Chapter 23 Playing with the Bunny

After Yin Xian turned into a rabbit, all he could think about was how to escape the island. Matters of the heart felt far away from him now.

Everything he’d done to “be nice to her” was insignificant and purely because Wang Jiexiang had value to him.

Why did she help him? She had no reason to.

For the first time, Yin Xian realized that he wasn’t a good match for this girl.

She was forgetful, easily amused, easily satisfied. Others could anger her easily, but she was just as easy to appease.

And himself? Everything he could remember about himself was the exact opposite.

A non-existent conscience flickered to life for a moment when he saw her looking aggrieved.

“Wang Jiexiang.”

Yin Xian, for once, showed concern for the past he had forgotten.

“Was I bad to you?”

“Did I not love you enough?”

“Did we break up on bad terms?”

Her head drooped lower, and she muttered a muffled “mm.”

“So.”

Lifting her head, Wang Jiexiang earnestly asked, “As compensation, can I touch you?”

“That’s kind of a sudden transition, isn’t it?”

The bunny paw scratched its head in confusion. She looked at him with longing in her eyes.

“You like rabbits that much?”

He reluctantly agreed, puffed out his little chest, and switched into business mode.

Wang Jiexiang cupped the bunny in her hands, quickly lifting and lowering him, efficiently and thoroughly petting the chubby little rabbit she’d been eyeing for a long time.

“…” Yin Xian stared blankly, letting his fluffy fur get tousled, his soft flesh squished and rubbed into various shapes.

“So cute!”

She cupped his little bunny head, smooshing all the chubby parts of his face together.

“Tiny little bunny.”

Wang Jiexiang’s voice turned syrupy sweet, completely absorbed in petting, lost in her own world.

“Little Bunny feels so nice! Why are you so tiny and soft?!”

With his face all deformed from the rubbing, he struggled to speak.

“…Be honest. That pitiful act earlier—was it fake?”

“Pet pet pet, chubby bunny, chubby feet.”

She pretended not to hear, lifted both his front paws, and swayed him left, then right.

Yin Xian silently cooperated.

“…You’ve had enough, haven’t you?”

After playing with the bunny, Wang Jiexiang was in a great mood.

She went back to eating crayfish, drinking juice, returning to her usual self.

She pulled two keys out of her pocket and handed them to him.

“One of these keys fell off the otherworld version of you. The other one was given to me by my mom.”

The bunny found it odd. “You saw your mom in that house?”

Mentioning her mom, Wang Jiexiang’s expression darkened. “Yeah. And it was ‘you’ who took me to her. But… I couldn’t see her face clearly or hear her voice.”

“Isn’t that really strange?”

“Yeah, and that’s not the only strange part,” she counted off on her fingers, “The world resets, there’s a barrier, NPCs with identical faces, phone cards that won’t break. That world reset eight times while I was in it. Honestly, I only made it out because…”

She paused for half a second, searching for the right word. “…Because that world let me go.”

The massive amount of information she got was exchanged for a difficulty level dozens of times higher than any other house. Her words immediately caught Yin Xian’s attention.

“Can you tell me the whole experience in detail?”

Thinking about recounting the eight cycles from the beginning, Wang Jiexiang suddenly remembered something she’d nearly forgotten.

“When I entered the house, I was about twelve. You were twenty-two,” she sneered, “You told me not to bother you and went off to play rubber ball by yourself. You were dating a pretty girl named He Shan.”

The bunny didn’t sense anything off. “Oh, and then?”

“And then?!”

Wang Jiexiang held up fists the size of sandbags.

“Didn’t you say I was your first love?”

The bunny tucked his tail and shrank back.

“I don’t remember. I lost my memory.”

She moved in, taking advantage of the moment. “Liar Yin Xian! Now you owe me ten petting sessions.”

He was full of question marks.

“Ten!” Wang Jiexiang repeated, “And if you don’t agree, the price goes up.”

Yin Xian relented. “Alright.”

“Heehee, I’m using one now.”

She immediately grabbed him and happily rubbed the bunny again.

Yin Xian humbly asked, “Can you tell me what happened while you play with me?”

“Sure!”

Wang Jiexiang started from the chaotic mahjong parlor, talking about Brother Xu, the work uniform, the cafeteria, He Shan, and the scolding phone call from his father. Twenty-two-year-old Yin Xian was dissatisfied with his life but had no clear vision for his future.

She kept talking and talking, about how he eventually walked her home. The key appeared when he spontaneously thought about volunteering as a teacher in her hometown. They boarded a strange bus that went straight to her hometown, where she saw her grandma, her dad, even her dead mother.

After eight cycles, Wang Jiexiang only finished speaking once her throat was parched.

Yin Xian didn’t interrupt her once, calm as if he were listening to someone else’s story.

“The cafeteria at the Auto Repair Shop had lots of background people who looked exactly the same. When you say ‘exactly the same,’ what do you mean?”

Wang Jiexiang scratched her neck, finding it hard to describe their features. “Very plain looks. Faces you wouldn’t remember unless you stared.”

He picked up her description.

“Average height and facial structure, short black hair, black eyes, male. Skin slightly tanned, nose neither big nor small, a sweat towel around the neck, wearing a navy blue work uniform.”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes! Exactly like you said!”

“If you asked me to describe my former coworkers at the Auto Repair Shop based on memory, that’s what I’d say.”

Their eyes met. Simultaneously, the same thought occurred to both of them.

“And if you ask me to imagine what your mom looked like?”

The bunny closed his eyes.

After a long while, he said, “I can’t. I can’t picture it.”

“I’ve never seen your mom. She’s a specific, concrete person. I can’t imagine her face or voice. At most, I can sketch a vague outline—like a kind middle-aged woman wearing an apron.”

Wang Jiexiang paused.

“In the other world, my mom was wearing an apron.”

Which made the conclusion clear as day.

“The inside of the house manifested my inner world?”

The bunny’s guess brought them one step closer to the truth of Little Rabbit Island.

With that interpretation, many earlier mysteries could be explained.

“You saw my grandma and dad?”

Among all the threads she had untangled, Wang Jiexiang caught a discordant one.

“The ones I saw in the other world looked the same as in real life. If you didn’t see them, shouldn’t they have been like my mom—unclear to you?”

The bunny answered bluntly, “I don’t know.”

That line again!

She grabbed his ears, fed up.

“Don’t call yourself Yin Xian anymore. Just change your name to Dummy.”

Little Bunny didn’t argue.

Wang Jiexiang was surprised. “Seriously? You’re okay being called Dummy?”

Yin Xian glanced up. “Dummy sounds better than Feifei. You’re Feifei.”

“I told you I hate being called Feifei!”

She furiously kneaded the bunny.

Yin Xian noticed her sneaky hands!

“…Are you using this as an excuse to touch me again?”