“I”

Yu Mao could already understand people so well, yet somehow she was always missing something in strange places, until she couldn’t even put together a complete self.

Like an apple riddled with holes, with no core growing inside yet.

She tried very hard to sense the food in her mouth. Its texture and flavor were both so unfamiliar that tears began falling again as she chewed.

When she cried, her expression hardly changed. Only those clear, wide eyes filled with tears; if you covered her eyes, it would be hard to tell she was crying at all.

It was precisely because of that emptiness elsewhere that all attention could gather in her eyes, making the complex, deep emotions in them all the more obvious.

Impossible to put into words.

Nan Changgeng’s movements went still. She pressed her lips together and fell silent, as if she didn’t know what to say. She should have asked why Yu Mao had suddenly started crying, but she realized she already seemed to understand.

“Changgeng...” She caught a tear with her fingertips; after glancing at it, she looked up at Nan Changgeng, her expression almost innocent. “I can feel so much of you, but I don’t have an ‘I’ to hold all of you and digest it.”

So she was always like a vessel, filling up until she split open again and again, then coming back to life once more.

Nan Changgeng was so overwhelmed by the faint, nameless stirring in her chest that she lost the ability to speak. When she finally opened her mouth, her voice was almost detachedly calm:

“The fact that you can realize that means you’ll have an ‘I’ soon.”

“That’s great.” Yu Mao couldn’t tell whether she was happy or not. She swallowed hard, and the food crushed into powder in her mouth obediently slid down, clearing a path through her esophagus as if it were also forcing its way through a blocked road in her brain.

She wiped her tears with both hands. When she spoke, she was often so blunt and direct that it could sound ambiguous:

“Feeling food seems like feeling you too. It’s just that its flavor isn’t as rich as yours.”

Nan Changgeng laughed. “What do I taste like?”

“A fusion of many flavors. It keeps changing; sometimes one flavor is stronger, and sometimes another comes through more clearly.” Yu Mao was very serious.

“Then I must not taste very good.”

She shook her head. “How could a person taste good?”

“Then what does a person need?” Nan Changgeng asked with interest, clearly trying to guide her.

“Need...” Yu Mao hesitated. After thinking for a moment, she said, “Life, a soul, and a sense of self.”

“Have you sensed yourself?”

“I...” She lowered her eyes, picked up a piece of baked potato, and put it into her mouth. The surface of the potato looked harmless enough, but the heat inside erupted the moment she bit down, stinging her mouth with a sharp burn. “It’s hot.”

She only said that much, then indifferently swallowed it down and lifted her eyes to the woman, staring at her intently. “I sensed it.”

“I can eat normally. I feel like I’m living like a person.”

Like a doll that had finally been fitted with a stomach; the empty shell was being filled bit by bit, becoming more and more like a living human being.

And Nan Changgeng was the one who had made her.

Something Lin Yan had failed to do for more than ten years, she had accomplished in just one day.

Nan Changgeng met her gaze in silence, joy hiding a trace of faint fear.

That fear had been fermenting all day.

It was the fear of suddenly being given too much power, only to have no idea whether she could hold onto her own heart under the crushing weight of it.

She had once seen all kinds of hypotheticals: if someone gave you a button, and every time you pressed it, a random person in the world would die; or the person you hated would suffer bad luck, and so on.

And now she truly had a “button.” She only had to say a single sentence to shape and control a person.

This life before her, body and mind alike, was at her mercy. Whether her request was reasonable or not, it only took a few words...

The conditions were too simple. And she happened to have such a huge flaw: an endless, bottomless greed.

Could she really restrain her desire to indulge, and avoid trying to reshape her again because of any emotion or passing whim?

“Grow up quickly...” The murmur was almost a sigh. Grow into a complete, independent person who would no longer be at her mercy.

Suddenly, someone squeezed in and sat down beside her, cutting off her thoughts.

“She can eat now? Oh my god, that’s amazing!”

Lin Baiyu’s outburst drew quite a few looks in the cafeteria.

Yuan Li came trotting over with her tray, craning her neck as far as it would go. “Really? Really?”

“How could it be fake?” Lin Baiyu’s eyes were shining with excitement. “Are you still eating? Show her again!”

As she spoke, Yuan Li arrived too, standing beside the table with equally heated eyes.

Yu Mao glanced at the two of them, then at Nan Changgeng. She was calmly cutting her own steak, not responding to Yu Mao’s gaze. A faint smile rested at the corners of her mouth, carrying some deeper meaning.

Yu Mao couldn’t be sure whether there would be a test related to these two, so for once she didn’t just ignore them. She picked up a piece of chicken stewed with potatoes and ate it.

Yuan Li’s mouth fell open. “Th-this is huge news!”

Yu Mao being able to eat normally was no less shocking to her than hearing that a chronic, terminal illness had been cured.

“Shouldn’t we celebrate something like this? Throw a party or something.” Lin Baiyu grinned, practically vibrating with the urge to have fun.

“You still have energy to play?” Chen Xia drifted past with a dark face and a listless tone. As a singing-and-dancing contestant, she not only had to practice her own dance but also help Lin Baiyu rehearse. “I’m about to die of exhaustion.”

Lin Baiyu widened her innocent, Kazi-style eyes; she looked lively as anything, unlike Chen Xia, who had two dark circles under her eyes and wore a thoroughly jaded expression. She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world:

“If we don’t wear ourselves out, the production team will wear us out anyway. It’s basically the same either way. If we do it ourselves, at least we can make sure it’s something we actually want to do.”

