The parallel giant slalom race between the two park giants today was worth the ticket price. Some people even went back to find videos of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics parallel giant slalom competition and discovered that, at least in the knockout rounds, the athletes’ first-round results were generally around 45 seconds.
In other words, Shan Chong and Dai Duo’s skiing skills were already very close to those of professional athletes in this event.
Rounding it up, everyone spent a little over a hundred yuan on ski tickets to watch an Olympic qualifier?
What a steal!
The video of the competition was widely circulated. Everyone present immediately posted it on their WeChat Moments (except Shan Chong and Dai Duo)… Some even edited a video of it.
For example, Lao Yan.
At dinner time, Wei Zhi was browsing the day’s menu on her phone when Jiang Nanfeng called her. She put down her phone and leaned over. The intro to the video started—
Along with an extremely rhythmic drumbeat, a deep, magnetic male voice began to sing, “There once was a ship that put to sea.” In the picture, two figures, one black and one white, appeared on the screen, their upper bodies and heads filling the frame.
Light snow began to fall, and tiny snowflakes danced in the air, blurring the lens.
The person in white wore ski goggles and a white face mask, covering him tightly. He looked straight ahead.
Beside him, the one in the black snowsuit wasn’t wearing anything at first… As a focused, magnified snowflake drifted by, he turned his head and glanced at the camera, then pulled down his ski goggles with an expressionless face.
“Ahhh, it’s him!”
Wei Zhi snatched the phone, zoomed in on the handsome face with two fingers, and widened her eyes.
“Goggle Cloth God!”
“Oh really?” Jiang Nanfeng said with a doting smile. “What a coincidence! Look familiar?”
Wei Zhi was immersed in the joy of encountering Goggle Cloth God on WeChat Moments and ignored Jiang Nanfeng’s words. She exited the video and glanced at the poster, Lao Yan. “Your puppy-dog coach knows him?”
Jiang Nanfeng: “I think so.”
Wei Zhi: “One minute, I want his complete profile.”
Jiang Nanfeng said with disdain, “Can you finish watching the video before you say anything?”
Wei Zhi: “I want to return the goggle cloth!”
Jiang Nanfeng: “I still want to watch the Snow Circle’s top story today. Give me back my phone!”
She moved to grab it, but Wei Zhi raised both hands, nimbly ducked under her armpit, and fell onto the bed, pressing the play button.
The video resumed playing. The two figures in the video lowered their bodies, and with a whistle, their snowboards cut through the snow as the background music reached its climax—
Snow dust kicked up by the snowboards engulfed the two figures.
The whaling ship in the background music sailed through the wind and waves, and the sailors on deck raised their rum.
The cheerful music blended perfectly with the original sound of the snowboards rubbing against the snow.
The two figures, one black and one white, were like fish swimming or birds flying, swimming freely in the silver sea, soaring in the white sky.
In the lens, the movements were either sped up or slowed down. All that could be seen were their backs, rising and falling with the folding of their bodies, amidst the splashing snowflakes—
It was impossible to see what kind of snowsuits they were wearing or what kind of snowboards they were using in the race. There was only high-speed advancement!
The camera slowly lowered. On the soft, deep snow, two deep snowboard tracks remained, and the two-color checkered flags fluttered quietly in the wind.
The background music suddenly changed. As the light rhythm and male vocals continued, the competition between the two athletes had already ended, and the result of the competition could not be seen.
The camera zoomed out, zoomed out, and zoomed out again. All that could be seen was the icy and snowy world, with two blurry figures, one black and one white, in the distance.
It could only be vaguely seen that the person in white was sitting on the ground, looking up at the person in black beside him.
The person in black also looked down at the person in white.
Then a gust of wind blew, and the ice crystals on the trees behind them reflected golden light in the setting sun.
The man in black moved and bent down.
At this moment, the camera cuts to a close-up of the face of the person in white. He sat on the snow with a blank face, and on his ski goggles, slender fingers gently tapped…
At this second, the video went black, and only the background music was still playing, “One day when the tongue is done, we’ll take our leave and go”…
As the singing gradually faded, the video ended.
