Wáng Qígē: "The company is on break recently. Are you free? Let's go out and have some fun."
An hour later, she initiated a video call.
Liǔ Cháoquè answered. A voice, slightly grainy and muffled, came through the speaker.
"Hello?"
"You're still sleeping?" Wáng Qígē asked in surprise.
"Yeah, who knows what crawled into the screenwriter's head last night—they made me submit the manuscript before five this morning. I only fell asleep at four, I'm so tired~" Liǔ Cháoquè complained with a grievance-laden tone, bitterly denouncing the screenwriter for acting less than human. Then, remembering why Wáng Qígē had called, she asked, "Is there something you need since you're calling now?"
"Oh, not really much. I just wanted to see if you have any free time. I'm on leave right now and wanted to take you out."
"Where should we go?" In a flash, Liǔ Cháoquè perked up. She looked at Wáng Qígē on the opposite side of the screen, her eyes sparkling.
"Ahem, ta-da." Wáng Qígē pulled out a promotional poster—it turned out to be for an amusement park, headlined by a super-large Ferris wheel.
"And here I thought you wanted to go to some cat café to pet cats, or go paragliding and hot-air ballooning near your place." She didn't mention cosplay, mostly because they had already gone last month.
"I actually wanted to go play on the glass skywalk near my place. I heard it's thrilling, and some people get so scared their legs turn to jelly." Liǔ Cháoquè offered a sincere suggestion.
"If you're looking for a thrill, you might as well try the drop tower and the pirate ship, or maybe the roller coaster. That'll definitely send your adrenaline soaring and get you abnormally excited."
"Then I'd be chilled to the bone from head to toe, and half my life would be gone." Liǔ Cháoquè was left speechless.
"So are you coming to the amusement park with me or not!" Wáng Qígē demanded, exasperated.
"I'm going, I'm going, it's not like I said I wouldn't. It's just that if we go all the way somewhere, wouldn't it be a bit too monotonous to *only* visit an amusement park?" Liǔ Cháoquè hesitated and said, "Besides, there are so many amusement parks in this world; we don't necessarily have to travel somewhere just for one. Locally speaking, there's even a large Ferris wheel right near our place."
"Take a look at where the amusement park on this poster is!"
Reminded by Wáng Qígē, Liǔ Cháoquè, who had previously lacked enthusiasm, took a closer look at the promotional poster. Wait a minute—this amusement park was called Fantawild, and if she remembered correctly, that place was in Níngchéng.
"We didn't have the chance during our four years in college. Aren't you curious whether it's actually fun or not?" Wáng Qígē smiled. "I still remember you wanted to go to Fantawild back then, but we gave up because it was simply too far from our school—you couldn't possibly make the trip and back in under three days. Going now makes up for that regret."
"All right, then let's go." Liǔ Cháoquè clicked her teeth. "I also remember someone borrowing my student ID back then to buy discounted tickets over there, but I, the actual student, never got the chance to use that discount. Just thinking about it is so frustrating."
"Then you wouldn't happen to want to try using your expired student ID, would you?" Wáng Qígē suspected she might actually be harboring that thought. "Anyway, thanks to my employee benefits, these two tickets are completely free, so you won't need to pull any tricks with your student ID."
"You have perks like this and didn't tell me sooner? Let's go, let's go—only a fool passes up a freebie. We're going to play every single game we can experience. I've wanted to ride that roller coaster for the longest time, though I have no idea if it's going to scare the soul right out of my body."
Seeing her acting somewhat scatterbrained, Wáng Qígē knew how excited she was. "It's a deal, then. We'll book tomorrow's train tickets. When do you want to leave?"
The two of them hit it off immediately. When they met the next day at the Níngchéng railway station, Liǔ Cháoquè couldn't help sighing, "I feel like every time I go out these past month or so, it's just to go have fun."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Wáng Qígē sighed. "You're about to grow mold staying at home. Are you trying to sprout little mushrooms?"
Liǔ Cháoquè felt she needed to clarify. She didn't stay at home all day—she still had to eat. Even though takeout was convenient, she didn't like eating it. Sometimes her three daily meals consisted of nothing more than boiling a handful of bok choy, operating on the principle that as long as she didn't starve to death, it was fine.
