Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Pierce, Proofreader-adjective
Nan Zhou soon noticed Jiang Fang’s ear lobes that were almost burning red, and his teeth were chattering faintly.
He guessed, “Is the effect of the alcohol over?”
Jiang Fang coughed lightly, “… Well, it’s over.”
Nan Zhou, “Oh.”
Nan Zhou, “Then, do you still want to eat?”
Jiang Fang quickly sorted out his embarrassment and restored his usual appearance.
The wetness at the corner of his eyes faded away. His messy hair straightened to its original position, regaining his sophisticated, sober, and rational persona.
Nan Zhou curiously watched his every move.
When he lowered his hand, he called him, “Brother Fang.”
Jiang Fang sensibly replied, “Yeah.”
Nan Zhou’s lips were a bit moist, and with the light reflecting on his glistening lips, one couldn’t help but focus their attention there.
Nan Zhou, “I’ve always wondered before what you wanted when you teamed up with me.”
He sincerely continued, “Now I understand. What you want turns out to be me.”
Jiang Fang couldn’t hold back; he choked and coughed violently, “……”
He couldn’t help but want to block Nan Zhou’s mouth.
Fortunately, compared to before, the current thinking was only a slight gaffe, which could be controlled.
Jiang Fang straightened his collar, “The things I just said….”
Nan Zhou, “Hmm?”
Jiang Fang slightly staggered on his steps and was flustered, “You don’t…”
——Don’t take it seriously.
——Don’t take it as a promise.
——That is not the love that should be spoken out loud.
Thousands of words of rejection were hanging on the tip of his tongue.
And Nan Zhou’s calm and cold eyes were staring at his face, impartial, focused, and earnest.
“…Don’t forget.”
Jiang Fang aimed his eyes at Nan Zhou, made sure he was articulating it clearly, and “forced” himself not to go back, “Remember clearly.”
Nan Zhou: “Mm. I will.”
Nan Zhou thought for a moment and asked rhetorically, “So, in the future, you won’t say such things to me?”
Jiang Fang, “……”
Nan Zhou expressed frankly: “I like it when you say all those things to me.”
Jiang Fang pursed his lips, and his smile unconsciously carried a bit of nervousness and a rare youthfulness.
Having one’s self be restrained with rationale was more ideal than being influenced by one’s desire.
Only this way could Jiang Fang break through the invisible obstacles and barriers without hesitation.
“It’s hard,” he said, “… but I will try to learn.”
Nan Zhou “hmmed” and raised the hand still tied tightly with Jiang Fang’s with the choker, “So, is this going to be untied?”
Jiang Fang, “……”
He rubbed his forehead helplessly, and let out a muffled laugh.
——Damn.
The loss of control in just ten minutes, the hole he dug for himself. He was afraid it would take a lifetime to fill.
The passionate, dazzling fire was also him.
Jiang Fang sought his advice: “Do you want to untie it?”
Nan Zhou looked at the shimmering leather choker that restrained him and asked Jiang Fang, “Will you feel at ease by tying me like this?”
Jiang Fang felt almost embarrassed by his own stupid words, “Maybe…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Nan Zhou’s fingertips brushed against the surface of Jiang Fang’s palm. Indescribable itchiness ran through his body and to his heart. One after the other, his slender fingers snuggly linked themselves into the gaps in his hand, cozily resting in the warmth of his touch.
Five pairs of fingers interlocked.
The subtle friction made the numbing tingling sensation clear and conveyed an indescribable feeling from their fingertips to the depths of their hearts.
Nan Zhou just pulled him, and they walked side by side through the black vines, shrubs, and trees.
Nan Zhou whispered to him, “Actually, you can’t tie me with iron chains.”
“If you want to tie me, just call my name.”
“My name is Nan Zhou. You knew it a long time ago. Isn’t that right?”
“If you’re worried I’ll be taken away by something, don’t worry. I’ll always come back. Running back as soon as possible.”
Nan Zhou said these words naturally and calmly.
He didn’t take this as some wondrous love story or vow but simply stating the truth.
