"Huh?" The bewildered Lin Yi looked even more bewildered.
"What do you mean? Was I supposed to die on the way?"
She said, "I really want to know what happened to you, but I don't want to..."
"Don't want to... interrupt me physically?" Lin Yi asked tentatively.
Her expression stiffened slightly, and for the first time, a trace of embarrassment appeared on her strikingly heroic face.
As the sports department's ultimate senior, she did find it rather embarrassing to greet a freshman by throwing him.
So she said earnestly:
"Let's swim."
Pitch-black tides battered pitch-black reefs. In the pitch-black sky floated a pitch-black sun with only a golden rim of light remaining.
An iron-tower-like figure holding the Ancient Bronze Lamp stood amid the whimpering, growling sea wind.
His deep golden eyes watched the empty area before him, his resolute face devoid of expression.
He stared at the air for a very, very long time, then slowly turned to face the sea.
"Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-"
The surf sounded endlessly, waves shattering and scattering.
He raised a foot and stepped on a pale, bloodless hand that had climbed up from below the cliff.
He exerted a little force, and with a bang, the hand shattered into countless white fragments that scattered into the air on the sea wind.
"Whoooosh-"
The wind howled like a battle song, his overcoat snapping within it.
Behind him, the indistinct outline of a building could just be seen shrouded in faint mist.
It resembled a medieval European clock tower lost in thin clouds of haze.
May 7, X023, 15:20, first floor of the Gymnasium, swimming area.
Lin Yi held the edge of the Swimming Pool, constantly kicking to keep his body from sinking.
He had been swimming in this position, holding on to the edge, for eighteen minutes.
It was not that he insisted on holding the edge, but because he was in the shallow end and would be standing as soon as he stopped for a moment.
Nor was it that he did not want to swim farther out, but that the Sports Department Girl would not let him.
The Sports Department Girl seemed very bored. She was not swimming, merely propping her cheek on one hand while idly splashing water onto her thigh with the other.
She had been like this from the beginning.
Lin Yi stole a glance at her, not knowing what she was thinking.
But her intuition was extraordinarily keen. A single glance from Lin Yi pulled her out of her thoughts. Still resting her cheek on her hand, she shifted her eyes slightly, her gaze snapping onto him.
Lin Yi hurriedly looked away and kicked even harder, splashing away...
But the Sports Department Girl's sweet, clear voice, carrying a hint of authority, still drifted to his ears:
"Can you swim?"
"Yes... ah, no, I can't." Lin Yi glanced at his watch. It was already 15:21, and PE would end in just a few minutes. Better not complicate things.
"If you can't, practice more." How could the Sports Department Girl fail to see through his little scheme? Her lips curved slightly with a look of having him firmly in hand. "Swim for another forty minutes."
"Okay... huh? Huh?? What?" Lin Yi froze, then froze again. "Doesn't class end at 15:30?"
"Oh." The Sports Department Girl calmly stirred the water. "Among all the rules you know, is there any hard-and-fast rule saying PE... can't... run... over?"
"Eh...?" Several rules ran through Lin Yi's mind, and his expression shifted slightly. "I don't think... there is?"
Only the Student Rules stipulated that PE was mandatory, while the Class Schedule specified when PE started and warned students not to be late. But as for PE having to end on time, that seemed... never to have been mentioned at all?
"Well, uh..."
He suddenly realized something-no wonder the Gymnasium Rules said to watch the time during Swimming Class and not exceed one hour!
He had initially wondered about that. PE only lasted an hour in total. Even without counting the time spent getting to the Swimming Hall, changing, and showering, a little time lost here and there meant it could never add up to more than an hour!
Well, now he understood.
Only...
"What a painful realization..."
The meme of a face shedding two clear streams of tears surfaced in Lin Yi's mind. He muttered, "Actually... I can swim a little."
"Now you can?"
"Uh... I suddenly remembered."
"Since you can, swim a little longer."
If he couldn't swim, he had to practice more; if he could, he had to swim more... Lin Yi's face fell. Experience really did count. Either way, he had to swim for a full hour.
