Scene 6: Stars and Flowers (2)

"Hi... Hi there, what's your name?" Asked Lu Mingfei hesitantly.

 

"Zero." The girl had a slight Russian accent.

 

"It shouldn't be... Ski something or Na something? Zero is English, right?"

 

"It's a Russian word, too. It's just 0. I don't have an official name, they gave me the id of 0." The girl said coldly, "You can just call me Zero."

 

"Zero?" Lu Mingfei wanted to avoid embarrassment, "This song is quite familiar."

 

"Por Una Cabeza, by Carlos Gardel, the Argentine tango king. Have you seen Scent of a Woman?"

 

Lu Mingfei shook his head.

 

"What about Schindler's List?"

 

"Yes, of course! It won an Oscar!" Lu Mingfei regretted after saying that. If a little Russian queen-like girl whirled into the dance floor to ask him to dance, he should have put on the manner of a Chinese emperor to cope with it. Why did he speak like a village poor child?

 

"It has this piece in it as a soundtrack. It gives you the feeling above everything else." Zero looked straight into Lu Mingfei's eyes, her voice was calm and cold.

 

"What do you mean?" Lu Mingfei didn't dare look her in the eye. He did not know why Zero used this way to save him, although he had conceived, the main character should be Nuo Nuo who's dancing with Ceasar right now.

 

Maybe I'm too embarrassed so she's helping me out? He thought.

 

"I don't mean anything," Zero said.

 

"I know what you mean, I'm not stupid. I think Caesar was trying to snub us and humiliate us? He invited us here, hung us here, trying to tell us he didn't care about us. He wouldn't mind if I grouping with Chu Zihang or Kieran. He just watches us eat, watches us dance in embarrassment." Lu Mingfei sighed, "I know Caesar is a good man, he has a beautiful girlfriend, why should he pay attention to a loser? It's just my luck these days... I thought I was not a loser... "

 

"You don't have to explain it to me. I said I didn't mean anything." Zero interrupted him.

 

“Oh, is it?" Lu Mingfei embarrassed himself again, "I thought... "

 

"I just love to dance and brought my dancing shoes."

 

"But why me?"

 

"Everyone else has a partner."

 

"Then why don't you dance with Fingel? He dances better than me." Lu Mingfei thought the reason for Zero is far-fetched because she likes to dance, she cut the crowd to pull his hand? Is Zero the legendary heroine who saved lives but never ask for payback?

 

"Fingel is too tall. He doesn't match my height." Zero spoke with sense.

 

Nothing more to say so they keep dancing.

 

"At the end of this song, I will rotate 3600 degrees, hold my hand!" Zero ordered like a queen.

 

Lu Mingfei did it without thinking. In the lingering sound of the final song, all the other girls stopped except Zero. She began to rotate with her fingers on his palm. The skirt was flying, silver light was swirling on the shoes, and the sound of the heel hitting the ground constituted a series of allegro. For a moment all the light seemed to be focused on her, just like the death of the swan created by Tchaikovsky.

 

Dancing novice Lu Mingfei suddenly felt that he had become a useful person. Zero's petite figure matched him perfectly with her high-heeled shoes, and his raised arms gave her convenient support. Zero asks for power from his hand and uses him as a support for the rotation. If he suddenly trembles or loses his mind, Zero will become an unbalanced top. Lu Mingfei himself knows how unreliable him, "king of the loser" is, but the trust is given to him by Zero. The little queen from Russia puts her excellent dancing skills and the nobility that shakes the whole room on the gambling table. The bet seems to be...

 

Lu Mingfei's face.

 

Lu Mingfei had no way to reply to her help but only concentrating on holding Zero's hand.

 

Applause, hearty applause. Caesar clapped. Everyone claps following him. The applause was like a storm, in the storm, the silver swan was dancing proudly.

 

Lu Mingfei suddenly fell into a daze. He felt vaguely that somewhere he had been, the lights were gorgeous and the applause was thunderous. Under the watchful eyes of the public, the slender figure spun in front of him, spreading her skirt like the tail feathers of a peacock.