He didn’t know why Jiang Fang had so much uneasiness in his heart.
Maybe he was human.
Anyway, Nan Zhou didn’t want to be alone and was already satisfied when he met Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang.
“I believe you.”
Nan Zhou heard Jiang Fang’s voice. There seemed to be a lot of tenderness and sadness that he still couldn’t understand.
“This time, I won’t go backward.”
After re-embarking on the journey, both of their steps were much lighter.
Nan Zhou silently recalled those words of Jiang Fang.
In fact, it wasn’t an uncomfortable and sickening thing.
The feeling of hunger was still there, but Nan Zhou felt like he was slamming against something inside his body, making his bones flutter as if he was about to fly into the sky.
For the first time, Nan Zhou experienced this distinctive and wonderful feeling.
The change in their mood greatly hastened their pace and made up for the wasted ten minutes with ease.
They walked smoothly to the edge of the dark forest and saw the jagged light that came through under the dense canopy of trees.
Unexpectedly, before the two could get out of the forest, they heard the sound of hurried footsteps.
Jiang Fang pressed Nan Zhou’s shoulder while Nan Zhou grabbed the front of his shirt.
The two hid behind a tree.
The ragged brother and sister were unaware of the two in the forest.
The younger sister was about to flee into the forest without thinking, but she fell to the ground within two steps of rushing in.
From her tattered clothes, a few pieces of gold fell out. Beneath the brilliant sunlight, they shone into Nan Zhou’s eyes.
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang looked at each other.
In this timeline, the witch’s corpse should probably be boiling in a pot now.
At this time, the pair of brother and sister weren’t the graceful and elegant little masters of the candy house, nor were they two wolves starving to the brink of madness, but the two most ordinary peasant children who escaped death.
The older brother picked his sister up off the jagged rock.
“Don’t go there!” He said, “That’s where we came from; we can’t go back through here.”
The sister bravely wiped away the blood seeping from her knee, “Then where are we… going?”
They were close to the forest edge as they ran towards the swamp.
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang deliberately distanced themselves from them and followed closely.
The first two times when Nan Zhou and the others went to the swamp, there was a small bird with dappled fur on the tree branch.
Other than that, they found nothing of value in the direction of the swamp.
Nan Zhou and the others tried to talk to the bird.
But it turned a deaf ear to their proximity and only concentrated on tending its feathers.
Just like what a typical self-absorbed bird would do.
The siblings were similar to what they had seen before.
They were unable to find a boat to cross the swamp or a fisherman who could help them.
Standing on the edge of the rotting swamp, the only living thing in sight was this bird.
The sister burst into tears.
The brother was in disarray and had to pray to the bird perched on the tree, “Please, take us across the river.”
Nan Zhou had a hunch.
This time, things would be different.
Sure enough, the bird jumped forward twice.
She opened her pale yellow beak and emitted a girl’s voice, “Are you going to cross the river?”
This was indeed a fairy tale.
The little bird lowered her black bean-like eyes, “Is this what you wish for?”
The sister was delighted and answered first, “Yes!! We want to go home! We want dad!”
The bird stood quietly on the branch, gazing at the brother and sister, “One’s wishes always have a price to be paid.”
This sentence made Nan Zhou frown.
Yes.
From the very beginning, the brothers and sisters who were NPCs didn’t tell them what tasks they were going to accomplish.
It seemed like it was part of the mission, asking them to find the task itself in the quest.
At first, Nan Zhou thought they needed to go and find the door.
Now, the bird’s words reminded him.
In each timeline they traveled, the siblings had different wishes and paid different prices.
In the candy house, the siblings skillfully partnered up to lie and try to eat them.
The price was to sacrifice the goodness and innocence they originally possessed.
In the cabin, the siblings were starving, and their only wish was to stop suffering from hunger.
The price was the life of their father.
Now, in front of the swamp, the two of them wanted to go home and see their father.
With the continuous change of timelines, their wishes were constantly changing.
What did this seemingly irregular change mean?
And what was the price they would have to pay to return home?
