The thin body wrapped in a hospital gown remained motionless, frozen like a statue on the chair, as if a pale cutout taken from some picture book.
A moment later, he opened his mouth, the corners of his lips moving silently.
Confined here for too long and with untrimmed hair, he bowed his head, his eyes obscured by the fallen bangs.
For reasons unknown, he seemed unable to clearly hear... whether the sound echoing in the confinement room was emerging from his own throat.
The mentor lifted his eyes from behind the lenses, casting him a puzzled glance.
"She has a name." After a long silence, Ji Minghuan spoke. His voice was still very low.
"What did you say? I didn't hear clearly."
"She's not called the deaf-mute girl. 'Kong Youling', that's her name, I hope you remember it."
"Oh, sorry, I didn't pay attention just now..."
"Is she okay?" Ji Minghuan interrupted him.
The mentor smiled warmly, just as he was about to answer, he suddenly froze. In that instant, he met Ji Minghuan's gaze.
The young man across the table nodded slightly, his shoulders drooping, hands hidden under the table like reeds severed at the stems. His expressionless face, with pitch-black pupils, was frighteningly hollow, like a strange creature from the depths of a ravine, ready to devour.
After a moment, the mentor recovered from his shock, tilted his head to avoid his gaze, and said, "Her current situation is very safe. Although she has been identified by our people as a rare psychic ability superpower user, objectively speaking, her danger level is far lower than yours, so she's relatively freer. Her actions aren't as restricted."
With that, the mentor paused, once again meeting Ji Minghuan's eyes. He asked in a low voice:
"Do you want to meet her?"
"Tomorrow. I'll bring her here to see you."
"You're not lying to me?"
"No," the mentor shook his head and calmly denied, "I have no reason to deceive you. You and she are both good kids, and I will do my best to arrange a meeting for you."
But these seemingly sincere words fell into a silence as still as death, echoing back nothing but silence.
Seeing the other party still silent, the mentor picked up his thermos cup, and said, "Anyway... today's conversation ends here. Rest early." As he said this, he stood up from his chair and turned towards the exit.
Just as he was about to say goodbye, Ji Minghuan suddenly lifted his eyes and called out to him.
"Wait... I have one more question."
The footsteps abruptly stopped, the hem of the mentor's white coat had just swept over the metal threshold.
He stopped in place, half-turning his body.
"When can I leave here?" After speaking, Ji Minghuan quietly added, "I... want to return to the Welfare Institute."
The mentor did not immediately answer, instead stood with his hands behind his back. After a moment's silence, he raised a hand to adjust the glasses on his nose, revealing his usual smile.
"If you behave and cooperate with our work, then maybe... when you grow up, you'll be able to leave."
Finally, he left with that ambiguous response and left without looking back.
Ji Minghuan sat expressionlessly on the chair, quietly watching the mentor's figure fade into the distance.
He understood in his heart that he would most likely never leave this laboratory, or perhaps... by the time he qualified to "leave," he would be a lifeless corpse.
As the sound of footsteps gradually faded away, it wasn't long before the mentor's figure was obscured by the closing metal door. Then, one by one, the "bedroom" lights went out—if this metal box could be called a bedroom.
Naturally, Ji Minghuan returned once again to a state of utter boredom, having no choice but to stand up from the chair.
Surrounded by complete darkness, he couldn't see his hand in front of him, but he had long memorized every inch of detail in the confinement room, so he silently walked towards the bed, turned around, extended his arms, maintaining a star-shaped posture, and weakly collapsed onto the bed.
He didn't even bother to pull the blanket over himself, simply closed his eyes, and surprisingly... Ji Minghuan felt no sense of loss, having long become accustomed to it.
The silent confinement room, the cold reflective monitor eyes, the persuasive mentor, and the mercurial officers comprised Ji Minghuan's life for the past month.
In the darkness, the consciousness of the boy in the hospital gown gradually blurred, as if sinking into an unknown dimension.
The sudden sensation of weightlessness enveloped his entire body, as if plummeting from the rooftop of a high-rise building, the glass curtain walls dyed golden by the sunset, reflecting a distorted figure in a freefall, then all at once, plunging into the icy sea of Siberia, with the solitary moon hanging high, the shadow of the cod swimming slowly beneath the ice in the moonlight.
In the end, there was only a senseless blue left, cold enough to make one's heart pound, losing all sensation.
[Welcome, our number one player.]
[Loading the "Infinite Split Game", you will soon enter the "character creation" phase.]
This was the last voice he heard.