Time slipped away quietly. Zhùyān didn't know whether what that man had said was a joke or not, but if he really did come, what would it look like if she just walked away?
Tension and unease filled her heart, making her movements as she chewed the hamburger even more sluggish. It made this foreign food, which didn't lend itself to careful savoring, somewhat hard to swallow.
If she didn't eat it, she wanted to; once she ate it, it felt a bit cloying. While she was caught in this dilemma, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the glass door being pushed open.
The young woman holding the hamburger wrapper raised her head and looked toward the door, locking eyes straight away with a pair of deep, obsidian-like pupils.
He looked around the room, waved at her, and smiled. "I'm here."
Zhùyān looked at the mess on the table and, a beat too late, felt a blush creep up her face. She managed an awkward smile and tried to block the view with her hand, but it was a bit like trying to cover your ears while stealing a bell.
The soft sofa dipped under a weight, and their arms were close enough that even through the cool silk shirts, they radiated a temperature that made her blush.
Biān Chéng turned to her and asked if she was full. Seeing Zhùyān shake her head, he produced a cup of fruit tea as if by magic.
"I saw this on the way over. I told the clerk not to put in too much ice." Zhùyān's face finally returned to its normal temperature. Her slightly sweaty hand touched the cold cup wall, and she felt instantly revived.
She unwrapped the straw and began her battle with the cup seal, but the straw that usually popped right through in two seconds refused to go in no matter what.
You're sitting way too close! Zhùyān raged internally.
"Keep poking and the straw's going to split." Biān Chéng reached out his hand. "Let me try."
Zhùyān laughed awkwardly and handed it over. With a sharp *pop*, the straw pierced through.
"Here..." Zhùyān took it back with a sheepish smile and started drinking earnestly.
He rested his chin in his hand, watching her with a smile.
Observing the interaction between the two, Wén Xià was screaming like a squeaky chicken on the inside, while on the outside she remained completely composed, gracefully picking up her hamburger and taking a bite, her eyes glowing with satisfaction.
*Ship sailed.*
Nán Chǔ looked from Zhùyān to the man, covered her mouth, and teased, "This gentleman seems very familiar with our Smile? May I ask what your relationship is?"
"Lifesaving comrades," the man said, looking at Zhùyān with a faint smile. "At least in my heart it's like that. I wonder what Miss Smile thinks."
"It's a lifesaving bond," Zhùyān acknowledged. With someone interrupting the strange atmosphere, she felt a lot more at ease.
"Oh, I forgot to introduce him to you." Zhùyān put down her fruit tea, which was now only two-thirds full. "This is that photographer friend I told you about, Biān Chéng."
"Biān Chéng, these are my classmates. We're currently in the same group doing our final project." Then she introduced each of them by name so they could get acquainted.
"So you're the international photographer Smile is always talking about! Seeing you is believing—you're both handsome and talented!" Nán Chǔ gave him a thumbs-up.
"Too kind, too kind. I just take a few pictures and win a couple of national awards." National awards, huh? She only remembered that in her world, national awards meant a lot of credits, scholarships, and of course, a nice gloss for one's resume.
A national photography award must be a recognition of a person's photographic ability at the national level; it sounded like a really big deal.
She didn't really understand much about this herself, and it was too late to look it up on the spot. A few people present actually recognized him, asking if he was the master photographer who was exceptionally good at shooting landscapes—the one whose representative works included *Tides*, *Flying Birds*, and *Sunset*.
Biān Chéng looked pleasantly surprised, asking how they even knew about those.
A kid said with a proud look that he was a hardcore fan, and that every time a new photography collection of his came out, he would follow it the very first moment.
Fine! This position was yours to sit in; she shouldn't be sitting here, she belonged at the kids' table.
"You really are amazing!" Having crammed some knowledge, Zhùyān finally managed to chime in. Looking at his award-winning photos, she couldn't help but sigh, "It's so breathtaking. Nature itself is a masterwork of creation, yet your photos freeze their beauty in time, allowing people all over the world to appreciate the splendor of mountains and rivers. And I feel like these photos have something more than just beauty."
"What's that?" Biān Chéng asked.
