Chapter 2 Looking On
The night was cold.
While it was summer, the temperature wasn’t so high to insufferable. At night, it was quite cool. As rainbow-colored lights refracted in the air, even with dust, there was an element of fantasy, making it hard to judge what was real and what was not.
Leng An kept following Cloud mostly because they went to the same school. It was scary for a girl to walk around late at night, and it was odd that she didn’t go to the class party even though she was in the area.
But now that he saw what he had, he regretted his decision.
He wasn’t sure when it happened, but everything on the street seemed to have disappeared. The street, people, traffic lights, cars, buildings . . . everything. Leng An always thought he was quick on his feet, but this time, when he realized the change, everything was already gone, or more accurately, everything on Earth disappeared, leaving just the sky and the surprisingly bright stars.
When Leng An was standing alone in the new world, looking helpless, Cloud noticed him.
“How did you get in here?” Cloud took just one step to reach him. She hadn’t planned on an intruder. The boundaries she set were for the prey she wanted; she didn’t realize Leng An would end up inside as well.
Before she could question him further, he pointed to something behind her.
Leng An could only use “some thing” to describe what he saw. In fact, Leng An thought maybe he was hallucinating because he’d stopped taking his medications and treatment. He didn’t know if Cloud saw what he saw, so he wanted to check. The way Cloud interrogated him didn’t make sense, either. It was quite remarkable that Leng An could analyze so much within such a short time‒it was as if his brain was a computer screen with many open tabs.
What is that thing with a human-head and snake-body? Is it a hallucination? It’s a monster, right? Cloud, you see it, too, right? Wait, what are you doing? Where did you get that sword? How did you make a fire in your hand? Doesn’t it feel hot?
Leng An appeared calm but his brain was exploding as it processed everything that was going on; there was more activity in there than fireworks during Chinese New Year.
Cloud didn’t want Leng An to hang around, but she was too busy to deal with him. She was in trouble herself. It had taken her blocks of chasing to get the monster inside the boundaries she had set, and now that it’d gotten away, she had to fight and hope for the best.
The angry-looking, human-faced snake monster opened its blood-red mouth, leaping toward Cloud. As it roared, its powerful tail swept toward her. The sword seemed to have materialized out of her hand and the fire in her hand didn’t burn her. One swipe of the sword sent out a burst of fiery flame. Watching the battle, Leng An felt increasingly surreal.
Swinging the sword didn’t affect Cloud too much; she was bounced back and slid forward on the ground, but it was another story for Leng An. He wasn’t so much calm but frozen in shock as he watched the monster fall toward him and topple him over.
If it had been a beautiful woman giving him a bear hug, he would have been quite happy, but the monster doing so just made Leng An annoyed. Was it male or female? It couldn’t just launch at him like that!
Leng An thought of moving the monster off his body, but it wasn’t letting go. Its tail wrapped around him like a python around an ox, locking Leng An in place. His face started to lose color; he was almost out of breath.
Cloud touched her brow, wondering how on Earth this guy had ended up here. She rolled her eyes and yelled, “Animal, let him go!” As Leng An looked to Cloud for help, he saw the same scales on her body from earlier, but this time, he got a better look. They weren’t scales so much as pieces of armor glinting with a silvery light. The armor pieces clung so close to her body that they looked like she grew them herself. He had to admit, her outfit looked amazing.
The human-faced snake monster wrapped itself tighter around Leng An when Cloud shouted. Leng An felt as if he was about to be shredded apart. Since he couldn’t free himself and couldn’t breathe, he could only hope that Cloud would save him. It was in that moment he realized that wasn’t a surreal scene at all.
When almost of all his energy was gone and he couldn’t struggle anymore, Leng An gave up. He didn’t know why, but he believed that Cloud could save him. Perhaps it was an illusion, or maybe he was drunk or having a nightmare. They were classmates after all; she would save him, right?
“It’s snowing.”
Why would it snow in the summer?
That was what Leng An said before he passed out. Cloud clearly heard him. After hesitating for half a minute, the sword left her hand, turned into thousands of smaller swords, and they all rained down.
The monster was surprised by Cloud. It yelled, “You don’t want to save him? Argh!” It wouldn’t be able to wait for the answer, for as the many smaller swords fell, it couldn’t escape anymore. With its dying breath, it said, “How did‒?”
How was this possible? That ordinary human wasn’t hurt by all of these falling swords. As the monster died, its wounded body relaxed and let Leng An go, still puzzled over how Cloud knew the human wouldn’t die.
If Leng An was an ordinary human, he wouldn’t have ended up inside her boundaries.
Cloud knew her power. She hadn’t made juvenile mistakes even in kindergarten, but now she was confused as to who Leng An could be. They had been classmates for three years and she’d never noticed he was extraordinary.
Leng An opened his eyes suddenly and gulped in air. It took him a while to come to. What happened was insane, and he had actually survived? Wait, he was back at the restaurant.
“Hey, are you okay? I told you not to drink if you can’t handle your liquor,” the teacher’s voice barked out. “If Cloud hadn’t called us, we wouldn’t even know you’d passed out on the street. It’s so dangerous this late at night. You said you were getting us a taxi, but even as the class leader, you didn’t need to . . .” The teacher was in lecture-mode and kept talking, while Leng An only heard one keyword: Cloud.
Where was she?
He looked around, and finally spotted her in the corner. When he looked over, he could tell she was staring at him in a cold and inscrutable way, giving him a shiver. He could tell what happened was a memory and not a dream.
Those feelings of almost dying and being frozen in place by the monster were real. He wasn’t a coward, he was objective, so he kept denying his hallucinations, even though at first he thought he was fantasizing.
Leng An had seen scarier monsters than the human-faced snake creature before, but he’d always told himself it was just a fantasy, and as long as he wasn’t afraid, it was okay. But now, someone else had seen the monster, too, and worse, this person was his classmate, and even worse, his classmate looked like she wanted to kill him.
So his hallucinations were real, which meant he had been incredibly lucky before, since he’d made it this far without getting killed by one.
He needed to thank her.
Maybe she’d reconsider killing him after his show of gratitude.
Leng An really want to say thanks, but he didn’t get a chance to. Now his body was out of control again. He would cry if he could.
After about half an hour, Leng An felt less freaked out. The car he was in had entered a less populated area, but he wasn’t in some kind of body-disposing wilderness; more like a rich neighborhood. The buildings looked more upscale here than in downtown Yunshan City. It seemed like a show of wealth to Leng An, knowing how many people in the world had no place to live.
The initial fear changed to disgust.
The car stopped in front of a big metal gate. He thought it was the destination, but once the gate opened, however, the car continued forward. Rich people really lived differently. Leng An didn’t want to overthink the situation; at least now he was in control of his thoughts and he shouldn’t let the ability go to waste.
The car finally stopped.
Leng An’s body exited the car as if he was a programmed robot. He was half a step behind Cloud, no more, no less, as they went inside the house.
It was dark inside. The house wasn’t dark, but he had somehow closed his eyes, so he saw nothing. He heard Cloud saying to someone, “I brought him here.”
Wait, was he just sold off by his classmate? Was Cloud a human trafficker?