Pollen
Ugh... my head hurts. What ti is it now?
Liushu awoke with a splitting headache, got up from bed, and turned on his phone to check the ti.
7 a.m.
Still pretty early.
Until what ti did they drink last night?
What did they even talk about?
Damn, it's all gone. Total blackout.
Guess that's what you call drinking to oblivion.
Never mind, better go get so breakfast first.
Liushu got out of bed, got dressed, and put his hand on the doorknob.
"Bang!"
The door was kicked open from outside by Wei, the door slamming Liushu straight onto the wall.
"Are you trying to pose as a living wall art?" said Wei.
"What kind of weird thing is that?"
Liushu pushed himself off the wall.
"Did you find Shuang Yun?"
"No, I didn't."
"Then why are you coming to my room?"
"I ca to look for you."
"For what?"
Liushu was confused.
"You've been missing for a whole day, and you're asking why I ca to find you?!"
Wei picked Liushu up with one hand.
"Huh?"
Liushu picked up his phone again.
Checked the date.
Holy crap, he had actually slept for almost thirty hours straight.
So he had directly missed Mo Ying and Xiya's match today?
"I'm docking so of your salary this month."
"Have rcy, seriously, if you dock more I'll be eating dirt by the end of the month."
At the ntion of a docked salary, Liushu looked utterly reluctant.
"Didn't you used to survive eating dirt anyway? I have faith in your tenacious vitality."
Wei smiled as she left the room.
Leaving behind a forlorn Liushu standing alone in the room.
He'd literally drunk away a month's salary—Liushu was half numb from life.
"By the way, about Shuang Yun, I have so guesses,"
Wei suddenly stopped in the corridor.
"What guesses?"
Liushu regained his serious expression.
"She once touched the Forbidden Book of ti. Yesterday I went to ask Principal Alitos, and she said previous people who touched that book also had similar incidents."
"This sudden disappearance kind of situation?"
Liushu asked.
"Yes. That book has been touched by a few people before; Shuang Yun isn't the first. So of them also suddenly disappeared, but they all ca back within minutes or hours."
"But Shuang Yun has already been gone for several days."
Liushu frowned.
"Right. My guess is, after she ca in contact with the Forbidden Book of ti, her very existence beca highly unstable, and she jumped to another tiline—could be the past, or the future."
"....."
Liushu's eyes widened.
Right, that's possible.
Shuang Yun could very well be experiencing a ti jump right now.
"But I've also been through the Corridor of Ti. Why am I fine?"
Liushu asked.
"Not sure, maybe because the person who opened the entrance was Shuang Yun, so you weren't affected. That's just a guess. Maybe, in the future, you'll go through a ti jump too."
Wei shook her head.
"You've beco too much of a busybody. You used to be a cold person."
Wei stared directly at Liushu.
"Indeed, maybe I was too much of a busybody. Perhaps I shouldn't have cared about whether Shuang Yun lived or died,"
Liushu replied blandly.
Just as Wei said, he was actually just like her—both were rather cold types.
"No matter what, it's because of your ddling that I'm now in a heap of trouble."
Wei produced a stack of docunts.
"I'll be blunt. Shuang Yun may not co back."
"....."
Liushu fell silent.
"Ti jumping is sothing neither you nor I can comprehend. She might not co back, or, even if she does, this world may have already passed by hundreds of years."
"And that's still the lighter scenario. Worse is..."
"She might travel back into the past, and if she brings current technology with her, this could cause the present tiline to collapse."
"... No, maybe I'm overthinking it."
Wei suddenly took back her previous words.
"If she interferes with our tiline, she'll be dealt with before that happens."
Wei was right; if Shuang Yun really ti-jumped into the past, before she could affect the future, a god or a divine agent would take care of her.
That was the worst-case scenario.
☆☆☆
"Whoa, what a gloomy face to see first thing in the morning, Mr. Liushu,"
Mo Ying comnted when she saw Liushu looking dejected in the breakfast hall.
