The Creatures That We Are

The black hole devoured all. Everyone and everything elongated into distorted, frozen light and shadow in an instant, swept infinitely close to the event horizon without actually entering.

“Ah!”

Gao Yang shouted and woke up in a classroom, sitting at a desk with his companions around him, all dressed in high school uniforms. Outside, the sun blazed and the cicadas chirped in a rumbustious chorus, marking the season as summer. On the blackboard was a vivid black hole, as if the blackboard had become a display window into the universe.

Dressed in an elegant outfit and wearing gold-framed glasses, Vermilion Bird pointed and tapped at the black hole on the blackboard with a pointer.

“Always falling asleep in astronomy classes! Do you not have a dream beyond your academic pursuit? This is the black hole! One of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe.”

Angrily, she snapped, “Gao Yang, stand in the corridor!”

“Okay.” Gao Yang rose to his feet and walked toward the door. When he passed the desks at the front row, he found Nana sleeping in her seat, her drool pooling on the desk.

“Ms. Xia,” he called out immediately, “Nana’s asleep, too. Why didn’t you punish her?”

“Who told you I’m not?”

Vermilion Bird picked up a half-used white chalk and flicked it, shattering it into white particles that coalesced into lines and wrote countless esoteric formulas in the air. They intertwined and burned with holy radiance before turning into a white shooting star of truth, rushing to the only desk in the universe and the high school student sitting at it.

Finally, Nana woke up. She yawned, bleary-eyed.