I Will Never Submit to Miss Grim Reaper - Chapter 239

Chapter 239: The Age of Aquarius Doesn’t Believe in Tears

 

Together with Yin Xiamo, we sat in the most prime seats in the cinema for about seven or eight minutes, and still no one had entered from outside.

The whole cinema was empty, with only the sound of me crunching popcorn in my hands, holding a big bucket of it.

 

“Nuo’er, you really look like a hamster like this,” the girl beside me said, trying to grab a handful of popcorn and reaching out her hand towards me.

 

“Open your mouth.”

 

I instinctively opened my mouth, “Ah—”

 

“Mmm!”

 

Then Xiao Mo stuffed a lot of popcorn into my mouth, making my cheeks bulge.

 

“Mmm… *Crunch*… Xiao Mo, you…”

 

It took me a while to chew and swallow all the popcorn. I took a sip of cola.

“What are you doing?”

 

“Oh? What do you want me to do?”

Yin Xiamo showed a mischievous expression, extending her fair and tender hand, open, palm facing me, her middle finger moving up and down continuously.

 

“Is this okay, right here?”

 

“I mean, what are you doing! Not that… that…”

 

I felt my face heating up, “You’re getting more and more mischievous!”

 

“Because Nuo’er is too cute, I can’t help but want to tease you a little bit.”

 

The girl beside me chuckled, seeing that I had just finished drinking a sip of cola, she naturally reached out and took my cola, taking a deep sip.

 

“You clearly have your own…”

 

Before I could finish my sentence, Yin Xiamo interrupted me. She brought her own cup of cola over and placed it in my lap. “Let’s swap drinks.”

 

“You sound like a pervert.”

 

I took the cola with a feeling of frustration, glanced at the entrance of the movie theater, and said, “Why is still no one here? Did we accidentally rent out the whole place?”

 

Actually, this situation was within my expectations.

Nanqi District was relatively remote, with few people around. Even if there were any, they would be mostly elderly or children. Young people either went to the city for schooling or worked elsewhere. And the primary target audience for the cinema was young people.

 

Secondly, the hype around “Age of Aquarius,” this movie, had basically died down. Those who hadn’t seen it by this month had probably watched it online, and there weren’t many who still wanted to buy tickets to see it in the cinema.

 

Moreover, in recent years, the economy had been sluggish, and society as a whole had low desires. Naturally, not many people were willing to engage in such retro entertainment activities.

 

Lastly, today wasn’t a holiday or a day off, so naturally, fewer people would come to the cinema.

 

Considering all these factors combined, it was normal for there to be few people coming to Nanqi District to watch “Age of Aquarius” at this time. I just hadn’t expected it to be so few that only Xiao Mo and I were here.

 

“Just to clarify, this isn’t my doing,” Yin Xiamo said while biting the cola straw.

 

“There really aren’t many people around here.”

 

“I know,” I nodded.

“I’m just surprised that there are so few people interested in coming out to watch a movie.”

 

Unless she could predict the future or travel through time, Xiao Mo really couldn’t know in advance which movie ticket I bought and then “clear the theater,” and there was no need for it either.

 

I vaguely remember the last time I came out to watch a movie was back in college. At that time, there was a guy in our dormitory who was the type who would rather die than lose face. He chased after girls every day, preferring to buy them 20 yuan worth of milk tea or thousands of yuan worth of handbags, scrimping and saving to buy them new phones for Valentine’s Day and other holidays, while he himself ate instant noodles and pickles every day.

 

Whenever he was in a relationship, everyone in the dormitory knew they had to hide their snacks for the month, or else they would definitely be cleared out by him. This guy spent money like water on girls, then had no food to eat and would mooch off his roommates.

 

It was that roommate who had taken me to see a movie during college.

 

That day, he had just been dumped by his girlfriend of over two months, holding two movie tickets he had already bought.

 

“I’ve already bought them, it would be a shame not to watch. Let’s go together tonight,” he had said at the time.

 

Coincidentally, I didn’t have much going on those days, so I agreed.

 

But when the appointed time came, he didn’t show up. I ended up sitting in two seats alone and watched the movie alone.

 

I still remember that the movie being played at the time was an old film – “Rickshaw Boy.”

 

“Ding ding…”

 

After watching the background scenes of “Age of Aquarius” for a while in my seat, eating popcorn, I noticed the security guard not far away closing the door and stepping back. Some of the small lights behind me also went off at this time, and the big screen slowly faded away and then gradually lit up again.

 

It began.

 

I looked around the vast cinema, confirming that tonight’s movie had only Xiao Mo and me as the audience.

 

“Not bad,” Yin Xiamo said beside me as she reached out her hand, rubbing my belly, and then took hold of my hand.

 

“Let’s see what’s so special about the movie Nuo’er personally chose.”

 

“It’s not really my choice, it’s just that this movie happens to be highly acclaimed today,” I replied.

 

I turned my gaze to the large screen in front.

