This whole street was filled with food shops, so the next place Mu Anqi and the others entered was a restaurant that looked like it served home-style stir-fried dishes.
There were a lot more customers in this restaurant, most of them sea fish Mu Anqi didn't recognize. Only, their appearance was somewhat comical, as if they were walking on two fish tails.
The variety of marine creatures in this restaurant was much richer, but their expressions looked similar to those in the previous restaurant—just eating mechanically, and… they seemed completely unable to sense the players' existence.
This underwater city was too strange. Clearly, they could touch these creatures and even cut away the fishing nets or plastic items entangling them, yet they didn't know how to stop the creatures here from eating plastic, metal, and all sorts of garbage. This bizarre, polluted city—they could understand what pollution was, but where should they even begin?
"Fang Xunjiu, go give that cloud-patterned grouper over there a Good Person Card," Mu Anqi whispered, "then see if you can try talking to him."
"…G-give a fish a 'Good Person' Card?" Fang Xunjiu looked a little helpless, probably never having imagined that one day the scope of his card-giving would extend beyond species. Resigned, he walked over, carefully took out a card, and gently placed it on the grouper that was eating plastic shards from a clay pot. "Uh, hello?"
The grouper continued eating, but its eyes glanced at Fang Xunjiu and the Good Person Card. Then, while stuffing the plastic shard into its mouth, it waved its small fins. "Okay, together."
They could communicate!
Fang Xunjiu was overjoyed. Although the fish had mistaken him for a customer wanting to share a table, it didn't matter. Fang Xunjiu sat down across from it, wanting to ask something but not knowing how to begin. Hesitating, he looked back at Mu Anqi and the others for help. His younger sister pointed toward the plastic-man shopkeeper, and Fang Xunjiu immediately understood. He turned back and asked, "Why do you all come here to eat plastic?"
"…"
"…"
Silence, a deathly silence.
The crunching and chewing noises vanished completely. In that instant, all the marine creatures in the restaurant fixed their gaze on Fang Xunjiu. The carefree smile on Fang Xunjiu's face froze. One hand pressed against the table, his body tilted slightly, ready to bolt at any moment, but for now… he didn't dare make a single move.
Mu Anqi and the others hadn't expected Fang Xunjiu to just blurt it out so directly—this was as straightforward as a straight ball could get!
The plastic-man shopkeeper let out a series of squeaking, grating plastic noises. He stretched his joints a bit, pressed the bell at the counter's edge, and the marine creatures resumed eating.
But the plastic-man seemed to have "come alive."
He left the kitchen, step by step walking out, coming up in front of Fang Xunjiu. He carefully sized him up. "You're new here?"
"?!" What—what was speaking was actually the plastic-man?
"New residents must undergo an inspection. Go out, turn right, three hundred meters, cross the street, and you can check in at the hospital," the plastic-man said. "While you're at it, undergo a bit of modification. Otherwise, you won't survive."
"Ah, thank you!" Fang Xunjiu let out a breath of relief. He had thought he had accidentally triggered some unavoidable death ending. "I'll head there right away."
The plastic-man kept staring at Fang Xunjiu, his gaze fixed on him even as Fang Xunjiu stood up and walked out of the shop. Only when the door finally closed did he slowly shuffle back into the kitchen.
…Strange, indescribably strange. Still inside the shop, Mu Anqi and the others exchanged glances, only to realize they still hadn't drawn the attention of the plastic-man or the marine creatures.
Was it because Fang Xunjiu had taken the initiative to talk and handed over a Good Person Card to form a connection, or simply because he had spoken the word "plastic"?
"Fang Yunjiu, go outside and check on your brother first," Mu Anqi said as she held a substitute paper figure and sat down in the seat across from the grouper. She quietly watched the fish eating in front of her, but the grouper was focused entirely on its food and didn't notice her at all. Mu Anqi thought for a moment, then pulled out a candy cane and waved it in front of the grouper's eyes. Still no reaction.
"Hello, mind if I share the table?"
No response.
Mu Anqi pondered for a bit, then softly spoke the word "plastic."
…Still no response?
Hesitant, Mu Anqi lifted the candy cane and poked the grouper's hand with the other end, knocking the piece of plastic it was holding out of its grasp. At that moment, the grouper finally reacted. It lifted its head and "looked" at Mu Anqi, as if only now noticing her. "You, what are you doing?"
"Sorry, I was just stretching a moment ago." Mu Anqi replied without changing her expression. She didn't expect the grouper to accept that answer; it glanced at her as if unwilling to bother with her — or perhaps, in its view, eating was the most important thing, so it simply didn't want to pay attention to Mu Anqi.
Mu Anqi stood up and looked at the plastic-man; the plastic-man saw her too.
But she had already cut fishing nets and plastic rings earlier — if touching them could make the creatures here "notice" you, why had nothing happened in the last food shop?
Because… behavior?
B-but this fish didn't have any plastic or fishing nets on it.
