Celebration

The next day.

Jiang Ran arrived at the club room and pushed open the door.

Hundreds of eyes glared at him!

"Holy shit!"

Jiang Ran was stunned.

"Rhine Cat has reproduced!"

Before, there had only been a dozen or so Rhine Cat plushies in the club room, all brought over from the dorm by Cheng Mengxue.

But now...

The entire club room had been taken over by Rhine Cat!

Rhine Cat plushies, Rhine Cat cushions, Rhine Cat cups, Rhine Cat pencil holders, Rhine Cat desk lamps, Rhine Cat trash cans, Rhine Cat sofa covers... and so on and so forth.

All kinds of Rhine Cat merchandise filled every corner. It was a full-on invasion by the Rhine Cat army.

"What are you shouting about?"

Cheng Mengxue emerged from the pile of Rhine Cats.

"Rhine Cat is a plushie. How could it possibly reproduce?"

"What do you think? Doesn't the club room feel much cozier now? Surrounded by Rhine Cats, your mood just naturally gets better!"

"Not at all."

Jiang Ran only felt horrified.

"This must have cost a fortune, right?"

"Not that much. Most of them were regular ones that cost a few dozen yuan. Only this one was a bit expensive..."

Cheng Mengxue walked over to the sofa and picked up a Rhine Cat that was both round and square.

"Look, this is the rice cooker Rhine Cat I've always wanted!"

It was either a Rhine Cat shaped like a rice cooker, or a rice cooker shaped like a Rhine Cat.

It was so abstract that Jiang Ran couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"This thing costs three thousand yuan?"

"It's four thousand now."

"That's ridiculous. What kind of idiot would buy this?"

"What do you know? This is a super-limited edition designed by Rhine Cat's creator personally!"

Cheng Mengxue smiled mysteriously.

"And, hehe, do you know... why it costs more than the other limited editions?"

"Because it can cook rice?"

"NONONO~"

Cheng Mengxue hooked her fingers around the rice cooker Rhine Cat's forehead and, with a "pop," pried its skull open. She took out a glowing blue sphere from inside.

"Because—ta-da! There's a spacetime particle Rhine Cat hidden inside!"

"Haha, didn't see that coming, did you? There's one inside too! What a bargain—buy one, get one free!"

Jiang Ran was speechless and wanted to laugh, like one of those popular internet memes.

What kind of carbon-based life-form could come up with this design?

He was very concerned about the mental state of Rhine Cat's creator.

"Isn't it a genius design?" Cheng Mengxue pressed eagerly.

"It's a shit design!"

Jiang Ran couldn't understand it at all.

"What kind of nonsense is this? A rice cooker Rhine Cat... Why not a microwave Rhine Cat? Maybe there should be a mini fridge Rhine Cat too?"

"There really is one!!"

Whenever Rhine Cat came up, Cheng Mengxue's eyes sparkled.

She hurried over, grabbed Jiang Ran by the arm, and shook him vigorously.

"There really is, fellow countryman! There really is a mini fridge Rhine Cat! It's a collaboration with Jask SPACE-T, made to commemorate—"

"Enough, enough. That's enough." Jiang Ran cut off Cheng Mengxue's endless chatter.

Sigh.

It was bad enough that the Rhine Cat army in real life kept growing. He really didn't want the Rhine Cat family tree in his mind to keep getting bigger too.

"You two are such a pair of bickering rivals. You're at each other every single day."

Qin Feng appeared at the club room door.

"I could hear you loud and clear from the stairwell."

"What were you up to this morning?"

Jiang Ran turned around.

"You've been acting so mysterious. I asked, and you wouldn't tell me."

"Hehe."

Qin Feng smiled and produced three cruise tickets.

"Look what I got! The most luxurious cruise ship in Donghai City, and the top-floor deluxe suite, too. It has its own swimming pool and restaurant, with panoramic ocean views."

"What do you need that for?"