 

What the hell? When in the last 18 years had I been so successful? That's impossible, isn't it? Is it an illusion? How possible could this feeling like an emperor belong to oneself?

 

But with that came confidence, unmatched confidence with power. He took Zero's slender hands suddenly. It was the last moment of the dance. Zero completed her 3,600-degree rotation. Facing Lu Mingfei, she slowly crouched down to salute. Her scattered dance dress was gathered up against her legs as a blooming flower gathered back into bud. The time was exactly right, it was as if he had asked Zero to stop spinning, but he thought he had no reason to pull her hand but just a tinkle.

 

Zero didn't get up yet. This was the end of the standard court dance, it's time for Lu Mingfei to reply.

 

Lu Mingfei was suddenly stunned. He returned to the real world from the good feeling like the emperor and found that he had not learned any court dance at all, and of course, he can not salute. Those boys all bowed to the girl at the end of the dance, but he did not pay attention to it since he needed to focus on Zero.

 

Damn. Should I kiss her hand? Or just bend over? How about putting the left hand on my chest? That sounds like an Arab. Lu Mingfei began to sweat, what a great dance, how could he screw it up on the last little detail?

 

"Please stand up after kowtowing..." In a moment of tension, he blurted out this terrible sentence, which made him almost collapse.

 

"How could I be such a person?" He said to himself and looked around until he saw that no one else had heard the words. They were clapping their hands together that drown out his terrible words.

 

Zero stood up, did not look at Lu Mingfei, turned and walked to the side of the dance floor. She changed back to a pair of black leather shoes, put the silver high-heeled shoes back into the shoe cover, and then put them back into the black suitcase. She then took a dark red long windbreaker from the waiter to put on, say hello to no one and left directly from the front door. She came as sharp as a knife and left in the same style.

 

"This year's new students are quite interesting." Lu Mingfei heard Caesar's whisper.

 

Caesar was holding a glass of brandy with ice, watching Zero disappear into the darkness.

 

"Now please welcome Caesar, President of the Student Union, to address us." A minister tapped a microphone from a second-floor platform.

 

People stopped to talk about Zer. No matter how dazzling the Russian girl is, after all, Caesar is the star of this college. Caesar handed his glass to the waiter, went up to the spiral staircase to the second floor, stood before the microphone, and scanned everyone below like an emperor reviewing an army.

 

"I was very disappointed the first day I came to the college," Caesar paused, "because there were so many people!"

 

"The true elite will never be the majority!"

 

The opening scene was so cold that it made people tremble. Lu Mingfei thought that if this guy ruled the earth, he would probably become a fascist like Hitler. And the first thing he wants to kill is this kind of waste like Lu Mingfei.

 

But then Caesar smiled faintly, "thank you for coming. It's nice to see the most elite group gathered here. Our Gattuso's guest," Caesar raised a finger, "can only be the best!"

 

After a moment of silence, someone clapped vigorously, followed by everyone clapping, everyone's eyes shining with excitement. It was an honour that Caesar considered them the best among students.

 

Lu Mingfei was also a little flattered, he seems to become an "elite" too... It was Fingel who led the clapping, and the expression on his face was almost full of tears. It seemed that the "F" grade dude was very moved by Caesar's appreciation of him, but he forgot that he was not even on the guest list.

 

"I like to work with great people because my time is limited, while I can't stand wasting time on unqualified people." Ceasar made the guest calmed down. "It has always been my view that Cassel College is a miracle, a mission, so there should be the best people who have the most concise, powerful voices."

 

"Who should make such a noise?" He looked down coldly.

 

"Caesar!" Suddenly someone in the Student Union answered.

 

"No, not me, but... Us!" Caesar raised his voice. "The best of us!"

 

The double applause almost broke Lu Mingfei's eardrums. He was a child who grew up in a socialist country. As he heard in a high school politics class, the voice of the low-level people is the loudest. But caught in a bunch of "self-described elite", and regarded as one, he can only clap.

