He closed the Colonel's work notebook, put the ballpoint pen in the pen cup at a forty-five-degree slant to the right, and placed the books he himself had flipped through back in their original spots. Then he folded the small ladder and stored it in an unobtrusive corner, wiped down the tube lights, and folded the quilt into a perfect square. A bit of dust had landed on the windowsill, and although there seemed to be no need to wipe it off, he always felt that the Colonel had a slight obsession with cleanliness—his rooms in the Main City and the City Defense Agency had an almost neurotic simplicity, bare to the point where they didn't seem lived in. So An Zhe carefully wiped away that bit of dust, then wiped it three more times.
After he was done, he looked up and met the gaze of a small bug.
The bug was very small. He recognized this type of creature; it was a firefly, which contained few nutrients and lived in groups. Because they were often accompanied by poisonous mushrooms, within the Abyss they lived relatively well.
At dusk, the little firefly's stomach was aglow with a faint fluorescence. It was very beautiful, and An Zhe liked it a lot. Back when he was purely a mushroom, he had secretly envied those fluorescent mushrooms that could emit light.
But after a moment's hesitation, he nonetheless gently blew the little bug out of the car. As someone he slightly suspected of having an obsession with cleanliness, the Colonel probably wouldn't like bugs in the room, he thought.
After the bug left, he closed the window and began to wipe away the dust on it.
The entire time, he felt like the Colonel was watching him.
Sure enough, three seconds later, the Colonel asked, "How come you've been wiping the window this whole time? Do you have an obsession with cleanliness?"
An Zhe was rendered speechless.
He turned and left the area that was visible in the rearview mirror.
Over the next three days, An Zhe constantly observed Lu Feng.
First, he discovered that whether the quilt was neatly folded or not would have no effect on the Colonel's mood.
The angle at which the ballpoint pen was placed would have no effect on the Colonel's usage of it either.
Then he deliberately dirtied the desk. At night, when the Colonel saw the tea stain on the desk, he did not show any obvious displeasure. After picking up the cleaning spray and dissolving it, he calmly continued working.
An Zhe began to doubt the importance of his former neurotic cleaning habits.
He felt a little lost.
At bedtime, Lu Feng held him from behind.
"I don't have an obsession with cleanliness. Before, I saw that your rooms were very bare," An Zhe said quietly. "I thought you liked it like that."
Lu Feng kissed his temple.
"Thank you," he said.
An Zhe laid his fingers on Lu Feng's arms, saying nothing.
After a while, Lu Feng said, "I didn't pay attention to it before."
"What about now?" An Zhe asked.
Lu Feng said, "Anything's fine as long as you're comfortable with it."
Pillowed on Lu Feng's arm, An Zhe looked down.
This was only a minor matter, but he had thought about it a lot.
"I just, I just thought..." With some difficulty, he organized his words, his gaze blank. "Sometimes, I don't really understand you."
"It's impossible to completely understand someone," Lu Feng said.
"But..." After saying that, An Zhe's voice trailed off.
Humankind's matters were too numerous, and their emotions were too numerous as well, he thought. Humans were always speculating on and thinking about other humans. Sometimes he really wished that he and Lu Feng could be two mushrooms, blown by the same wind, drenched by the same rain, and spending their entire lifetimes growing together, nothing more.
He turned to face Lu Feng, but Lu Feng got up.
An Zhe watched him, bewildered. The Colonel pulled open the nightstand drawer, took something out, and held it out to him.
In the darkness, it emitted a beautiful pale green fluorescence. Wide-eyed, An Zhe accepted it. It was a glass bottle, and inside it were more than a dozen little fireflies, the same kind as the one he saw that one evening.
They flew around in the transparent glass bottle. Now that it was nighttime, the sky had completely darkened, and those tiny lights were even more beautiful than they had been at dusk.
"Wow," An Zhe said.
He held the bottle tight.
The Colonel said, "For you to play with."
After saying that, he opened the glass bottle, and the fireflies flew out. As they were social creatures, they flew together from one side of the room to the other and from the floor to the ceiling, resembling tiny floating lights as they did so.
An Zhe sat up in bed and grabbed at them a few times. They were a species that had a close relationship with mushrooms, so they did not avoid him, but rather circled around him.
"When did you catch them? I didn't notice." With a smile, he turned back to look at Lu Feng and discovered that the Colonel seemed to have been attentively watching him ever since he took out the glass bottle.
He suddenly got it.
It was impossible for someone to completely understand another person, but humans have always been trying to understand each other.
This was also a type of joy, like being drenched by the same rain.
An Zhe was up against the vehicle door.
Misty drizzle landed on the skylight, turning it all hazy.
This was his third time going with Lu Feng into the Abyss.
He was currently turning into a mushroom.
Hyphae climbed up Lu Feng's clothes, and his shape gradually transformed. After becoming a mushroom and casting off the shackles of his human body, he could freely go here and there in the Abyss.
Halfway through the change, Lu Feng pressed down on his stomach with one hand. The man had always liked to play like this.
Lu Feng asked, "When will you have a baby spore?"
His tone of voice was as natural as if he was asking, "When will you give me a child?"
Of course this wasn't a natural thing.
Firstly, An Zhe could not give birth to children. He could only grow a spore that belonged to himself alone, an endospore, according to Pauli—the embryonic form of a new body.
Secondly, even he himself did not know when he would have a spore. As for when his initial spore had started growing and the reason why it had started growing, he no longer remembered.
He said, "I don't know."
Then he asked, "Do you want a baby spore very badly?"
"I do."
"Why?"
"It's very entertaining."
An Zhe was angered by this man once more.
Was toying with his subconscious really such a joyful thing?
He said, "I won't give it to you to play with."
Lu Feng earnestly rubbed his stomach, as if by doing so he'd be able to speed up the baby spore's growth.
An Zhe couldn't be bothered to acknowledge him. Continuing to change shape, he wound his hyphae securely around the man.
Lu Feng plucked apart some of his hyphae, then tied two wisps of it into a bow. But An Zhe had special knot-untying skills. By reversing the original steps, he untied it.
Lu Feng tied a more complex knot.
An Zhe untied it.
Another knot.
Another untying.