1
An Zhe is in the front of the car,
The afternoon sun's rays shine obliquely down through the skylights of the armoured vehicle.
This is the first day he and Lu Feng have gone to the abyss.
When the human troops conduct missions in the wild, the armoured vehicle is their mobile camp. The driving cabin is at the front, and the massive bulk of the storage space takes over three quarters of the rest of the vehicle body. The remaining one quarter is at the bottom, low and constrained, and it's the break cabin where one can barely stand straight. The break cabin has a thin board separating it, which is better than nothing, and it's a compartment for two with a coffee table in the middle for water cups. Since it doesn't see the sun, the blankets and pillows have a vague smell of mold to them.
From the first time he's come to the human base, An Zhe has ridden Vance's vehicle, and in his memories there are also some impressions of these armoured trucks, which leads to him thinking in the past, the colonel must think it a drudgery spending at least half the year in these armoured vehicles. Whenever the colonel went to rest in these narrowed beds and got up, his head must've hit the ceiling.
And then the colonel would be in a bad mood.
When the colonel got in a bad mood, the entire troop would fall under a giant shadow, putting everyone on edge, and no one would dare say a word.
And this atmosphere would lead to the colonel being in a worse mood, which would then affect his sleep.
Thus, the next morning when the colonel woke up, due to the lack of sleep, his intelligence would decline visibly, his actions no longer perfect and without weakness.
——And so he would hit his head again.
The journey of the troop in the abyss would then go on under this giant shadow day after day.
The first night spent in the colonel's vehicle, it's a beautiful starry night sky outside the skylight, and An Zhe sits on a leveled, large bed, hugging a pillow in a spacious room, feeling the gentle and comfortable breeze coming in through the side window, describing to the colonel his initial imaginations.
The colonel's expression is as if he's heard something perplexing.
An Zhe guessed at his confusion, but didn't guess the issue the colonel focused on first.
"Why would you think my intelligence would be lower when I wake up in the morning?" Lu Feng asks.
An Zhe replies, "Because I imagine you wouldn't have gotten enough sleep the night before."
"Even if I was sleep deprived, that kind of situation still wouldn't happen." The colonel says, "Besides, if I had hit the ceiling once, there wouldn't be a second time."
"Which means you really did hit your head before." An Zhe says.
This time he's won against Lu Feng in this argument battle.
After a short moment of silence, Lu Feng says, "That's only happened once when I was fourteen or fifteen."
"But no matter when, my emotions and intelligence are both very stable."
"Really?" An Zhe watches him suspiciously, "But recently, I often notice that in the morning, you'd watch me without moving, like the speed of your brain is very slow."
"That's because you wake up too late." Lu Feng's face is without expressions, "If you wake up before me, then you can watch me instead."
He actually makes a lot of sense. An Zhe turns his back against him, making it clear that he no longer wants to talk to him. Yet three minutes later, he still can't hold it in and asks, "Why did you receive a different treatment than the others?"
——The colonel didn't sleep in the lower break cabins, his vehicle was clearly remodeled, and the spacious, bright room upstairs was the colonel's real bedroom. The walls of the bedroom are in a beautiful, silvery white colour, and on the sides as well as above have windows installed, and there is even a solitary washroom built in that limited space.
The bedside has a desk installed, much like the format of the standardized rooms in the outer districts of the base. The contents of that extremely perfunctory work handbook of Lu Feng's were done over this desk.
In any case, this picture of comfort and brightness is different from what An Zhe imagined.
The colonel says, "One of the Judges went mad in the compartment. There was a different reason for why he went mad, but the Supply Station still upgraded the living space of the Judges who came after.
"Maybe they just want to put you guys in a better mood." An Zhe says.
"Mn." Lu Feng replies, "Later when I led troops, I got the Supply Station to remodel all the vehicles of the Trial Court, and added five more cars for supplies."
"You're so good." An Zhe says.
Lu Feng's tone is unusually flat, "It's because I noticed they'd often hit their heads, and that'd put them in a bad mood."
An Zhe hugs his pillow and starts to laugh.
Yet unexpectedly, Lu Feng follows with, "Have you hit your head before?"
"No." An Zhe replies.
He's different from foolish humans.
Then, Lu Feng looks at him calculatingly from top to bottom.