Wu Sansheng came over and took hold of Mu Anqi. Xia Yun glanced back at the plastic-man shopkeeper, then left the shop together with Mu Anqi and the others.
"I feel like… something is staring at me." Fang Xunjiu said outside, rubbing the standing hairs on his arm. His expression was strange, as if he couldn't quite understand it. "This feeling… I don't know how to describe it, but it's not good. I — you guys — there's a voice urging me to go to the hospital for a checkup, and it keeps whispering in my ear that I'm so hungry, so hungry, so hungry…"
"I shouldn't be hungry, but right now I feel like I really am," Fang Xunjiu said, a little tongue-tied. He also looked somewhat off—compared to his earlier easygoing humor, now Fang Xunjiu seemed shrunken and uncomfortable. He clutched his stomach; he clearly shouldn't have been hungry, yet he was…
"I still have plenty of food in my storage ring." Back on the ghost ship, Mu Anqi had stockpiled some food and water just to be safe, including the flatbreads Fang Yunjiu had later made. At the time, she'd only thought it wasn't very secure to leave them on the ship, but unexpectedly… they turned out to be very useful inside this Black Mirror Vortex. Mu Anqi took out a flatbread and handed it to Fang Xunjiu. "Eat slowly."
"I think I was noticed too, but why… don't I feel hungry?" Mu Anqi wondered.
Because… was the degree of being observed different?
"I don't know." Fang Xunjiu took the flatbread and immediately bit into it, devouring it so fast he nearly choked. Even though they were under the sea, it felt no different from being on land. Mu Anqi pulled out the barrel of water, scooped a bowlful, and handed it to Fang Xunjiu. He gulped it down and thumped his chest hard before finally catching his breath.
"Ah, that's better, but I don't feel very full. Forget it." After finishing the flatbread, Fang Xunjiu rubbed his stomach. Not wanting his sister to worry, he changed the subject and asked, "Shall we check out that hospital?"
"Mm, let's go take a look."
With that decision made, Mu Anqi and the others prepared to head to the hospital the plastic-man had mentioned.
New residents, transformation, unable to survive…
"After the transformation, would they be able to live just by eating plastic?" Wu Sansheng suddenly asked. "If the transformation happens step by step, then… could the plastic-man be the final result of it?"
It was only speculation, but it seemed highly likely.
On the way to the hospital, Mu Anqi saw a flat-bodied fish wearing a "coat" stitched together from multicolored plastic bags, swaggering down the street with an arrogant stride. Around its chest hung a necklace strung from small metal rings, and its tail… was no longer a fish tail at all, but had already become two pairs of plastic legs.
As if confirming Wu Sansheng's guess.
All kinds of fish, and sea turtles of various sizes—Mu Anqi even saw an especially tiny orca. Normally, how could an orca possibly be the same size as a turtle? Yet in this city, it happened.
Most of these marine creatures carried plastic items on their bodies or wore ornaments pieced together from bits of metal. Of course, some of them, like that fish earlier draped in plastic bags, had put on "clothes": torn fishing nets, rainbow-colored plastic bags, even half a cut-open water bottle, with a fish's head poking out of the bottle's mouth while its body was half trapped inside the bottle.
This made Mu Anqi question reality itself: then what did it mean when she cut apart fishing nets and plastic rings before? Had she… cut apart someone's "clothes"?
This was too absurd, wasn't it? Who would wear clothes that restrained and bound them, turning themselves into "deformed" beings?
Mu Anqi and the others crossed a street and finally arrived at the hospital entrance. The place was bustling, with long lines of marine creatures waiting. The "mountains of fish and seas of turtles" were downright overwhelming. Xia Yun took a closer look and immediately noticed something was off. "Most of them are lining up for follow-up transformations or to have their stomachs cleared."
"What Fang Xunjiu needs to ask about is the newcomer inspection and… the initial transformation?"
In front of the two consultation rooms, there wasn't a single marine creature—completely empty.
When Fang Xunjiu walked toward the newcomer inspection side, all the marine creatures turned their gaze on him, as though they were looking at some rare endangered species.
"Our city still has so many newcomers? How strange. Could they have been hiding in some basement, and now finally couldn't hold out any longer? Why are they all coming out today?"
"The sooner you get transformed, the sooner you can enjoy it. After holding on for so long, they still have to give up in the end."
"Sigh, without transformation you simply can't survive."
The marine creatures waiting in the transformation line whispered among themselves. Unlike those in the food shops, they seemed a bit more "alive," no longer so mechanical and numb.
"Huh? How come there's one more newcomer?" Along with that voice, these marine creatures seemed to have noticed Mu Anqi as well.
Mu Anqi froze, suddenly feeling a gaze from the unseen depths—an indescribably subtle sensation. This gaze didn't come from the marine creatures, but felt more like it belonged to some "person" hiding in the shadows. Stranger still, the moment she sensed it, a foreign thought echoed in her mind:
"I'm so hungry…"