But compared with a certain fellow who had been held underwater for over an hour, his situation... seemed much better already.
So he silently began paddling.
One stroke, two strokes, one stroke, two strokes...
"Too slow. Put some effort into it." The Sports Department Girl's voice came from above his head.
Immediately afterward, accompanied by, "Your back's sticking out," he felt something smooth and soft step onto his back, pressing his body into the water like a surfboard...
"Huh?!" Lin Yi was abruptly stunned.
The external force upset his balance, and one careless moment sent his whole body, head and all, under the water, leaving only his two hands holding the Swimming Pool's edge above the surface.
"Hey, I-glug, glug, glug..."
His head went underwater too, instantly changing his view from above the water to below it.
The LED lights above the surface broke into fragments amid the waves. The hazy play of light and shadow passed through the surface as scattered light refracting into the water, making the clear flow resemble a prism.
Since Lin Yi had spent all this time paddling around in the shallow end, where the water barely reached his chest, he had merely hung his goggles around his neck rather than putting them on.
So when he fell underwater, he instinctively shut his eyes, then lowered his body, trying to plant his feet on the Swimming Pool's floor...
But when he stepped down, the Swimming Pool tiles that should have been beneath his feet were gone!
"Huh?"
Startled, he stamped down several more times, but found nothing each time!
"What...?!"
He abruptly opened his eyes, enduring the intense discomfort of water rushing against them, and looked beneath his body!
What...?! Fuck! he cursed inwardly.
Sure enough, the Swimming Pool had disappeared yet again!
An endless abyss lay beneath him, and faint light surrounded him.
At that moment, it was as though he had sunk into an enormous blue hole. Sparse rays of light hung down through the water above, while below lay boundless darkness that seemed capable of swallowing the world itself!
The world seemed frozen. Suspended in the flowing water, he could feel neither gravity nor his breathing, but the darkness below exuded an intense, indescribable terror as it slowly closed around him.
A pitch-black abyss, distorted light and shadow...
Between deep blue and grayish white lay a world sliced into fragments by the descending light...
Beneath the abyss lay a darker abyss...
The sound of flowing water slowly vanished from his ears. The world was utterly peaceful. He could hear only his own heartbeat and the sound of blood flowing through his veins.
A deathly silent world could drive a person mad, but in his daze, he heard distant, ancient singing.
Beneath the abyss, living beings whispered and called, their voices mingling with the ancient song and reaching his ears in broken snatches...
He felt an urge to simply keep sinking like this.
No... this isn't right! This isn't right!
At the critical moment, he realized his hands were still resting on the Swimming Pool's edge.
The Swimming Pool!
I'm still in the Gymnasium!
My hands! They're still holding the Swimming Pool's edge!
Get up!
The instant that thought struck him, he felt scorching blood surge in his chest. Powerful strength erupted within his body and flowed into his arms!
Raaagh-
He roared inwardly, his hands exerting force as he hauled himself bodily out of the water!
The instant he broke the surface, his body instinctively grasped around him, like someone about to drown desperately reaching for anything he could get hold of!
As luck would have it, someone extended a hand to him. In his panic, he grabbed it, then pulled hard to haul himself up.
As it happened, the other person was also pulling him.
Splash-
He shot out of the water like a seal, but the other person clearly had not expected him to unleash such vigorous strength and was caught off guard, knocked to the ground.
Lin Yi gasped violently, then felt something soft beneath him.
"Mm... what is that?"
But before he could react, he was tossed aside like a sandbag...
"Cough, cough, cough..." He coughed up several mouthfuls of water, covered his face, and climbed to his feet beside the pool. Then he instinctively looked toward the person who had "thrown him away"...
Over there, the Sports Department Girl was just sitting up from the ground, quietly narrowing her eyes at him.
She had never entered the water, but the front of her swimsuit was already wet.
Lin Yi did not need to think to know what that soft thing had been.
He immediately grew awkward. If the person just now had been Wei Liang, he could at least have made a couple of jokes about how soft the human body was, but now he dared not do anything.
