Chapter 153 Puppet Show

"Yes, it just opened."

"I went to check it out last night, but there wasn’t much to do there. Just a bunch of puppets standing around — not fun at all."

"Wait. You two actually want to go?"

Linglan twirled the lily of the valley she was holding between her fingers, turning the stem this way and that, and answered almost absentmindedly, as if she were simply making conversation to pass the time.

Lin Yun thought it over for a moment. There was no point dancing around the subject with someone like Linglan — better to just be direct and see what came of it. She nodded, quite honestly.

"Yes, I’d like to take a look. I don’t know what’s inside, though, so I wanted to ask around first before we went in blind."

Linglan glanced at her twice, a flicker of surprise crossing her face. She hadn’t expected Lin Yun to admit it so readily, without the usual hedging tourists tended to do.

"Just don’t set the puppets on fire. Other than that, you can hit them all you like — they regenerate on their own soon enough."

"And even if one doesn’t heal by itself, someone will come along and fix it. It’s fine. Go ahead and be bold about it."

She waved a hand dismissively, the gesture almost bored. In her mind, the puppet theater wasn’t worth watching at all — just a collection of lifeless puppets, nothing more, nothing worth the trip.

Those puppets can’t hold a candle to shadow puppetry...

Linglan muttered something else under her breath, low enough that neither Lin Yun nor Song Xizheng standing beside her could quite make out the words.

"What kind of shows are they putting on at the theater, exactly? Sister Linglan, did you happen to see anything when you went yesterday?"

"You’ll see for yourselves soon enough." Linglan gave them a knowing smile, the kind that promised she knew more than she was willing to say.

At that moment, Song Xizheng turned to her with obvious anticipation written across his face. "Sister Linglan — beautiful, generous Sister Linglan — I heard there are float parades somewhere in the amusement park. Do you know when those usually happen?"

"Ah... that."

Lily of the Valley didn’t answer right away. She paused, staring off into the distance for a moment as though genuinely trying to recall. "You’d have to ask Rose about the schedule. Rose is the one who handles all of that — I’m honestly not too sure myself."

"That’s a shame. I don’t know Rose at all." Song Xizheng scratched the back of his head and wisely decided not to press the matter any further.

Linglan’s gaze drifted toward the roses sitting on the table nearby, and she added, almost as an afterthought, "Come back after dinner. The roses take their turn on duty around then, so you can ask one of them yourself."

With that, she casually gathered up the roses from the table, gave a small parting wave, and walked off without another word.

Lin Yun shot Song Xizheng a meaningful look, and the two of them stepped out of the visitor center together.

[System Notification: Lily of the Valley’s Affection +10]

System, what’s Lily’s current affection level?

[35.]

On their way to the puppet theater, they crossed paths with the clown NPC again — the very same one who had once handed Lin Yun a balloon shaped like a kitten.

This time, though, he offered up another balloon, but it had no shape to speak of at all — just a plain, ordinary round one. Even Song Xizheng was given one of his own.

"...What’s this supposed to mean?"

The two of them stood there staring down at the balloons now bobbing gently in their hands, unsure what the clown could possibly be hinting at this time.

Just as before, the clown said nothing. He simply handed the balloons over and walked away, offering no explanation whatsoever.

By the time they arrived at the entrance of the puppet theater, they found that Song Zhenzhen and the other two members of their group were also holding balloons of their own.

"No way — you two ran into that clown as well?" Song Zhenzhen hadn’t expected that Lin Yun and Song Xizheng would end up with matching balloons too.

Song Xizheng held the string up between two fingers. "So what do we even do with these? Just bring them inside with us?"

"Should be fine, I’d think. It’s just a balloon." Xiong Qi didn’t see any harm in it — they’d already looked the thing over carefully, and it really did seem to be nothing more than an ordinary balloon after all.

Once they stepped inside the puppet theater, a girl in a red vest behind the counter handed each of them a small notebook. "This is today’s full program."

"Every show listed is marked with the number of little red flowers required to watch it, along with today’s performance times, so you can plan accordingly."

"Also — would any of you like to trade a few flowers for some snacks while you’re here?"

"We’ve got popcorn, fried sausages, fried dough sticks, fried gold bars, cola, orange juice, crimson liquor, and plenty more besides!"

