Chapter 19

Teacher Mo… something was off.

Li Zhuo rested his chin on his hand, unconsciously poking his scratch paper with the tip of his pen.

The weather had been getting hotter day by day. Sometimes, even just sitting still, you’d find yourself drenched in sweat without lifting a finger. Whenever this happened, he couldn’t help but wonder:

Why did Teacher Mo always wear long sleeves and long pants? Didn’t he feel hot? Come to think of it, he’d never actually seen him sweat.

That was one thing.

The last time the class rotated seats, Li Zhuo was moved to a sun-drenched spot by the window in the morning. By afternoon, he’d been moved back.

In the past, students had begged the school to install air conditioning in the dorms year after year, and the school had played deaf and dumb year after year. Only this year had they not only listened, but responded with such lightning speed!

It was said an unnamed, kind-hearted donor had given the units for free? That was way too coincidental.

Even the school’s Psychological Counseling Room—in the mouths of other students, it was just a decorative sham to satisfy requirements, and they’d never even laid eyes on the psychological counselor. It was pretty much the same now, or rather, was it exclusively open to Li Zhuo?

If you followed Li Zhuo to the new counseling room, you’d find the door just happened to be open, and Teacher Mo would be sitting inside nine times out of ten. If any other student tried, what they met was, without exception, a tightly closed door.

Plenty of students had tested this. It was like in a game, where you couldn’t enter a certain dungeon until you met the trigger conditions.

And another thing…

Li Zhuo remembered tripping over a flowerbed somewhere on campus during his free time two weeks ago. The very next day, that flowerbed had been quietly removed.

Once, Mo Liang even brought up the time Li Zhuo was back in Pingshan Village. Li Zhuo guessed he might have found that episode of the family-search show featuring him. Why else would he ask a question like, “Was that man very bad to you?”

“Actually, my adoptive father—the man who bought me—he wasn’t that good to me, but he wasn’t that bad either. Just… ordinary.”

Li Zhuo was telling the truth.

One-eyed Yang certainly hadn’t doted on him like a precious treasure, but it wasn’t so bad that he was constantly beaten or cursed at. The environment was just like that, the conditions were just like that…

Li Zhuo calmly recalled:

“I remember when he was in a good mood, he’d hold me and look at the moon in the yard…”

“Back when he could still work, a few times when he came back from the town market, he’d bring me a few pieces of candy. The kind wrapped in clear, holographic foil, fruit-flavored…”

“So sweet it was almost sickening. I’d always dissolve it in hot water. That way the sweetness balanced out, and it would last me a long time.”

“You ask if it was good? Actually, now that I think about it, it was alright, I guess. I’ve already forgotten.”

He explained so earnestly, but the way Teacher Mo looked at him was still that strange way he couldn’t describe—thick with guilt and self-reproach, nearly overflowing.

“I should have come sooner…”

“Then you wouldn’t have suffered so much…”

“Does your hand still hurt?”

“Let me see…”

He kept apologizing to Li Zhuo. It clearly had nothing to do with him, yet he felt he was the one who had failed.

Recently, with summer vacation approaching, Li Zhuo had tentatively sent a text to his biological father.

The content had two parts. The first half reported his progress on the last monthly exam, from thirty-something in the class up to fifteenth. The second half hinted that summer break was starting, to see if he’d suggest bringing him back to Hai City…

That message sank like a stone into the ocean.

He was indeed down for two or three days at first, but then figured his father was probably just too busy. After all, he was the Chairman of such a massive Li Group—even when Li Zhuo was home, he’d always been busy.

So Li Zhuo stopped thinking about it. But Teacher Mo still seemed to take the matter deeply to heart. He seemed to mind the disregard shown to Li Zhuo even more than Li Zhuo himself did.

Every so often, he’d obliquely ask about his feelings toward the Li Family and their businesses, and what his aspirations were…

Teacher Mo once said, with a tone of contempt, that what little the Li Family had was trash not even worth mentioning. But those things were originally his—since they’d been taken, did he want them back?

“But I’ve never managed that many companies,” Li Zhuo earnestly corrected him. “And besides, that stuff isn’t mine. It’s my dad’s. Who he gives it to is his business…”

“……”

Teacher Mo was silent for a long time back then. Afterwards, Li Zhuo would often catch him staring with a complex, utterly indescribable look in his eyes.

So strange, wasn’t it?

Of course, Li Zhuo carefully considered, Teacher Mo’s recent emotional instability might not necessarily be because of him. It could be something else entirely.

Hadn’t Teacher Mo mentioned before that he had a child who passed away in an accident? Maybe it was about that child?

A person shouldn’t be too presumptuous.

As for the kindness toward him, he was probably just a substitute—like seeing something that reminds you of someone else, right?

Teacher Mo could always comfort him with gentle words. But what about Teacher Mo himself? The books all say a physician can’t heal himself. That seemed to hold some truth.

But… but…

“……”

Problems from real life were indeed more complex, more variable, and far harder to solve than problems from a textbook.

Li Zhuo wasted an entire break period, yet only managed to poke a dense field of tiny black dots into his scratch paper, still unable to figure the problem out.

He felt like he’d almost arrived at an answer, but also felt that it wasn’t the real one.

Or perhaps the right answer had flown right before his eyes countless times, but he himself hadn’t reached out to grab it.

The days flowed on like a gentle, tranquil stream, calmly and without ripples. There were only two weeks left until summer break, and the class schedule visibly intensified.

That Sunday’s evening self-study session, the head teacher wasn’t there, a rare occurrence. The English teacher took over instead. He was arguably the students’ favorite among the main subject teachers.

Sure enough, after finishing the lesson, he started sharing stories of his own life. For the final ten minutes, he let the students discuss freely and quiz each other on vocabulary.

