My girlfriend is from the future!

at last,

I've found you...

Although Wen Liang had covered her mouth with her other hand to avoid surprising others and committing a foul, the look in her trembling eyes revealed an emotion that was more intense than surprise or astonishment.

Two hands, one fair and slender, the other broad and thick, and the seals placed in their respective palms, one cool and gentle, resembling the radical of the character "才" (cái), while the seal in He Tianran's hand was engraved with the character "合" (hé).

The character 才 (cái) combined with 拾 (shí) is a numeral, which is the capital form of the Chinese character “十” (shí).

As a verb, it has the straightforward meaning of "to pick up".

The ticket inspector took the stamps from each of them, combined them into one, and put it into the stamping machine. After the word "when" on the ticket, the inspector firmly pressed down a bright red "拾" character.

Perhaps it truly is fate; certain things lost to time can only be retrieved and pieced together into a complete form, a correct word, when these two people come together at a certain moment…

They did indeed take a trip in October.

The ticket inspector smiled with relief at the first moment that the two travelers from the apocalypse connected. Then, he wrote the words "Where" in the blank space in the middle of the train ticket and looked up and down at the two people, indicating that they should make this round of choices.

The two lowered their heads again to make their choices.

Aside from the time clearly indicated in Chinese characters, the rest of the seals consist of pictographic patterns. Among these patterns, there are half a mountain and half snow, but unfortunately, there is no half of a snow-covered mountain...

This left Wenliang somewhat at a loss.

What kind of travel is it if you travel without a destination?

Wen Liang secretly glanced at He Tianran, who seemed to be troubled by the same question, his chin resting on two fingers as he pondered. But then his eyes lit up, as if he had found a seal that suited his taste. Just as he was about to look up, Wen Liang quickly looked away and examined the seal in her box carefully.

At this moment, Bai Lingye returned with Sui Chulang, but Su Xiaotong and Luo Que were nowhere to be seen.

"What are they doing?"

Sui Chulang, who was still unaware of how the game would proceed, asked.

"Ticket checking requires two people to simultaneously select three identical stamps without any communication, specifying when, where, and why."

"Huh? The probability is too small. What if we communicated beforehand, or guessed wrong?"

"Those with tickets will have them torn up; those without tickets will be penalized with time off."

"...Whose vote was torn up?"

"Whoever has the vote can tear it up."

"Gone?"

"That's all, what else? It'll be more expensive to go back and buy a ticket now if it gets torn up, and the penalty will only reduce the time by two hours!"

Bai Lingye was somewhat puzzled by Sui Chulang's question, but after he stepped forward to look at the seal in He Tianran's box, and then sneaked around to look behind Wen Liang, he was glared at by the girl. After thinking for a while, he said:

“Then let’s choose ‘five’ in a bit. I’ll take the number five, and you take the one with the ‘single’ radical. We’ll choose the lake as the location, and why do we choose the knife, fork, and plate?”

Sure enough, as soon as this male celebrity finished his loud plot, he was punished by the cameraman for two hours. However, judging from the situation, he should have plenty of time left to live. He didn't care much about it and had already achieved his goal.

"This game should require someone to be willing to risk being punished and quickly discuss all the choices. Otherwise, the probability of them making silent choices like the two of them is too low."

Under the supervision of the photographer, Sui Chulang completed the addition and subtraction of survival time, and was smug about his brilliant plan.

This is indeed a method recognized in the game rules, and it is also a loophole deliberately left by the production team. The only difficulty is whether anyone is willing to reduce the time by two hours. After all, even if the time is reduced, only one person can leave in the end. If there is really someone in the group who is willing to sacrifice and make the best of their partner, then it will be easy to get through this.

Even He Tianran turned around and gave Sui Chulang a thumbs up when he heard about this method. Of course, he had thought of it, but he didn't have enough time to be punished again in order to find an excuse to get away from Bai Lingye.

But He Tianran's thumbs-up wasn't entirely for that reason. Just like Bai Lingye, after hearing his words, initially thought the method was good, but something just felt off, until her smartwatch beeped to indicate that time was being deducted...

"Oh dear! My time has been reduced too! You... oh dear, before you say anything, you... you need to deactivate your skill first!"

"Huh...? This works?"