“What is this?” Wei Zhi asked blankly, clutching her phone. “What is this?”
“A large-scale tourism promotional video for the mountaintop ski resort.” Jiang Nanfeng took back her phone and watched it again herself. “Tsk, tsk,” she said, “The rime on the trees in the small forest is so beautiful too. Let’s go play there tomorrow, too?”
Wei Zhi couldn’t listen to a single word. “This is not a large-scale tourism promotional video. This is a large-scale ski-themed forbidden love story.”
Jiang Nanfeng: “What?”
Wei Zhi said with a straight face, “Goggle Cloth God likes men?”
Jiang Nanfeng: “?”
Wei Zhi’s expression crumbled. “The way he took off the white-clothed person’s goggles was even gentler than the way my heartless coach pulled off mine!!!! QAQ”
Jiang Nanfeng: “Why does your coach pull off your goggles?”
Wei Zhi: “He insisted that I get up by myself, but I couldn’t get up, so I shut down for three seconds. He got scared and pulled off my goggles to see if he had made me cry! QAQ”
Jiang Nanfeng: “…So, did you cry?”
Wei Zhi: “Is that the point!!!”
Jiang Nanfeng: “No, but I still want to ask.”
Wei Zhi: “I kind of wanted to cry, but not as much as I want to wail now. My Goggle Cloth God is gone! Gone! Our story just started, and I found out we’re not sexually compatible! I’m going to the bar tonight to drown my sorrows over my unrequited love that had no beginning and no end! Ah! Sob!”
Jiang Nanfeng locked the phone screen with a click. “You seem to have that serious illness. And you’re going to drink alcohol! A piece of goggle cloth has you so infatuated. Your aunt and uncle didn’t starve you when you were a child. They probably never imagined that after all the trouble they went through to raise you, you’d be tricked away by a piece of goggle cloth!”
Wei Zhi: “Tricked away where! I wish I could go! Is there even a road ahead? Aaaaaahhhhhhh, sob!!!”
Jiang Nanfeng looked at the ball of flesh rolling around on the bed with unbearable sympathy. She seized the opportunity to pin her down and leaned in, asking condescendingly, “So, do you still want his information? If you’re confident in yourself, you can try to turn him straight…”
Wei Zhi: “No! Get off! I won’t do such an uncivilized thing! And I don’t have the confidence—the two of them look kind of sweet, damn it, sob, sob, sob, sob, sob!!!”
Jiang Nanfeng: “………………Kind of sweet, my foot. Are you shipping them now? Is this the joy of forcibly digging through the rubble of your own collapsed house to ship a broken wall and a rotten tile CP?”
Wei Zhi rubbed her eyes.
She said with a sniffle, “That guy in white looks a bit like the psycho who sprayed snow all over us on the slopes today.”
She paused, thought for a moment, and came to a very stereotypical conclusion: “As expected, people who wear white snowsuits are not good people.”
…
Wei Zhi didn’t sleep well all night. The next morning, she simply called in sick and didn’t appear until the afternoon, looking listless.
At two o’clock in the afternoon, she showed up at the ski resort with dark circles under her eyes and her little turtle backpack. Her butt pad was as green as her dark circles were deep.
“Now she looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.”
Jiang Nanfeng lovingly touched Wei Zhi’s dark circles, only to have her hand swatted away.
As the little girl exuded low pressure, Lao Yan arrived, accompanied by… a trendy guy.
The trendy guy wasn’t wearing a proper snowsuit either. He had on a loose, deep purple hoodie and sweatpants. His face mask was a standard black one, and he held his helmet and goggles in his hand, revealing only a pair of calm eyes.
He also had a satchel slung across his waist, bulging with who knows what.
Wei Zhi glanced over and didn’t recognize who it was. Her gaze quickly swept over him and landed on Lao Yan. She asked listlessly, “Where’s my precious Shifu?”
