Jhin, whom the girls were fretting over, was at this very moment standing before a magnificent white relief archway made of gold, pearls, and seashells. Boys and girls in deep-blue school uniforms kept walking past him, laughing and chatting as they passed beneath the arch and entered the campus not far off, where singing and dancing were in full swing.
"Strange... what did I come here to do?"
There seemed to be a cloud of fog in his mind that kept him from remembering how any of this had come about. So many of his memories had grown blurry and indistinct beneath that fog. Left with no other option, he stopped a girl who was just about to walk past him and asked, "Excuse me, hello—could you tell me what that school up ahead is doing?"
"Huh? You're clearly wearing the school uniform, and yet you don't know about the Blue Sea Feast?" The girl, whose hair was dyed in streaks of black and white, hadn't wanted to get involved in someone else's business, but for some reason she felt an inexplicable fondness upon seeing Jhin, and so she reined in her impatience to explain to him: "It's an annual festival, held to celebrate the birth of the merfolk. You do know about merfolk, don't you?"
"Merfolk... ah, I should know about them."
"What do you mean, 'should know'... You're a really odd one."
"Sorry, there's a lot of things I can't quite remember."
"Don't tell me you hit your head on the way to school." The girl looked him over with concern, checking whether there was a bump anywhere on his head.
Jhin touched his head uncertainly. "I don't think so? I don't feel any pain anywhere on it. Oh—my name's Jhin. And you?"
"My name's Kyaru."
"Kyaru, Kyaru..." He repeated the name slowly, twice, his brows gradually knitting together. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was terribly familiar to him, yet he couldn't recall where that sense of familiarity came from.
Kyaru looked at him curiously. "What's wrong? Is my name strange or something?"
"Ah, sorry. I just feel like it's a little familiar—like I've heard it somewhere before."
"You..." She placed both hands in front of her and took two steps back, her eyelashes trembling faintly, her emerald-green eyes fixed warily on Jhin. "You're not trying to hit on me with some cheesy old line like that, are you?"
"How could that be?" Jhin let out a helpless laugh; what he'd just said really was easy to misunderstand. "I genuinely feel like it's familiar."
"Then take your time remembering. I've got things to do, so I'll be off."
Tossing out that line, Kyaru ran off without looking back, though she didn't forget to pass judgment in her heart: For someone who actually looks pretty decent, he sure likes to use those tired old pickup lines. What a weirdo.
Jhin didn't think to chase after her. Rummaging through his own pockets, he fished out a student ID card that stated his class and seat number. Besides that, there was also a wallet stuffed full of banknotes in his pocket.
"Blue Sea Academy, Year One, Class A, huh... I probably won't need this kind of information at a festival."
His blurry memory and his purpose for coming here still hadn't been sorted out. Since things had come to this... he might as well eat something first.
Jhin tucked away the student ID and wallet and followed the crowd into the school. He called it a school, but there wasn't the slightest trace of one to be seen inside—an endless, boundless sea of flowers, a colossal Ferris wheel hundreds of meters tall, ornamental goldfish drifting through the air wrapped in bubbles. The bizarre, fantastical sights didn't surprise him in the least.
It was as if, somewhere in his subconscious, this was exactly how the place ought to look. Holding a three-yuan tricolor ice cream in his hand, savoring its peculiar flavor of fruit and grilled meat all mixed together, Jhin strolled along, observing what in the "Blue Sea Feast" might be worth his attention.
"Thud." Because he was distracted and not watching where he was going, a little girl with white hair bumped into his arms. Seeing her cover her bright-red nose with tears glistening in her eyes, he offered an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking."
The little girl shook her head. "No, I was running too fast. Big brother, this is for you!"
"This is..." Jhin took the sheet of white paper she handed him. The moment he lifted his gaze from it, he found that the little girl had already vanished. "Huh? Where'd she go?"
He casually stuffed the white paper into his pocket. Just as he was about to take a lick of his ice cream, he discovered it had already disappeared, leaving nothing but a cream-smeared cone in his hand. "When did I finish it off?"
A cone with no ice cream was nothing but a dry sheet of corrugated cardboard, but Jhin still upheld his principle of not wasting food and ate the whole thing.
After wandering around the festival a few times, there were still so many things he couldn't remember. He could only sit down on a bench beside the lawn, watching the setting sun sink into the blue sea as two crescent moons, symmetrical to one another, slowly climbed up into the night sky. The bright silver moonlight draped over the earth like a layer of gossamer.
A salty sea breeze blew through the air, only to turn into the aroma of grilled fish as it passed by a certain barbecue stall. In an instant it stirred up the glutton worm in Jhin's belly. Without a word, he strode over to the stall and waved to the owner. "Give me a grilled fish!"
As chance would have it, Kyaru was also sitting by this very stall eating grilled fish. Seeing her look at him in surprise, Jhin changed his order on the spot: "Boss, make that two!"
"You got it! That'll be twenty yuan in total."
"Here you go."
The owner fanned the fan in his hand quickly and in small strokes, making the charcoal fire glow brighter. As the temperature rose, more grease seeped out from the surface of the fish flesh, and before long he handed the two grilled fish over to Jhin.
Carrying the two servings of food, Jhin sat down beside Kyaru without hesitation, handing one grilled fish to her at the same time. "What a coincidence. Do you really like the grilled fish here?"
"N-no I don't! I just happened to be passing by, and my stomach happened to be empty, that's all!"
Jhin pressed down the corners of his mouth, struggling to keep them from curling up, and pointed a finger at the side of her table. "I think... that line would be a lot more convincing if you tidied away the plates over there."
"Th-these aren't mine—they were left by the last person! Boss! Hurry up and clear these dishes away!"
"Coming, coming." The owner trotted over with a cheerful grin and took the plates away.
"Ahem, ahem... I only just finished my first plate when I saw you coming over." Kyaru wiped the corners of her mouth clean with a napkin and rested both hands elegantly on the table. "Was there something else you wanted from me?"
Jhin couldn't help feeling that there ought to be a rather contented cat's tail behind her right about now. Casting the strange notion to the back of his mind, he pushed the grilled fish toward her. "I just saw you eating grilled fish so happily, so I came over to say hi. Consider this fish my thank-you gift for clearing up my confusion earlier."
"So you do know how to repay a kindness. In that case, I won't stand on ceremony—I'll accept it." Kyaru couldn't keep the corners of her mouth from lifting. She picked up her chopsticks, plucked up a piece of tender white fish, and popped it into her mouth. "Mmm~ delicious!"
"As long as you're happy." Seeing her eat with such relish, Jhin picked up his own chopsticks and savored the delicacy too.
The two of them had only eaten half their grilled fish when a bell that rang out across the entire campus reached their ears. The white paper Jhin had put in his trouser pocket began to grow hot. He took the sheet out and looked—words that hadn't been there before were now appearing on it.
Hearing the bell, Kyaru looked extremely excited. In a flash she hurriedly finished off her grilled fish and called out to him: "The festival eve is about to begin. Let's hurry over there!"
"Mm."
Jhin nodded and set off toward the source of the bell under her lead, though in his heart he was pondering the contents of the white paper.
____
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