 

“They say it’s also about… yuri, set in a futuristic world, with a bit of a tragic love story.”

 

Under our gaze, the large screen in front reached its maximum brightness, displaying LED lights and various futuristic furnishings.

 

“What year is it in the Age of Aquarius? 1986? Or 1987?”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Tom, if you don’t pay your dues today, the ‘Apocalypse’ people will come and demolish your house. I guarantee they’ll do it!”

“Jialan! Jialan Shuo! Get up, stop mulling over your worn-out storybook!”

 

Like many sci-fi or futuristic urban films, the beginning of ‘Age of Aquarius’ is somewhat mundane, simply introducing the background and setting through visuals and some interactions between people.

The protagonist of this story, ‘Jialan Shuo,’ seems to be a small-time delinquent wandering the “legal edge” of the future world, akin to David from ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.’ They’re both powerless and penniless, from the lower class with no family support. However, the protagonist of ‘Age of Aquarius’ is even more miserable. He has neither parents nor education and lives day by day by taking on ‘missions’ from the ‘black market’.”

 

Then the scene shifted to the protagonist, “Jialan Shuo,” taking on a mission. This time, he received a commission to sneak into a “forbidden area” and steal a “prohibited item” from there, with a very generous reward.

 

Based on the settings I had been watching, I could roughly understand the background of this world – in the future world, humanity has overcome the vast majority of diseases, greatly extending lifespan, and almost any illness can be treated, except for the “plague.”

 

In this world, everyone works for the “Apocalypse,” and everything related to the “Apocalypse” is top secret. Ordinary people who are found peeping into the secrets of the “Apocalypse” will be “executed.”

 

“This setting seems a bit cliché,” I muttered under my breath as I watched the protagonist nervously execute this “secret mission.”

 

Because, for novels, this kind of setting is no longer popular. Overly complicated settings are considered “overdone” by any editor.

 

Then I was dumbfounded.

 

Because as soon as the protagonist arrived at the forbidden area and found a spacecraft that needed to be transported, he was directly killed by the guards there.

 

A gunshot to the head, his skull shattered.

 

I froze with my hand still holding popcorn.

 

Is there another story that starts with the protagonist’s death? An homage to “Wings of Freedom”?

 

Anyway, he doesn’t feel bad at all, he just wants freedom, he won’t care about my feelings, wow?

 

“What do we do with this person?”

 

Immediately after, the scene shifted to a place resembling a laboratory.

 

“He saw things he shouldn’t have seen, Doctor…”

 

“Why did it turn out like this? Any clues?”

 

“Perhaps this is what ‘they’ referred to as ‘specimen’?”

 

“How about letting him carry out that plan?”

 

After a brief blackout, when the protagonist woke up again, he found himself turned into a girl.

She was like a little princess, with a delicate face, slender figure, and delicate beauty.

No wonder they said this movie had a gender-bending plot, it turns out it’s here.

 

I thought to myself as I nibbled on popcorn.

I have to admit, this is progress for Chinese films.

After all, the fact that this movie was allowed to be made and released is quite “progressive” in itself.

But I wonder what the so-called “pure gender-bending” is all about?

 

“Kid… oh no, young lady, I think you should know what you were doing before.”

“If you don’t want to be ‘executed,’ then listen to us obediently.”

 

Through subsequent scenes, I learned that the group of people who captured the protagonist were from the “Apocalypse” faction. The protagonist had glimpsed the secrets of the “Apocalypse” and should have been executed. However, these people intended to give the protagonist a chance by making them become a “maid” for a certain wealthy heiress, tasked with gathering information held by that heiress.

 

The plot unfolded with the protagonist, now transformed into a girl, learning the etiquette and principles of upper-class society under the demands of these self-proclaimed “Apocalypse” members. She learned how to walk elegantly, how to serve others as a woman, and even completed training in basic maid skills before being sent undercover by the group to the side of the heiress.

 

As for what exactly she was supposed to be undercover for, these people didn’t say, only instructing the protagonist to gain the heiress’s trust through deception.

 

Subsequently, “Age of Aquarius” took nearly an hour to narrate the storyline from their initial encounter to acquaintance, and then to mutual affection, which was the warmest “lesbian” segment in the entire movie.

 

During this time, the film also elaborated on the futuristic technological world view. I could see that the heiress’s house was filled with exquisite high-tech machinery and artworks. Additionally, the film consistently emphasized the “plague” – people would only die if they contracted the “plague,” otherwise, as long as you had money, even if you were shot in the head, you wouldn’t die. You could simply pay to get a new head.

 

Furthermore, the people of “Apocalypse” also possessed means to execute the “plague,” effectively causing a person to die. This made me curious about what the “plague” was throughout the film, and why the technology of the future world was so advanced, while also delighting in the increasingly warm relationship between the maid protagonist and the heiress.

 

In the latter half of the movie, conflicts arose. The “Apocalypse” people used the heiress’s trust in the protagonist to capture her and take her back to the “Apocalypse headquarters.” Meanwhile, the protagonist, now a girl who had been living with the heiress for several years, learned part of the truth of the situation.

