pr: roki
An occasional darkness could make a person calm down, but long-lasting, never-ending darkness would make them anxious, agitated, angry, and insane. Negative emotions would come from all directions like a tidal wave and, like vines, would wrap around their head, feet, and fingers until they bound, enveloped, and pulled the person into an even deeper darkness.
He could hear the beeping of indicators, but from outside the device, across some kind of cover, they seemed a little far away. It was like a clock ticking from another world, mixed with some alerts of experimental data he didn’t even understand at the time, dull and boring.
Every once in a while, he would be transported into another chamber, and every time the mechanical sound of an experiment’s initiation rang out coldly, two forces would be loaded around him. Perhaps they were energy fields, or perhaps they were something else. Back then, he didn’t quite understand.
He could only feel a gravitational force dragging him towards one direction. Like a basin with its rubber stopper suddenly pulled out, a huge vortex bound him with an unbreakable force, so strong that his body almost became deformed from the compression. It seemed to be dragging him not to a point in space, but straight to another world.
But the other force attempted to fix him in place.
Every time it happened, he had a momentary awakening of control over his limbs, as if he’d suddenly regressed to a time when the drugs hadn’t yet been injected into the body, hadn’t yet taken effect.
Yet this awakening of perception was as useless as his prolonged abundance of mental strength. It merely made clearer the sensation of his body hovering on the edge of tearing as it was pulled.
Sometimes he could even smell the scent of blood coming from his own body— strong and pungent, bringing back his consciousness muddled by the excessive pain.
Whenever this scent appeared, the two pulls loaded on him would be withdrawn. He would be returned to his original capsule and receive careful and meticulous treatment.
Yes, careful and meticulous treatment.
Even if he only half-understood the monitoring and treatment data broadcast by those electronic voices, he knew how complicated that program of treatment, course after course, really was.
So, he always quickly regained his health and plunged back into the next cycle.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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And then, he didn’t want to laugh anymore.
He grew accustomed to the pain over and over again. No matter how large or deep a wound was, it didn’t matter to him, because they always healed in the end. He didn’t know what the purpose of the experiments was, but the repeated failures had inadvertently given him another ability. His physiological healing ability had far exceeded the realm of “normal.”
By the time he vaguely understood the purpose of the experiment, it had finally succeeded—
He had finally, as hoped, freed himself to a certain extent from the constraints of time on an individual and filled in what those people called “the only imperfection of man.” The torment of “near-death—retrospection—repeat” over and over again had changed passive triggering to autonomous control, and he had gradually numbed into a monster.
“I escaped while they were celebrating the success of their experiment. I guess what they were doing was supposed to be done in secret, because that day, someone found out where they were and there was chaos, giving me a chance.” Sa’e Yang shrugged. “Of course, a blind little fool can’t fumble very far. I bumped into a group of wanderers, and they took me on their aircraft.”
He spoke very succinctly, covering all the clashes and crossfire in a few words. “They were a bit unlucky and got into a clash with another group from one of the star regions, maybe wanderers, maybe some planet’s army, and— boom! Exploded into fireworks. The aircraft’s emergency self-rescue device shoved me into some kind of escape pod, and after drifting in space for a few days, I was rescued by someone.”
As he spoke, he let out a laugh. “I’m sure you must’ve guessed that the person who saved me was the unlucky King of the Wanderers, His Excellency Carlos Black. Unfortunately, the timing of his appearance wasn’t very good, and I was a little easily agitated at that time due to the effects of my experiments. Anyway, I stayed on Carlos Black’s aircraft for a few days, and neither of us were very happy about it. This was what laid the emotional tone for my later interactions with them. Later, they just happened to have a deal with the military, and I returned to the planet. The military found some experimental information on me—”
Sa’e Yang tilted his head and pointed at the side of his neck. “From here. As far as I know, a military general later led people to take down the entire experimental laboratory. There seemed to be a few more little brats inside.”
Chu Si suddenly remembered the kid who had appeared and disappeared in front of Jiang Qi’s apartment, who’d also had a number marking on the side of his neck. “So the kid we ran into last time…”
“Ah— that little brat,” Sa’e Yang said. “I did wonder at the time if it could have something to do with that laboratory. There shouldn’t have been as much security there in the beginning as there was later on. Maybe they didn’t think a four or five year old could do anything. I don’t think it was very difficult to escape back then, several little kids managed to do so. When I escaped, I vaguely heard one of the men who came after me say that it was the second time I’d gotten escaped from control. Of course, I have no recollection of the first time. After all, you can’t expect someone who didn’t even remember what they looked like to remember a failed escape.”
