CHAPTER 315: CHAPTER 103: THE JAPANESE ECCENTRIC

This trip to Japan, because it involved "Yellow Love," Su Ziceng did not tell anyone. Initially, she wanted to invite Pello to go with her, but she considered it inappropriate to travel alone together as a man and a woman.

Su Ziceng silently compared her interactions; she had privately spent time with Qiu Zhi before, but it never felt like the situations when she was with Pello. She wasn’t exactly nervous, but she inadvertently displayed a bit of coquettishness from time to time. Su Ziceng felt that she was increasingly behaving like her past self, continually being teased by young men who were superficially "younger" than her true self.

Going to Japan, the biggest headache was the language barrier. Fortunately, through a Japanese acquaintance of Director Luo, she found a female student from Nagano University.

After arriving at Narita Airport, a female student took care of all the transfers, and the journey was relatively smooth. The student who picked her up was two years older than Su Ziceng, from Guangzhou, and spoke Mandarin with a Cantonese accent. She mentioned she had been abroad since high school, and perhaps due to long-term residence in Japan, she was extraordinarily polite, often nodding and bowing, which Su Ziceng found somewhat uncomfortable.

Regarding Japan, Su Ziceng’s view was similar to most of her compatriots, split between love and hate. After turning thirty, Su Ziceng had a period where she deeply admired the designs of Issey Miyake. However, due to national outrage, she never learned to truly appreciate the culture of this island nation.

Listening to the student’s explanation, this year’s weather in Japan was unusually cold, hence the cherry blossoms that usually bloom between March and April only flourished properly in April this year. It seemed the student thought Su Ziceng was merely a tourist along for sightseeing. Su Ziceng did not overly clarify but urged her to hurry to Nagano.

The drive from Narita Airport to Karuizawa took about two more hours, and by the time they reached Karuizawa, the sun was setting. The moist and wooded Karuizawa, enveloped by a thin mist at night, felt somewhat cold on the skin.

They stayed in a family inn renowned for its natural hot springs. The inn’s kaiseki cuisine was well-known, and after taking a bath, Su Ziceng retired early and slept well through the night.

Woken by the first bird call of the morning, Su Ziceng was already awake. She didn’t get up immediately but lay in bed, thinking about the events of the past two years. The Red Love pendant on her chest fell onto the tatami, faintly emanating a red glow.

The sound of the inn owner’s "shuffling" footsteps came from outside the door, and many faces flashed across Su Ziceng’s mind. After focusing on each one by one, she sighed involuntarily.

Now that she was in Karuizawa, she hoped to smoothly find the named hidden family. The footsteps gradually receded, and the bird calls grew louder—likely a sign that the sun was about to rise. Suddenly, she felt a strong desire to witness the fog clearing under the sunlight.

There was still no movement in the student’s room, and not wanting to disturb her peaceful sleep, Su Ziceng stepped out alone. She wore light spring clothes, and upon exiting, the inn owner reminded her of something, but unfortunately, Su Ziceng did not understand Japanese. She simply nodded, assuming the owner had advised her to "dress warmly due to the cool morning temperatures."

At six in the morning, the full sun had not yet risen, but its power was already apparent. Su Ziceng felt the fog gradually dispersing as she walked.

The air in Japan was very clean. After taking several deep breaths, even her body felt lighter. She passed by a few elderly people taking walks and occasionally some middle-aged individuals jogging.

Both sides of the road were lined with upscale apartments, vacation inns, or private mansions, which were more compact and fairy-tale-like compared to the mansions in Mo City’s first and second districts.

Having wandered several straight paths back and forth, Su Ziceng planned to head back when she heard someone shouting nearby.

A person with mixed black and white hair was sitting by the side, shouting at Su Ziceng.

Su Ziceng looked around; apart from a few lush green trees, there was no one else. "I don’t understand Japanese," she reiterated, but the person did not stop and continued shouting at her.

Su Ziceng remembered that on the taxi ride the day before, the female student had told her that Japanese was easy to understand, and if communication failed, they could resort to "writing Chinese characters," which would allow them to guess the meaning through the characters.

Perhaps the person had something urgent to say; Su Ziceng stopped and pulled out a pen and a pocket dictionary from her coat. With the experience from her trip to France, she had learned a few tricks for traveling abroad.

Before Su Ziceng could write down "What do you need?", the elderly man snatched the pen and quickly wrote down a series of numbers: 19370707.