"Hmm, soul." Zhùyān nodded in self-approval. "In your photos, I see a thriving vitality."
"Oh, then which photo is your favorite?" Biān Chéng asked her.
Zhùyān sighed helplessly. "How is this supposed to make me choose? I feel like an apprentice picking the biggest and best apple in an orchard. Just when I think one photo is the best, I flip through and feel like another one looks even better. But if I really have to choose, I personally like this one."
She tapped on a photo and showed it to the man: "The sea of flowers at the foot of the mountain."
"Though that's probably just because I like taking pictures of flowers myself, which makes me easily drawn to photos like this."
"Is this the background picture on your WeChat and Xiao'e?" Biān Chéng tapped open Zhùyān's profile picture.
Zhùyān's eyes widened—not because her amateur drawing was being used as a textbook example by a master-level teacher, but wasn't this background picture actually the scenery photo she had taken outside the campus in Hangzhou City in real life? She clearly remembered choosing a system-default bubble picture in the game!
Could it be that even the WeChat system graphics had changed?
How on earth was this even possible?
And she had clearly been using this account and the bubble background all along; why would opening it switch to her real-life phone's background just because Biān Chéng touched it?
With trembling hands, she tapped into her Storage Space, and a lightning bolt suddenly struck her brain hard, leaving her dizzy.
It had changed—everything had changed. Her avatar had reverted to the cat photo, and even the background had been replaced.
She tapped into the train ticketing app, her hands trembling as she began typing the station name for Taicheng into her phone.
She had to go back and check! Never for a moment had Zhùyān wanted to verify her thoughts so badly, but when she saw Biān Chéng's worried and strange expression, she suddenly calmed down.
That's right, Biān Chéng was still here, and these classmates hadn't vanished either.
"Smile, what's wrong with you?"
Right, she was still Smile...
"Nothing, nothing, I'm just a bit shocked that you actually look at my background picture." Zhùyān immediately regained her composure. Regardless of whether this was The Truman Show or she hadn't returned to reality and only her phone had crossed over, she had to keep it together in front of this person and not let him notice anything.
"Hey, precisely because I'm a photographer, I pay a lot of attention to other people's background pictures," Biān Chéng smiled. "An occupational hazard is sometimes quite troublesome. Good thing I don't have obsessive-compulsive disorder, otherwise I'd have to point out composition flaws to all sorts of people and probably chase them down to change their photos."
"That sounds terrifying," Zhùyān put on a frightened expression. "You wouldn't want me to change my photo, would you?"
"No way," Biān Chéng denied it instantly. "Not at all. On the contrary, I think your photo is actually quite nice. Even though the resolution is a bit low and it's slightly blurry, it looks full of vitality."
"I think so too. You know, my favorite kind of thing is when there's a single flower on a tree branch like this. I don't like photos with too many flowers; it feels too crowded. A vast expanse of green with just a tiny speck of red in the middle—it has this indescribable, poetic mood."
"A single dab of red amid a sea of green. Then take a look at this one of mine." He pulled up a photo from his phone gallery, showing dandelions blooming at random along a path in the woods.
Just a single flower, hazy and indistinct, as if a gust of wind could carry its seeds away at any moment.
"Ah, lovely," Zhùyān praised. "I love this photo."
"Then I'll take you out to take pictures together sometime," Biān Chéng smiled.
Biān Chéng had come to this place purely to find Zhùyān. Ever since that day they parted ways at the hospital, this little girl had gone completely off the grid. She hadn't replied to a single message, making him terribly worried.
Had something happened to her again? Or was it simply because she didn't want to be friends with him?
Fortunately, after his persistent telecommunication harassment, there were some results: on Saturdays and Sundays she might reply to one out of ten messages, and on weekdays she'd reply to thirty messages with a "?" every other day.
Today he was just trying his luck to see if she would reply, and he actually got an unexpected harvest. The destination wasn't far, so he rode his bike over. Good thing she hadn't left, hadn't left him with a dead-end address. A wave of joy surged in his heart, and he felt almost touched.
"Biān Chéng? Biān—Chéng?"
"Huh?"