“And then?” Chu Si asked. His tone had unconsciously grown softer.
“Then, it took several years of treatment for my eyes to recover. After, the military placed me in the sanatorium, and after that you threw blood in my face.” Sa’e Yang finished with a laugh. “A very boring and uninteresting story.”
In fact, for a long time, Chu Si had wondered— why would a rebellious person like Sa’e Yang be willing to stay in a sanitorium, or even be willing to accept the constraints of a training camp and complete missions for two years?
He thought about it for a long time, and not being able to think of any reason other than seeking excitement, he put an intentional label on Sa’e Yang, a projection of sorts, since he himself had done it with a purpose in mind.
But now, he felt that maybe there were other reasons, other less crazy and rebellious reasons mixed in beyond that.
“Did you like the sanitorium and the training camp?” Chu Si asked. “I mean, leaving out the fact that you picked fights with me and I picked fights with you.”
Sa’e Yang raised an eyebrow, his tone taking on a hint of disgust. “What do you think? Of course I thought they were very, very annoying. Every time I saw those childishly restrictive rules, I was tempted to do something to destroy them. They always made me think of something uncomfortable. I have to say, you picking fights with me and me picking fights with you was probably one of the few things that didn’t get tiresome during those years.”
He smiled a little more at that, and seemed to think that the two teenagers who had been as incompatible as fire and water back then were a little too childish for their own good.
Chu Si’s lips also curved. “Then why did you stay for so long?”
“Seeing as how they took down the laboratory and cured my eyes…” Sa’e Yang said, “I barely endured it for a few years.”
Whether it was during those years in the sanatorium or at the training camp, whether it was as a teenager or as an adult, Sa’e Yang was always alone every time he appeared in Chu Si’s vision. Even with all the people around him as a backdrop, his aura of being unattached to anyone always stood out strongly.
He used to think it was arrogance and contempt caused by excessive pride, but now he understood the cause.
If the starting point of a person’s memory was a fragmented darkness, a closed capsule, with no ties to the world other than the countless ports and tubes all over their body and even human voices nowhere to be heard… they probably wouldn’t be able to get used to the world with its many relationships.
So even now, though Sa’e Yang had undergone a significant transformation, he still seemed very much a loner. He could talk to Tang and the others but not become familiar with them, and he could tease Shao Heng but not get much closer.
The interactions between normal people took on a very extreme result in his case— the entirety of his involvement with all that surrounded him was through Chu Si.
This mentality was somehow the same as that of a child who was just starting to have emotions, as if time had gone back to the beginning, without any intricate webs of relationships or sidetracks…
He had only two hands, so he could only focus on grasping one person.
Chu Si looked into Sa’e Yang’s eyes, curved with a little smile in them. They were a clear light gray, nearly transparent, and always gave the impression of being cold and unfathomable. It was as if all of his smiles always contained a perpetual stillness.
“Sa’e…”
“Hm?”
Chu Si looked at him for a moment, then reached out to embrace him.
“Perhaps… it’s a little too late for this.”
Was it too late?
Sa’e Yang’s chin pressed into the hollow of his shoulder, and he blinked twice very softly. His light-colored eyes were hidden in the shadows of half-lowered lashes, and the natural light inside the room shed a few tiny dots of light through the gaps, so beautiful that it was impossible to tell that they’d once been blind for years.
When his eyes first recovered, there was a long period of time when he couldn’t get used to them.
Sometimes, he would suddenly find himself surrounded by darkness, like an island completely isolated from the world. Sometimes, he would suddenly hear a few faint electronic sounds, reporting some time and energy-related data, like the hallucinations of a lunatic. Sometimes, he would think that there was always a trace of the scent of blood lingering on his body, thick and sweet, unremovable…
But it didn’t matter.
Look, someone had embraced him without any hesitation…
ahhh theyre so sweet…
Ngl I would jump in front of a train for these two 👩🦯
So touching.
Thank you for the update!
🌺
Thank you for the chapter~
Oh
I’m so soft for them