They were universal Arabic numerals, which reassured Su Ziceng a bit, but what did this string of twelve numbers mean? Could it be that this person was lost and hoped she could help contact his relatives?

Su Ziceng thought for a moment, then pulled out her phone from her coat pocket and handed it to the stranger.

Upon seeing the cellphone, the stranger did not display a happy expression; instead, he shook his hand haphazardly and then pointed at Su Ziceng, uttering a series of Japanese phrases.

"I don’t understand Japanese," Su Ziceng pointed at her ears and then gestured at her mouth.

"Birthday?" The stranger quickly wrote two recognizable Chinese characters on the cover of Su Ziceng’s dictionary.

"Mine?" Su Ziceng was somewhat displeased, how could she start sharing her personal information with a complete stranger, so she shook her hands again.

The stranger became frantic, rattling off some words and scratching his ears and head in desperation, eventually starting to wail.

A few passersby walked past, their bizarre conversation drawing quite a few sideways glances; Su Ziceng felt she might be entangled with a lunatic and tried to break away and leave, yet the stranger gripped her tightly, refusing to let go no matter what.

"Really," Su Ziceng’s eyes rolled around, thinking it’s just a birthday, she might as well make one up. Then, she took the pen and wrote a series of numbers.

The strange man shook his hand again, "Just this," Su Ziceng, afraid he wouldn’t believe her, wrote it again.

Seeing her still fabricating, the stranger hurriedly picked up a dead branch from the side and wrote eight numbers on the ground, 20120504, "What does this mean?" Su Ziceng recalled that in her thirty-fifth year, there was a legend that 2012 was the doomsday. Could it be that this stranger also intended to predict doomsday? A smile crept across Su Ziceng’s lips, but soon the smile faded. She remembered, the significance of 20120504, that was the day Su Qingzhang was laid to rest, and also the day she herself had attempted suicide.

As she froze, the stranger quickly followed up with another date, 19960701. Su Ziceng’s expression changed again, this was a day she could never forget, the day she was reborn.

The morning mist clung to their eyebrows and eyelashes, from afar, they looked like two elderly people over the age of sixty.

"19780617" Su Ziceng hesitated for a moment, but eventually wrote down her real birthday. She did not know the background of this strange person she encountered halfway, but he could pinpoint the days of her death and rebirth, or possibly, he might know even more.

After the stranger received the correct numbers, he gave a thumbs up, then squatted on the ground, resting the dictionary on his knees, quickly sketching a figure of a human body, followed by a few shapes resembling stars.

It took about ten minutes to complete the drawing. When the stranger stood up, Su Ziceng hadn’t had a chance to look at the sketch yet, but she was startled by his facial expression. The stranger, who previously had the energy to curse, now had his facial muscles twisted, and his lips twitching occasionally, as if sapped of strength, unable to speak.

After handing over the drawing to Su Ziceng, the stranger walked away along a small path, not turning back despite her calls.

Su Ziceng looked at the dictionary that was scribbled all over and then at the drawing the strange man had intentionally left. It was a peculiar drawing; the figure resembled Da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man, only the adjoining shapes looked like stars.

The sun was fully up now, and the fog in Karuizawa had cleared, the small path the stranger took glistened moistly under the sunlight, with a few wet footprints left behind.

"What a strange person," Su Ziceng closed the dictionary, feeling somewhat suffocated in her chest; the air in Karuizawa seemed too fresh, breathing in too much of it made her feel a dizziness from an excess of oxygen in her brain.

When she returned to the guesthouse along the same way, the landlady saw her hair was wet from the dew and fog, chattering away, handed her a small wooden bucket and a towel, and nudged her towards the bathhouse for a bath.

After the morning bath, the female international student had already gotten up, and they shared a bowl of steaming beef udon noodles. Su Ziceng then explained her real purpose in Karuizawa and took out the peculiar drawing she had gotten earlier.

The female student examined it closely but couldn’t make sense of it, yet hearing that Su Ziceng was looking for someone in the not-so-small area of Karuizawa seemed quite challenging.

"Perhaps we should ask the landlady," suggested the female student, also taking the dictionary with her, since the landlady was a local, maybe she would know what the drawing meant.

What disappointed Su Ziceng was, no information about the collector was gleaned. Karuizawa, being a prominent tourist destination, saw many people come and go every year. An unknown solitary traveler, without any distinctive description, but the drawing now had some news. (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to cast recommendation votes and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)