"I forgot." He says, "You don't have what it takes to hit your head."
An Zhe feels that if one day he dies, it must be Lu Feng who infuriated him to death.
2
An Zhe is on the roof of the car.
The radiance of dusk spills over the skylights of the armoured vehicle.
This is the thirtieth day he and Lu Feng have stayed in the abyss.
They discovered a beautiful valley in the abyss, the thin and tall weeds of emerald green enveloped the grounds of the entire valley, embracing a limpid lake.
——The almost transparent stalks of the grass are glowing imperceptibly.
"So beautiful." An Zhe says, scanning the area.
"Thin foliage straw No.29," Lu Feng says, "It can excrete strong corrosive fluids at night to conduct hunting activities. We should leave now."
An Zhe climbs down the small ladder from the skylight, and Lu Feng heads to the driving cabin.
An opening has been made between the driving cabin and the living room, so when An Zhe isn't sitting in the passenger seat, he can still see the colonel at any time, and under normal circumstances, he would also stay in areas where the colonel can see him in the reflectors.
Inside the living room, he reads for a bit, then he begins to clean——There actually isn't much to clean, so technically it's just tidying.
He closes the colonel's handbook, places his ballpoint pen in the penholder, leaning it at 45 degrees angle, puts the books he's flipped through back in place, folds up the small ladder and places it in a corner that's not easily noticeable, wipes all the light tubes once, then folds the blanket into a perfect square shape. A bit of dust seems to have fallen over the windowsill, it doesn't seem like it needs to be wiped, but he always feels the colonel has a bit of mysophobia——In his rooms at the main city and Defense Office, they were both somewhat neurotically simple, so desolate that it didn't seem like places people lived. Thus, An Zhe wipes away that bit of dust seriously, then repeats the cleaning three times.
Once he's done wiping, he looks up, and his eyes catch a little bug.
The bug is very small; he recognizes this living creature, it's a small firefly without much nourishment, lives in groups, and because it often coexists with poisonous mushrooms, it lives rather well in the abyss.
In the evening hours, the belly of the small firefly starts to glow faintly, very pretty, An Zhe likes it a lot——When he was still only a mushroom, he already secretly admired those mushrooms that could glow.
But he hesitates for a moment, and in the end he still lightly blows, sending this little bug out of the car cabin. He thinks, since the colonel is someone who suspiciously has a minor mysophobia, then he probably wouldn't like having a little bug inside the rooms.
After the little bug is gone, he closes the window, and starts to wipe the surface dust off the window.
As he cleans, he keeps feeling the colonel is watching him.
Sure enough, three seconds later, the colonel asks him, "Why are you always wiping the windows? Do you have mysophobia?"
An Zhe, "..."
He turns around and leaves the area that's visible from the reflectors.
In the following three days, An Zhe observed Lu Feng.
First, he discovered that whether the blanket was folded neatly or not, it didn't affect the colonel's mood.
The angle the ballpoint pen was placed didn't affect how the colonel used it.
——And then he purposely dirtied the desk. At night when the colonel saw the tea stains on the desk, he wasn't obviously upset. He took a cleaning spray, wiped the stains away, and continued to work unflinchingly.
An Zhe begins to doubt his own neurotic, repeated cleaning actions.
And feeling a little down.
At night when they're in bed.
"I don't have mysophobia. It's because I saw your rooms in the past had all been very cold," An Zhe says in a small voice, "I thought you like it that way."
Lu Feng caresses his face.
"Thank you." He says.
An Zhe rests his fingers on Lu Feng's arm, and he doesn't speak.
After a while, Lu Feng says, "I never noticed it before."
"And now?" An Zhe asks.
"Whatever you're comfortable with." Lu Feng says.
An Zhe pillows on his arm and lowers his eyes.
It's only a small matter, but it's made him think of many more things.
"I just, I just feel…" He's having some difficulty forming his words, his eyes lost, "Sometimes, I don't understand you too well."
"It's impossible to fully understand someone." Lu Feng says.
"But——" An Zhe starts, but stops.
Humans have too many issues and have too many emotions, he thinks. Humans are forever guessing at each other, pondering. There are times when he really wants to be two simple mushrooms with Lu Feng, having the same wind blow at them, get wet under the same rain, spending their entire lifetime growing together without anything else.
