Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Ungrammatical Sentence
"Huh?" "Huh?" "Huh?"
The three of them blurted it out at the same time.
They looked at each other.
Huh?
What was with all the "huhs"?
"’Do not believe’—I understand the first four syllables."
Qin Feng frowned slightly.
"But this last syllable... ’ha’... what on earth does that mean? It makes the whole thing a broken sentence, right?"
Jiang Ran shook his head.
"Or maybe the syllables can be arranged differently?"
But no matter how he rearranged them, no other combination formed a coherent sentence.
"Let’s head back to the clubroom for now."
He put away his phone.
"In any case, this trip to see Teacher Zhang Yang wasn’t a waste. We gained a lot!"
...
「Film Club, Activity Room.」
The small blackboard had been wiped completely clean. On it, the five syllables were written in large letters.
"What is ’ha’ supposed to be?"
Qin Feng asked for the Nth time.
"No idea."
Jiang Ran replied for the Nth time, looking up at Cheng Mengxue.
"It’s actually a bit like Xiaoxue’s verbal tic."
Sometimes when Cheng Mengxue spoke, she liked to end her sentences with a "ha."
This "ha" usually had no real meaning. It was just a particle used for emphasis, reminders, confirmation, or to ask a question.
For example, some of her most common phrases were:
"I’m going to eat, ’kay!"
"I’m starting the countdown, ha!"
"Don’t forget to bring it, alright!"
"So I’ll just buy it then, ha?"
’Hmm?’
Cheng Mengxue hadn’t noticed at first.
But after trying it out herself, she muttered:
"It really is!"
She blinked her eyes.
"But that’s nothing special, right? Lots of people talk like that, don’t they? Hey, wait a second..."
She suddenly realized.
"You’re not trying to say... that this message was actually sent by a future version of me, are you?"
...
Jiang Ran thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"Probably not. The sender of this message is my phone number. While it’s not impossible that you were the one who typed it, I don’t think it’s that simple."
"Besides, regardless of who sent it, these five syllables form a completely broken sentence."
"’Do not believe ha...’ It seems like a warning not to believe something, but what exactly? Why was it replaced with just a ’ha’?"
Seeing that Qin Feng had been lost in thought without speaking, Jiang Ran turned his head.
"Qin Feng, what do you think?"
Qin Feng didn’t answer right away.
He stroked his chin, pacing around the activity room.
Finally, he walked to the small blackboard and wrote out the Pinyin annotation for the five syllables—
bu, yao, xiang, xin, ha
Then he pointed to the "ha" at the end.
"I believe that these last two pinyin letters aren’t the complete picture. There must be more information after them."
"For example, this ’ha’ could actually be ’hai,’ ’hang,’ or ’han’... It could even be ’ga,’ ’gan,’ or ’gang’."
On a T9 keypad, the "4" key contains the three letters G, H, and I. Considering Pinyin logic, it really could be an H or a G.
Jiang Ran nodded; he had just been thinking the same thing.
’Could it be...?’
’That this string of mysterious numbers is just the first part of the code, and there’s a second part to come?’
If there was another string of mysterious numbers, they could continue pressing keys on the T9 keypad and get more Chinese characters, more information.
Just as Qin Feng said, the meaningless "ha" might be incomplete, with other Pinyin letters meant to follow.
"Wow, but you’re so amazing, Jiang Ran."
Cheng Mengxue gave Jiang Ran a thumbs-up.
"When we first got this mysterious message, you guessed it was a warning. I can’t believe you were right."
"I wouldn’t say I was right just yet."
Jiang Ran waved his hand dismissively.
"As it stands now, even though we’ve decoded that string of mysterious numbers into five syllables, we still haven’t gotten any useful information. We can’t be sure if it’s a warning or not."
"It’s just telling us not to believe something, but what specifically? What is it that we’re not supposed to believe?"
"Are we not supposed to believe in the Positron Cannon? Not supposed to believe in the Time SMS? Not supposed to believe in the Worldline Jump theory? Or..."
He glanced around the room, his eyes lingering on Cheng Mengxue and Qin Feng.
