Chapter 11 Peach Banquet

I couldn’t help but duck my head and narrow my eyes as I kept watching myself. It almost felt like I was watching an illicit film or something.

In the video, I sat up silently, but the light was so dim that I couldn’t see my expression clearly. The three of us looked at each other for a while without speaking.

Then, I stood up and the three of us left the screen.

I leaned back against a stone, took a deep breath, and pinched my brow as I tried to recall if such a thing had really happened last night. Did I wake up last night to pee and the three of us just went together?

But I had no memory of it at all. Granted, it wasn’t uncommon since I often didn’t remember what happened when I was half awake in the middle of the night.

I continued to stare at the screen and found that it took about an hour before I came back to lie down. Now I was completely puzzled. I could understand if it was just a muddleheaded pee break, but that kind of thing wouldn’t take an hour. Plus, there was no way I would forget about it.

I looked at the sleeping Fatty beside me, feeling at a total loss.

The rest of the video was completely normal. I soon fell asleep and then Fatty came back after a while. He cleaned himself up and fell asleep while Poker-Face moved to keep watch.

In the middle of the night, it took the three of us about an hour to do something, which I didn’t remember at all.

Was this a fucking fit of hysteria or something?

I got up carefully without waking Fatty up, climbed to the edge of the boulder where Poker-Face was keeping watch, and sat opposite him. There were three electro-luminescent lamps sitting on the side, their light almost making him look like a stone statue. I could also see a pile of stones in front of him that looked like a mani stone pile. People who didn’t know him would think that he got bored and started playing with the stones here, but only I knew that these were actually deadly weapons.

I unwrapped a chocolate bar, broke a piece off, and asked him where we went last night as I ate it.

Poker-Face looked at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I handed him my cell phone and let him watch the video. He was a little surprised and watched it several more times. At this time, Fatty got up and asked what was going on (as it turned out, I had actually woken him up earlier). I handed him my phone and he fell silent after watching it for a while.

“Don’t you remember?” I asked.

Looking at how agile they were in the video, they definitely weren’t sleepwalking at the time.

“Did you edit the video?” Fatty wondered. “This absolutely did not happen last night.”

I shook my head. Fatty scratched his scalp, looking very confused. I glanced at Poker-Face, who was looking at himself on the screen thoughtfully.

I watched the video again and made the screen brighter. I was almost certain that all three of us were awake.

“Were we possessed?” Fatty asked.⁽¹⁾

I glanced at the darkness around me as Poker-Face shook his head. He looked at the darkness deep in the gap and asked, “Sound?”

I immediately came back to my senses. I had definitely recorded the video with sound last night, but I was afraid of waking Fatty up and had turned it off. I quickly turned it back on and pulled the video’s progress bar to that particular section.

I heard the three of us talking.

There were a few words I couldn’t hear very clearly, but I definitely heard Fatty say, “Hurry up. We’re going to be late and miss our turn.”

What do you mean? Are we going to the Peach Banquet?⁽²⁾

I turned to look at Fatty, but he immediately shook his head, “I didn’t say this. We were definitely possessed.”

Poker-Face stopped the phone at this time and zoomed in on the screen. We saw that Fatty was carrying an empty backpack with him when he left. Poker-Face quickly skipped to the part of the video when Fatty came back, and we found that the backpack was full and very heavy.

We immediately turned our heads and looked at Fatty’s backpack. I remembered that there originally hadn’t been much in it, but now it was bulging. I didn’t know what it contained.

“Smartphones were designed for long fingers,” Fatty murmured. “You’ve adapted well.”

“Quit joking,” I said. “What did you bring back?”

<Chapter 10><Table of Contents><Chapter 12>

****

TN Notes:

(1) The actual term used is “walk-in”, which is a New Age concept of a person whose original soul has departed their body and has been replaced with a new, different soul. Info here.

(2) The Peach Banquet was a yearly banquet the Queen Mother of the West (the Jade Emperor’s wife) held in “Journey to the West”. The peaches were consumed by immortals due to their mystic virtue of conferring longevity on all who ate them. Info here.

****

6 chapters in 1 day? I’ve done my duty. Til next time darlings!