The classroom instantly became a noisy marketplace.

Li Zhuo carefully checked his misspelled words in the dictation exercise, while Deng Yuliang chatted about everything under the sun with the person in the front seat.

Li Zhuo still didn’t join in, but the thoughts spinning in his head wouldn’t stop. Perhaps it was because of a keyword about aliens that spilled out from his deskmate’s discussion.

Li Zhuo latched onto this point.

—What if he were an alien?

It sounded incredibly absurd.

Generally speaking, most people’s impression of aliens came from sci-fi movies—green-skinned men invading Earth with claws bared, or Grim Reapers from horror and the supernatural…

Compared to those, Teacher Mo was just a bit elusive, at most… just a little nicer to him. No matter how you looked at it, he didn’t fit the profile, right?

But…

The chattering around him still hadn’t stopped.

Suddenly, Li Zhuo heard a set of footsteps. He quickly lowered his head, flipped open a textbook page, and mouthed vocabulary words while rapidly warning:

“The teacher’s looking over here.”

Soon, the footsteps grew clearer.

The gossip instantly ceased. By the time the English teacher patrolled past, all he heard was the muttering sound of students reciting words and texts…

The whole thing was like a plain, unremarkable pebble sinking into a churning stream, vanishing in an instant.

【What is this?】

Mo Liang was looking through a monthly summary report the System had sent him about Li Zhuo.

It didn’t just include basic info like his height and weight, but also his daily diet, sleep conditions, backed-up micro-expressions, every strand of hair that had fallen out…

To make it more intuitive, the dense data was also rendered into a series of visualized arcs.

Looking at the different colored lines that had stabilized, Mo Liang was in an excellent mood. He quickly noticed a faint grey line at the very bottom.

【Why is this line declining?】

【This line records, from activation until now, the number of times the Mission Target has expressed curiosity or inquired about the Host’s personal issues…】

【The peak was in the first month. From the second month, it gradually decreased. In this most recent month, it has dropped to zero…】

As for why it had reached zero…

The System lagged for two seconds before arriving at a conclusion.

【Perhaps it is because the Host is now more and more practiced at playing the role of a human?】

At this prompt, Mo Liang realized it had indeed been a long time since he’d heard Li Zhuo ask anything about his past.

Questions like where he used to be from, what he’d been like as a student, why he’d chosen to come to Experimental High School, what his child had been like, where he went during the holidays—he really hadn’t heard those in a while.

But maybe, just like the System said, it was because he was now more and more experienced at playing a human?

In the very beginning, he hadn’t even known how to display breathing. He’d gone a whole day without eating or drinking and hadn’t known to blink. Later on, he’d improved by leaps and bounds. He simulated breathing, blinked at regular intervals, no longer ate bones together with the meat, and no longer exerted a bite force beyond normal human capacity…

He himself also felt he was now more and more like a legitimate primitive human. This made him feel great. He’d taken another step closer to his child!

Mo Liang quickly cast this question to the back of his mind and carefully scrutinized the itinerary for the Summer Camp. Besides a few popular scenic spots, he focused on the personnel list and the food arrangements for each meal.

【Must he make friends?】

【Of course…】

The mission had now entered its second phase. The previous phase was to restore his physical health. This phase required helping him become less fearful of social interaction, to step out of the shadows.

The System explained that many branch missions were actually formed from the deepest obsessions in the Mission Target’s heart. Some cared more about career, some about revenge, some about family, friendship, or love. Different goals meant different focus points.

After layers of screening by the System and Mo Liang, from among many plans, they had settled on the upcoming Summer Camp.

When Mo Liang told Li Zhuo about this, the boy was sitting cross-legged on the fluffy floor mat, holding a test paper, AC blasting, head bent over the coffee table as he diligently worked through problems.

He wasn’t very surprised by the news about signing up for the Summer Camp. He kept doing calculations on his scratch paper.

“Mhm. I understand. Thank you, Teacher Mo.”

That was his reply.

Their child’s reaction didn’t match the System’s predictions, so the anxious caregiver inevitably started worrying again.

【Is that him liking it or disliking it?】

The System immediately began analyzing micro-expressions and concluded he was currently deeply focused on solving problems.

【It should be… liking it?】

【That’s good then.】

The System was scanning every one of Li Zhuo’s micro-expressions. Mo Liang, naturally, was also observing his child. Or rather, it wasn’t observation, but a gaze filled with adoration.

His eyes meticulously traced every tiny, downy hair on the boy’s face, every faint or distinct little mole, every rise and fall of breath, every current of air…

This descendant from the distant Pollution Era didn’t know what such staring meant to a primitive human. All he knew was that this was his child.

He wanted to gaze at him endlessly like this, doing nothing else, just letting his figure remain permanently imprinted on his retina.

In this past semester, Li Zhuo had grown taller. His sunken cheeks had filled out, his posture straightened…

His lips were thin and ruddy, his brows and eyes handsome and sharp, his pupils dark as deep pools. When at a loss, he bore the unique blank innocence of a youth. When silent and spacing out, he appeared remarkably aloof.

And since he’d just gotten a new haircut, trimming away the bangs that used to somewhat block his vision and fully revealing his full forehead and cold, sharp features, the number of people secretly turning back to look at him on the street had skyrocketed.

In short, the wilted, listless little cabbage from before, carefully watered by his caregiver, had seen its shriveled leaves soak up moisture and grow into a glistening, vibrant little cabbage!

The System said the Mission Target was already in his growth period. Once sufficient nutrition caught up, this was all perfectly normal.

Mo Liang paid this no heed. He just silently adjusted the frequency of his own breathing, breath by breath, until it synchronized with Li Zhuo’s. Between one inhale and one exhale, they gradually merged into one.

“My child is breathing…”

“I love…”

“I love it so much…”