Chapter 21 Part 2

On the street, Gao Qie was shoved along the way, but he couldn’t resist Horne and could only curse nonstop. Horne showed no reaction, keeping a cold face until he dragged Gao Qie to the house door. Then he said coldly, “One minute. Get out immediately, or I’ll make you die twice.”

Once in the game, once in reality.

Gao Qie grumbled and went inside.

Horne turned around. Not far off, Moroz was sprinting wildly, but getting slower and slower, with dozens of ghosts sliding toward him.

Not even a minute later, Gao Qie came out. Horne grabbed him, tossed him back to the house where Han Ya and Wen Yu were hiding, and immediately went to find his own clues.

His clue was from March 2050, when the experimental team conducted the first experiment on Algernon, with plans for three practical sessions within a year. Before the experiment began, they repeatedly ran background checks and examinations on Algernon to ensure this little white mouse was the most suitable subject.

Seeing this record, Horne frowned.

The wording in the diary was growing increasingly strange.

As he pondered this, there was a sharp crack—the wooden board splintered, and the fragments turned into knife-like edges stabbing toward him. Horne didn’t even look up; he simply tilted his body slightly to dodge. The fragments grazed his hair and crashed into the wall.

Horne set down the diary and quickly walked out.

When he emerged again, Moroz was nowhere to be seen on the street. Instead, that familiar red figure was holding off the ghosts.

He had still been a step too slow.

After returning to exchange the diary clue with Han Ya, Horne glanced around but saw no sign of Moroz.

Han Ya directly raised a finger, pointing upstairs with a gloating grin. “Hee hee, the brat got caught by the ghosts.”

Horne’s footsteps paused. Han Ya shrugged helplessly and continued, “The brat told me to scram. Why don’t you go up? Get him down. He’s finished with his clue, so we can move to the next one.”

Horne went upstairs. He didn’t really want to get involved, but thinking back to the previous timeline, he felt he couldn’t just ignore it.

There was no one in the bedroom upstairs. Horne stood at the door for a moment before finally hearing faint but rapid breathing from inside the wardrobe.

He pulled open the wardrobe door, and dim warm light filled the cramped space. A teenager was curled up inside, trembling all over, his head buried between his knees. He didn’t look up and said in a muffled, impatient voice, “Didn’t I tell you to scram? Didn’t you understand?”

This was utterly different from his previous brazen demeanor. Horne didn’t know what to say for a moment and could only ask stiffly, “Are you okay?”

The instant he heard the voice, Moroz froze, then slowly raised his head.

The teenager’s face still carried a youthful innocence, even if it was just a mask. His brows were tightly furrowed, his lips pale, and he looked badly tormented.

Horne gazed at him calmly from outside the wardrobe, watching the myriad emotions in Moroz’s eyes—nothing like the innocence a teenager should have, but rather the emptiness of someone who had endured countless changes.

From Moroz’s perspective, the world beyond the wardrobe door didn’t exist; there was only Horne. He opened his mouth, but the words to drive him away died on his lips.

Horne sighed softly, crouching down slightly to meet the eyes of the person in the wardrobe. He softened his voice. “Do you want me to leave?”

Moroz’s expression went somewhat blank. Hearing Horne’s question, his hands clutched at his pant legs, creating wrinkles, before he shook his head.

Horne eyed his disheveled collar and wanted to straighten it for him, but he withdrew his hand halfway. His tone was even, though his pace slowed a bit. “Those ghosts’ illusions target the player’s own painful memories. What you went through… never mind.” Halfway through, Horne realized he was prying too much; these weren’t things he needed to know.

Yet Moroz’s body suddenly leaned forward a little. He spoke urgently, “I can tell you! I…” His voice trailed off toward the end.

Horne watched him quietly, neither standing nor pressing, simply waiting.

After a moment, Moroz extricated himself from his curled-up position. He kept his head down, his voice tinged with bitterness. “I joined this game for the person I love.”

Horne was somewhat surprised. He had always found this teenager suspicious and had imagined many possible reasons, but never this one.

As Moroz spoke of it, his gaze drifted past Horne to somewhere else, his voice carrying a low, hoarse sadness. “The person I love is trapped by his family, forever living for them. He’s in so much pain, constantly getting hurt. I know he doesn’t want to, but his family won’t let him go. He has no choice. I really want… to win the game and save him.”

Horne stared at him silently for a long time. Just as Moroz began to suspect he had noticed something, Horne finally asked, “Why?”

Moroz blinked. “Why what?”

Horne explained calmly, “Maybe he already made his choice.”

Now it was Moroz asking “why.”

Horne’s gaze kept getting drawn to Moroz’s messy clothes. In the end, he couldn’t hold back and straightened his collar for him.

As he smoothed out the wrinkles in Moroz’s white shirt, he said indifferently, “Humans are creatures who often say one thing but mean another. They claim what they want or don’t want, yet their actions frequently contradict their words. No one truly traps or burdens another person—not even parents. If he acts as if bound by his family, that’s already his willing choice.”

Moroz froze in place. The insufficient light cast shifting shadows on his face, his eyes dark and inscrutable. He bit his lip lightly, took a deep breath, then suddenly tugged at the corner of his mouth and leaned back against the wardrobe’s inner wall, laughing weakly. “Maybe so. But even if that’s true, I wouldn’t change. I’d still stay by his side, no matter what happens.”

