Prodigy’s Playground

Chapter 17 Celebration

Two days later.

Jiang Ran arrived at the student activity building’s club room and pushed the door open.

Over a hundred pairs of eyes glared at him!

“Holy—”

Jiang Ran was stunned.

“Rhine Cat reproduced!”

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

But now…

The entire club room had been occupied by Rhine Cat!

Rhine Cat plushies, Rhine Cat throw pillows, Rhine Cat mugs, Rhine Cat pen holders, Rhine Cat desk lamps, Rhine Cat trash cans, Rhine Cat sofa cushions… and on and on.All kinds of Rhine Cat merch stuffed every corner—an outright Rhine Cat legion invasion.

“What are you yelling for?”

Cheng Mengxue wriggled out from the Rhine Cat pile.

“Rhine Cat is a plush. How could it reproduce?”

“Well? Well? Doesn’t the club room feel way cozier now? When you’re surrounded by Rhine Cats, your mood just gets better without you even noticing!”

“No, it doesn’t.”

All Jiang Ran felt was horror.

“This must’ve cost a fortune.”

“Not that much. Most of it’s normal stuff, just a few dozen each. Only this one was kind of expensive…”

Cheng Mengxue walked over to the couch and picked up a Rhine Cat that was round and chubby but also oddly square.

“Look—this is the one I’ve wanted forever. The rice-cooker Rhine Cat!”

It was a Rhine Cat shaped like a rice cooker—or maybe a rice cooker shaped like a Rhine Cat.

It was so abstract Jiang Ran genuinely couldn’t parse it.

“This thing is three thousand?”

“Four thousand now.”

“That’s insane. What kind of idiot buys this?”

“What do you know? This is a super limited edition personally designed by the founder of Rhine Cat!”

Cheng Mengxue smiled mysteriously.

“And, heh-heh, do you know… why it’s more expensive than the other limited editions?”

“Because it can cook rice?”

“NONONO~”

Cheng Mengxue hooked her fingers over the rice-cooker Rhine Cat’s forehead. With a little pop, she flipped its “skullcap” open and pulled out a blue, gleaming sphere from inside.

“Because—da-da-da-daaa! Because there’s a spacetime-particle Rhine Cat hidden inside too!”

“Hahahaha, you didn’t expect it, did you? There’s another one inside! Buy one, get one—what a steal!”

…

Jiang Ran didn’t know whether to be speechless or laugh. He looked exactly like one of those memes that gets posted everywhere.

Was this really a design a carbon-based lifeform could come up with?

He was genuinely worried about the mental state of Rhine Cat’s founder.

“Isn’t it genius design?” Cheng Mengxue chased after an answer, delighted.

“It’s a shit-tier design!”

Jiang Ran couldn’t understand it at all.

“What is this chaotic nonsense? Rice-cooker Rhine Cat… why isn’t there a microwave Rhine Cat? What’s next, a mini-fridge Rhine Cat?”

“There really is!!”

The moment Rhine Cat came up, Cheng Mengxue’s eyes filled with stars.

She squeezed in close, grabbed Jiang Ran’s arm, and shook it hard.

“There really is, hometown buddy! There really is a mini-fridge Rhine Cat! It’s a collaboration edition with Jask SPACE-T, it was made to commem—”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Jiang Ran cut off her nonstop flood.

Sigh.

A Rhine Cat legion expanding in real life was bad enough;

he truly didn’t want the Rhine Cat family tree in his head swelling too.

“You two really are sworn enemies. You bicker every single day.”

Qin Feng appeared in the doorway of the club room.

“I could hear you clearly all the way from the stairwell.”

“What were you doing this morning?”

Jiang Ran turned.

“You’ve been acting all mysterious. I ask and you won’t say.”

“Heh-heh.”

Qin Feng smiled faintly and shook out three cruise tickets.

“Look what I got. Donghai City’s most luxurious ocean cruise ship—and the top-floor luxury suite. It comes with a pool and a restaurant, full ocean-view panorama.”

