Soft and exotic music, a female voice singing an unknown song in a gentle tune.
The light was a little dim, making the wooden table and tablecloth in front of me look very textured. There were intricate and twisting patterns on the bowls and plates, and chopsticks and knives and forks were on the sides.
Xiao Chen realized that this was a double table in the restaurant. He looked around and saw rattan-style decorations, wooden carvings of peacocks and elephants on the walls, and stone Buddha statues in various postures placed on the surrounding cabinets. The waiter standing not far away was wearing Southeast Asian-style clothing.
There was no one opposite, but there was a set of tableware.
Am I waiting for someone? Xiao Chen thought to himself.
Sure enough, not long after, a girl came over slowly, led by a waiter, and walked up to him.
Luo Ling?!
"Sorry, I was delayed for some time by a meeting. You've been here for a while, right?" Luo Ling took off her coat and hung it on the back of the chair, then put her bag behind her. She smiled at Xiao Chen and sat down opposite him.
"Well, fortunately, I just arrived too." Xiao Chen responded to her with a smile.
"How was the reading count for last night's article? Did it exceed 10,000?" Luo Ling asked as she flipped through the menu.
"Manuscript?" Xiao Chen was still confused.
"You're stupid." Luo Ling laughed, "Why do you look so confused when you came in today? Did you stay up late last night and lose too many brain cells?"
She called the waiter first and ordered a few dishes quickly. Then she opened her phone, searched for a while, and praised: "Not bad. It's over 20,000. It seems that the story is well made this time. Time travel... um, um, and analysis... Not bad, Lao Xiao, it's like a detective story, well-reasoned and convincing."
Xiao Chen had no idea what she was talking about. He could only touch his nose and wait patiently for her to finish reading.
Luo Ling read very quickly, finishing the entire article in just two or three minutes. She put down her phone, suddenly reached out, held Xiao Chen's hand and said, "Tell me, that day two years ago, if you hadn't been riding your bike to print and accidentally hit me, and then took me to the pharmacy a few steps away to buy Band-Aids, we would have been in school and would have disappeared along with half of the campus."
Xiao Chen's hand was held by Luo Ling's slender hand, and he suddenly felt a little hot on his face. Luo Ling was so intimate and natural with him, could it be that they were already in that kind of relationship
However, Luo Ling's words still made him a little concerned. Disappearing from campus
"You, are you talking about the day when you traveled through time?" Xiao Chen asked with a frown.
"Hey, you, the WeChat editor, are you confused by the story you wrote? Are you so sure that it was a time travel?"
Luo Ling turned her phone around, the screen facing Xiao Chen, and saw that it was a public account called "Lao Xiao Strange Talk". The first article in it was a bird's-eye view of Hua Xia University, except that there seemed to be a big hole dug in the ground, and most of the school disappeared from the ground. The title was "Traveling Through Time and Space: Hua Xia University's Journey to Another World", and the following text was speculative, discussing what would happen if the shocking mystery of Hua Xia University's disappearance was a time travel.
"I didn't expect you would write in it that both of us became magicians and became a couple over there. How much do you cling to me that you won't let me go even after traveling to another world?" Luo Ling smiled sweetly, and Xiao Chen's heart beat faster when he saw her.
Luo Ling and I didn't travel through time? Xiao Chen was surprised to read the article, but he always felt that the article described what should have happened. And the warmth here was just a dream.
Dream
I finally remembered, the Dream Travel Method...
Xiao Chen's heart was filled with a sense of loss at this moment.
"What's wrong? You look so strange today." Luo Ling squeezed her hand tighter. "What happened?"
Now that he knew it was a dream, Xiao Chen let it go.
"Let's eat first. I haven't had a good meal like this for a long time." The dishes were already served. He filled a bowl of Tom Yum Goong soup and drank it in one gulp. He felt that his taste buds, which had been dormant for many days, had finally revived. Then came the curry beef brisket and the shrimp salad. Luo Ling looked at Xiao Chen wolfing down his food with a thoughtful expression.
"Hey, how about we play a game now?" Luo Ling said.
"Game?" Xiao Chen was still wolfing down his food.
"I think the article you wrote is quite interesting. How about you continue to deduce what happened to us after we traveled through time, and then I can help you find the flaws?"
Seeing Luo Ling's high spirits, Xiao Chen shrugged and said, "Okay."
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and began to recall: "If we traveled through time, I should have been printing something at that moment, and you went to the small supermarket..."
Xiao Chen briefly recounted his own experience, and spoke for nearly half an hour, finally talking about his experience in the capital. He wanted to stop several times, but Luo Ling encouraged him to finish the story and asked a lot of details.
Luo Ling seemed to be still digesting the story, but Xiao Chen couldn't wait to continue eating.
"There's not much food there, right?"
"Yeah, that's right." Xiao Chen was so busy eating that he didn't think seriously about what Luo Ling said.
"Is there any rice?"
"No."
Luo Ling drank a glass of juice and said, "I should have taken you to eat Chinese food earlier. It's not easy for you to come back once."
"What did you say!" Xiao Chen suddenly realized that there was something wrong with what the other party said.
Luo Ling folded her hands, resting them on her chin, and said seriously: "You are Xiao Chen, and many of your subtle movements are still the same, but you are not my Xiao Chen, because you don't know much about our affairs, and everything that happened in this world after the school disappeared. I guess you are a Xiao Chen from a parallel world. In that world, you and I both went to another world!"
Xiao Chen held a large shrimp in his mouth and looked at the other person in surprise: "You are so smart even in the dream! But since it is a dream, even you are fake, what else can I say?"
"How do you know that I am just a fake dream? I think I am a very real Luo Ling." She smiled slyly.
"How is this possible?" Xiao Chen waved at the spoon on the table, and the spoon floated in the air. "Look, this is surreal, right? It can only happen in a dream."
"But, can you do this in your world?" Luo Ling asked back.
“That’s… indeed.”
"So, how do you know that if you return to your original world or come to my world, you will not continue to possess this power? After all, this is just pure spiritual power and does not involve any magic, right?" Luo Ling was able to draw inferences from Xiao Chen's previous narration and quickly grasped the essence of the problem.
"I now feel that you are real, because I don't think I am so smart even in my dreams." Xiao Chen murmured.