"I told you he was totally spacing out, and you wouldn't believe me." Zhùyān blinked at one of the guys and said with a cheeky smile, "You lost. You have to take charge of the video editing for my share."
"Ah—idol, you really were spacing out?" Liǔ Xiàngrú looked somewhat disappointed. "Don't geniuses usually have all sorts of things brewing in their brains?"
"If the brain kept working the whole time, wouldn't it crash?" Zhùyān retorted. "Besides, no matter how legendary Biān Chéng is, he's still human. You need to get rid of that mindset."
Liǔ Xiàngrú nodded. "That's true. Heh heh, now there's another thing I can do just like my idol."
"Except that when other people space out, it's clearing their minds to give their brains a break so heavy work doesn't crush their brain cells, whereas your spacing out is purely because you're bored." Zhāng Zhùyān's words were as sharp as ever, and Liǔ Xiàngrú instantly wilted.
Zhùyān leaned close to Biān Chéng's ear and asked, "We're going back to school later to sort through the footage. You probably have other things to do, right? Why don't you head out first?"
"Does Smile want to chase me away that badly?" Biān Chéng put on a wounded expression. "It's so hard to get to see you for once, and who knows when we'll bump into each other next. All told, it's only been a little over half an hour, and you're already kicking me out. Did I do something to upset you? I can change it, okay?"
That string of accusations made Zhùyān feel like a heartless woman who toyed with a young man's feelings and then casually dumped him and walked away.
The volume of that scene was practically drawing the gaze of everyone else eating here, alright? She felt all sorts of curious or disapproving glances directed at her, making her feel like needles were pricking her back.
"All right, all right." Zhùyān had to smooth his feathers. "But our itinerary for the rest of the day is really boring. If you stay, it might feel like working overtime. You probably don't like working overtime on your day off, especially the kind that doesn't pay a salary."
Ah, put that way by Zhùyān, Biān Chéng's eager little heart seemed to cool down quite a bit.
Zhùyān pressed her advantage: "Even if you say you'll just watch, once it involves professional stuff, won't your fingers itch to meddle? And then in the end it becomes your tutorial project, still the kind without a paycheck."
"Uh..." Biān Chéng's heart cooled until only about a quarter of it was left.
And that remaining quarter was quickly extinguished when she dropped her next sentence.
Zhùyān leaned in close and whispered, "Even if guidance is needed, I prefer private tutoring. I probably won't have anything going on next Sunday. Wonder if you're free?"
Biān Chéng's eyes flew wide open, but then a look of suspicion crossed his face. "You aren't just making up an excuse so I won't tag along with you guys, are you?"
Now the wounded one was Zhùyān. "When have I ever broken a promise? Since I promised you, I will definitely keep the appointment."
"Anyway, if you don't believe me, just come along. If you end up working overtime, blame yourself." Zhùyān turned her head away, went back to intently slurping her fruit tea, and ignored him completely.
"All right then—Smile, I'm sorry." Biān Chéng shook her arm. "It's a deal, then. Pinky swear."
"Fine, fine, pinky swear."
After Biān Chéng left, the group didn't have much other business on their minds. Before meeting Biān Chéng, they had still harbored thoughts of asking Smile's big-shot photographer friend for guidance. Once they actually met him, they really didn't dare think about it anymore; their little amateur photography projects genuinely didn't seem worthy.
Once they got back to school, everyone divided up the tasks so they could consolidate everything on Sunday.
Post-production editing was truly maddening. Not only did every piece of dialogue have to be written out, but it also had to occupy a specific duration. By the time she finished writing out nearly twenty minutes of conversation, it was already six-thirty.
Zhùyān rubbed her eyes; staring at the computer for so long had left them feeling dry.
Her coursework for the year was just about wrapping up around this time, and she still had to finish a trade research paper of no less than eight thousand words.
Added to the need to complete linear algebra and mathematical statistics, her days off were actually very short.
Oh, and she had to squeeze out some time to attend martial arts classes.
"Sigh." Zhùyān leaned against her chair, tilting her head back in a mournful groan.
...
"How did your photography project turn out?" Today, Biān Chéng had a double-strand fine silver chain hanging around his neck, wore a white shirt with gold threads on the upper body with a gold chain at the pocket, black jeans on the lower body, and white canvas shoes on his feet, exposing fair and rosy ankles.
