Puzzle Madness

Chapter 183 Levitation Technique (Part 1)

DouDou has recently started dreaming: that's something new.

In the more than ten years of his life so far, he has never dreamed.
Dreams like the Taro Dream and the Arcade Dream, or the shared dreams they later experimented with, were too real and still lingered with a sense of reality; in DouDou's eyes, they couldn't be considered true dreams, but rather a kind of virtual reality.

This time, however, he had a dream that was chaotic and difficult to understand.

In his dream, he seemed to be flying, but it was far different from what he had imagined: somewhere between floating and falling.

It feels like there's a heavy object weighing it down, and it just won't rise.

But just as being held aloft by water makes it impossible to descend and fall to the ground.

Dou Dou resembles Mong Cai, or perhaps an even more bustling metropolis; towering buildings stand at both ends, their glass windows dazzlingly bright.

He stood in the middle of the street, the asphalt road scorched by the blazing sun, the air so hot it seemed to shimmer and twist; it was just like any other day.

And then more people appeared around them. They were all ordinary-looking, with nothing strange about them; their expressions weren't particularly joyful, but they were certainly full of energy.

DouDou's head spun like a prayer wheel in his dream, scanning his surroundings round and round, but no one looked familiar to him—he could do the same in reality, so he didn't notice anything unusual.

Every face was unfamiliar, representing all ages and races. DouDou had probably never met these people before; but a face is merely an arrangement of features and contours, and these faces mostly came from his imagination.

What's unusual is what these people are doing.

They swing their arms like birds in flight, calm and collected. Their bodies are parallel to the ground, arms outstretched to the sides, then they swing them, their palms striking the center beneath them again and again.

With such casual and comical movements, the strangers rose up on the wind.

pa la la la la la
Amidst the rising and falling of wings, men and women with clearly defined faces ascended into the sky and disappeared into the clouds at the zenith.

Some people were dressed, their clothes rustling as they walked; others were naked, their genitals hanging like sacks, swaying in the wind. Millions upon millions of people were densely packed together, a colorful spectacle, like balloons.

Gradually, it began to rain—this was actually sweat. In the sweltering heat, under a completely unshaded sky, with so many people around, it was natural to sweat.

The weather in Mong Cai is absolutely awful! It's incredibly sunny just to go outside.

DouDou thought this in her dream. A trace of worry even crossed her mind: Did the people in heaven remember to wear sunscreen?
It started as a light drizzle, then gradually turned into a torrential downpour; but people remained silent, only the sweat from the rain and the stillness of the silence.

It was here that DouDou realized she was dreaming.

First of all, humans don't have well-developed pectoral muscles and their bones aren't hollow, so they definitely can't fly like birds (because of the midterm exams, DouDou has been studying physics and biology diligently; he knows all this); then they don't have wings, feathers, or similar structures, so utilizing air resistance is out of the question.

It would be better to grab the hair on your forehead and lift yourself into the sky—
However, he didn't think of this in his dream. Although he tried to imitate the strange people around him and waved his hands a few times, he couldn't take off at all and could only watch the crowd that blocked out the sky.

They hovered silently at the zenith, pressing and colliding with each other; yet no one uttered a word, they simply flew in silence. [If I could fly—I'd push an ice cream cart up there and sell popsicles: I'd definitely make a fortune!]

With this fleeting thought, I woke up inexplicably: the line between dream and reality was even more blurred than I had imagined. One second the sky was full of figures waving their arms, the next I saw a mottled ceiling and sunlight streaming into the room.

The two overlapped and blurred, like the fade-in/fade-out effect in a movie; and in the ear, there was a faint, swirling sound of flapping wings.

Wow! I was dreaming.

[Maybe it's because of midterms and the pressure is too much? But that can't be right, it's not even the final exam.]

He scratched his nose, rolled over, and doubted the idea—after all, it wasn't his first midterm exam, and the pressure wasn't that intense. For the first time, DouDou only felt a little excitement in his dream, along with a deeper sense of weariness.
Should we go to Xinhua Bookstore and find a copy of "Zhou Gong's Interpretation of Dreams"?

If that doesn't work, try Jung, Lacan, Freud, etc.—I don't know if that will help? Maybe! Anyway, those books were on sale by weight last time, 45 cents a pound; I forgot to buy two pounds and they're still sitting there.

Is it because my subconscious desire to fly is so strong that I have this kind of dream? Or is there some subconscious desire of mine that I'm not even aware of?

Finally, he banished all these chaotic thoughts from his mind, got out of bed, and went to school.
"What a nerve."

He said this while picking up his schoolbag.
-
Before this dream, everything was quite peaceful: even ordinary to the point of being boring.

Almost in the blink of an eye, half of the new semester has passed. Midterm exams are just around the corner, and DouDou is already starting to worry.

The Magic Swan 2 wasn't as fun as I imagined: things are most wonderful before you get your hands on them. But after less than a month of playing with it, the joystick started drifting; even without pressing any buttons, the icons would wiggle randomly on the screen, and the machine went crazy, just like a person.

DouDou herself didn't dare to take it apart, afraid of breaking it; the owner of the video game store near the school gate was eager to try, but the repair price made DouDou hesitate.

Casio-Bandai's after-sales service hotline was either busy or required waiting for more than an hour before being transferred to a human operator: in the end, DouDou had no choice but to put the Magic Swan aside and continue playing his old Mega Drive console.

Ai Xi was pretty much the same as usual, except that her habit of being late had become even worse: before, she would at most miss the morning reading, but now she was often nowhere to be seen during the first class; once she got to her seat, she would lie down and take a nap, often not waking up until the afternoon nap, and at most she would get up to eat breakfast during the broadcast exercises.

One time, she was drooling so much that DouDou had to put two napkins under her mouth; AiXi was sleepy every day, so DouDou became the one to buy breakfast.

God knows what she does every day—
The biggest impact of this situation on DouDou is her homework: without the strong support of her clever deskmate, it becomes much more difficult for DouDou to copy homework.

So recently, DouDou started copying Ruan Jingbo's homework—mainly multiple choice questions. When it came to fill-in-the-blank and answer questions, her handwriting turned into clumps of mosquito coils, making it impossible to read.

Most of the time, Ruan Jingbo doesn't look so conspicuous: it took her more than a month to roughly master how to control her body with the dance machine.

If you don't observe her behavior and gait carefully, she seems like a normal person at first glance; but writing is quite difficult for her, and Ruan Jingbo's handwriting cannot even be described as sloppy.

(End of this chapter)