ecstasy

A dozen or so heads, their faces covered in sweat, turned around in unison:

[Huh?! So many people? ?]

Doudou could recognize that these were all familiar faces from the same grade as him, but none of them were in his class.

They were both men and women, filling the small storage room to the brim - when the iron door opened, a heat wave mixed with the smell of sweat, moisture and mildew rushed in from the storage room.

There were no lights on inside, and every face was vaguely visible; some people carried flashlights, beams of light illuminating the fluffy dust:

"Newbie! From Class 3. Ai Xi has brought the newbie here."

"Oh, that handsome guy from Class 3."

"Great! I saw him in the cafeteria. He looks very handsome in his raincoat."

If it was whispering, then in this utility room, there was clearly no privacy at all—

Doudou understood that they were expressing their compliments in a shy way: This is quite embarrassing.

It was just because they were too close together and the light from the flashlight was shaking, making them look like some kind of hybrid monster with multiple heads and bodies; it gave the compliment an inexplicable atmosphere.

The whispering continued for a while; the students were all huddled together and had no intention of coming out of the cannery.

Ai Xi patted Dou Dou's shoulder and squeezed into the small can-like room with him.

After coming in, the smell of paint mixed with rat droppings became even stronger - I really don't know how these students could stand it.

Someone curled up his arms, squeezed out a little space, and reached out to Doudou; but his head was completely submerged behind the other torsos and shoulders:

"Welcome, very welcome, classmate."

Doudou placed his hand on the palm that was covered in sweat due to the heat, then put it back.

"Is this some kind of club? Do I have to pay dues?"

A low laugh spread out--

“He has such a great sense of humor!”

"If I had known this, I would have spoken to him earlier. I thought he was a girl."

"Don't be nervous, just follow what we say."

Doudou withdrew his hand and chuckled in agreement:

Everyone was very enthusiastic, but it was a little awkward.

Boom!

Ai Xi yanked the door shut—the iron gate slammed shut behind them again, cutting off the midday light.

"Everyone, be quiet! There's still half an hour left before lunch break and roll call. Let's get started."

Her voice was cold, and it caused a small echo in the utility room - the low hum caused by whispers disappeared.

The utility room was plunged into near-darkness. Doudou scanned the faces and carefully counted the number of people.

Including myself and Ai Xi, there were a total of seventeen students crowded here.

"Three, two, one, raise your hands!"

A voice shouted from the corner: Everyone raised their arms in unison - including Doudou, who knew what to do when he saw the muscles in Ai Xi's shoulders and back tense - and put them together, touching their palms.

They seemed to have formed a triangular pile of firewood with their arms.

The students standing in the middle stretched their hands vertically upwards, and the angles of their positions became more and more inclined as they moved to the outside; the hot steam from their breath rose, making the storage room even more stuffy.

"Start! Shout together!"

Another voice rang out. It was a petite girl standing at the edge. Doudou could see her eyes were wide open; they almost popped out and fell to the ground in her high-pitched roar:

"We are—friends of the Taro King!"

Some sporadic roars were a beat slower, and they were hoarse:

"Friends of the Taro King!"

Doudou was mixed in, feeling a little awkward:

"what?"

The shouts of the crowd were difficult to understand, but their passion was comparable to the entrance of a sports event; after one shout, they fell into silence.

After waiting for a while, nothing strange happened. No one spoke, only the intermittent gasps of everyone:

Squeak!

Doudou turned his head and looked around: the mouse in the corner of the utility room was startled and was running along the crack in the wall.

But the mouse suddenly disappeared halfway through its run.

【Eh? 】

Doudou wanted to raise his hand and point out the missing mouse to Ai Xi:

But the utility room seemed even hotter.

The heat was so intense that the air became distorted and the walls began to melt; the cement slid down drop by drop.

This is not a metaphor - Doudou can see that the gray-white water droplets are increasing in number; until they become small streams and slide into the cracks in the wall.

The crowded figures around him also became blurred in the steam; Doudou raised his hand to his face, but he could not make out the lines on his palm.

There was a crash.

The walls completely melted into mud and fell to the ground; the utility room was missing its walls, like an opened cardboard box.

Outside the room lay an endless darkness, thick and pitch black, like closing your eyes in the dead of night; not a single light could penetrate from outside.

Even Doudou, who could see at night, could not see a single thing in his field of vision.

-

When the walls fade away——

Snapped.

The sound was faint, as if someone had pressed the channel change button on the remote control.

And the surroundings lit up in an instant:

Sunlight poured in from nowhere, and Doudou found himself standing in a completely new place—

The classmates in school uniforms around him had disappeared, replaced by a group of "crystal people" with glowing and fluorescent bodies and polygonal torsos and limbs.

"Yeah! It worked this time too!"