He was pale to begin with, and this half-body of white clothing made him look refined and ethereal, like someone not of this mortal world.
Yet the moment he opened his mouth, he was instantly dragged back down to earth.
"Ah—not bad, squeaked by. Neither bad nor good, upper-middle level. I actually thought we might get graded as excellent; truly, daydreaming is a fool's errand." Just like when she filled out an entire math test and ended up with a score of just over one hundred and ten on the gaokao—when you max out your expectations, you sometimes just end up embarrassing yourself.
"Is that so?" Biān Chéng scratched his head. "At most, I'm just sensitive to light and know how to do some image enhancement. When it comes to editing alone, I might not do a very good job either. But if you're interested, I can go study it and come back to teach you."
"It's not like that, I just have a bit of a gap in expectations." Zhùyān sighed. "I thought we'd done our best, but there's always someone better. I still have a lot of hard work to do. But that's in the past now, we can talk about it if it ever comes up again. Today we're going out to have fun, so let's not start off talking about such unhappy things~"
"Have you figured out where we're going to play?" Zhùyān asked.
Biān Chéng said he was a local, so Zhùyān hadn't made any travel plans—though she rarely made them anyway, just walking and exploring wherever her feet took her.
The two of them wandered through the ancient street, bought Tanghulu, and squatted by a sugar-painting stall waiting for a freshly made giant bear and Doraemon.
They pedaled their bicycles along the outskirts of the West Lake, and finally stopped at a large shopping mall.
"As expected, a shopping mall is the ultimate destination of a shopping trip," Zhùyān couldn't help remarking.
"Then, dear Miss Smile, shall we go tour the mall?" Biān Chéng asked with an amused smile.
"Since we're already here." Zhùyān took the lead in entering the mall of this world.
She had no idea what the malls of 2035 were like compared to her own world.
She was like a butterfly unfortunately straying into this world, yet confined to a single spot; only with a native's guidance could she venture half a step away.
So in order to meet Xú Wàngzhōu, fate had guided her to leave home at that exact time; and in order to move about freely, she had accepted Xú Wàngzhōu's invitation. That way, both home and school became zones she was permitted to enter.
And today, she had unlocked the commercial street, unlocking the greater part of Hangzhou City.
It was also today that she truly got to see the other side of this world in a meaningful sense—a side interwoven by fate.
The mall at noon seemed no different from the malls in her memory, except that there seemed to be far too many food shops on the second floor.
Just within her line of sight, there were several Sichuan restaurants, hot pot joints, and... tea restaurants.
"It's almost noon. What do you feel like eating?" Biān Chéng operated the assistant robot beside him. "Do you want something spicy or light?"
"Eating spicy food gives me excessive internal heat."
"Then do you eat beef?"
"A small amount of beef is fine."
...After asking about several dietary preferences in a row, Biān Chéng asked, "Then shall we go have clay pot rice? Or seafood noodles?"
"How do you know so precisely what I want to eat?" Zhùyān curiously leaned over, looking at the robot that looked somewhat like a small letter 'U'. "Just through this little thing?"
"I am not a thing. I am Service Robot Number 3845, very happy to serve you. I have matched the locations of shops serving the cuisine categories you prefer. Five shops meet the requirements: two with fair ratings and three with excellent ratings. The current top three are packed to capacity, while two still have available seating. Based on current pedestrian traffic, please select your preferred shop within six minutes. The next dining rush hour will arrive in twenty minutes."
My, aren't you quite smart.
Zhùyān asked, "How many seafood noodle shops are there, and which one is closest?"
"The optimal location has been matched for you."
Sitting inside a shop named Taishi Noodle Restaurant, Zhùyān twirled an empty bowl in her hands while the hovering robot that had completed its guiding duties had already departed.
Ordering now didn't require scanning a QR code; you just tapped the touchscreen beside you to select from the menu. Only now did she have a visceral sense that she had transmigrated into a future game.
Actually, the future didn't have huge changes. Mobile signals had just become 6G, and every household used facial recognition. Shopping malls hadn't changed much—you still had to scan barcodes.