The two siblings, who were so intent on returning home, now obviously couldn’t understand the deeper meaning behind the words the little bird uttered.
The older brother grabbed his sister’s hand and exclaimed, “We can give you anything you want, as long as you take us back to Daddy.”
The little bird’s black beady eyes examined them, “Do you have anything to pay me for?”
The sister busily fished out the witch’s silver bracelet from her bosom and held it up to the bird.
But the bird raised her voice, “I hate that! I don’t want that!”
It went to the branch, pondered for a moment, and offered an exchange, “You only have to promise me that when you get home, you will give me half a loaf of bread. I’m collecting bread.”
The brother wrinkled his brows and asked what Nan Zhou wanted to ask, “But there is a candy house nearby. Why don’t you go there to look for bread?”
With a gentle voice, the bird spat out a thought-provoking sentence.
“That’s not bread at all.”
The two siblings didn’t understand the meaning behind the words at the moment and agreed.
After getting their promise, the bird spread its wings.
Its slender wings, usually placed on both sides of its body, unfolded, and it was actually obscuring the sky.
Wool-like feathers of mixed colors and wings of more than ten meters long fluttered out layer upon layer, like a large piece of inferior flying carpet.
The two siblings thanked the bird and rode on each wing with joy.
On the wings, the brother also firmly held the sister’s hand.
They rushed to their own home, and happily went to the blood feast of murdering their father.
The giant-winged bird soared into the air, crossed the fetid swamp, and fluttered its wings into the distance.
A feather fell from its wings.
The feather fluttered and fell on the silt not far from the swamp shore.
Probably because of sucking the dirty water and heavy mud, the pattern and outline of the door handle gradually appeared on the surface of the feather.
——It formed a door in the mud.
It was just that this door was effective for only a short time.
When the feather was about to sink without a sound, a hand jerked over and decisively pressed the door handle down.
The moment the door opened, time shifted.
When they opened their eyes again, they were once again in the heart of the forest.
This time it was a three-way intersection.
The road to the cabin was once again open.
And in the distance came the sound of human footsteps again.
It was the miserable woodcutter, carrying the two siblings on his back, ready to take them to the forest and abandon them.
The pair of siblings had already gone through an ordeal of being abandoned, and they seemed to know the fate they would face.
The brother firmly grasped his sister’s hand, who was about to cry and put the other hand into the rucksack, trying to crush the bread he brought so that the fine crumbs fell on the road, to form a way home.
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang dodged and hid in the forest.
Looking at the depressed backs of the father, son, and daughter, and the bread crumbs that fell behind them and attracted the birds to peck at them, Nan Zhou knew that the brother and sister were about to meet their final fate.
And Jiang Fang raised his eyebrows with interest.
The confrontation between the two children and the witch in the story of “Candy House” was supposed to be the main event.
They had jumped to the fourth timeline and never got to meet the witch, at most they only saw the witch’s boiled bones.
The main “characters” they met were the siblings and their father.
Was this a coincidence, or was it something else?
Hunger eroded silently again, surging like a “tide,” biting at their empty stomachs.
Nan Zhou wasn’t in a hurry to eat.
He said softly, “I seem to understand why we are so hungry in this copy.”
Jiang Fang turned around and said, “Isn’t it because of the influence of these two siblings?”
Nan Zhou shook his head thoughtfully and asked Jiang Fang, “Have you ever heard of another fairy tale related to hunger.”
“I stopped reading stories a long time ago. The ones I’ve heard before, I’ve pretty much forgotten.” Jiang Fang shrugged, “Except for your story.”
Nan Zhou was curious, “Why?”
“Because I know they are all fake.” Jiang Fang answered, “But there are times when I would wish you were real.”
For Jiang Fang in the past, this had been a rare fantasy in his rational world.
Nan Zhou pondered about it for a while and thought it was an agreeable answer, so he squeezed his hand lightly to express his happiness.
He took Jiang Fang’s hand, took the attitude of Teacher Nan, and asked Jiang seriously, “Then do you know the story of Inger?”
Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Pierce, Proofreader-adjective
Nan Zhou soon noticed Jiang Fang’s ear lobes that were almost burning red, and his teeth were chattering faintly.
He guessed, “Is the effect of the alcohol over?”
Jiang Fang coughed lightly, “… Well, it’s over.”
Nan Zhou, “Oh.”
Nan Zhou, “Then, do you still want to eat?”
Jiang Fang quickly sorted out his embarrassment and restored his usual appearance.
The wetness at the corner of his eyes faded away. His messy hair straightened to its original position, regaining his sophisticated, sober, and rational persona.
Nan Zhou curiously watched his every move.
When he lowered his hand, he called him, “Brother Fang.”
Jiang Fang sensibly replied, “Yeah.”
Nan Zhou’s lips were a bit moist, and with the light reflecting on his glistening lips, one couldn’t help but focus their attention there.
Nan Zhou, “I’ve always wondered before what you wanted when you teamed up with me.”
He sincerely continued, “Now I understand. What you want turns out to be me.”
Jiang Fang couldn’t hold back; he choked and coughed violently, “……”
He couldn’t help but want to block Nan Zhou’s mouth.
Fortunately, compared to before, the current thinking was only a slight gaffe, which could be controlled.
Jiang Fang straightened his collar, “The things I just said….”
Nan Zhou, “Hmm?”
Jiang Fang slightly staggered on his steps and was flustered, “You don’t…”
——Don’t take it seriously.
——Don’t take it as a promise.
——That is not the love that should be spoken out loud.
Thousands of words of rejection were hanging on the tip of his tongue.
And Nan Zhou’s calm and cold eyes were staring at his face, impartial, focused, and earnest.
“…Don’t forget.”
Jiang Fang aimed his eyes at Nan Zhou, made sure he was articulating it clearly, and “forced” himself not to go back, “Remember clearly.”
Nan Zhou: “Mm. I will.”
Nan Zhou thought for a moment and asked rhetorically, “So, in the future, you won’t say such things to me?”
Jiang Fang, “……”
Nan Zhou expressed frankly: “I like it when you say all those things to me.”
Jiang Fang pursed his lips, and his smile unconsciously carried a bit of nervousness and a rare youthfulness.
Having one’s self be restrained with rationale was more ideal than being influenced by one’s desire.
Only this way could Jiang Fang break through the invisible obstacles and barriers without hesitation.
“It’s hard,” he said, “… but I will try to learn.”
Nan Zhou “hmmed” and raised the hand still tied tightly with Jiang Fang’s with the choker, “So, is this going to be untied?”
Jiang Fang, “……”
He rubbed his forehead helplessly, and let out a muffled laugh.
——Damn.
The loss of control in just ten minutes, the hole he dug for himself. He was afraid it would take a lifetime to fill.
The passionate, dazzling fire was also him.
Jiang Fang sought his advice: “Do you want to untie it?”
Nan Zhou looked at the shimmering leather choker that restrained him and asked Jiang Fang, “Will you feel at ease by tying me like this?”
Jiang Fang felt almost embarrassed by his own stupid words, “Maybe…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Nan Zhou’s fingertips brushed against the surface of Jiang Fang’s palm. Indescribable itchiness ran through his body and to his heart. One after the other, his slender fingers snuggly linked themselves into the gaps in his hand, cozily resting in the warmth of his touch.
Five pairs of fingers interlocked.
The subtle friction made the numbing tingling sensation clear and conveyed an indescribable feeling from their fingertips to the depths of their hearts.
Nan Zhou just pulled him, and they walked side by side through the black vines, shrubs, and trees.
Nan Zhou whispered to him, “Actually, you can’t tie me with iron chains.”
“If you want to tie me, just call my name.”
“My name is Nan Zhou. You knew it a long time ago. Isn’t that right?”
“If you’re worried I’ll be taken away by something, don’t worry. I’ll always come back. Running back as soon as possible.”
Nan Zhou said these words naturally and calmly.
He didn’t take this as some wondrous love story or vow but simply stating the truth.
