Dragon Raja; Chapter 11: Cassell’s Gate (9)

Dragon Raja

“What kind of college is this! They’re messing with us!” Su Xiaoqian exclaimed before turning to leave.

Lu Mingfei and Chen Wenwen exchanged confused glances. “The Little Fairy” had lasted even shorter than Liu Miaomiao; she probably only held out for five minutes.

It didn’t seem like the interview was taking place inside; it felt more like a knife practice, where they were cutting people off faster and faster. Zhao Menghua, who was supposed to be the best in spoken English in their senior year, didn’t even last three minutes before being sent out, his expression blank.

“Chen Wenwen,” Ye Sheng called.

“Good luck!” Lu Mingfei whispered loudly from behind Chen Wenwen.

Chen Wenwen turned to look at him and nodded gently.

Time passed second by second, and everyone outside remained silent. Lu Mingfei could hear his own heart racing. He felt a bit scared, fearing that when Chen Wenwen came out, she would also have a disappointed expression.

Chen Wenwen lasted fifteen minutes. When she came out, her face showed no expression, and she kept her head down, looking at her toes.

“How did it go?” Lu Mingfei leaned in closer.

Chen Wenwen hesitated for a moment, then quietly waved at him, “They asked…”

Lu Mingfei was filled with joy and was about to lean in closer to listen when he heard Ye Sheng call, “Lu Mingfei.”

Lu Mingfei was taken aback, turning to see Ye Sheng waving at him. “Lu Mingfei, you’re next.”

Strange; he had never met Ye Sheng before. Could he have recognized him just from the two-inch photo on the application form sent to the University of Chicago? Lu Mingfei felt a bit curious.

He followed Ye Sheng into the conference room. The room was empty, with a large conference table that could seat dozens, but only a sweet-looking girl was sitting there, wearing the same uniform as Ye Sheng, though hers was a skirt suit, with a rose-red lace scarf at the collar.

“I’m Sakatoku Aki, also one of the examiners,” the girl stood up and bowed to Lu Mingfei in a typical Japanese manner.

“I bow,” Lu Mingfei thoughtlessly replied, returning the gesture.

Having been a homebody for so many years, playing countless PS games and watching countless anime, he knew a bit of Japanese.

“おはよう (Good morning).” Aki giggled softly, covering her mouth and correcting Lu Mingfei’s Henan-accented Japanese. Her smile felt sisterly and warm.

It seemed like he made a good first impression on the examiner, and Lu Mingfei felt a surge of happiness.

Ye Sheng sat next to Aki, opened his notebook, and looked at Lu Mingfei. “Let’s get started.”

Lu Mingfei nodded and took a deep breath, channeling all his energy! He had practiced all night, and now it was time to show what he had learned!

“Do you believe in aliens?” Aki asked gently.

Lu Mingfei was stunned for a moment, then felt… as if a nuclear bomb had exploded in his head… with a mushroom cloud spreading everywhere, leaving nothing else.

What was going on? The first question should have been “Please introduce yourself” or “Why do you want to apply to our school?”!

The answer to the first question was supposed to be, “My name is Mingfei Lu, a Chinese high school student. I like online computer games and pandas…”

The second question’s answer was, “The great faculty is the key reason, and your college has a very good research atmosphere…”

These answers had been polished by Lao Tang’s enthusiastic help and then memorized by Lu Mingfei after going over them seventy or eighty times.

But this… what was with the aliens?

All his preparation… was utterly useless!

Lu Mingfei’s eyes widened like saucers as his head slowly drooped. He was just that unlucky—a person whose luck was perpetually terrible. He had experienced all kinds of misfortunes: studying hard to write formulas on his desk before a test, only for the teacher to suddenly announce a complete seat swap; or stealing a glance at a neighbor’s answer sheet, only to find they were on version A while he was on version B… As a person with bad luck, he should bravely accept his fate rather than engage in futile resistance.

“I believe it. I believe in aliens,” Lu Mingfei said. He suddenly thought that Zhao Menghua lasting three minutes was already quite impressive.

“Is that so?” Aki said in a neutral tone, showing no positive or negative feedback on her face. “Why do you believe?”

What the hell, why believe? Believing is just believing; no one in the world can prove they’ve seen aliens. Some people believe, and some don’t. It’s like being asked why you like that girl at the next table who wears a white cotton dress. You could list a thousand reasons, but the real reason is simply that you don’t know why. Whenever you see her, your heart races, you care about everything she says, and you remember all things related to her, so you know you like her. Why? No reason. Lu Mingfei thought.

“I often wander on the rooftop at night, looking at the stars,” Lu Mingfei said.

“Hmm, good, you look at the stars when you have nothing to do,” Aki noted very seriously.

Lu Mingfei didn’t understand her seriousness at all; it felt as if he were China’s foreign minister, just having stated countless diplomatic phrases that needed to be diligently recorded on paper.

“If you also look at the stars, you’d think, if there are no aliens, the universe is so vast, with a diameter of hundreds of billions of light-years. A beam of light takes hundreds of billions of years to travel from one end of the universe to the other, passing through countless galaxies, yet only meets people on Earth. But when light passes through Earth, it doesn’t even take a second; it only meets people for one second in hundreds of billions of years. That’s strange, right?” Lu Mingfei said.

“Loneliness? Are you implying the loneliness of light?” Ye Sheng interjected.

Lu Mingfei scratched his head. He hadn’t really intended anything by it, but it seemed his answer had been interpreted a bit more profoundly, so he nodded in agreement, allowing Ye Sheng to see him as a lonely child.

“Second question: Do you believe in superpowers?” Aki asked again.

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