Ping ping ping ping.

The glittering silhouettes lowered their hands and began to clap and cheer; the sound of the collision was very crisp.

Doudou found that they were still the same classmates: their height, body shape and general outline were the same as before, except that they were covered with a layer of frosted glass.

There is a mirror embedded on the top of the crystal-like body; a long handle and a round mirror surface.

Doudou turned his head and happened to see [Ai Xi] beside him——

The reason why he could recognize it was because there was a photo sticker on the smooth mirror, which was Ai Xi's face.

The edges of the sticker were charred and uneven, as if it had been burned, with gray debris on it. The woman inside was frowning, and it was unclear what she was thinking.

The body structures of other students are roughly the same, the only difference is the decoration on the mirror--

Not all of them are like Ai Xi's photo albums:

There were also stacked Polaroids, cartoon-style sketches sold for two yuan each on the street, family portraits with only the individual left out after the rest of the family members were cut out, simplified facial features painted with crayons, and blurred outlines of butterfly specimens and transparent tape.

Every object that carries a "face" is completely different.

Chapter 103 Mirror and Circle

A moment ago, Doudou was crowded in the utility room with other students—

If it weren't for this, he would almost have an illusion:

I was actually teleported to a handicraft competition held in an elementary school; the works worn by everyone on their heads were so similar and absurd that they seemed to be real but were not.

There was no sun overhead, or any other constellations—the sky was filled with a light that came from nowhere.

The clouds were puffy and the waves were rolling; there seemed to be an invisible dry ice machine in the corner, continuously spewing out thick smoke.

It is somewhat similar to the Heavenly Palace in the TV series Journey to the West, but much more crude; even as a set for a film or TV series, it is disgusting and inferior.

Beyond that, there was repetition—the same scene, stretching to the very end of the sight; it seemed not to be a sphere, and there was no horizon.

What is certain is that this place is indeed not the reality I am used to.

The students scattered with a bang and ran in the mist, their joints making sharp friction sounds.

There are no odors and no natural noises.

Doudou's "head" spun 360 degrees, facing the [Crystal Man] who should be Ai Xi:

"Eh? Ai Xi! What's that on my face?"

He raised his front legs and fumbled around on his mirror, but couldn't touch any bumps: Doudou found that his voice sounded so strange, completely different from what he usually heard.

The sound is muffled and wrapped in a layer of noise like electrical interference; it even changes every moment.

The crystal figure that looked like Ai Xi turned comically, the mirror embedded in its neck moving closer; it was as if the portrait sticker that had been burned by fire really was her facial features:

"Hey—are you Doudou? Weird, the top of your mirror is empty?"

Doudou moved to adjust his position. He glimpsed his current "face" through the gap between Ai Xi's head mirror and the photo sticker.

There really is nothing.

It was empty, just a complete and uncovered mirror; it was now reflecting Ai Xi's portrait.

This feeling is very wonderful——

Doudou could still see, but he couldn't feel his eyeballs, and his eyelids no longer itched. When he opened his mouth, there was no airflow.

"You [faces]—can you choose yourselves?"

Ai Xi's profile pictures snapped and changed, one after another, each one showing a different expression; with a strange sense of fluidity, like the animation on TV that had been cut out:

"It should be automatic? I tried it with them last night, and it was like this when I came in."

Ai Xi in the photo now has one eyebrow raised and his lips tightly pursed, as if deep in thought:

"I don't understand the mechanism, maybe it has something to do with each person's personality."

-

If you don't understand something, don't think about it first--

Doudou's curiosity turned to a new direction:

"Never mind my face, this place is really fun! I've never seen a place like this before!"

"What's going on here? Is this a collective hallucination, or have we been teleported to another dimension?"

Ai Xi's thin silhouette walked up to Dou Dou; her voice was full of noise, as if she was talking through a walkie-talkie:

"You'll find out when we're done—I left something in the utility room."

"Well, it's mostly the same as yesterday, but there are a few differences."

She raised her square "hands" and tapped them together:

"My body is blurrier than yesterday, and the colors are lighter. My voice has also changed."

Doudou raised his upper limbs and poked the mirror with a grunting sound; but there was no sign of it breaking.

During their last social practice, the head teacher took them to visit an art museum - there was also a similar mirror on the wall, which was an installation art.

At that time, Doudou was just confused; now that his head had turned into a mirror, he found it quite amusing:

"Has there been any change? That feels more like an illusion! Could I be hypnotized by brain waves?"

"[Different] Maybe it's because the signal is more unstable? If it's a radio broadcast mechanism, maybe my participation has affected the signal reception—"

"It's not like I've traveled to another world. It's so empty here, there's nothing."

He placed his hands on both sides of the mirror and pressed them against his imaginary temples.