Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Where are we going next?”
The sounds of the sea tide got quieter, and Zhuang Xiaodie asked this question.
In fact, Zhang Zian couldn’t determine where he really wanted to go, but he always felt that as long as he kept going, he would definitely be able to go to where he wanted to go and see the people he wanted to see.
So he just vaguely replied, “It’s just ahead—not too far away.”
Regarding the place in Binhai that was the most beautiful in autumn, besides the hidden foggy mountains in late autumn, the old street between the Dongcheng and Nancheng Districts was a good place that only the old Binhai residents knew about. Before the liberation, there had been several foreign consulates and offices. Almost all the streets had had Western-style architectural buildings. Today, there were still normally-operating churches. Thus, the area had become a place to hold weddings and cosplays and for couples to take a stroll.
Many people who loved photography went to the streets with their cameras during Golden Week holiday and captured good happenings there.
Of course, with this so-called photography, the most important thing was that the model was beautiful. Cats were also popular, precisely because there were very few ugly cats.
Zhang Zian and Zhuang Xiaodie did not leave the seaside from the original road. They strolled to the southeast. Unwittingly, they entered the Nancheng District, passing through several small alleyways. When they came out of the alleys, they came face-to-face with buildings constructed in typical European architectural styles. It made one wonder if they had crossed into Europe instead.
The sleek and dense French paulownia was planted on both sides of the wide but sparsely populated street. Western-style houses were everywhere. Fountain gardens could often be seen through the iron fences typical of European houses. There was a half-naked statue of some god standing next to the fountain. The little angel had wings and a bow and was flying.
The autumn wind picked up, and the apricot leaves on the street were blown around like water moving downstream.
On the street, there were just a few old gentlemen who were holding cameras, trying to find a subject to shoot. Because they did not have a hired model and Binhai City was not running any auto shows, they were bored to tears taking photos of lotuses. Thus, they could only come here during the holidays to take street photos of passersby.
When Zhuang Xiaodie, wearing a gorgeous Chinese costume, appeared, the amalgamation of the East and the West, the classic and the modern, the two different cultural styles formed a strong visual impact.
The photographers suddenly felt like sharks that had smelled blood. They hurriedly carried over their heavy pieces of equipment such as aperture lenses and DSLR cameras, and even before asking if she agreed to have her photo taken, they started taking shots with their cameras.
Zhuang Xiaodie continued walking without paying them much attention, but Zhang Zian had been repeatedly despised by them. What they meant was: “You are like a stick that is trying to steal the limelight! Go further away!”
Zhang Zian was also feeling rather helpless. Not everyone respected the portrait rights of others, like the female broadcaster he’d met at the top of Mount Hidden Fog. There was no way around it if they insisted on taking photos. He might as well let them take the photos, but for them to hint that he was blocking their shots…
Zhuang Xiaodie was slightly fascinated but turned a blind eye to the photographers who flocked to her like flies. Instead, she was thinking about the wheelchair girl whom she’d met at the beach.
She didn’t dare to be absolutely certain, but the wheelchair girl’s light blue dress, dark green wide-brimmed hat, and skin, which was surprisingly white and not like Asian skin color, all reminded her of that mermaid in the pet shop’s second-floor bathtub.
As for why her hair was black, it was presumably because no one in the real world had dark green hair, and the girl, dressed in such simple terms, was not suitable to have her hair dyed.
So, it might have been that an elfin had quietly modified another detail of her dream.
Who would have this ability? She thought about it hard. She felt that it might be the dog that had appeared in this dream.
Oddly enough, as she read Zhang Zian’s memory, putting aside all the other elfins, the mermaid should be the one that despised him the most. Why had she joined the dream with the other elves?
Was it because after Zhang Zian had fallen asleep, something had happened to her in the pet shop that she didn’t know about?
What worried her more was the dream itself.
Guided by her and using the memory of Zhang Zian to build this dream world, although it was just a dream, it was an incomparably realistic dream. Once this dream world had been created, it was no different from reality.
This was also the perfect dream she’d created.
There were too many illusions and arbitrary desires in the dreams of the ancient people. Such dreams were too different from reality. It made her soberly aware that it was a dream, so she preferred this dream. Even she herself was sometimes confused and couldn’t figure out if she was a human, or if she was a…
Because it was incomparably realistic, it couldn’t be easily modified. Otherwise, one wrong move and all would be gone, much like that phrase in his memory… A butterfly on the Amazon River in South America flapped its wings and may cause Texas in the United States two weeks later to experience a tornado.
This knowledge was very novel and interesting to her, but after careful thinking, she felt that it was logical and fully made sense. It even helped her clear up her own thinking, and therefore she could create a more realistic dream.
In this respect, she was very grateful to Zhang Zian. The last piece of the puzzle was from him, though it was an accident, and it had helped her to make a highly realistic dream.
However…that arrogant elfin, the stupid dog named Famous, dared to interfere and alter two details of her dream without her prior knowledge. This allowed the elfins who should not appear in this world to appear and caused a film that should never have been released to be released. This was shown even before Zhang Zian could experience the filming process. What kind of chain reaction would these events trigger? Even she was not sure.
In the worst-case scenario, the dream may go in an unknown direction that she couldn’t control…
Zhang Zian awkwardly dealt with the blaming eyes of the photographers. Zhuang Xiaodie silently thought about the means of repairing the dream world. The two did not speak, so they walked silently together until a Gothic church appeared in front of them.
This church was not too big. It was about three stories high. It had a red-brick-and-wood mixed structure. There was a towering Gothic bell tower on the left and right sides and a pure white cross on the spire of each bell tower. The impression it gave was one of seriousness, serenity, and a defender of the olden times.
A photography association or a society that seemed to be from a university was doing cosplay in front of the church. Several boys were surrounded by several girls. Some of them were responsible for the lighting, some responsible for taking photographs, and some responsible for using fans to create the effect of wind blowing on clothes…each of them had a task.
Amongst them, the girl who was responsible for the modeling was wearing an antique dress, which may have been that of a cosplay character in a domestic martial-arts video game. When compared with Zhuang Xiaodie, whether it was her figure, looks, or the exquisiteness of the clothing, she was completely defeated.
They were shooting by the church door and cried out loudly from time to time. This actually interfered with the normal peaceful order of the church. The members of the church were affected by the ruckus they made, and the quiet atmosphere was broken.
When Zhang Zian and Zhuang Xiaodie walked past the church door with the photographers following them, such a strange combination naturally attracted the attention of the community.