“Mm.” Horne responded simply. Having crouched for so long, he simply sat cross-legged on the floor. “But if you just want to stay by his side, you don’t need to join this game or make a wish. You just need to do it.”

Moroz fell silent.

Of course he was doing it. He had been doing it for over a hundred years, never stopping.

He raised his head, looking at Horne with utmost seriousness.

The two fell into mutual silence. In this cramped space, their breathing grew loud, their emotions profound.

After a long while, Moroz spoke, somewhat tentatively. “Can I ask… when the ghosts touched you, what did you see? You… you were in so much pain, screaming and crying the whole time.”

Mentioning this made Horne’s heart sink.

He knew he must have screamed for a long time, given how sore his throat was, but he hadn’t realized he had cried too. In his memories, the last time he cried was at twenty—not counting the breakdowns from nightmares where he woke sobbing.

Horne lowered his eyelashes slightly, letting his hair partially shield his face. When quiet, he always gave off an obedient impression, showing no wariness or guard. But when his eyes opened, there was a deep, distant detachment.

Horne’s facial muscles felt too weak to move. Pretending nonchalance, his voice came out somewhat hoarse. “Some… distant past, some dead people. I don’t know. It just reminds me not to trust others.”

Even probing the reason, he still couldn’t recall it. Only when he approached the city gate time and again, passing through the thick fog amid immense pain, did he gain a shred of clarity.

That city gate seemed like an insurmountable chasm in his heart, warning him of something.

That was why he found this game’s design so bizarre—it always dredged up painful pasts. Those pains were emotions; since he couldn’t recall specific events, only a profound sorrow in his heart remained.

In the silence, Moroz’s voice rang out especially earnest. “You’re a good person.”

Horne looked up, seeing Moroz’s serious expression. He gave a rare light smile, though his mouth quickly straightened again as he said indifferently, “You’re overthinking it. You don’t know me.” He didn’t want to explain further; that was enough.

“But you came up to find me, to comfort me,” Moroz countered for him. “Even though you were so guarded against me at first.”

Horne’s reply was cool and emotionless. “Just for the game objective.”

As expected, that kind of answer. Moroz leaned forward a bit; he always wanted to get closer to Horne, only to pull back when he realized how near they were.

Horne noticed but said nothing. They weren’t really acquaintances anyway; this sense of boundaries actually made him more at ease.

“You’re guarded against everyone. I don’t know what you’ve been through.” Moroz softened his voice. His thoughts drifted far away, back to the long-ago Frost Plains, where those memories were buried under pure white snow, wrapped in thick layers of time, resurfacing in another form.

“But the person I love told me that when we encounter awful people or terrible things, it’s easy to doubt the world’s essence and fairness, to lock away our hearts and turn cold. But the world isn’t the problem—it’s that our blinded hearts can’t discern. God cast a spark into the human world not to destroy, but to temper. After the burning, some hearts turn to black charcoal, others to diamonds.” As Moroz said this, he stared into Horne’s eyes, his voice soft yet solemn.

Horne kept his head down, silently regarding his hands with a scornful self-mockery. “Oh, so you think I’m the black charcoal.”

“You’re a diamond.” Moroz replied urgently.

Horne wasn’t sure what he was thinking at that moment. He lifted his head and met Moroz’s faintly shining eyes. Suddenly curious, he asked, “How old are you this year?”

“Eighteen.” Moroz answered truthfully according to this mask.

“Eighteen, huh.” Horne turned his head, gazing into the depths of the wardrobe as if lost in thought, murmuring, “Indeed still at that naive age.”

At that age himself, he had been even more naive and innocent—more so than Moroz.

“Brother, the person I love also told me that the awful people we meet in life make sense when we look back much later. Your encounter and experiences were reasonable; they had their perspective, and you had yours. People on different levels don’t cross paths a second time, so there’s no need to judge them. At that point, just clear your own prejudices and let it end.” Moroz alluded in another way, afraid to be too direct or obvious.

Another silence followed. It took Horne a long time to speak. “All this came from the person you love?”

Moroz tensed a little but nodded firmly.

Horne gave a faint “mm.” “The person you love sounds great.”

Moroz suddenly curved his lips, his eyes crinkling into smiling arcs, his volume rising unconsciously. “Brother, do you know? He loved going into the snowfields, shaping snow into a city—buildings, streets, pedestrians, like snow sculptures. He liked taking me to watch sunrises, sunsets, auroras; sneaking off to find abandoned phonographs, making tapes from scraps, playing choppy music in the middle of the night, pulling me to dance as if at a ball. We ended up getting chased and scolded by the neighbors.”

As he spoke of these things, the light in his eyes sparkled brilliantly. His hands rested over his chest, utterly devout.

Mentioning his beloved made all the surrounding negativity vanish. Only then did Horne feel this face finally matched the vibrancy of an eighteen-year-old—like life force poured down intensely like starlight.

But the more he spoke, the more his voice grew muffled, finally shattering into fragmented sorrow. “Even though he knew that in the age of the Aliens, none of those beauties he hoped for would ever come.”