Her skin had the fairness of someone who hadn't seen the sun in years, but she looked well-kept and didn't appear frail at all. After all, her home was equipped with a full set of running gear. Buying it had nearly broken her heart at the time, but the results were quite good.
"Growing mushrooms is impossible. If those things started growing, this house would be finished." She adopted a very scientific attitude toward her remark.
"Is the subject matter of your recent novel on the futuristic sci-fi side?" Wáng Qígē asked.
"How did you know?" She had recently written a fifty-chapter short story, and reading interstellar novels had almost made her sick to her stomach as she studied the brilliant achievements of her predecessors word by word.
"You have no idea—I've read Hugo Award-winning novels to the point where I can practically recite them." Mentioning this made Liǔ Cháoquè start pouring out her grievances. "Now I finally understand how some authors feel taking ten years to write a single book. Seriously, even though I submitted my manuscript yesterday, I still feel like it's somewhat imperfect, and I have this huge urge to revise it and submit it again. But in the end, cold hard cash stopped my impulse." She looked like a sprite whose vital essence had been drained dry. "Still, maybe going out to play with you will give me some new inspiration."
Wáng Qígē stood on tiptoe and patted her head. Her hair had been washed yesterday and still carried the fragrance of shampoo.
"Once you submit it, stop thinking about it for now. We can talk about it later. We've come all the way here to play, so you need to be happy."
"Of course, I'm super happy right now!" Liǔ Cháoquè shook her head, as if trying to fling her chaotic thoughts out of her mind. She pointed forward and struck a very chuunibyou pose: "To Fantawild, GO!"
"GO!"
The flying chairs at the amusement park weren't particularly thrilling, but Liǔ Cháoquè kept having dangerous thoughts in her head about the machine malfunctioning and flinging her away. She had no choice but to shift her attention to the screaming people ahead or the vendors selling things in the distance.
Until it finally stopped and her feet touched the ground, she still felt a floaty, unreal sensation.
This drew a burst of laughter from Wáng Qígē: "Are we still going to ride the roller coaster, or should we just ride the carousel instead?"
"Both, just let me recover for a moment." Liǔ Cháoquè said cowardly.
A roller coaster truly lived up to its name—those who had never ridden one had no idea that this thing seemed okay at first...
Listening to the eardrum-piercing screams beside her, along with the weightless sensation of a 90-degree vertical drop, your body had already landed, while your heart was still floating in the sky.
With the wind howling past her ears and the sensation of her soul leaving her body, Liǔ Cháoquè numbly experienced it over and over again, feeling as though there was no end in sight. Turns out, when people are in extreme panic, they can't even make a sound.
Offering a sense of security far more enduring and buoyant than the pirate ship, it made Liǔ Cháoquè flee the roller coaster entrance the very first second she could. She felt as though she had been reborn, moved to tears of joy.
"I never want to ride these games again!" Liǔ Cháoquè said with a trembling voice.
"I told you that you wouldn't be able to handle it, but you just had to refuse to shed tears until you saw your coffin. Now you know..." Wáng Qígē supported her as she sat down on a bench and handed her a bottle of water.
Liǔ Cháoquè took it and wiped away her involuntary tears. "Weren't we just curious? Who knew it would be this terrifying, and you couldn't even get out halfway through?"
God knew how she had survived those thirty-some minutes. Fortunately, there was a buffer right before a major sprint; she felt like she'd almost had the wind knocked out of her from fright.
"So what do you want to play next?"
Liǔ Cháoquè waved her hand. "Let's rest first, I'm a bit dizzy." As soon as she finished speaking, blackness overtook her without warning, and she collapsed.
Before losing consciousness, Liǔ Cháoquè seemed to hear Wáng Qígē's exclamation of alarm. She couldn't help lamenting that she was probably one of the few unlucky souls to be knocked out cold by a roller coaster.
Drip, drip. Drip, drip.
Many people were talking by her ear, and the tip of her nose caught the scent of hospital disinfectant. Someone was cursing, and someone else let out a haughty cold huff.
Liǔ Cháoquè felt something was amiss. Surely fainting wouldn't cause her to start hallucinating things like this.
When her consciousness cleared once more, the moment she opened her eyes and looked at the familiar white window curtains and the familiar man sitting beside her,
Liǔ Cháoquè felt completely unwell, especially when this person called out her name: "Smile?"
"Biān Chéng?"