GBP Chapter 123 Song of a Distant Hometown - S01 E05
Chapter 123 Song of a Distant Hometown - S01 E05
(Recommended background music:)
Are you lost? —Park Bird
Comfort chain——instupendo）
*
You are facing a very serious problem right now.
—It seems you have no way to leave the land of exile.
Although you have achieved great success in absorbing the second soul, with all four of your limbs burned off, you are unable to stand up and walk, let alone find an exit in the land of exile.
……
……
This is ridiculous! You're not going to be lying here forever, are you? How are you going to find a way out of this land of exile? What are you going to do about what's happening outside?
How long have you been here? What's the situation outside?
Once everything quiets down, the things you need to worry about immediately and indiscriminately swarm towards you. They all crowd into your shattered head, with no intention of overflowing.
Unfortunately, no matter how much you think about it now, these problems will not be solved.
...After all, you can't even stand up.
You don't know if your facial expression twitches because you're speechless.
Physically transformed into a shattered pottery figurine, you lie silently in the soft sand, listening to the ebb and flow of the ocean waves.
In an empty world, a wind, seemingly from nowhere, suddenly rises, brushing against your cheek and carrying away a few insignificant grains of sand.
The sky over the land of exile seems never to clear.
Countless invisible butterflies, transformed from time itself, fall into your shattered body and cavity.
Your breathing overlaps with the sound of the rising and falling tides.
In a daze, you feel as if your body has fallen into the sand island beneath you.
It's strange. You're clearly a broken clay figurine, so why do you have such a hallucinatory feeling?
You think this way, which is a bit strange.
Your heart and your mind have melted.
Even so, you still retain the ability to think. But why can't you hear your own heartbeat? Where has it gone?
Your consciousness seems to have drifted into a soft cloud, but in order to stay awake, you force yourself to gaze at the gray sky with your only remaining eye.
At this moment, beneath you lies damp, peaceful, and soft soil, a warm bed for dreams.
In your half-awake state, flowers suddenly and silently bloom from the depths of the white sand beneath you.
Delicate chamomile blossoms caress your ear, while shy snowbells cling to your broken cheeks, offering comforting kisses to your shattered edges.
Large swirling fronds of frangipani blossoms emerge from your dwindling black hair, like tiny birds peeking out their snow-white heads from among the vines.
Their roots and emerald vines, like some soft little animal, crawl all over your body, which is stuck in the sand, and begin to grow vigorously upwards from your empty head.
The plant's delicate, frail roots coiled around your broken body like feathers.
You can feel the flower's breath.
Because its branches and leaves are mingling and overlapping with your breath.
They make you feel the rhythm of life.
...but those flowers and the vegetation that climbed onto your body soon withered.
They change all over your body like children pampered by the spring breeze.
You, lying still, are like a silent patient, while the mischievous flowers that peek out from different corners every now and then are visitors coming to see you.
Occasionally, small creatures like hermit crabs might crawl into your body and make their home. But like all flowers, these little guys, who can control their own movements, tend to leave faster than the plants that cling to you.
Life is constantly dying and being reborn. After showing you its most dazzling side, it naturally leaves with the passage of time.
...And as the flowers meet and reunite with you more and more often, you seem to gradually lose your sense of time.
In this vast place of exile, apart from those speechless beings, it seems that you are the only one left.
You don't know if you've ever fallen asleep, but you feel like you've lived through centuries.
A strange, psychedelic feeling gives you the illusion of being back in high school.
The long summer days are filled with the damp rain, the puddles reflecting the sun's shadow, the street vendors calling out their wares, and the vibrant, everyday life that permeates the air.
The class you hate is like a never-ending dream.
The teacher's voice was rapid, and you didn't hear a word. But your high school years were so short; in the blink of an eye, all those sounds were swallowed back into your stomach by a surging tide of memories.
They vaguely squeezed together into the dark green videotape, carrying with them a damp smell from the vegetation being moistened by water vapor.
It sounded like the voice from an old-fashioned radio, as loud as a cicada before its death.
It seems that everyone's face in your memory has been erased by time, leaving only the basic outline of a human being.
You feel like a sheep that has died on the beach.
First, your snow-white fur falls off, your blood-red muscles and pale yellow fat rot, and your gradually exposed white bones soon perish with the arrival of the wind and sand, finally turning into part of the earth and falling into a deep sleep.
You can feel death and time flowing through you simply by lying in the sand.
And so, you suddenly feel an urge to sing a song.
That song is probably very old, so old that even kids your age can't sing it much anymore, yet you still sang it off in your hometown dialect—
……
"Outside the long pavilion...beside the ancient road?"
"The fragrant grass stretches to the horizon—?"
"The evening breeze caresses the willows, the flute's melody fades away?"
"Sunset beyond the mountains—?"
"At the ends of the earth, at the corners of the world?"
"Half of my close friends have passed away?"
"A ladle of wine exhausts the remaining joy, tonight's parting dreams are cold—?"
"Outside the long pavilion, beside the ancient road?"
"The fragrant grass stretches to the horizon?"
"The evening breeze caresses the willows, the flute's melody fades away?"
"Sunset beyond the mountains?"