 

In the movie, this “Earth” has intricate connections with a planet thousands of light-years away from Earth.

 

In 2012, the Earth world erupted into a super war that lasted for hundreds of years. In the end, humans were divided into two factions: the controlling faction and the saving faction. At that time, the controlling faction almost dominated the entire Earth, while the saving faction had to hide underground. The technology at that time had progressed to a very terrifying level, and they had partial mastery of quantum mechanics. The saving faction was relentlessly hunted by the controlling faction and had no choice but to execute a long-planned plan – the Wandering Seed.

 

In the initial stages of this plan, they intended to send members of the saving faction into space to leave Earth and find a new home. However, if they did so, the spaceship would be too conspicuous and the energy supply insufficient. In the end, they chose to send the embryos of all saving faction individuals into space, with only three astronauts operating the spacecraft to fly to the new home.

 

Several years later, they found a planet – “Aquarius Palace.”

 

The spaceship landed, and the astronauts began to awaken the dormant embryos, cloning all individuals of the saving faction from Earth, and using quantum hyperspace technology to allow the consciousness of the saving faction from Earth to control their cloned bodies on this side.

 

In other words, the humans on the planet Aquarius Palace… their real bodies are on Earth. The bodies on this side are their “clones.” The clones themselves have no thoughts, and they only move when controlled by the “quantum consciousness” from Earth.

 

So, the “saving faction” back then, their original bodies were lying on Earth, sustained only by nutrient meals to keep their brains functioning. Their consciousness, however, had flown to the planet Aquarius Palace, controlling their cloned bodies here, and they began constructing this brand new home.

 

The construction of the colony on the planet Aquarius Palace went smoothly for the clones. Within a few hundred years, they had built superweapons, returned to Earth, eradicated the “controlling faction,” and brought back the technology of “remote quantum body control.”

 

From then on, if people on Earth wanted to marry and have children, they would first send their “original bodies” to Aquarius Palace for preservation by professional personnel there. The ones active on Earth were only the “clones,” and no injury or illness would be fatal to them because their brains were on Aquarius Palace.

 

As for the so-called “plague,” it naturally occurred when there were problems with the “original bodies” on Aquarius Palace. And the “execution” by “Apocalypse” meant ordering the people on Aquarius Palace to kill the “original bodies.”

 

In this setting, the protagonist’s initial “male body” was actually a disguise. Her true self was a girl. Because her family background was too mysterious and didn’t want her to be targeted, they modified the genes of her clone, causing her to spend much of her childhood and youth in a male body.

 

The specific identity of the protagonist was not elaborated in the movie, but the film provided a tense “setting” or “plot arrangement” for me watching in front of the screen—

 

The super-secret mission the protagonist received at the beginning was to steal her own “original body.”

 

Due to some conflict on Aquarius Palace, her original body was transported from Aquarius Palace to Earth.

 

And after the protagonist was shot in the head by “Apocalypse,” upon awakening, she didn’t undergo a body swap but lost her connection to her clone and returned to her original body.

 

This also means that if she gets injured or dies, she will die completely on Earth.

 

The “Apocalypse” authorities didn’t expect such a thing to happen. They didn’t even recognize the protagonist’s “original body” and thought it was just a data error that turned the protagonist from a man into a little girl. They took advantage of having leverage over the protagonist to demand her to get close to the heiress.

 

The heiress is a descendant of the “controlling faction” from back then. Sending the protagonist was just an attempt to find a reason for this family to “rebel.”

 

In theory, “Apocalypse” represents the “justice” on Earth’s side. The protagonist returning to her original body in a world where people fight and kill everywhere, relying on their “immortality,” is very dangerous. What she should do is leave the heiress behind, especially now that her cooperation with “Apocalypse” has ended. There’s no need to resist “Apocalypse” for the sake of that heiress.

 

Then, the protagonist remembered every little detail of the “yuri” moments between the two girls during that time and made a decision—even if it’s her original body, even if there’s a possibility of truly dying, she must rescue her!

 

In the final twenty minutes, the screen presented a scene where the protagonist, in the body of a girl, infiltrated the “Apocalypse” headquarters dressed as a maid, holding dual guns as if she owned the place. After all, the protagonist was originally a delinquent, and all kinds of life skills and combat skills were at her disposal. With the cyberpunk music accompanying, the whole cinema was buzzing with excitement.

 

Finally, the protagonist rescued the heiress captured by “Apocalypse.” The two kissed amidst flames and explosions, declaring their love, and the movie ended.

 

*Sniffle…*

 

Seeing the words “Age of Aquarius doesn’t believe in tears” on the screen, I took hold of one of Yin Xiamo’s hands.

 

“The plot is indeed great…”

 

“It’s great. A movie that can make Nuo’er cry buckets is a good movie.” Xiao Mo took out a handkerchief.

 

“Wanna go for a walk?”

 

“……”

 

……