The "dependency" skill meant that everyone prospered together, and suffered the same fate as everyone else, which made He Tianran extremely happy.

While the other side was both amused and exasperated, and had already figured out the answer, Wenliang on this side was still completely clueless.

Without a doubt, since He Tianran could answer the question about the October trip, he must know that their destination that time was the snow mountain. This is a very clear answer. The problem is that, among the several options they have now, this is not the correct answer!
What is that man holding in his hand now?
Is it just a regular mountain pattern?

This is obviously the most reliable guess at the moment, but Wen Liang is still hesitant, because the rough mountain-shaped pattern in her hand is far inferior to the scene she saw that day.

She also has a snow pattern, and it's a very realistic half-diamond-shaped snowflake. If He Tianran really has a mountain, then her snow pattern is somewhat compatible with the image in her mind.

But that doesn't comply with the show's rules; two identical stamps are required for it to pass.

Therefore, a question naturally surfaced in Wenliang's heart—

"Does the destination of that trip have to be a snow-capped mountain?"

Based on the established facts, the answer is clearly yes, but from a traveler's perspective, the answer is less reliable...

All she could hear was Sui Chulang and Bai Lingye's complaints and playful banter. Her attention was drawn to the couple, and Wen Liang was reminded once again of the man who had traveled alone on the train with only four thousand yuan in his pocket.

Wen Liang still remembers him saying he liked making plans, but when she asked him where he actually wanted to go among so many tourist attractions in Yunnan and Tibet...

"I didn't calculate it by destination..."

"No? Then how will you make a plan?"

"It's according to... a plan that will allow me to return the way I came..."

When pressed for an explanation, he said it was simply to fulfill a wish of his ex-girlfriend. At the time, he had no destination in mind; the purpose of the trip was simply to put an end to his relationship…

It just so happens that this period falls on the snow in Kawageburg.

Even having experienced it firsthand, Wen Liang still doesn't understand why He Tianran, who was so devoted to Cao Aiqing, would stage such an absurd scene...

This wasn't the first time Wen Liang had wanted to ask such a question, but each time He Tianran would say he didn't know, or just look confused and leave it at that, so that trip felt like a dream that only existed in her mind...

But today, a voice inside Wen Liang seemed to urge her to ask this man she had once again labeled as "just another passerby"...

This time, I will get an answer.

A trip may have no destination, you can just go wherever you want, but if a trip is unforgettable, it must be because the journey itself has been given some kind of meaning by the experience...

Looking at the various patterns and stamps in the box, some concrete and some abstract, Wen Liang's gaze lingered on a particular corner. She knew what she had to choose...

"Hey, stop it, stop it! They've made their choices, look!"

Sui Chulang covered his face with one hand and pointed with the other at Wen He and the other person who had already made their choice and extended their hands to each other.

Bai Lingye immediately stopped patting the male celebrity. Seeing the behavior and expressions of the two people opposite her, she whispered in Sui Chulang's ear:
Why did they suddenly become so serious?

"This game is supposed to be about teamwork, but it's really just about luck. You bet money, roll the dice, and open the box. Aren't you holding your breath in tension?"

Sui Chulang used a vivid analogy, but upon hearing it, He Tianran and Wen Liang both looked at him simultaneously. As if to dispel his tense and serious tone, a confident expression appeared on their faces—

He Tianran slightly raised his chin, shook his head, and looked confident; Wen Liang's lips were like a crescent moon, but her index finger pressed against her red lips, making a shushing gesture.

Then, their palms truly opened as if the lid of a dice cup had been opened...

Sui Chulang and Bai Lingye couldn't resist following the camera, as if filming a close-up shot, and the former couldn't help but exclaim, on behalf of the audience:
"Wow—oh my god—"

In his line of sight were two seals engraved with half-heart-shaped arcs, which together formed a complete heart.

That trip was He Tianran's way of returning to a woman's heart, wanting to completely erase his image from her memory; on the same day, a man who came from nowhere and claimed to be just a passerby knocked on Wen Liang's heart door and moved in, making it hard for her to let go.

And coincidentally, they were all the same person...

Of course, they haven't recalled so much yet, and they can't explain all of this from a higher perspective.

So their current choices are more like those of ants, stopping and starting, taking detours, but always remaining within the plane of a heart—

I couldn't help but spin around.