“Why did you buy that?”

For a moment, Jiang Ran wondered if there’d been a secret worldline shift that hadn’t notified him… because why were his friends acting this abnormal now?

“I swear, the second you two got money, you started floating off into outer space.”

“Is it so bad to be a little extravagant once in a while?”

Qin Feng shrugged.

“Besides, if it’s a celebration dinner, we should obviously pick a good place.”

A celebration dinner?

Jiang Ran frowned.

“Didn’t you already do a celebration dinner days ago?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have the memory.”

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

“You’re the biggest contributor to how we got here. How could we celebrate without you?”

“Since you don’t have the memory, Xiaoxue and I talked about it… and we decided we’ll celebrate again, just for you!”

Only then did Jiang Ran understand what Qin Feng had been doing all morning.

So this was him trying to patch in the celebration memory Jiang Ran had lost.

There wasn’t really any need…

But.

This was what friends were, wasn’t it?

Always caring about tiny details you never even notice. Caring about things you didn’t realize mattered.

“Come to think of it, I’ve never been on a cruise ship.” Jiang Ran smiled.

“Me neither.” Cheng Mengxue stood up, giggling.

“I especially haven’t.” Qin Feng spread his hands.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Jiang Ran looked out at the blazing sunlight outside the window.

“Let’s go!”

PENG———

Water exploded up from the pool.

Cheng Mengxue leapt from the four-meter platform, kicking up sparkling spray that rained down over Jiang Ran and Qin Feng’s heads.

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

“That was a bomb, wasn’t it?”

Qin Feng complained.

“Can the splash get any bigger?”

“She even dared to jump. That’s already impressive.”

Jiang Ran defended her.

“You dare jump?”

“You dare?”

“You jump and I’ll jump.”

“You jump and I’ll jump too.”

Thirty seconds later.

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

From below it didn’t look like much, but standing up there, you realized—four meters was really high.

They were on the luxury suite’s pool at the very top of the cruise ship, and the platform rose another four meters… which meant this was the highest point on the entire ship.

And, at the same time, the highest point above this stretch of ocean.

Jiang Ran stood at the end of the board and looked at the far horizon where sky met sea, curving away under the earth’s shape toward the end of the world.

Qin Feng stood behind him and tilted his head up at the sky.

“Do you feel like this scene is kind of familiar?”

“What do you mean?”

Jiang Ran turned his head back—only to have two fingers press against him.

They were Qin Feng’s fingers.

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

“[Lilith.]”

His expression sank. His voice dropped low.

“[Make the sky go dark.]”

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 lifted his head.

Only then did he realize: a drifting cloud had happened to slide in front of the sun.

“Heh-heh!”

No wonder Qin Feng had looked up at the sky earlier… he’d noticed the cloud was about to cover the sun, and on impulse he’d gone full dramatic actor.

“Lilith is omnipotent.”

Qin Feng looked into Jiang Ran’s eyes.

These were lines from that very first day—the script they’d used while filming on the rooftop terrace.

Jiang Ran had written the script and handed it to the film club to shoot, so… who could possibly be more familiar with the lines than Jiang Ran?

“Omnipotent doesn’t mean a god.”

Playing along, Jiang Ran picked up the scene and slowly turned around.

“Only the one who controls history, who manipulates history, counts as a god.”

At this moment, it was exactly like that moment.

Now that they held time-traveling text messages—now that they could rewrite history at will—saying that line again painted an entirely different landscape inside him.

Just like that day on the rooftop terrace’s edge, Jiang Ran spread his arms, bathing in the sea wind sweeping over the platform.

“And now, we’ve grasped that power. Our lives have only just begun!”

He altered the line, improvising.

Under the boundless blue sky, gulls cried. The sun slid out from behind the cloud, and light poured down in full.

“[The future is ours!]”

He jumped, losing gravity between sky and sea—

“[History is ours, too.]”