T/L: Fleeting Cloud E/D: Larkspur & Sasha
Tong Yan moved ‘his’ body clumsily and then took out Xu Xinduo’s new mobile phone. He found that Xu Xinduo had yet to set a fingerprint or face lock. He could only try to key in the password but in the end, he couldn’t open the mobile phone lock at all.
After giving up on the struggle, he could only stand up and walk around in the room. He wanted to see where he was. After looking around, wasn’t it… Xu Xinduo’s neighbourhood?
Tong Yan sat on the windowsill and looked at the room, scratching his head impatiently.
Why was he forced to switch again?
Xu Xinduo and Tong Yan had begun swapping their bodies when they were seven years old. The first time it happened, both of them were shocked.
Xu Xinduo was still the calmer one. She first confirmed her body’s state and then tried to get familiar with the environment. She calmly tried to ascertain what was going on.
However, Tong Yan was frightened at first but then he accepted it matter of factly. He wandered everywhere in the village, caught fish in the water and even went up the mountains to get fruits. He had a particularly good time.
When they were younger, they were forced to switch bodies. In the sense, from time to time, under uncertain circumstances, they’re compelled to swap. Sometimes they switched back after a few minutes. However, there was also times when they couldn’t switch back even after a few days had passed.
Then, they started to leave messages in their respective houses so that they could get in touch with each other.
After the two children talked over the phone, they learned about each other’s affairs. They didn’t tell the adults at home but gradually accepted the bizarre deal fate had offered them.
They exchanged their information and said a lot of things. Moreover, they also formed some rules for themselves. After some time, they could swap their bodies whenever they wanted.
However, there was also a limitation. That was they could switch bodies at most four times a day. Switch over and then return- it counted as twice. They could switch back and forth 2 times in 24 hours.
In the past two years, these two had been able to switch bodies at will. As long as the number of times didn’t exceed the limit, there was generally no problem.
Only two years later, forceful swapping of bodies had suddenly caught Tong Yan off guard. He would end up in a weird situation, not knowing what to do. Like for instance today. This whole place was strange and he was absolutely clueless about the goings-on.
Ergo, he sat in silence for more than an hour. No one came inside nor did he go out. He was afraid of making any mistakes so he thought it was safer to stay there.
For example, Xu Xinduo entered this place normally. If he went out and asked someone what he was doing here, it would arouse people’s suspicion. It was easier to solve the problem by staying there.
After some time, he felt as if Xu Xinduo wanted to switch bodies so he immediately cooperated.
Xu Xinduo returned and saw that she was actually sitting on the windowsill. She got down quickly and patted her cheeks to get rid of the irritation from before.
When she got to Tong Yan’s body, she’d found herself in a dressing room. There were more than a dozen people changing clothes around him. She almost collapsed. It was too much for her to take it and she hurried back.
‘Aren’t you competing abroad?’
‘I can’t wait for half a month!’
Looking around the room, she went to pick up the paper and found it blank. She could only go back and sit down. Taking a pen, she began to answer the questions.
It was not surprising that Tong Yan didn’t notice the paper that was under the table. It was just that too much time had passed. There were three sets of questions in total. Even if the questions were not too many, she needed to speed up.
She answered the simple ones quickly, keeping the time-consuming questions for later. She finished the simple part of each set of questions in no time. Still, there wasn’t much time left. She only had eight minutes to answer each set of questions.
When the teacher came over to collect the papers, Xu Xinduo didn’t dwell on it and quickly handed in the answer sheet.
The teacher took a look at the answer sheet and brought Xu Xinduo to a classroom.