The group fell quiet at that. They already knew, from experience, that most of the food sold around the amusement park wasn’t exactly trustworthy, and none of them felt like spending their little red flowers to find out the hard way.

"None of you tourists want anything at all?" The girl in red shrugged it off easily enough — she was clearly used to visitors ignoring her sales pitch by now. "Personally, I’d recommend the fried sausage and the crimson liquor. Both are absolutely delicious, if you ask me."

Seeing that no one responded to her recommendation, she didn’t seem to take it personally in the least.

Sooner or later...

"No need, thank you. We’re mainly here to watch the shows today." Xiong Qi looked up and offered a polite smile before turning his attention back to the notebook, scanning the list of plays alongside the others.

There were five shows scheduled to run that day: Red Sleeve Pavilion, Red Shadow, Climbing the Mountain, The Resentful Mother, and The Puppet’s Lament.

"So which one should we watch first?" Song Zhenzhen asked quietly, leaning in to look over the notebook herself.

"Let’s go with Red Sleeve Pavilion — the title sounds familiar, at least." Lin Yun tapped a finger against the entry in the notebook.

"Sure, sounds good. Red Sleeve Pavilion it is, then."

The rest of the group agreed without much objection, and so the decision was settled.

Red Sleeve Pavilion required two little red flowers per person, so everyone tore off two from their individual cards and handed them over to the girl in the red vest.

However, the show itself wouldn’t start until ten o’clock, and they’d need to be seated by nine-thirty at the latest. After a short discussion, the group decided it made more sense to squeeze in a few simple rides beforehand and circle back in time for the performance.

Lin Yun and Song Xizheng ended up wandering back to the whack-a-mole booth once again, more out of habit than anything else.

This time, though, Lin Yun noticed something different almost immediately — the person in the green vest who usually handled the cleanup and ran the counter, the one who dealt with the bloodstains, had been replaced by an unfamiliar woman.

She didn’t dwell on the change for long and simply moved on to the game itself.

Once it began, a small gopher popped its head up from one of the holes.

"Sis, you’re back again already? You’re really dedicated, huh."

"You big bully! You come and hit me every single day without fail. I’m going to send a monster after you, just you wait!"

"Now that’s going too far! If you hit me again tomorrow, I swear I’ll bite your head clean off and eat it myself!"

"Waaah, that really hurt! Why can’t I get even one single day off from this?"

Lin Yun kept a careful eye on exactly which holes the little gopher children would pop out of next, all while listening closely to every word they said between hits.

Something about the way they spoke felt oddly deliberate, as though they were hinting at something just beneath the surface.

Is this some kind of warning not to come back tomorrow? What might happen if she did anyway?

And that line about not getting a day off — could that actually be a request for her to wait one full day before returning?

Three minutes later, the round came to an end. The girl in the green vest glanced over the final numbers, congratulated Lin Yun with a bright, practiced smile, and then set about cleaning up the counter for the next player.

Song Xizheng finished his own round shortly after, and the two of them stepped off the platform together to collect their little red flowers from the attendants waiting nearby.

Just as they turned to walk away, the man in the green vest called out and stopped them both.

"You two really do seem to enjoy whack-a-mole — this makes three visits now, if I’m counting right. If you come back and play seven days in a row, there’s a surprise reward waiting for you at the end of it!"

"A surprise reward, huh?"

"That’s right. If you’re interested, just make sure to swing by again over the next few days." The man looked between the two of them with an easy, friendly smile.

Lin Yun and Song Xizheng exchanged a brief glance. "Understood."

Once they’d put some distance between themselves and the booth, Song Xizheng was the first to speak. "You know, what those gopher kids actually say during the game is nothing like what the staff in green vests tell us afterward."

"Then just don’t go back."

"I got a good look at one of the gopher kids today, and something about her seemed off. Her face — it looked older than a child’s face has any business looking."

Song Xizheng’s eyes widened at that. He hadn’t noticed anything of the sort himself; he’d been too busy hammering away at moles and half-listening to their chatter to actually study their faces closely.

"There’s apparently a reward waiting after seven days," Lin Yun said, a faint, humorless smile tugging at her lips, "but honestly, I’d bet good money they’re planning to leave those kids stuck as gophers indefinitely."

She paused for a moment, then added, almost to herself, quieter than before, "And if I had to guess, it’s probably not really seven days at all. My money’s on four."