Dragon Raja 4; Chapter 107: Odin’s Shadow (4)

Dragon Raja 4

“Junior Sister! Junior Sister! Let’s talk this out! I know you and this guy are innocent, but helping him cover a bit won’t hurt, right?”

“I’m a hostage in a kidnapping case, and you want me to take the blame too?” Nono swung a beer bottle, almost hitting Finger on the head.

“You didn’t take the blame! Su Xiaoqian said, ‘Wow, Senior Sister is already quite old and still so fiery?’” Finger imitated Su Xiaoqian’s tone and exaggerated movements, swaying his hips and batting his eyelashes, acting like a playful diva.

“Quite old? I’m only one year older than her!”

“But she’s still single, and you’re about to become a lady of the aristocracy.”

“Luxury my foot!” Nono cursed angrily.

“I’m going for a walk by the shore,” Lu Mingfei stood up and headed along the floating bridge toward the sandbar.

He hadn’t walked far before Nono and Finger stopped their banter. Nono stared intensely into Finger’s eyes. “Do you realize what your discovery means for him?”

“It means he’s a true lunatic,” Finger sighed. “That Chu Zihang he talks about was probably pieced together from bits of his memories of Deer, his own high school experience, and Abbas. It’s like when we writers want to create the perfect woman: we take Su Xiaoqian’s beauty, Xia Mi’s cuteness, that Japanese girl’s long legs, add a bit of Chen Wenwen’s fragility, and then sprinkle in a touch of your quirkiness. Mix it all together, and voilà, a perfect woman!”

“Hold on, I only contribute a bit of quirkiness to this perfect woman?” Nono was stunned.

“Well, it wouldn’t be a big deal to leave out your quirkiness entirely, but since I already mentioned so many people, I felt a little bad not including you…”

“Let’s not get off track! Do you realize how big of a blow this would be to him? And you said it right in front of him!” Nono raised a beer bottle, pretending she was about to smash it over Finger’s head.

“I wanted to see how he’d react to hearing it,” Finger said, watching Lu Mingfei’s retreating figure. “But he suddenly seemed uninterested in it all.”

Finger pulled a tablet from his bag, opened a webpage, and slid it over to Nono.

It was the website of the local evening news, with a headline from years ago: “Fatal Traffic Accident on a Rainy Night, Vehicle Mysteriously Moved”.

The article vividly described a strange event. A student from Shilan Middle School with the last name Lu and his father had been traveling in an expensive Maybach during a typhoon. Both were killed in a traffic accident. Later, the wrecked Maybach was found in an abandoned field, its front end buried in a waterlogged rice paddy, nearly four kilometers from the nearest road. No tire tracks were found in the area. The experts’ explanation was that a small but powerful tornado during the storm had lifted the car from the highway and dropped it into the field. Lu’s father, Lu Tianming, had been interviewed, expressing how deeply this incident had hurt his family, especially his wife, whose mental state had become unstable. He urged the media not to press them too hard.

Nono closed the page with a serious expression. “Isn’t this exactly what Lu Mingfei described as Chu Zihang’s story? Is this Lu Tianming Su Xiaoyan’s husband? The father of that ‘Lu’ student?”

“Lu Tianming is Su Xiaoyan’s second husband. Her first was a man named Chu Tianjiao. She had a son with him, and after remarrying Lu Tianming, that son’s name was changed to Lu Mang in the household registry. Now, take a guess at what his original name was.”

“So you’ve actually found Chu Zihang?” Nono asked, her voice low.

Finger nodded slightly. “Lu Mingfei was both right and wrong. There was a Chu Zihang, but he died when he was fifteen.”

Finger tapped a few more times on the tablet, bringing up a photo. It was of a fifteen-year-old boy wearing a crisp school uniform, his face still bearing traces of youthful seriousness.

Lu Mingfei wandered aimlessly along the sandbar. Several girls gave him curious glances, drawn to his striking appearance, though he was casually chewing on a malt candy stick.

He understood why Nono and Finger had suddenly started arguing—their tactic to divert the conversation was crude and obvious. It wasn’t that he had lost interest in the matter, but that he was consumed by a greater fear. His mind was filled with the image of Odin standing on the Penrose stairs, holding the spear that symbolized fate. Compared to that, whether he was mentally ill didn’t seem to matter.

Lu Mingze had said that those who know the truth are the loneliest because they are aware of the inevitable outcome, yet must endure the unfolding of events. As Lu Mingfei gazed at Nono’s increasingly gaunt face, he deeply understood this sentiment. Only he knew that the countdown had begun. Nono’s life would almost certainly end, all her vitality and efforts reduced to nothing in the moment that spear was thrown. In Lu Mingze’s multiverse theory, a person’s existence was like a crumpled piece of paper—ready to be discarded at any moment, with no need for setup or explanation.

