Near noon, Dylan was the first to crawl out of his Coffin and leave the dormitory for the Start of Winter luncheon.
Zheng Qing had no idea why such a large group of Creatures of the Night had chosen to hold a banquet in broad daylight. He privately speculated that perhaps they wanted to draw upon the season's initial bleakness and killing chill, to show their defiance against this stretch of time?
A little later, the Fat Wizard, who was still dissatisfied after revising his article three times, finally ran out of patience. He tossed aside his Quill Pen, folded the parchment carelessly, stuffed it into his robes, and headed for the school paper's editorial office.
As for Dr. Xiao, he had remained in the library since morning classes and had not even returned for lunch. This left the young government-sponsored student rather regretful that he could not share the delight of frog-meat dumplings with him.
For a time, only Zheng Qing, the fat cat, and those carefree little elves remained in Dormitory 403. The young government-sponsored student patiently and stubbornly worked through an afternoon of homework in solitude. As soon as night began to fall, he could no longer suppress the agitation in his heart. He pulled out the ampoule he had long since warmed in his grip and sniffed the restless Transformation Potion inside through the glass.
This was his sixth time turning into a cat that week.
In truth, Zheng Qing felt that he could already transform without the ampoule—just like the potion in his hand, which had long passed its expiration date yet did not affect his ability to draw a certain kind of "conviction" from the bottle.
The reason he had not thrown it away was, in a sense, also a kind of path dependence.