For a moment, Jiang Ran wondered if the Worldline had secretly jumped again without telling him... Why had all his friends started acting so weird?

"I've noticed that ever since you two got rich, you've both been getting carried away."

"Once in a while, there's nothing wrong with splurging a little, right?"

Qin Feng shrugged.

"Besides, since it's a celebration, we should pick somewhere nice."

A celebration?

Jiang Ran was puzzled.

"Didn't you already have a celebration banquet many days ago?"

"Yeah, but you don't remember it."

Qin Feng walked over and patted Jiang Ran on the shoulder.

"You're the person most responsible for getting us this far. How could we leave you out of the celebration?"

"Since you don't remember it, Little Xue and I talked it over... and decided to celebrate with you again!"

Only then did Jiang Ran understand what Qin Feng had been up to that morning.

He'd wanted to make up for the celebration Jiang Ran had missed.

There was really no need...

But.

That was what friends were like, right?

They always cared about the little things you might not notice, about things you weren't even aware of yourself.

"Come to think of it, I've never been on a cruise ship before." Jiang Ran smiled.

"Me neither." Cheng Mengxue stood up with a giggle.

"I've never been either." Qin Feng spread his hands.

"Then what are we waiting for?"

Jiang Ran looked out the window at the bright sunshine.

"Let's go!"

Splash—

Water sprayed up from the pool.

Cheng Mengxue leaped from the four-meter diving platform, sending up sparkling spray that fell on Jiang Ran and Qin Feng's heads.

The two of them sat by the pool and wiped their faces.

"Was that a bomb?"

Qin Feng complained.

"Could the splash have been any bigger?"

"It's impressive enough that she dared to jump."

Jiang Ran defended her.

"Would you dare?"

"Would you?"

"If you do, I will."

"If you do, I will too."

Thirty seconds later.

The two of them stood one behind the other on the four-meter diving platform.

It hadn't looked like much from below, but once they were up there, four meters seemed really high.

They were at the suite pool on the highest level of the cruise ship, and the diving platform rose another four meters... So this was the highest point on the entire ship.

It was also the highest point above this stretch of ocean.

Jiang Ran stood at the end of the diving board, looking at the distant line where sea met sky, curving down toward the edge of the world with the shape of the Earth.

Qin Feng stood behind him and looked up at the sky.

"Does this scene feel familiar?"

"What do you mean?"

Jiang Ran turned around, only to have two fingers pressed against him.

They were Qin Feng's fingers.

Qin Feng held his right hand like a gun and pressed it to Jiang Ran's forehead.

"[Lilith.]"

His expression darkened as he said softly,

"[Darken the sky.]"

The next second, a miracle happened.

The sunlight around them rapidly dimmed until it vanished. The entire world lost its source of light!

Jiang Ran looked up.

Only then did he realize that passing clouds had happened to block the sun.

"Heh!"

No wonder Qin Feng had looked up at the sky earlier... He'd noticed the clouds were about to cover the sun and had gotten into character on a whim.

"Lilith can do anything."

Qin Feng looked into Jiang Ran's eyes.

This was the script from that first day, when the two of them had acted out a scene on the rooftop.

Jiang Ran had written the script, and the Film Club had filmed it. So... who could have known the lines better than Jiang Ran?

"Even someone who can do anything isn't a god."

Playing along with Qin Feng's performance, Jiang Ran picked up the scene and slowly turned around.

"Only those who control history and manipulate it can be called gods."

At this moment, it was just like that moment.

Now that he had the Spacetime Bulletin and could rewrite history at will, reciting that line again filled him with an entirely different feeling.

Just as he had stood at the rooftop's edge that day, Jiang Ran spread his arms and basked in the sea breeze on the diving platform.

"And now, we hold that power. Our lives have only just begun!"

He changed the script and improvised.

The boundless blue sky rang with the cries of seagulls. The sun emerged from behind the clouds, spilling all its light across the world!

"[The future is ours!]"

He leaped, weightless between the sky and the sea.

"[And so is history.]"