“Fair enough, but shouldn’t you at least ask the person involved first?” Chen Xia’s dead-fish eyes slowly turned toward Yu Mao.

Lin Baiyu puckered her mouth, instantly feeling like the whole thing was ruined.

But Yu Mao shifted her gaze to Nan Changgeng.

Nan Changgeng hadn’t said a word the entire time; she only watched Yu Mao’s reaction with a composed smile, as if waiting to see what she would do.

With no response to rely on, Yu Mao had to handle it herself. After thinking it over for a moment, she actually nodded. “I don’t mind.”

She needed to sense the world more deeply, and sense people too; perhaps feeling a more lively environment would be more effective?

That shocked the others badly; the surprise was almost the same as seeing her able to eat normally.

Yuan Li couldn’t help blurting out, “Damn, the sun’s rising in the west. Why are you suddenly acting so differently?”

Yu Mao swallowed; it was a little hard to keep from drifting off. Half a beat later, she remembered she needed to answer. “I’m trying to break my inertia and grow a soul to live with.”

“...Still the same way of talking. Yep, she wasn’t switched out.”

It was mysterious and incomprehensible.

Only Lin Baiyu was grinning foolishly. She didn’t care about the details; the important thing was that the celebration party now had a chance.

She turned to the camera and stared so hard that her eyes nearly crossed. “Director, you hear that? Hurry up and get a party organized for the cat!”

She didn’t want to play any of the weird games the production team had prepared. She wanted enjoyment; she wanted to be happy; she wanted a big meal!

Yu Mao kept looking at Nan Changgeng, silently stuffing meat into her mouth and devoting herself to her weight-gain plan. After a while, she suddenly asked:

“Is it okay for me to say things like this?”

Nan Changgeng froze. Her lips moved; she had originally wanted to say that there was no need to ask her permission for something like this, that no one’s words, actions, or decisions needed another person’s approval or satisfaction.

But the words turned once in her mouth and were forced back by some unknown feeling.

Her hand on the fork tightened quietly; her fingertips went pale. Though she still sat with her usual composure, she lowered her chin and gave the girl an affirmative answer. “Of course it’s okay.”

After saying that, she felt both a strange easing and a tension at the same time.

It was probably because she had acted against reason from the heart; satisfying, yet at the same time, an uncontrollable, hidden sense of danger was spreading.

“Okay...” Yu Mao only managed one word, then suddenly pressed her lips together tightly, as if she were hesitating.

The others, crowded off to the side, had already moved to nearby tables to eat and were discussing loudly with Lin Baiyu how the party should be arranged and what games to play.

They had only known each other for a short time and didn’t usually interact much. It wasn’t that they weren’t happy for Yu Mao, but there was no way they could be said to care deeply about it; compared to that, talking about how to have fun was of course more important. The celebration was just an excuse to enjoy themselves.

The noise and bustle were irritating, and Yu Mao really had no energy left to take it in. She temporarily withdrew the thread of attention she had cast over there.

Because her gaze was so obvious, Nan Changgeng’s expression shifted slightly. “Do you have something you want to say?”

“Mm.”

She had already briefly weighed her own concern against the instruction Nan Changgeng had once given her, determined which was more important, and so she no longer hesitated:

“I want to ask... no matter what we do, you’ll stay with me, right?” Her words were light, her expression carrying a certain awkwardness, like confusion.

Of course she had some sense of her own desires, but she still found it strange that she would voice a sentence that felt almost like a demand.

Nan Changgeng was stunned for a moment, then let out a short laugh of surprise and delight. “Of course I will. I’ll be with you.”

“You did very well. Expressing your wishes and asking for confirmation is very important.” She looked at her with a smile. “Do you feel at ease now?”

“Mm!” Yu Mao nodded hard, then tried seriously to describe it to her. “It’s a wonderful feeling. It’s different from the shame and unease I imagined would come after asking you for something and getting what I wanted. It’s like my heart’s been stuffed full of cotton; dry, warm, light, and full.”

Nan Changgeng saw the moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes again and could only sigh helplessly, teasing her, “But your eyes are wet.”

Yu Mao said, “My body always has all kinds of physiological reactions because of you. I’m used to it already.”

“...Ah.” The woman paused.

Then she quietly lowered her head and shoved food into her mouth, as if the one who had been thinking too far was not herself. Her tone stayed flat. “Fine. Then I’ll get used to it too.”

Dinner ended fairly smoothly.

Yu Mao ate very little; her stomach needed time to adjust slowly, so she didn’t force herself to eat more.

Nan Changgeng, on the other hand, forced herself to eat quite a bit more. That vague unease about the future made her desperately want her body to become better, or at least not so frail and windblown.

And that night, in a rare move, she went to the practice room and worked out for a while with Lin Baiyu, who was rehearsing her dance.

She hadn’t expected the intensity to exceed her limits, though; after just ten minutes, she was already panting heavily and couldn’t get up from the floor...

She was the textbook example of an uneven talent: maxed out in music, not bad when it came to intelligence, but physically mediocre since childhood. She hated movement and preferred stillness. The period when her stamina had been best was back when she had been struggling in the industry, constantly needing to sing and jump around on stage; she had gotten through it entirely because her younger body had been decent enough.

But now her body had already been worn down by those years of decline. Her immune system was poor; she got sick often, and her strength had dropped quite a bit.

TL Note:

Kazi-style eyes (卡姿兰大眼) = a meme-like phrase for very large, glossy, exaggerated “big eyes.”