He turns to face Lu Feng, but Lu Feng gets up.
An Zhe is confused and watches him, and see the colonel pulls open the drawer of a dresser at the head of the bed and taking something out, passing it to him.
In the darkness, that thing is emitting a beautiful, light green glow. An Zhe widens his eyes and takes it——It's a glass jar, and in the jar are a dozen of little fireflies, the same kind he saw earlier in the evening.
They're flying about inside the transparent glass jar. It's night, the sky is completely dark, but those twinkling, starry lights are more beautiful than the illumination of dusk.
"Wow." An Zhe gasps.
He hugs that jar, not letting go.
"For you to play." The colonel says.
Then, he opens the cap of the jar, and the fireflies come flying out. They are lifeforms that live in groups, so they fly together from one end of the room to the other, from the ground to the ceiling, like a small floating light.
An Zhe sits up in bed, reaches out to grab for them a few times. They are creatures who are intimate with mushrooms, so they don't avoid him, flying around, circling him.
"When did you catch them? I didn't notice." He turns around to look at Lu Feng with a smile, and notices the colonel has been watching him intently ever since he's opened the jar.
It suddenly dawns on him.
A person might not ever fully understand another, but humans are always trying to understand each other.
This is also a form of happiness, like getting wet under the same rain.
3
An Zhe is next to the door of the car.
The misty rain is obscuring the skylights.
This is the third time he and Lu Feng have come to the abyss together.
He's in the middle of transforming into a mushroom.
The mycelium crawls up Lu Feng's clothes, his form gradually changing. After changing into a mushroom he will break free of the bondage of the human form, and he will be able to go about the abyss freely.
Halfway through his transformation, Lu Feng presses his belly. This guy always likes to play like this.
"When will you have a baby spore?" Lu Feng asks.
His tone is so matter-of-fact like he's asking "When are you going to have a baby".
Of course this isn't something so matter-of-fact.
First, An Zhe can't give birth, he can only grow a spore that belongs to him. A spore, according to Polly's explanation——Is the infant form of a new body.
Next, he doesn't know when he will have a spore. He no longer remembers when that first spore started growing, nor for what reason.
"I don't know." He says.
Then he asks, "Do you want a baby spore very much?"
"Yes." Lu Feng replies.
"Why?"
"Because it's fun." Lu Feng says.
An Zhe is furious because of this guy again.
Is it really that fun to subconsciously play around with him?
He says, "I won't let you play with it."
Lu Feng rubs his belly seriously, as if this can speed up the growth of a baby spore.
An Zhe doesn't want to bother with him, and continues to change his form, using his mycelium to tie this guy up firmly.
Lu Feng pushes a part of his mycelium aside, then ties a bow with two of the locks. However, An Zhe has a special technique in unknotting, so he unties himself.
Lu Feng ties an even more complicated knot.
An Zhe unknots.
He knots again.
He unknots again.
Finally, An Zhe withdraws those two mycelium locks completely.
——Such a juvenile game, even human infants don't care to play.
Lu Feng chuckles lightly, then fishes up a large bundle of the mycelium and starts to groom him.
An Zhe doesn't need this kind of service, and with every smoothing from Lu Feng he'd take back a part. Ten minutes later, his form has already shrunken to three quarters of his normal state, and is now only the size of a coconut.
It's as if Lu Feng's suddenly discovered something, and he asks, "You can turn small?"
"I can."
This is also something An Zhe has discovered recently; he can control the size of his own form. Who knows if this has anything to do with eating indiscriminately——Clearly it's been a long time since he's eaten those things.
"Can you turn any smaller?" He hears Lu Feng ask.
An Zhe tries to take in more of the mycelium, and turns into the size of an apple.
Shrink some more, and he's turned into the size of a ping pong ball.
——Seems he can shrink even more.
An Zhe continues to feel his own control of the mycelium, and keeps shrinking.
Suddenly, his body lightens, and flies up.
Startled, he then realizes it's because Lu Feng has picked him up.
Then, he is dropped into the breast pocket of Lu Feng's uniform.
Click, the button is buttoned.
"Let's take you out to play." The colonel's voice is light and easy, seeming to be quite cheerful.
An Zhe, "..."
The colonel must've gained some strange sense of happiness.