Puzzle Madness

Chapter 118 Sidney

The woman spoke, her accent so thick it was almost comical; like the foreigners invited to a comedy show to play pranks and liven up the atmosphere:

"I recognize you. I know who you are. You are Doudou, right? Am I right?"

Before Doudou could answer, the woman began to introduce herself again. She moved strangely, with one hand next to her face, as if holding something:
"My name is Sidney. You can call me Sid, it's more intimate - spelled like this: S, I, D"

Doudou's eyes darted up and down, then he pointed at the page in her hand, interrupting her spelling:
"Uh, you've got your books upside down."

The woman who called herself Sidney turned the book over, looked at the cover, and put the "Xiao Lin Guang Ji" back on the bookshelf.
"Sorry, sorry - I'm not very good at reading Chinese characters. But I'm okay with speaking, right?"

As she spoke, she held out her hand; her nails were covered with bite marks:
"Hello, hello. I came here specially to see you."

After the wonderful handshake with the homeless old man in the morning, Doudou shook the other's five fingers without hesitation.

Unfortunately, this time, I didn’t suddenly fly thousands of miles into the sky, or have other more novel experiences:

"I'm still a student. I don't buy health supplements. Oh, I don't buy insurance either. I don't want to sign up for extracurricular classes either."

Sydney has a very pointed nose and a high nose bridge. Her eyebrows are raised diagonally upwards and very close to her eyes, which makes her eyes particularly expressive:

"What to buy? Ah, you're overthinking it!"

"You might be thinking, 'Hey, is it unsafe for me to speak in public?'"

"Don't worry—there were a lot of people watching you here, but I chased them all away!"

"Look, there's a cataloger from the Human Cataloging Center over there. And over there... there's a whole observation group for the Eurasian Post."

Doudou followed Sidney's gesture and looked: the woman who had been sitting at the counter registering books was gone. Also gone were the group of university students who had been leaning against the bookshelf.

I read a book for two minutes and said a few words - in just this short time, these people disappeared without a trace.

[How did you do that? Is it crazy? ]

Doudou shrugged. "I've been running into more and more weird people lately. Maybe that's a good thing."

[Is there really an agent or something monitoring me? I thought Ai Xi was just too suspicious.]

Anyway, Sidney's word choice is weird, and he doesn't look like an ordinary person at all:

"What? Are you an agent for some big company? I'm still in school and don't plan on working part-time; don't recruit me."

Sidney shook his head repeatedly, and his earrings made a clanging sound.
"Ah, ah. No! It's just... I want to tell you something:"

She came closer. Sydney had green eyes like deep pools; at this moment, the green water was stirring:
"Have you ever considered that you're killing people too quickly?"

Doudou looked around - these rows of bookshelves were all quiet, no one noticed them here.

The old electric fan overhead creaked but produced little wind; it looked like it might fall over at any moment. Only the electronic reading room had air conditioning.

He finally put down "Happy Robot 2137." The conversation before him began to attract him more than the book in his hand:

"what?"

Doudou never thought that someone would strike up a conversation with him in the book city—and the topic was about this kind of thing.

Sidney crossed his fingers, clasped them before his chest, and moved them up and down; his movements were like supplication and prayer:

"You think—many of the characters you killed had their arcs not yet completed and their characterizations not yet three-dimensional; they were killed off by you!"

"The backstories of these characters and their relationships with each other can't be shown if they leave the stage."

Doudou took a step back, putting some distance between himself and Sidney:
"Huh?!" He was a little dizzy and disoriented from this sudden barrage of strange remarks.
"Oh, oh! I didn't explain it clearly. Wait! Let me start from the beginning:"

Sidney crossed his fingers in front of his chest, clenching and unclenching them from time to time:

"Have you ever thought that you and I might be in a comic book? Or a TV show? Or even a video game? Anyway, it's a work of art. Everyone in this world is a character in it?"

After hearing this, Doudou began to understand what the crazy girl in front of him meant:

"--Hey, did you just watch Sophie's World recently?"

He raised his finger and pointed to the bestseller section—there were stacks of copies of "Sophie's World." The book had just been translated into Chinese this year and was selling very well. Doudou remembered its ending, which had a similar concept to "The Fourth Wall" or something.
Doudou had heard some of the plot from his homeroom teacher, but he didn’t remember it clearly: it was probably about the protagonist suddenly realizing that he was actually a character in a novel, and finally running into the real world.

Sidney waved his hands repeatedly and shook his head like a rattle:

"No, no, no! It's not a philosophical question, it's real! It's a fact! I discovered it more than ten years ago!"

Doudou patted the bookshelf beside him—these rows were filled with novels and comics:

"Um—so, you mean: we are also characters in the book?"

Sidney pointed at the book "Happy Robot 2137" and said in a firm tone:

"Comics. We are characters in comics; but not four-frame funny comics, maybe thrillers or horrors?"

Sydney gestured back and forth with her hands; she adjusted her headband made of plastic bottle caps and shook out her plain white tulle dress:
"Look, my look is simple and memorable, right? And since it's mainly white, it saves some effort in coloring—whether it's black and white or color comics, it's more convenient."

"I designed it specifically so the author wouldn't have too much trouble drawing me. I read an interview article before: some characters are just too complicated to draw, and they get killed off right away."

As he was speaking, Sidney suddenly changed his words, with a hesitant tone:
".Is it a comic? Not necessarily a comic."

"Oh, maybe a TV show or a movie? Anyway, it's a popular entertainment medium; it's definitely not poetry or something. I think the span and length should be very long--"

Doudou was listening intently, but the other party's sudden self-doubt triggered a wave of emotion:

"What the hell? You don't even know! Besides, you say that—do you have any evidence? If you do that, people will definitely think you're crazy."

Sidney still spoke softly, lowering his voice very low:
"Well—I've been researching this for a long time, but there's really no easily understandable evidence. It's inevitable that you don't believe me."

"But there's no rush, no rush. It's okay if you don't believe me. It's okay. Let's just assume, assume! Assume that what I say is right, okay?"

"Imagine you're a character in a comic book. You kill all the other characters the moment they appear! And this comic book doesn't have the concept of resurrection or anything like that."

"Wouldn't that be a waste? Think about it, you could have had a lot of plot and possibilities with them; they would have had a lot of stories of their own to explore."

Doudou placed one hand across his chest and the other hand on his chin:
"Well, just hypothetically. If you think along those lines, it would be quite beneficial for this [comic]."

"But keeping the bad guys and listening to their nonsense doesn't help my personal experience, right? I don't care whether the story develops or not, and I don't care whether other people are characters or not."

Sidney bit his middle finger nail, clicking:

"Yes, there is help! Didn't you notice? Oh, you might not know it yet!"

She placed her hands on her chest, then opened them, making an expansion gesture. The bottle cap headband made a small sound as it rubbed against her.

"Actually, you can make the people around you become—make their fanaticism even stronger! And even if they weren't fanatic before, they might become fanatic just by being in contact with you. It's like an amplifier!"

"So if there's someone you want to kill, you can wait a while before killing them: they might gain new abilities, or their existing abilities might change; they might evolve and level up! Wouldn't it be more fun to kill them that way?"

(End of this chapter)