He didn’t know why Jiang Fang had so much uneasiness in his heart.
Maybe he was human.
Anyway, Nan Zhou didn’t want to be alone and was already satisfied when he met Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang.
“I believe you.”
Nan Zhou heard Jiang Fang’s voice. There seemed to be a lot of tenderness and sadness that he still couldn’t understand.
“This time, I won’t go backward.”
After re-embarking on the journey, both of their steps were much lighter.
Nan Zhou silently recalled those words of Jiang Fang.
In fact, it wasn’t an uncomfortable and sickening thing.
The feeling of hunger was still there, but Nan Zhou felt like he was slamming against something inside his body, making his bones flutter as if he was about to fly into the sky.
For the first time, Nan Zhou experienced this distinctive and wonderful feeling.
The change in their mood greatly hastened their pace and made up for the wasted ten minutes with ease.
They walked smoothly to the edge of the dark forest and saw the jagged light that came through under the dense canopy of trees.
Unexpectedly, before the two could get out of the forest, they heard the sound of hurried footsteps.
Jiang Fang pressed Nan Zhou’s shoulder while Nan Zhou grabbed the front of his shirt.
The two hid behind a tree.
The ragged brother and sister were unaware of the two in the forest.
The younger sister was about to flee into the forest without thinking, but she fell to the ground within two steps of rushing in.
From her tattered clothes, a few pieces of gold fell out. Beneath the brilliant sunlight, they shone into Nan Zhou’s eyes.
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang looked at each other.
In this timeline, the witch’s corpse should probably be boiling in a pot now.
At this time, the pair of brother and sister weren’t the graceful and elegant little masters of the candy house, nor were they two wolves starving to the brink of madness, but the two most ordinary peasant children who escaped death.
The older brother picked his sister up off the jagged rock.
“Don’t go there!” He said, “That’s where we came from; we can’t go back through here.”
The sister bravely wiped away the blood seeping from her knee, “Then where are we… going?”
They were close to the forest edge as they ran towards the swamp.
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang deliberately distanced themselves from them and followed closely.
The first two times when Nan Zhou and the others went to the swamp, there was a small bird with dappled fur on the tree branch.
Other than that, they found nothing of value in the direction of the swamp.
Nan Zhou and the others tried to talk to the bird.
But it turned a deaf ear to their proximity and only concentrated on tending its feathers.
Just like what a typical self-absorbed bird would do.
The siblings were similar to what they had seen before.
They were unable to find a boat to cross the swamp or a fisherman who could help them.
Standing on the edge of the rotting swamp, the only living thing in sight was this bird.
The sister burst into tears.
The brother was in disarray and had to pray to the bird perched on the tree, “Please, take us across the river.”
Nan Zhou had a hunch.
This time, things would be different.
Sure enough, the bird jumped forward twice.
She opened her pale yellow beak and emitted a girl’s voice, “Are you going to cross the river?”
This was indeed a fairy tale.
The little bird lowered her black bean-like eyes, “Is this what you wish for?”
The sister was delighted and answered first, “Yes!! We want to go home! We want dad!”
The bird stood quietly on the branch, gazing at the brother and sister, “One’s wishes always have a price to be paid.”
This sentence made Nan Zhou frown.
Yes.
From the very beginning, the brothers and sisters who were NPCs didn’t tell them what tasks they were going to accomplish.
It seemed like it was part of the mission, asking them to find the task itself in the quest.
At first, Nan Zhou thought they needed to go and find the door.
Now, the bird’s words reminded him.
In each timeline they traveled, the siblings had different wishes and paid different prices.
In the candy house, the siblings skillfully partnered up to lie and try to eat them.
The price was to sacrifice the goodness and innocence they originally possessed.
In the cabin, the siblings were starving, and their only wish was to stop suffering from hunger.
The price was the life of their father.
Now, in front of the swamp, the two of them wanted to go home and see their father.
With the continuous change of timelines, their wishes were constantly changing.
What did this seemingly irregular change mean?
And what was the price they would have to pay to return home?