 

"The Student Union is not serving someone from the day I take it over. Why are we here? Kill the dragon king? Maintain the world? Or, prove yourself?" Caesar shrugged. "If you tell people what you're doing, they'll think you're crazy."

 

"But the true elite will always be regarded as crazy by the common people! Like Nietzsche! He died, but he was the true elite of his time!" Caesar waved his arms vigorously, like a Greek orator, "because the world doesn't tolerate people who aren't like them! And they can't tolerate elites because they're stupid!"

 

Lu Mingfei saw the crowd with the expression of "I'm just a crazy person who can't live with the world".

 

Caesar threw up his hands. "I don't want to kick anybody out of this campus. Since the rules of Cassel College allow people who are not qualified to study here, I can accept it. I also understand the way people who are not qualified life, and I don't want to interfere. But I hope they don't make too much noise, because I don't like noise."

 

"But this college, this mission, is ultimately supported by the best!" He pointed to the sky again. "Now please let me welcome you, as President of the student union, to the camp of lunatics!"

 

Lu Mingfei looked up at him and thought of the birth of Sakyamuni, the Buddha, who had taken seven steps to the north, south and north, pointing to the sky and saying, " "I am chief of the world, Eldest am I in the world, Foremost am I in the world. This is the last birth. There is now no more coming to be." 1)

 

"Can't you stop being so cool?" He said in his heart, "Do you know people don't like the cool person?"

 

It didn't matter if he said it out loud, because no one cared. Everyone clapped and hugged each other excitedly.

 

"Shall we hug each other? It's very weird here if we don't." Fingal appeared wriggling behind him.

 

"I don't want to hug a man... And I don't think you have the ability to join the Student Union." Lu Mingfei looked at him, "You don't mind being trampled to death by the elites?"

 

"Never mind... I hear that Caesar is a good boss and pays his own money to the members."

 

"Can't you have a little pride..." Lu Mingfei covered his face again. These days, too many things happened that let him covering the face.

 

"Lu Mingfei!" Caesar's voice came from high up.

 

Lu Mingfei was surprised and he saw Ceasar took out a hand to him. "Come up and stand with me." Then he sneered, "You can say no."

 

Lu Mingfei's mind went blank. All the people are looking at him, this is the time of choice, as long as he went up and stood with Caesar, tomorrow campus news network will say he joined the Student Union, and Chu Zihang will immediately become his enemy if he refused... In short, go up, his enemy will be Chu Zihang, not go up, Caesar will be the enemy. Caesar was not prepared to give him time to think, there's no application paper or interview.

 

He didn't mind being with Caesar at all, and he was a little tempted when Fingel said that a rich man like Caesar would pay his brothers his own money...

 

He just wasn't ready to offend Chu Zihang.

 

Dead silence.

 

Then Caesar heard a mobile phone ringtone, Caesar stunned for a moment and reached his pocket.

 

In the hall, the noisy mobile phone ringtones sounded. Music ringtone, beeping sounds, old-fashioned phone tinkling sounds, unknown number sounds, dozens of different kinds of bells sounded at the same moment, let people thinking they're in a drum band that started to play in a second. Few people have ever heard so many mobile phones ringing at the same time, it's horrible.

 

After all the guests stunned for a moment, they began to grab their phones. The girls hid the mobile phone in different places, some put in stockings, some hidden in the folds of the skirt, and some put it on their partner. The appearance of hundreds of people busily finding their phones let Lu Mingfei breathe a sigh of relief. He didn't have a phone and didn't care who called every one, so at least he didn't have to make the decision. He looked around, ready to slip away.

 

Caesar opened the phone, his face suddenly changed. He reached out his hand to make everyone quiet, holding up his phone and turned on the speakerphone button.

 

"... Please walk to the window, look towards the school gate and hold your breath. When guests arrive, the host should be prepared." It was a muffled voice that had fixed.

 

Everyone's face changed too because they all had the same voice on their phones.

 

Guests squeezed toward the windows, looking out through the large French Windows of the Amber Hall, where the cut-iron school door was closed and lit by a cold light.

