He was completely dumbstruck, forgetting even his sorrow as he stared dazedly at the faraway aurora. Pauli let go of him and gently dried the tears on his face with a handkerchief.
"But why would I be like this?" he mumbled.
Without waiting for a reply, he was swept up in another, more pressing question.
"Then… then will he love me too?" He looked at Pauli almost pleadingly. "Will he love me too? I'm just a… a xenogenic."
"Has he said anything to you before?"
An Zhe shook his head. Their relationship was frighteningly short. He said, "But he kissed me."
But he was by no means clear on the meaning of the kiss. That day, the power of words was too feeble, so they could only do that.
"You're still alive," Pauli said. "Did he let you leave?"
"I left him. He has always been a qualified Arbiter. I know he wouldn't spare me," An Zhe said slowly. "At that time, I only wanted to leave him and find a place to die. But it was only because his gun fell into my backpack that I was able to return to the Abyss."
"His gun fell into your backpack?" Pauli repeated.
An Zhe made a soft sound of affirmation, and an unsteady smile appeared in his eyes. "He liked to randomly leave his things with me."
Pauli Jones slowly stroked An Zhe's hair.
"You must know, silly child," Pauli said, "the Arbiter's gun never leaves his side. This is an iron-clad rule that was established a hundred years ago."
An Zhe silently met his eyes. In the end, he bit down on his lip.
"I don't know," he said. "I really don't know."
"No matter what reason it stemmed from," Pauli told him, "he definitely loves you too. That's what that means."
"Would an Arbiter like a xenogenic?"
"I don't know," Pauli said, "But I've also lived with many xenogenics for a hundred years—if you believe I still have the qualification to be called an Arbiter."
While looking into those seemingly all-knowing gray-blue eyes, An Zhe thought that Pauli definitely knew the reason why Lu Feng would like him, but he didn't dare to ask. Pauli must have had his reasons for not saying it.
Image after image appeared before his eyes. At the city gates, a woman who had lost her husband hoarsely cursed him to die a miserable death. At the supply depot's public square, a bullet traveled through the back of Doussay's head, but she pitched forward toward him. Countless silhouettes appeared before his eyes. Those hoarse shouts, the trembling dread, the bone-deep admiration. Countless shadows rose up and surged together, reaching up with their hands. With love, hate, and tacitly understood grudges and fears piled up, they pushed him to the mountaintop where the cold winds howled, making him look down at these hordes of living things.
No one approached him, no one understood him, and his admirers would rather order a false mannequin using all their wealth than speak a single sentence to him of their own accord.
As for… As for the Arbiter's compassion and favor, it was something nobody dared to even dream of. What sort of bone-chilling fear and unimaginable honor was that?
He was a xenogenic, something diametrically opposed to humankind, but he faintly hoped to receive it. And unexpectedly, he had received it.
At least, the moment Lu Feng put his gun into An Zhe's backpack, within the eons, there was once such a second—in that second, the Arbiter left his pistol to a xenogenic, forsaking his lifelong beliefs to love him.
Then, just like the fairy tale in the children's textbooks, the midnight bell rang, and one returned to the Abyss while the other returned to the base.
Like a gradually stopping sandstorm, as the bell rang, the dust settled. An Zhe's heartbeat returned to its normal frequency bit by bit. He had received unimaginable gifts, but he was utterly calm.
He thought that it was enough. All of it was enough.
"If there comes a day when humankind is safe and you see him," he said to Pauli, "Please… please don't tell him that I came here."
Pauli said, "No one can lie to the Arbiter."
"Then say that I've come and gone," An Zhe said. "I've gone far away, and I may be anywhere in the world."
Pauli looked at him with a gentle yet sorrowful gaze.
"I truly hope God can favor you two," he said.
But An Zhe slowly shook his head.
"But I can't love him, and he can't love me," An Zhe murmured.
"Unless—unless the day comes when humankind falls. But I hope that day will never come." In that moment, an assured tranquility enveloped him.
Countless translucent white chips of ice were born in the gaps between the aurora and the clouds. They drifted down, and the silent mountain scenery and night came alive as a result of all the flying bits of ice. It was snowing.
An Zhe held out his hand, and a hexagonal snowflake landed on his finger. The beautiful shape gradually lost its form amidst his skin's warmth and drew in upon itself to form a crystalline droplet of water.
"I've known you all for only three months," he said. "But this is my whole lifetime."
The wind grew louder, and thousands of snowflakes blew into the corridor like willow catkins carried aloft by the spring wind. An Zhe looked up. He thought that everything from the forgotten past was unfolding before his eyes and dispersing into twinkling fragments.
The tempestuous storm subsided, the waves and undercurrents simultaneously ceasing to flow. He couldn't describe it as sad, nor was it anywhere close to being happy. He only felt that the snow was beautiful.
The joys and sorrows throughout his life, the meetings and partings, were just like the births and deaths of all the tangible things in this world. They were all ephemeral snowflakes.
"Are you cold?"
"Not anymore."
He memorized the shape of that snowflake, and in that second he obtained eternity.
The aurora lit up the Abyss.
From the laboratory suddenly came the sound of glass shattering.