"No way...you guys cheated...? Ah, I know, this is what you saw in the screening room, right?"

Bai Lingye kept remembering the hint He Tianran had given her before she left. Otherwise, she really couldn't imagine that there would be two people who, through a combination of guessing and deception, had been fooled twice by so many patterned seals.

However, this heart-shaped stamp is indeed quite abstract. It seems that before the show airs and before seeing the past performances of other groups, Bai Lingye cannot guess what actual location or scene could be abstracted into a heart.

Actually, the most shocked people at the scene were not the two of them, but the photographers following He and Wen and the ticket inspectors who were already on pins and needles.

Because the ticket checking process was never designed to allow guests to pass unscathed, given the extremely low probability of such an outcome, and no room was left for any form of communication unless someone was punished, the ticket checker himself felt a little guilty, thinking he hadn't seen through the two people's cheating methods. When he looked to the photographer for help, he saw that the other person also shook their head, and he immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

The two photographers were also muttering to themselves. Bai Lingye's point was valid, but it didn't apply to He Tianran and Wen Liang. The two photographers had seen that photo; it was an outdoor wedding on a lawn, and the stamp had a grassy design—why not choose the grassy area? They said if it were He Gu's turn next, and the couple chose a heart, that would be understandable, because it's a wedding, because of love…

The ticket inspector asked, "Where are you two going? Choose a heart..."

What's wrong, you two are trying to take each other's feelings to heart...?
Believe it or not, one of the two photographers, after thinking about it for a while, started to understand what was going on. He was the one who filmed the two of them together in the mansion before. If his colleague hadn't pulled him back to report to the director, he would have definitely shot them together from the front. The way they kissed was something that ordinary friends, colleagues, bosses, and employees wouldn't do.

Having tasted this unique display of affection that perhaps only he could understand, the photographer couldn't suppress a smile as he filmed the ticket inspector's close-up shots of the ticket checker stamping the ticket, causing the inspector to look at him curiously, wondering if he had made a mistake in some procedure.

Okay, now we've used the most symbolic heart shape. Let's see how you choose in the next round.

With these questions in mind, the photographer took a few steps back and returned to the original position where he had taken the medium shot. Unexpectedly, he brushed past He Tianran and quickly took a few more steps to pull the focus away.

In the scene, under the ticket inspector's puzzled gaze, He Tianran retrieved a box of red ink from the exposed part of the old-fashioned stamping machine...

At the same time, Wen Liang also came over. The two did not exchange a single word or glance. They simply pressed their thumbs into the inkpad, one of them positioned the ticket, the other blew on his finger, and pressed it onto the blank space at the end of the ticket where "Why" was written. Then the other person covered it up and pressed it on...

This process was more familiar to them than even long-married couples going to the Civil Affairs Bureau to get their marriage registration stamped. Even the photographer, who was originally taking pictures of He Tianran, couldn't help but sympathize and give a close-up shot of Wen Liang's face, thinking with pity—

You're so skilled at pressing your fingerprints...

This teacher Wenliang must owe boss He Tianran a lot of money...

Otherwise, the kiss earlier wouldn't have been so forceful; it was more of a release of pent-up emotions.

Wen Liang noticed that both cameras were filming her and became a little embarrassed. Seeing that the ticket was now ready, she quickly gestured towards He Tianran and explained:
"He just gave a thumbs-up, and I knew what he meant. We didn't foul; you just didn't see it. It's not our fault."

"cough~"

He Tianran coughed lightly, and the two cameras immediately pointed at him again. He picked up his ticket and pointed to the three questions on the ticket, explaining them one by one to the still bewildered ticket inspector:
"No train ticket will say 'why,' but it's not the end of the world, so everyone understands. Let me explain..."

The journey began in October, the destination was each other's hearts, as for why...

Because we're soulmates, is that right?

After saying that, he still felt unsatisfied and smugly said to Wen Liang behind him:

"I told you I had a foolproof method!"

Wen Liang crossed her arms, the crescent moons at the corners of her mouth and eyes never fading. Facing He Tianran's smugness, she turned her head to the side and retorted:

"Hmph, you think you're so great? If I didn't cooperate, you'd be just so-so." (End of Chapter)