Dragon Raja; Chapter 27: Golden Eyes (2)

Dragon Raja

“Senior, what grade are you in?” Lu Mingfei asked.

“Eighth grade.”

“Eighth grade?” Lu Mingfei almost choked on the Coke.

“Oh, actually, I’m in the fourth grade; I just got held back.” Finger said.

“Then why is it eighth grade?”

“I’ve been held back for four years…”

Lu Mingfei felt a pang of anxiety about his future and decided to avoid discussing such horrifying matters as being held back. “Have you taken that train before?”

“I take it every semester at the start of school; otherwise, I’d have to fly in a helicopter. The campus is in the mountains, and only this train goes there. No one knows the schedule; after all, no one in the Chicago train station knows. The last conductor who knew the schedule for that train died two years ago; he said that train had been running since before World War II.” Finger said, “But don’t worry; a train will come eventually. Those of lower class have to wait for their train.”

“Rank?” Lu Mingfei asked. “What kind of rank? Bourgeoisie and proletariat?”

“It’s something like a noble status. Students with higher ranks get certain privileges, and the college’s resources are given priority to them, like getting priority rides.”

“You’ve been here for eight years, and your rank still isn’t high enough?”

“To be honest, I’m struggling between being expelled and making up credits!” Finger spread his hands.

“Is it easy to find a job after graduating from Cassell College? You’ve repeated the fourth year four times and still can’t bear to drop out?”

“No, they assign jobs!” Finger let out a loud belch.

Lu Mingfei looked out through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the train station. The pitch-black skyscrapers stood shoulder to shoulder like giants. Night had fallen over Chicago, and bright sparks fell from the elevated tracks as trains passed by. Pedestrians hurried by, and neon lights flashed.

He and Finger had already spent two nights in Chicago’s train station, with no money for a hotel, wrapped in blankets sleeping on the long benches in the waiting hall. If it weren’t for their magnetic tickets working on the turnstiles, they would have been kicked out by security long ago. But nobody at Chicago’s train station knew about the mysterious CC1000 branch express.

Finger didn’t mind; he said every return to campus was like this for him. Blame it on their low rank. Higher-ranked students were met by cars at the station, boarding from the VIP channel without causing any commotion. Lu Mingfei had to ask just how low their priority was. Finger said it was about the same as medieval serfs. Lu Mingfei felt a bit down, and Finger tried to comfort him by saying there were those even lower than serfs—some people’s rank was like that of a mule.

The waiting hall was nearly empty except for the two of them. Finger wandered around, hugging a textbook, his reading voice echoing in the vast space. Lu Mingfei wrapped himself in a blanket, curling up on a wooden bench. His consciousness gradually started to blur, and he vaguely heard the sound of a distant bell.

The bell tolled, seemingly coming from a far-off church. With his eyes closed, Lu Mingfei’s mind drifted. He thought of a desolate plain under the moon and a shadowy church in the distance. He imagined a crowd running across the wasteland, holding torches. The flames couldn’t illuminate their faces, which were hidden in shadow. They rushed toward the moon—a moon so impossibly large, half of it submerged below the horizon. Those people jumped from the top of the mountain towards the moon.

He jolted awake, wondering why he would think of such things—insane, magnificent, yet real, as if he’d witnessed that grand scene himself.

Why was there such a monotonous bell sound? Suddenly, Lu Mingfei realized something was off. He was in Chicago, where the bustling roads outside were noisy, filled with the sounds of traffic and people. Why could he only hear that solitary, monotonous bell? During the day, he hadn’t heard any bells—there shouldn’t be a church nearby.

He sat up from the bench, and a huge moon rose slowly outside the French window, and the moonlight splashed in like waves approaching the coast. The entire waiting hall was shrouded in the cold moonlight, and the shadow of the window casted on the back of the bench. A boy sat silently, looking up at the moonlight.

Lu Mingfei looked around but couldn’t find Finger. The guards by the door were gone too. The Subway sandwich shop in the distance had turned off its lights. It was just him and that boy left here. He found it strange but didn’t dare speak, not even breathe too loudly. The waiting hall had a kind of silence that made one afraid to break it.

The boy looked Chinese, around thirteen or fourteen, wearing a pure black evening suit. His youthful face glowed softly. Lu Mingfei didn’t know why such a young boy’s face bore an expression of ancient sadness, as if he’d lived thousands of years. And though many rows of benches were empty, the boy sat close by, as if waiting for him to wake.

Lu Mingfei pulled off the blanket and sat next to the boy. The two of them silently watched the moonlight, time flowing by as if they were two people watching the sea.

“Do you want to make a deal?” the boy asked softly.

“What?” Lu Mingfei didn’t understand what he was saying.

“A deal?” the boy asked again.

“Deal what? I don’t have money… I am poor, no money…”

“So you’re refusing?” The boy slowly turned his head. His golden pupils glowed like flames, as if they were mirrors reflecting fire.

All of Lu Mingfei’s will was swallowed by that flame in an instant. His whole body shuddered as if he were on the brink of despair, a massive strength surging from within, and he suddenly jerked backward.

“Ah!” Finger’s scream snapped Lu Mingfei awake.

Finger was crouching beside him, clutching his head. Noises came from outside—the footsteps of pedestrians, the honking of cars, the friction of wheels against tracks—all the sounds of a metropolis. Two guards leaned against the doors, dozing off. The Subway in the distance still had its lights on.

“Was it all a dream?” Lu Mingfei thought to himself.

He had never had two overlapping dreams before. In the first one, he saw people running on a wasteland, and in the second, he talked to a boy. He went straight from the first dream into the second, still sleeping on the bench with the blanket draped over him.

“Don’t jump around in your dreams—you looked like a startled flea!” Finger complained.

Lu Mingfei wiped the sweat from his forehead. Why had he been startled? Because of the boy’s golden eyes? What was so strange about golden eyes? The girls in the anime club wore all kinds of colored contacts.

“Grab your luggage, the train’s here.” Finger said.

Lu Mingfei heard the sound of bells and a train whistle. Finger was right—a train had just arrived, its lights flashing across the platform. It was two in the morning, on a night with no late trains, and the CC1000 express was pulling in.

A figure appeared at the empty ticket gate. It was a person in a dark green conductor’s uniform, holding a small golden bell, with a golden badge pinned to their hat, carrying a flashlight in one hand and a card scanner in the other.

“CC1000 express, passengers, please prepare to board. Passengers, please prepare to board.” The conductor’s voice echoed through the hall.

The two guards continued to sleep soundly, and it seemed that only Finger noticed the arrival of the conductor. Even in the well-lit Subway shop in the distance, no one so much as glanced over. In the dead of night, for such an old-fashioned conductor to appear in the modern Chicago train station was an incredible sight, but no one paid him any attention.

Lu Mingfei shivered; the conductor seemed almost like… a ghost!

“Why does it feel like… a train from hell?” He grabbed Finger’s sleeve.

“It’s just the effect of his Yanling. That guy is as normal as they come, and he’s even a fan of Backstreet Boys,” Finger said.

“Yanling?” Lu Mingfei was taken aback.

“Here we are, here we are, Finger and Lu Mingfei.” Finger waved his hand.

Lu Mingfei carefully took the ticket out of his pocket, dragging his luggage and following Finger to the ticket gate. When he saw the conductor’s face clearly, he believed what Finger said—the guy didn’t look like a ghost at all, chewing gum and blowing bubbles.

Series Navigation

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