I think you should take a look behind you.” prompted Kuang Jinxin from beside him, patting him on the shoulder.

He turned back. There was a great amount of distance between them and the bears now thanks to the galloping reindeer, but he could still see the “tornado” that was distracting the group of bears.

It made a spectacular scene, whirling and twisting with a whistling sound. The black bears pranced about the swirling winds in glee, a few occasional swipes even yielding something in return — amidst the sweeping gales were live, jumping fish.

Xu Wang turned back around, regretting the confident words he’d boasted earlier. “I’m sorry, I know nothing.”

Kuang Jinxin brightened with excitement at having finally found a receptive audience. “I was the same yesterday! When I saw the icon in the Stationery Box, I was like, what the heck is a ‘fish tornado’? And then it totally floored me. It’s a whole new world out there!”

“Fish... tornado?” The person who came up with that name would probably be a great person to talk about the meaning of life with.

Kuang Jinxin nodded enthusiastically. “Yup, it’s called ‘Fish Tornado’. I think that and ‘Jingle Bells’ are items that everyone who ends up here has in their Stationery Box. All three of us had them, although Wu-ge used his yesterday. When Sun-ge and I arrived back here today, ours were both gone, I don’t know why. Thankfully you still had yours.”

Xu Wang nodded, turning towards the man with the dark face with the information he’d just gleamed. He stuck out a hand in greeting. “Sun-ge?”

The other man started, still in a sullen state and unwilling to partake in such a trivial convention, but angry fists don’t hit smiling faces, and after a long bout of vacillation, he finally stuck his hand out reluctantly. “Sun Jiang.”

Xu Wang was about to respond when he suddenly spotted a dark shadow out of the corner of his eye. The bear paw came bearing down before he had even turned all the way to look.

He reacted too slowly — he could practically feel his eyelashes make contact with the tip of the bear’s claws, when suddenly someone yanked him by the nape of his neck and he fell to the bottom of the sled, allowing him to escape with his life by a literal hair’s breadth.

“Everyone move to the front!” Wu Sheng shouted to the rest of the team, letting go of the hand clinging to Xu Wang’s shirt collar.

In truth, everyone had already crawled forward even without his prompting. Kuang Jinxin was so far ahead that half his body was practically hanging off a reindeer’s arse.

The reindeer ran faster and faster, but the black bear kept up, not discouraged in the slightest, huffing and puffing behind them. What kind of bear even ran that fast? It was like a cheetah.

Xu Wang kept his head turned back and stared fixedly at this bear that had not been distracted by the fish tornado, watching it close some more distance between them, getting closer, and closer, until it pounced forward and both of its paws landed on the back of the sled!

He was going to go crazy.

What kind of stupid place was this? Who the hell dragged them here, and were they even licenced to run such dangerous activities?!