 

The loud bang made people lose their hearing for a moment. In the dazzling firelight, the iron gate twisted and was thrown into the air by the blast wave of the explosion. Only after rising to a height of 20 meters did it fall again and hit the ground hard. The alarm sounded throughout the campus. In the darkness, all the buildings suddenly lit up and the quiet darkness was completely broken.

 

The red level alert was instantly activated.

 

Bright beams of light and the roar of motorcycles poured into the campus, dressed in black as intruders sped up on irate motorcycles. In their hands, guns gleamed fiercely. Once they're inside the campus, they dispersed and fired with precision, smashing up any monitors they passed.

 

"How? What?" Lu Mingfei was shocked. "A new battle? Do they have battles between colleges?"

 

That group of interlopers looks too much like gangsters.

 

"This is our war... The beginning of the war!" The man on the phone hung up with a cold smile.

 

"Red alert! Red alert! Dragon invasion! Dragon invasion! Freshmen shall stay in the dormitories, students who pass the Battlefield Survival module shall immediately get their weapons and refill with Frigg bullets. No live ammunition is allowed." Norma's voice was heard through loudspeakers throughout the campus, "blocking all entrances and the right to shoot at unidentified persons is given."

 

"Dragon invasion?" Lu Mingfei was dumbstruck. "Dragon... Invading on motorcycles? Not another Free Day, is it? I thought that's only a day long?"

 

The grim expressions on everyone else's faces suggested this was not a drill. The students, who had been dancing in their tuxedos, immediately showed their military training and rushed outside in an orderly fashion. The men from the maintenance department parked their cars outside each building and opened the carriages. Inside the arm racks were neat automatic guns. In front of the Amber Hall, the loading voice sounds like a storm.

 

Against a starless night, a dark figure stood on the turret of Cassel College, watching the lights of the motorcycles scatter like fireflies across the campus and then go out. People poured out of the buildings, taking control of all the passageways and entrances, and the quiet campus suddenly became a fortified military fortress.

 

He threw the phone down from the turret, put on his mask, and pulled out another phone. "According to your plan, everything is going well. But isn't it too much of a publicity stunt?"

 

"Whether or not this operation is successful, I want to impress them." The person on the other end of the line laughed.

 

"It is fitting well that I should execute the mission. I am always," said the people on the turret coldly. "Impressive!"

 

Suddenly he jumped out of the turret railing, let go of his arms, and flew down. The turret is 8 meters high, for ordinary people, their spines will not withstand the impact of fracture, but he gently rolled to the ground, as a leopard cat ran forward, disappearing in the darkness.

 

In the library control room, Manstein and Guderian rushed through the door. Professor Von Schneider stood in front of a large screen, looking at a screen full of dots, each representing a student joining the vigilance.

 

"A dragon invasion? What happened? Who decided it's a dragon invasion?" Manstein looked nervous.

 

The "dragon invasion" was something he thought only existed in theory. For hundreds of years, every dragon that was about to awaken was killed before they came out of the dragon tomb. When is it going to be these guys' turn? And a bunch of dragons? That's too challenging for his imagination.

 

"It's Norma. I don't have enough access to understand why Norma decided it was a dragon invasion, but there's no question that intruders did show up." On a large screen, Schneider called up images of the bikes entering the campus.

 

He froze when he saw Guderian and became angry. "What are you wearing?"

 

Guderian looked at himself and said, "Combat dress... I know I'm not going to help."

 

He went to bed early and awoke from his dreams, but he had not forgotten what to do in an emergency. He pulled his old combat suit from his wardrobe and with such difficulty filled the gun with Frigg bullets that he had almost forgotten how the pistol was loaded.

 

"But you're wearing a nightcap!"

 

"Oh, I see." Guderian took off his red nightcap lamely so that he did not look so much like Santa Claus.

 

"Could it be Norma's mistake?" Asked Manstein. "About ten people entered the campus, an invasion on this scale, for what? Damage? Demonstration?"

 

"They're for SOMETHING, I guess," Schneider whispered.

 

 

1) Reference from https://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/lifebuddha/2lbud.htm