MM Racing Chapter 057 The Road of the Family
Chapter 057 The Road of the Family
Lu Mingfei lay flat on the reclined airline seat, covered with a thin cashmere blanket handed to him by Ling, his eyes staring blankly at the night lights outside the porthole, flashing on and off.
He simply couldn't fall asleep.
Zero had already closed her eyes, curled up in the large leather seat, her chest rising and falling gently with the rhythm. As the plane gently lurched, her head tilted to the side, her long, platinum blonde hair cascading down, a few strands trembling slightly against her cheek with each breath. Zero, so unguarded, looked like a curled-up little hamster. Lu Mingfei, almost unconsciously, pulled out his phone and secretly pressed the shutter.
He quietly lifted the blanket, stepped barefoot onto the thick, soft carpet, and silently moved to the small walnut writing desk in the corner of the cabin.
On the writing desk sat a notepad bearing the half-decayed emblem of the World Tree, next to a Montblanc fountain pen.
Lu Mingfei gently pulled out the leather armchair, turned on the desk lamp, removed the cap from the fountain pen, and laid the notepad flat on the table, opening it to the first page.
He longed to say something, to talk to the people from his past, but the world separated them, and those people remained only in Lu Mingfei's memories.
If the person you're talking to can't hear you, then write down what's in your heart.
After hesitating for a long time, not knowing where to begin, finally, a drop of ink fell, spreading a small black stain on the page.
Lu Mingfei looked at the water stain and finally put pen to paper.
"Miss Misato, I drank black tea today."
He wrote the first line, his wrist trembling slightly from muscle soreness, resulting in crooked handwriting.
"It was a man over a hundred years old who bought me the drink. If you were here, I wonder if you would marvel at the miracle of life or complain that there's no beer available."
"He offered me black tea because I fought a monster. You're familiar with this monster too; it's not an apostle, it's a dragon, or as you know it, a dragon."
"Fighting in this world is much easier than back home. No need to worry about my machine going berserk, no need to worry about neural connections being disrupted. I'm wreaking havoc here and have saved two very good people."
"But Miss Misato, AT fields didn't exist in this world originally. When you removed my DSS collar that day, did you ever imagine that my body would become like this?"
Lu Mingfei glanced at Zero, who was still fast asleep, then changed to another piece of paper and wrote to Ayanami.
"Korea."
"She's quiet, just like you, and her face is cold. But she's very good to me. Although I don't know why she's so good to me, I think she's sincere, and that's enough."
"Don't worry, I'm not alone here. I've found people to fight alongside me. They trust me, and I trust them. Li, I've found my bond."
Then there's the boy who looks most like him.
"Shinji. You absolutely can't imagine how I'm treated in this world. I live a life of luxury here, surrounded by fancy cars and beautiful women. Wherever I go, people call me 'S-Class.' Aren't you envious? In this world, I'm the Angel. The local native dragons are nothing but trash in front of me. Haha."
"Oh, right. I went to Hakone last month. This Hakone doesn't have a Third New Tokyo City, there's no NERV headquarters underground, no Unit-01, and none of you."
"I was quite desperate at the time. I felt like everything I had experienced with you was a dream that never existed. I even wondered if I had died in the Third Impact, and all of this was just a replay in my mind before I died?"
"But today, underwater, that monster tried to disgust me with illusions. It turned into Misato, then into Rei, then into you, and finally into Asuka. It tried to deceive me with your faces, wanting to free me."
"But it doesn't understand you at all."
Lu Mingfei closed his eyes and began to write again, his handwriting more forceful than ever before.
"Finally, Asuka. You idiot."
"I'm now the universally acknowledged S-Class Demon King of the entire academy. I'm doing great, better than anyone else. Today, some idiot girl was being controlled by a monster and cutting her lifeline, and I caught her. Because she reminded me of you. I didn't dare say it before, but you're a complete idiot, and watching an idiot die is a crime!"
"I will listen to you. I will eat well and sleep well. There are a bunch of kids here who treat dragon slaying as a club game. They are childish and noisy. But I have seen what real hell is like, so I have decided to watch them. As long as I stand here, I will not let this world go to that damned end."
"So... take good care of yourselves over there."
Only a small blank space remained on the paper.
"Ayanami".
I saw you in the cabin.
"Thank you for protecting me, thank you for always being there for me."
Lu Mingfei carefully tore off these pages. He folded them several times, carefully flattened them along the edges, and folded them into a piece of paper.
Then he took out a wallet from his pants pocket, opened the zippered compartment at the back of the wallet, and stuffed the folded small piece of paper inside.
He leaned back in his chair, looked up at the dimly lit ceiling of the cabin, placed his wallet on his chest, and clutched it tightly with both hands.
He immediately felt a warm sensation in his chest, and his body relaxed like never before.
From then on, those memories were no longer a noose around his neck, but a talisman he carried with him.
He turned off the table lamp, walked back to his seat, and as he passed Zero's sofa, he bent down slightly and pulled the blanket that had slipped down to the girl's waist back up to cover her shoulders.
Lu Mingfei lay back down in the spacious airline seat and pulled a cashmere blanket over himself.
Zero couldn't see what Lu Mingfei had written on the letter.
But she was awake from the moment Lu Mingfei sat down at the writing desk.
His expression kept changing as he wrote; sometimes his lips curled up, sometimes his brows furrowed, and sometimes he would stop writing and stare at the paper for a long time. Towards the end, his wrist began to tremble, and the characters he wrote were so forceful that it seemed he wanted to pierce the paper.
Later, he put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
Zero had never seen Lu Mingfei so relaxed before, like a fist that had been clenched for a long time, finally loosening its grip one finger at a time.
She lowered her head, looking at the edge of the blanket on her shoulder. The cashmere where Lu Mingfei's fingertips had just touched still retained a trace of his body heat.
She reached out and gently stroked the crease with her fingertips.
Zero turned his head to the girl in the porthole and tried to twitch the corners of his mouth.
Outside the window, the sea of clouds was gilded with a magnificent layer of broken gold by the morning light.
Lu Mingfei finally embarked on his true journey home.