"A thousand threads of affection, a cup of wine?"
"The sound of the flute urges us on?"
"When will you return, my friend?"
"Do not linger when you come."
"The grass is green, the water is emerald green."
"How is Nanpu's injury?"
"Life is short, and joyful gatherings are a rare treat."
"Only separation is frequent...?"
"A thousand threads of affection, a cup of wine?"
"The sound of the flute urges us on?"
"When will you arrive here, my lord?"
"When you come...do not linger—?"
(Li Shutong's "Farewell" from 1935)
The Dragon Girl, who had never sung in front of people before, finally began to sing at this moment.
She chose a song that was so old that it would even sound a little eerie in this moment, a song that would sound strange if sung at this time.
She didn't know why she sang this song.
This song is as out of place as she is in hell.
A completely different language, a sorrowful yet slightly lighthearted melody, a sound so distant it seems to be sailing to the other side of the world.
Her voice is lower than that of an average girl, which makes her singing sound less melodious, but unique and beautiful.
The Dragon Girl's voice was always peaceful and calm.
It is like a high mountain that gives people eternal peace, like an effective but not strong stimulant, like an oak tree in the rain, like a deep green that is cold yet warm.
Her loneliness carried a damp sadness and tenderness.
The melancholic voice of the visitor from the East seems to have been born for blues, but her remarkable high notes and key variations also deserve a stunning performance in traditional Chinese opera.
The Dragon Girl's voice was sometimes as smooth as jade, but when she sang high notes, it also had an incredible refinement.
—But the truth is, despite her beautiful voice deserving of many compliments, she never sang again after going to hell.
Is it because you're not used to expressing yourself through singing? Or is it because you don't feel a strong need to express your emotions through music?
Nobody here can understand your singing.
So when everyone is singing, you're more used to sitting quietly to the side and watching.
You only sing songs in Mandarin when you're sure there's no one around, and you sing lyrics that just come to mind naturally.
—But in this foreign land, it seems that no one has heard you sing yet.
"sand."
"sand."
"sand."
"sand……"
……
……
What……?
The sand made a faint sound of sinking, and someone's light footsteps were slowly dragged down by the sand island.
You stared wide-eyed, incredulous at the sudden sound of footsteps.
The Land of Exile is a forbidden place that belongs only to you and Him. How could there possibly be anyone else here besides you and Him?!
Feeling as if you'd been hit on the head with a blunt object, you opened your mouth in shock, but for a moment you didn't know what to say.
Your view was originally obscured by countless blades of grass.
Although the gloomy, cloudless sky itself isn't much to look at, it still leaves you a small patch of sky to peek at.
In your dreamlike perspective, a blurry shadow suddenly appears in the direction drawn by the branches and leaves of the flowers, like a picture frame.
The man had striking brown skin and short, dark brown hair.
You can't see his facial features clearly, but you can see the silver light reflected from the glasses on his nose.
The uninvited guest was slender and tall, wearing a white shirt and a retro-style fitted dark vest.
He elegantly rolled up his sleeve, revealing a beautifully shaped forearm.
Faced with your unabashed gaze, he first chuckled, and then, like a true gentleman, bent down slightly, making a gesture as if to pull you up from the ground.
...Who exactly is the other party?
You are utterly confused.
Unfortunately, all you can think about right now is why there are strangers in the place of exile... or perhaps He has some backup plan?
Because the footsteps were so sudden, and the person who came was so unfamiliar and vague, you, who had everything under control, felt a rare sense of panic.
...but you quickly came to your senses.
After all, you've never seen this blurry figure before, and you have no impression of it. It's impossible for it to become a demon you've never seen before.
……
But if that's the case, wouldn't things become even more out of your control? And wouldn't the problem become even more complicated?
What's even stranger is that after you finally regain your ability to think, the shadow that's reaching out to you disappears without a trace in the blink of an eye.
……
...?
Feeling puzzled, you stare blankly at your remaining limited field of vision.
To be honest, if you weren't immobilized, you would definitely make sure that charlatan never leaves alive. You...
Good morning, my little sleepyhead! Did you sleep well?
When you let these thoughts run wild in your mind, a face you'll probably never forget suddenly appears in front of you.
……
……
……What???
The shock on your face was impossible to hide. You stared wide-eyed at the old acquaintance in front of you, unable to utter a single word.
The smiling old gentleman with a frilly striped red suit and a tattered hem, now looked like a male ghost who had died with his eyes wide open, gazing down at you with a set of sharp, gleaming teeth.
He was still holding that microphone cane that he never let go of, and apart from his rarely fully open red eyes, his mood seemed visibly good.
Wendigo's red hair was soft, swaying gently with the deer-ear-like sections that stood high on his head, carrying an incredible drowsy and furry laziness.
In the brief moment of your astonishment, the uninvited male demon squinted his eyes with amusement and, along with his cane, unabashedly played a grainy old jazz tune.
"...Ah, what a wonderful day!"
"I'm so glad we can meet again."
Even if it's a dream... at least we can meet again here—
"My dear~"
Accompanied by that unfamiliar yet magnificent old song, you hear Alastor, who shouldn't even be here, speaking to you in a broadcast-like tone full of emotion.