An Zhe trembled all over.
He said, "I don't want to."
"I can't hear you."
An Zhe brought up the past again. "Then every time I cry, you can't see it either?"
"It's not like I'm beating you. Crying is useless."
The new day began with unspoken criticism of the Colonel.
An Zhe was still in the vehicle.
Starlight spilled in through the armored vehicle's skylight.
This was the fourth time he and Lu Feng had gone to the Abyss.
The third time An Zhe mumbled on and on to himself, the Colonel put forth a solution.
Without any expression, he leaned against the back of the bed. "Do it yourself."
With an expression and tone of voice that was like he was at the genetic examination office at the city gates, next to the examination device, he said, "Do it yourself."
Facing him, An Zhe hesitated for a while before several strands of hyphae crept onto the Colonel.
Then he leaned down and kissed the Colonel's Adam's apple.
Then he kissed the side of the Colonel's neck and contemplated his next move.
Then it occurred to him that he was wearing loose white pajamas while the Colonel was still neatly dressed, so he began to struggle with the shirt buttons.
He was intimately familiar with this shirt, for he was an emotionless washing machine after all.
But not only did the shirt not open up as a result of their friendship, it was even more difficult to undo because of the angle.
After undoing the first button, he said to Lu Feng, "Undo them yourself."
Just like how Lu Feng would sometimes say to him.
Colonel Lu remained unmoved.
A few more strands of hyphae climbed up.
Humbling himself, the Colonel undid the second button in an unhurried manner.
An Zhe continued to think.
"You're someone who came from the third underground floor," he heard Lu Feng say, his voice slightly hoarse and containing a hint of a smile. "You should be a bit more practiced."
An Zhe was silent.
Then he said in a small voice, "It's not like I learned anything."
And he could not go back and learn again.
"I can see that," Lu Feng said. When this man lowered his voice, it contained a distant magnetism. An Zhe gave a start, feeling numb from his ears to his back.
So he once again recalled the past.
When he first met Lu Feng, he had even personally said "I work on the third underground floor," and the Colonel had responded with an "oh."
An Zhe was very curious about the impression the Colonel had of him at that time.
Seeming to understand him, the Colonel said, "I didn't know you were a mushroom then. I thought that if you didn't work on the third floor, there'd be no way for you to survive in the base."
He nonchalantly glanced at An Zhe, then continued. "Now it seems that even so, you can't support yourself."
The number of hyphae increased.
The Colonel stopped talking.
Right now, An Zhe's greatest wish was that the Colonel would be like that of his mannequin, unable to say a single word.
He lay his slender white fingers on Lu Feng's chest, waiting for the other man to finish undoing the buttons so he could hold his hand.
Then he saw the Colonel look at that place, seemingly also contemplating—and it was the kind of expression he only had when contemplating something serious.
A few seconds later, Lu Feng said, "In the past, you deceived me."
An Zhe tilted his head.
"Slow on the uptake, ignorant of what the crime of indecency is, doing illegal work with monthly wages lower than the baseline." The Colonel listed these three items, seemingly deep in thought. "These can't be explained by excessive simple-mindedness and limited intelligence."
An Zhe was at a loss for words.
He said, "Stop right there."
But it was obvious that the Colonel's hearing would selectively stop working.
"That night was also very unusual. You invited me to stay in your room."
An Zhe said, "That was because you had nowhere to go."
"The problem lay with how you wanted to give your toothbrush to me. You didn't understand human social etiquette at all."
An Zhe said nothing, as though his hearing had also selectively stopped working.
"Unless that was a clumsy flirting method you learned on the third floor… But that night, you were very well behaved," the Colonel said.
An Zhe knew the Colonel was talking about the night of Judgment Day, when he had invited this man to sleep for a night in his room.
He went to hold Lu Feng, pressing his forehead against the other man's chest. Even through a layer of fabric, there was a warm and solid sensation, and he could hear a steady heartbeat in his ears. All sorts of things had happened, just like a dream.
An Zhe imagined another possibility.
"Then," An Zhe said, "supposing that, at that time…"
Supposing that, at that time, it truly was a coincidental mistake—
If he truly was a worker on the third underground floor, or if he had mindlessly followed Mr. Shaw's suggestion, using another method to get close to the Arbiter—what would he have done that night?
The xenogenic with ulterior motives took in the Arbiter who had nowhere to return to.
When they did not yet know each other well and were even on their guard against the other.
But it was also at a time full of death, unrest, and abandonment.
Supposing that, at that time, An Zhe had leaned over to kiss Lu Feng on the lips or undid the buttons of his coat, what would they have been like?
An Zhe didn't know.
He only knew that to this day, when he thought of Lu Feng's back on the night of Judgment Day, his heart would violently tremble. He looked at those green eyes and seemed to return to that moment, when the blood-scented evening wind howled through the city.
So that expression appeared on his face again.
A quiet, grief-laden expression.
God did not love the world.
God loved the world.
The bed, the desk, and the decorations here used to be like the base's standard rooms. At night, the room darkened. The sound of the wind came from an unknown place, much like that night.
The An Zhe from that time was also like this, with snow-white soft cotton pajamas and an innocent face.
Lu Feng put a hand on his shoulder, his gaze seeming tangible. An Zhe first dropped his gaze slightly, then lifted it again to meet his eyes. His eyelashes also trembled slightly, like the minute shake of flowers and leaves when a butterfly perched upon them.
Lu Feng stared at him for a long time, as though he were staring at the twilight above fields of snow.
Until this twilight descended, and An Zhe leaned over to kiss him on the corner of his lips.
Soundlessly, he moved to kiss him on the lips.
The past flickered out.