When Shan Chong wasn’t around, she would call him all sorts of things, like “precious” and “Shifu.” It wasn’t like he could hear her anyway.
Lao Yan looked blank, still stuck on the word “precious,” not knowing whether to scold his junior sister for her audacity or praise her for daring to say and do anything… He stammered for a long time, then finally turned a helpless look to the trendy guy beside him.
The trendy guy’s gaze had been fixed on Wei Zhi the entire time, and now it was sharp enough to cut.
Seeing that she had finally looked over, he asked the question that had been on his mind: “Kid, do you have face blindness?”
That deep, slow voice was very familiar—
Countless times on the slopes, he had barked at her, “Twist your board,” “Watch your line,” “Center your weight,” “What’s your left foot doing? If you don’t want it, chop it off.”
Wei Zhi froze.
Her eyes widened slightly, and she looked the trendy guy up and down, carefully scrutinizing him. She was shocked.
“Why are you dressed like that? Changed professions? Changed to freestyle skiing?”
Wei Zhi wasn’t wrong. People who specialized in different skiing styles seemed to have their own distinct styles of dress. For example, those hip-hop guys and pretty girls who could go straight from the slopes to a nightclub without changing their hairstyles were mostly freestyle skiers who liked to jump around and spin on the beginner and intermediate slopes.
Shan Chong ignored her.
Wei Zhi persisted, “You’re not even wearing a snowsuit?”
Shan Chong: “Who said I have to wear a snowsuit?”
Wei Zhi: “Is that hoodie waterproof?”
Shan Chong: “Nope.”
Wei Zhi: “Then it’ll get wet immediately if it gets snow on it, and you’ll easily catch a cold.”
Shan Chong: “I’m not rolling around in the snow, and I don’t fall all the time. Why would it get snow on it?”
Wei Zhi: “…”
He had a point.
And there was also a hint of passive-aggressive criticism in his tone.
Wei Zhi: “I’m in a bad mood today, so don’t argue with me. Otherwise, I might just sit down in the middle of the slope and burst into tears.”
Shan Chong casually took the board from her hand, looking relaxed and indifferent, probably not caring at all whether she sat down in the middle of the slope and burst into tears. “Bad mood? Didn’t eat enough breakfast?”
“I do other things besides eat!” Wei Zhi said emphatically. “I have a maiden’s heart!”
Shan Chong: “You have what?”
Before Wei Zhi could answer, Jiang Nanfeng chimed in, “It’s like this. Yesterday, Lao Yan posted a video, and Jiji saw it. One second she was ecstatic to discover that the protagonist was the ski god she had admired for a long time, and the next second she was heartbroken to discover that it was a love story about the ski god and that the god’s sexual orientation was questionable.”
As Shan Chong listened to Jiang Nanfeng’s description, whether it was “admired for a long time,” “love story,” or “sexual orientation was questionable,” none of the words felt like they had anything to do with him. Out of curiosity, he took out his phone to see what video Lao Yan had posted—
Lao Yan’s WeChat Moments were only visible for three days, and the only thing he had posted in the past few days was a video from yesterday.
Shan Chong clicked on it, fast-forwarded through it, and found that the protagonists of the video were him and Dai Duo… Seeing the godly editing and atmosphere at the end, he looked up at the girl who looked heartbroken just from hearing the background music of the video—
He suddenly understood what “sexual orientation was questionable” meant.
And then he felt a little bad.
He stuffed his phone back into his satchel and turned to Lao Yan. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Lao Yan whistled and looked away.
Wei Zhi, however, changed the subject, pointing at his satchel. “What’s in there? Is it the apology gift you promised me yesterday?”
Shan Chong glanced at her and childishly turned his satchel away from her. “No.”
Wei Zhi: “Where’s my apology gift?”
Shan Chong: “Gone.”
Wei Zhi: “But you swore you’d give me an apology gift yesterday.”
Shan Chong: “We’ll discuss it another day.”
Wei Zhi: “Which day?”
Shan Chong: “The day you fix all those messy problems with your eyes.”