"Teacher, were you drained by a vampire or sucked dry by a succubus? What's with that look?"
Mo Ying twirled noodles in her bowl with a fork.
"Vampires and succubi only exist in books, not in the real world,"
Liushu retorted, cracking open an egg.
"Wait, I think not long ago soone actually found a vampire, so I guess vampires are a rare species—at least they do exist. As for succubi, no one's found one yet, so probably they aren't real."
Liushu peeled the egg.
"Teacher, where were you yesterday?"
Xiya asked.
"That's confidential."
Of course Liushu couldn't admit he drank himself to a blackout.
"Haven't seen Shuang Yun today either,"
Mo Ying look around at the other students in the hall, still failing to spot Shuang Yun.
"She took a leave of absence with after her match today, said she had sothing and had to go back, but she'll return for later matches,"
Liushu casually replied.
He himself had no idea when Shuang Yun would co back.
Or rather, whether she could even co back was a question.
Ti was not sothing anyone could understand.
"Oh, really? And she didn't even tell us,"
Mo Ying believed Liushu's words.
"....."
Xiya looked at Liushu.
Liushu winked at her, signaling her to keep quiet.
Xiya said nothing and went on eating.
"By the way, teacher Liushu, since you weren't here yesterday, there's sothing you might not know,"
Mo Ying suddenly said.
"Huh? What is it?"
Liushu asked, holding his coffee.
"In yesterday's match, a few students suddenly acted extrely abnormally and were forcibly removed from the match by other teachers and sent to the infirmary,"
Xiya blurted out.
"Xiya, you stole my line. That was supposed to be telling him."
Mo Ying shook Xiya's hand.
"You'd have kept him guessing forever, so I just said it myself,"
Xiya replied.
"They were acting abnormally? How so?"
Liushu's interest was piqued.
"They didn't wait for the referee to signal the start before suddenly attacking, and even after the opponent's Prism was broken, they kept attacking like they'd gone crazy,"
Mo Ying explained.
"Looks like more trouble is brewing,"
Liushu muttered as he picked up his tray and left.
"Teacher Liushu, you're eating so little?"
Mo Ying called after him from her seat.
"I left my cigarettes in my room, I'll be back in a bit,"
Liushu waved at her as he left the hall.
☆☆☆
"Bang."
Liushu closed the door to the infirmary.
A man who treated his cigarettes as life itself—there was no way he'd leave them in his room.
"Good morning," greeted Yiguan Huamo, the infirmary's physician, sitting on a chair next to so dicine jars.
Just as Mo Ying had said, Huamo was a very beautiful woman. In her white coat, she exuded a unique kind of elegance.
"So, what's the situation?"
Liushu cut straight to the point.
"The situation—you an them?"
Huamo gestured at four students lying on beds, all in evident pain.
"This was collected from them."
Huamo produced a sealed jar containing so powder—hardly noticeable unless you looked closely.
"This is pollen from the plants in the hunting grounds. It can heavily disrupt the mind, make people irritable, trigger hallucinations, cause madness. If left unchecked, it can even parasitize the host, make flowers bloom all over their body, and keep spreading more pollen."
Huamo smiled while saying things that sent chills down the spine.
"I am actually quite interested in this human garden phenonon."
"I don't have such twisted tastes. These students are all freshn; they've never been into the hunting grounds."
"Yeah, I know. I just don't get why this pollen showed up. Because of this, the principal had all students screened yesterday."
"What was the result?"
"Quite a few students were affected, including Mo Ying and Xiya. Not one of them realized it themselves."
"But don't worry—the principal has already extracted the pollen from them. Now they're fine. Thank goodness it was caught early—otherwise... quite a few would have died..."
Huamo's last words ca out in a low tone.
"This stuff can float through the air. Maybe it just drifted in from sowhere."
"As for where it ca from, you'll have to investigate. You're more sensitive to this kind of thing, aren't you?"
Huamo said with a smile.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)】
Reviews
All reviews (0)