"Or... is it telling us not to trust each other? Not to trust... someone in this room?"
"Hey!"
The rice-cooker Rhine Cat came flying at him menacingly!
Jiang Ran hurriedly caught it, but its lid popped open with a POP. The Time Particle Rhine Cat flew out from inside and hit Jiang Ran with an uppercut to the jaw.
’So strong! It even has a second-stage attack!’
"How could you say something like that!"
Judging by the fact that she had thrown her most-prized rice-cooker Rhine Cat as a weapon, Cheng Mengxue was clearly furious.
She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Jiang Ran.
"How could you suspect your own friends?"
"This whole time, with the Time SMS and everything, the three of us have made decisions together and acted together. No one has hidden anything from anyone else. How could you say that!"
"I was just throwing it out there."
Jiang Ran caught the Time Particle Rhine Cat and stuffed it back into the rice-cooker Rhine Cat’s shell.
"I was just running through every possibility. How could I not trust you guys?"
"If we have to be difficult about it, I’m the one who’s made the final call on the Time SMS experiments every time. If anyone’s the least trustworthy, I’m the one with the most suspicion on me."
Qin Feng stepped forward again, standing between the two and holding up his hands.
"Stop, stop, stop... We’re just discussing. No need to get worked up."
"We’re obviously not going to start suspecting each other over one strange text message."
"This message is clearly incomplete. If we can get a second mysterious message, a second string of mysterious numbers... then the truth will come out, won’t it?"
"No matter how you look at it, this doesn’t feel like a message to make us suspect each other... It feels more like a warning for us to be on guard against something, or someone, together."
"That ’ha’ at the end could very well be ’han,’ ’hang,’ ’hang,’ ’han,’ ’hai,’ and so on... It’s too early to draw any conclusions."
Jiang Ran set the rice-cooker Rhine Cat back down.
"Qin Feng is right. We need more intel."
He walked to the small blackboard and wiped it clean.
"What Teacher Zhang Yang said might not be completely accurate, but it at least gave us some reassurance."
"The most urgent task right now is to get more information about the mysterious message as quickly as possible and figure out what the sentence after ’Do not believe’ is."
He began writing on the small blackboard with a SCRITCH, SCRITCH, SCRITCH.
Qin Feng glanced over.
"Are we going to keep sending Time SMS?"
"Yes."
Jiang Ran nodded as he wrote.
"Whatever that Time SMS is trying to warn us about, at least it didn’t warn us against the act of ’sending Time SMS’ itself."
"In other words, the act of sending a Time SMS is safe and reliable."
"Moreover, we received the first mysterious message at the same time we received the Time SMS. If we want to keep receiving them, we’ll most likely have to repeat the process."
CLICK.
After finishing the last stroke, Jiang Ran had the other two look at the blackboard—
[Time SMS Experiment, Phase Two Objectives]
1. Continue sending Time SMS, while ensuring safety, to see if we can receive another mysterious message and another string of mysterious numbers.
2. Find a way to decipher the true intent of the mysterious message and figure out its origin and motive.
...
"We can put the matter of my special constitution on the back burner for a bit."
He clapped his hands, setting down the chalk.
"That problem probably won’t have an answer anytime soon. Let’s focus our energy on the two problems above for now."
Qin Feng and Cheng Mengxue sat down, both agreeing with Jiang Ran’s plan.
"So..."
Cheng Mengxue hugged the Rhine Cat.
"What kind of Time SMS should we send next?"
She tilted her head.
"Since we’ve already done several experiments and made a lot of money from the lottery..."
"Can we now send Time SMS messages to do what we want, to make up for regrets and fix past mistakes?"
Jiang Ran smiled faintly.
"The experimental phase is over, and we’ve mastered how to use the Time SMS. The content of future messages can indeed be a bit more flexible."
"Of course, that doesn’t mean we can send just anything. We still need to evaluate and decide on them together."
He sat back down in his chair, leaning back and looking at the other two in the room.
"I’m sure that over this period, everyone has been thinking about what they’d want to do with a Time SMS."
"So, the three of us will get one wish each. Let’s take turns making them come true."
"Who’s first?"
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