The two siblings, who were so intent on returning home, now obviously couldn’t understand the deeper meaning behind the words the little bird uttered.
The older brother grabbed his sister’s hand and exclaimed, “We can give you anything you want, as long as you take us back to Daddy.”
The little bird’s black beady eyes examined them, “Do you have anything to pay me for?”
The sister busily fished out the witch’s silver bracelet from her bosom and held it up to the bird.
But the bird raised her voice, “I hate that! I don’t want that!”
It went to the branch, pondered for a moment, and offered an exchange, “You only have to promise me that when you get home, you will give me half a loaf of bread. I’m collecting bread.”
The brother wrinkled his brows and asked what Nan Zhou wanted to ask, “But there is a candy house nearby. Why don’t you go there to look for bread?”
With a gentle voice, the bird spat out a thought-provoking sentence.
“That’s not bread at all.”
The two siblings didn’t understand the meaning behind the words at the moment and agreed.
After getting their promise, the bird spread its wings.
Its slender wings, usually placed on both sides of its body, unfolded, and it was actually obscuring the sky.
Wool-like feathers of mixed colors and wings of more than ten meters long fluttered out layer upon layer, like a large piece of inferior flying carpet.
The two siblings thanked the bird and rode on each wing with joy.
On the wings, the brother also firmly held the sister’s hand.
They rushed to their own home, and happily went to the blood feast of murdering their father.
The giant-winged bird soared into the air, crossed the fetid swamp, and fluttered its wings into the distance.
A feather fell from its wings.
The feather fluttered and fell on the silt not far from the swamp shore.
Probably because of sucking the dirty water and heavy mud, the pattern and outline of the door handle gradually appeared on the surface of the feather.
——It formed a door in the mud.
It was just that this door was effective for only a short time.
When the feather was about to sink without a sound, a hand jerked over and decisively pressed the door handle down.
The moment the door opened, time shifted.
When they opened their eyes again, they were once again in the heart of the forest.
This time it was a three-way intersection.
The road to the cabin was once again open.
And in the distance came the sound of human footsteps again.
It was the miserable woodcutter, carrying the two siblings on his back, ready to take them to the forest and abandon them.
The pair of siblings had already gone through an ordeal of being abandoned, and they seemed to know the fate they would face.
The brother firmly grasped his sister’s hand, who was about to cry and put the other hand into the rucksack, trying to crush the bread he brought so that the fine crumbs fell on the road, to form a way home.
Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang dodged and hid in the forest.
Looking at the depressed backs of the father, son, and daughter, and the bread crumbs that fell behind them and attracted the birds to peck at them, Nan Zhou knew that the brother and sister were about to meet their final fate.
And Jiang Fang raised his eyebrows with interest.
The confrontation between the two children and the witch in the story of “Candy House” was supposed to be the main event.
They had jumped to the fourth timeline and never got to meet the witch, at most they only saw the witch’s boiled bones.
The main “characters” they met were the siblings and their father.
Was this a coincidence, or was it something else?
Hunger eroded silently again, surging like a “tide,” biting at their empty stomachs.
Nan Zhou wasn’t in a hurry to eat.
He said softly, “I seem to understand why we are so hungry in this copy.”
Jiang Fang turned around and said, “Isn’t it because of the influence of these two siblings?”
Nan Zhou shook his head thoughtfully and asked Jiang Fang, “Have you ever heard of another fairy tale related to hunger.”
“I stopped reading stories a long time ago. The ones I’ve heard before, I’ve pretty much forgotten.” Jiang Fang shrugged, “Except for your story.”
Nan Zhou was curious, “Why?”
“Because I know they are all fake.” Jiang Fang answered, “But there are times when I would wish you were real.”
For Jiang Fang in the past, this had been a rare fantasy in his rational world.
Nan Zhou pondered about it for a while and thought it was an agreeable answer, so he squeezed his hand lightly to express his happiness.
He took Jiang Fang’s hand, took the attitude of Teacher Nan, and asked Jiang seriously, “Then do you know the story of Inger?”