He once thought everything that happened on the highway was just a dream. Now, he desperately hoped it had been a dream, one from which he could wake up. Like a drowning man finally breathing fresh air again, the relief of survival would be overwhelming. Neither Nono nor Finger understood why he had broken down in the middle of the night, holding Nono and repeating, “You’re okay, you’re okay,” because he had spent the entire night dreaming of driving with Nono on that Penrose staircase, only to be overtaken again and again by the pursuing Gungnir.

But in reality, he couldn’t wake up. He didn’t dare share this secret with Nono or Finger. No one would believe him, and it would only cause more chaos.

He stopped walking and gazed at the lanterns floating on the lagoon, recalling, for some reason, the birthday he had spent with Nono at the mountain spring. When he found out it was her birthday and realized he had no gift, he had found a napkin in his pocket. He wanted to fold it into a small boat, write a few words of blessing on it, and gently push it toward her. His life had been as fragile as that paper boat, but Nono had thrown it into a storm. And after surviving that storm, it had taken the shape of a battleship.

“I invite you out for drinks, and here you are staring at river lanterns. Isn’t that something for girls?” A cold voice came from behind him. “They set those little boats afloat, hoping for blessings, right?”

Lu Mingfei turned around. Nono stood with her arms crossed, tilting her head as she looked at him, chewing on a malt candy stick.

“In this part of the world, the idea is that the farther your lantern floats, the more likely your wish will come true.”

Lu Mingfei only told half the truth. Most girls wrote the names of their crushes on the lanterns. This was something only girls did, perhaps because the flickering lanterns mirrored their own fluttering hearts.

“Want me to get you a lantern too?” Nono asked as she stood beside Lu Mingfei, gazing at the lake. “You could write your wish on it—like finding Chu Zihang or maybe what you’re really searching for is yourself. Is it necessary to place your hope on a paper boat? If you really wanted it to reach the other side of the lake safely, why not just swim across holding it yourself?”

Suddenly, the wind picked up, and the waves capsized the lanterns. The girls by the shore, who had been setting them afloat, stood up and sighed in frustration.

Lu Mingfei glanced at Nono. She never failed to hit the mark—this time with her “finding yourself” comment.

“I read a novel online once,” Lu Mingfei began softly. “It was about this guy working in a big city. Life was tough for him, and whenever he felt like he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d think, ‘If it gets too hard, I can always go back home. I can find an easy job there.’ He remembered his happiest time being in middle school. He had a best friend, they copied each other’s homework, gossiped about girls in class, and went to internet cafes to play games together. They’d scrape together money for beef noodles at their favorite place. There was also a girl who lived nearby, long hair, oval face—she was the class beauty. They often walked to and from school together, sometimes talking, sometimes silent for long stretches. He believed she liked him, and he liked her too, but he was too scared to confess.

“One day, after a big fight with his boss, he quit, canceled his lease, and went back home with a backpack. He thought his old friend would be thrilled to see him and take him out for dinner. If the girl hadn’t found a boyfriend yet, he’d finally confess. If she was married, well, he’d give her a red envelope and tell her he had always liked her. But when he called his friend, the guy said he had to work late and maybe they’d catch up later. The girl, however, brought some fruit over to see him. He realized then that she wasn’t as beautiful as he remembered—she had bad posture and freckles. He went through their old class photos and saw there were prettier girls than her. He waited for his friend’s call until 2 a.m., but it never came. Then, scrolling through his social media, he saw his friend had been out drinking with other people. His friend had probably forgotten to block him from seeing the post.

“He suddenly realized that he hadn’t really had such a carefree time in middle school. Their school had evening self-study sessions every night and constant mock exams. They rarely had time for games at internet cafes. He didn’t have any close friends either—the guy he thought was his best friend was just a boy who didn’t mind hanging out with anyone, and they weren’t as close as he imagined. The girl liked him, but she wasn’t the class beauty, and like him, she wasn’t good at talking to people. They had walked that long road together many times, but there were no ponds or meadows, just fields full of crooked trees. The past he remembered was just something he’d romanticized to comfort himself during his tough times in the city,” Lu Mingfei said. “Aren’t we all just living in the world of our own imagination? From the moment we open our eyes, none of us are truly objective.”

Nono shot him a cold glance. “You’re really annoying, you know that? Didn’t I already answer this for you back in the cellar? Why are you still stuck on this?”

“I… I never told you this before, did I?” Lu Mingfei’s melancholic mood quickly deflated. “Actually… I just made up the story. I didn’t want to admit that, so I said I read it online…”