"Um... just now, I..." he stammered.
"Keep swimming. You have forty minutes left." The Sports Department Girl seemed wholly unconcerned, glancing indifferently at the Grandfather Clock in the Swimming Hall.
"Ah... oh, okay." Lin Yi scratched the back of his neck, approached the pool with his head ducked, and slid into the water without being told.
The water in the shallow end really was not shallow. At most, it covered his armpits, barely reaching his chest.
Full of confusion, he glanced at the tiles beneath his feet. The Swimming Pool water was exceptionally clear, the square white tiles plainly visible. Beneath the LED lights, the lines of the tiles twisted and writhed, utterly different from what he had seen before.
"Swim." The Sports Department Girl scooped up some water and splashed it at him, interrupting his thoughts.
"Oh, oh, okay..." Lin Yi sheepishly sank into the water. Just as he was about to start kicking, something occurred to him, and he silently put on his goggles.
At the sight, the Sports Department Girl's eyelid twitched slightly.
With his goggles on, Lin Yi held the edge and started kicking like a beginner.
There were still some students swimming in the pool, but with the Sports Department Girl present, the area around Lin Yi had invisibly become off-limits.
Lin Yi was thus able to concentrate on paddling.
Another ten minutes passed like this. At around 15:30, a girl came from the changing rooms, approached the Sports Department Girl, and whispered something in her ear.
The Sports Department Girl glanced outside through the Swimming Hall's glass, then gave the girl a couple of instructions. The girl nodded, glanced at Lin Yi, and left.
The Sports Department Girl watched Lin Yi paddle, leisurely stirring the water, sometimes splashing a little onto her thigh, sometimes onto the back of his neck where it rose above the surface.
When the time reached forty-something minutes past the hour, everyone in the Swimming Hall had left one after another. She, too, withdrew her fair legs from the water and pushed herself up from the nonslip flooring.
She folded her arms across her chest and looked down at Lin Yi.
Gradually, as Lin Yi kept paddling, tiny particles of white powder seeped from his body from time to time.
As soon as these white powder particles appeared, they kept trying to burrow back into Lin Yi.
"Heh."
She gave a cold laugh, walked over beside Lin Yi, then extended one foot gently into the water, lightly stirring the pool water around him.
As the water rippled, her toes gave off an enticing allure like delicious fish bait. The white powder particles seeping from Lin Yi's body seemed to have found a better target and rushed toward her toes.
Watching this, she slowly narrowed her eyes. Deep within them, golden flames slowly rose.
She glanced at Lin Yi again. As though it were time to open the floodgates, white powder particles kept seeping from his body.
After leaving Lin Yi's body, these powder particles made straight for her without pause.
Her expression did not change. She merely continued silently stirring the pool water with her toes.
More and more white particles gathered on her foot. Then, as though alive, they slowly climbed from her toes onto the top of her foot, passed her heel, and gradually wrapped around her foot like a no-show sock...
The white particles grew more and more numerous, seemingly endless. Soon, they covered her ankle and spread toward her calf...
Her expression shifted slightly. Then she took a deep breath and withdrew that foot from the water.
As though deprived of the most delicious food, the white powder particles churned excitedly on the surface.
She glanced indifferently at Lin Yi.
Lin Yi was still swimming perfectly well.
But she suddenly said sternly, "Your back's sticking out again!"
Even as she spoke, she had already raised her foot and stepped onto Lin Yi's back.
"I'm not... ah, glug, glug, glug..." The diligently swimming Lin Yi was stepped underwater again.
But his body was like a balloon... no, more like a cuttlefish squirting ink, as the Sports Department Girl's single step squeezed a large quantity of white powder particles out of him.
But this seemed to be the final wave. After that one spurt, no more white powder particles came from Lin Yi's body.
The moment these powder particles appeared, they greedily surged toward the Sports Department Girl's foot.
The white powder particles kept climbing, soon covering her calf, passing her knee, and slowly crawling up her thigh...
Thanks to reader "Super Great Western King" for the tip!!
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