Noel was once a victim of a human experimentation case.

The criminal was eventually caught by the police, and he was sent to an orphanage.

In the orphanage, he encountered many bad kids. Children jealous of his looks would throw dirty water on him. Kids who couldn't stand his intelligence tried to push his head underwater...

However, he set up a few traps. He let the former get scratched on the face by a cat, and the latter slipped into a river while playing. It wasn't much; as long as he showed a sympathetic and pitiful expression, everyone would think it had nothing to do with him. After all, who would suspect a poor little thing?

To protect oneself, let the aggressor fall into the trap first.

This is the survival technique of a genius.

However, after being adopted, he no longer needed those schemes.

His adoptive father was a famous musician, and his adoptive mother was an international jewelry designer. They treated him very well, and with just a slight mention from him, they would send him stacks of books.

In the deep night, he held books as if floating in a sweet, dark fantasy land. He read about the Jane Eyre being sent to Lowood Orphanage, realizing that the world truly does not pity the humble solitary; meek for a day, meek forever. He read about Les Miserables' perfect villain Thenardier, a personification of all dark forces in society, who by his wickedness allowed Jean Valjean to be exonerated, completing his life's only good deed accidentally. He also read about You Qing, who died absurdly, with moonlight on the road like it was sprinkled with salt.

"Noel, what do you want to become?" One day, his adoptive mother asked while watering the golden sunflowers in the backyard: "A writer? A mathematician? A physicist?"

"An adventurer."

He answered so from under his fluffy golden hair.

"An adventurer... that's quite romantic too." His adoptive mother didn't say anything like "useless" or "you must have a proper job," instead she supported him.

They talked about the worlds in books, about sceneries from all over, about the sunflowers in the backyard... An early-maturing child and parents who cherished romance, they seemed to become peers.

The parents loved romantic activities: musicals, handball, puppet shows... The room was filled with wooden puppets, and the family always performed plays with strings during their leisure time. Father played the male protagonist, mother played the heroine, and Noel played the child.

Noel felt comfort and even a slight attachment to this life... Is this considered "love"?

Whenever he looked in the mirror, seeing the ghastly surgical scars on his body, he felt like a broken glass bottle being slowly filled with happiness.

Colorful star candies would fall into his chest, clinking within the bottle and shimmering.

On Noel's twelfth birthday, his adoptive father mentioned a person: "This time when I went to Dragon Country to perform, I saw the famous pianist Ms. Lin. She didn't seem well, perhaps due to her five-year-old child."

Noel was not concerned about the stranger Ms. Lin, only asking: "Are the landscapes in Dragon Country beautiful?"

"Our adventurer, if you are to travel the world someday, you must visit Dragon Country! It's beautiful there." The adoptive father extended his arms, lifting him high in the air.

Noel flailed in mid-air. How old was he to still be lifted so high!

The family roared with laughter.

The room was filled with the scent of lavender, and the boundless fields outside the window, with windmills embedded under the azure sky like butterflies slowly flapping their wings. The golden sunflowers swayed as if the happy times would never end...

...

[You Qing was the first to die suddenly.]

["You Qing won't be running along this road again," said his mother.]

—— "Alive"

...

All the one thousand books on the shelf have been read, but Noel didn't ask his parents for new ones because they had a fight.

The reasons for the argument were nothing more than these: trivial matters of life, some differences in opinions, the parents' nagging.

In the evening, the parents took him to the amusement park. Thinking that they hadn't reconciled, Noel refused to accompany them and went into a Ferris wheel cabin by himself.

As the Ferris wheel rose, his parents waiting on the ground grew farther and farther away. He opened the book he carried with him and focused on reading.

——So he didn't hear the screams from the ground.

In the dim dusk, he leaned against the small door of the Ferris wheel's cabin, curled up reading translations from the book, like a cat half asleep and half awake.

Moonlight spilled over his golden hair, like eternal pure radiance.

...

"[...] I looked at that winding road to the town, but I couldn't hear my son running barefoot towards me, moonlight scattered on the road as if it was sprinkled with salt."

...

"You— who are you—!"

"—Where is your child?"

"What child, I don't understand what you're talking about."

"—Initially, we thought we could easily take him from the orphanage, but you adopted him. It seems you genuinely love him, poor parents... You seem unaware of what had happened to him; he was our most outstanding experimental subject."

"What experimental subject... you all..."

"—Unfortunately, it was your kindness that brought you a big trouble. Your mistake was adopting him."

"Tell Noel to run! Fanny, shout aloud—"

"Bang! Bang!"

Two soft sounds, like silenced gunshots.

Straight away followed the sound of two bodies hitting the ground, neither heavy nor loud.

...

"[...] It was time to bury You Qing, but I couldn't bear it. I sat in front of my parents' grave, holding my son tightly, refusing to let go, letting his face rest against my neck. You Qing's face seemed to be frozen..."

...

The Ferris wheel reached its peak and began descending.

Noel continued reading while constructing triangular blocks on the table.

He felt a slight regret in his heart. Should he not have sulked over trivial matters? After all, last night's white sauce veal stew was delicious, and mom also made strawberry pudding...

Let's silently count to three.

After counting, the Ferris wheel's cabin would hit the ground, and he would open the cabin door to tell his parents—I forgive you. Even if you always leave me at home to read, it's okay. I'm not an immature child who can't understand your busyness.

Counting silently in his heart.

One,

Two,

...

"[...] thinking that You Qing wouldn't speak again, wouldn't run around with shoes, my heart felt a sour pain, so fierce that I couldn't even cry."

...

Three.

The Ferris wheel touched the ground.

He stopped reading, paused like a brave about to enter the forest, and with a crisp click, pushed open the cabin door—

He looked toward the door, lips slightly parted.

He wanted to tell them—I forgive you, Mom and Dad. Can we continue the puppet show? Last time we had reached the part where Fantine sold her hair; now, it's time to continue...

What greeted him was not his parents, but a gun.

"Click."

The darkly yawning gun barrel bore residual blood, left from being fired at close range. At the last moment, his father threw himself barehanded at the assailant, providing an opportunity for his mother to survive.

But they didn't succeed.

No one succeeded.

Two cold bodies lay on the ground, blood oozing out, staining the Blue Rose Scepter used by the father for his performances red.

The Ferris wheel still slowly turned, the blocks on the table collapsed, he maintained the motion of opening the door, as if frozen.

He was dragged away from the Ferris wheel, directly facing the cold corpses, while a stranger in a white lab coat said with interest, "Say something. Plead, roar, cry your heart out... We've finally caught you."

People lifted his arms, and his blue eyes were gradually sinking into the cold silence of the sea.

Perhaps he should have understood long ago, this is the world's partiality to geniuses. Whatever it gives you, it must take away something.

Whenever his parents touched the scars on his back, he would tremble slightly—this was the remnant left on him. But he always felt the pain had passed, happiness had arrived. The tragedy wouldn't follow him like a shadow, he would live happily.

But this seems to be wrong.

Reality is not a fairy tale.

These criminals conducting human experimentation, come from a cult. They once dug up information about "eternal life" in the Polar Region and speculated that it might be a gift from outer space. So they started capturing orphans everywhere for crazy human experiments. They had an Experimental City, among countless dead children, Noel was the most successful subject—but was saved by the police.

But there was more than one den, and the darkness of the world cannot be washed away by justice alone. Those who pursue "eternal life" exist even at the highest levels—how can the full-throated justice of the common people be displayed?

Thus, even after tracking down the adoptive parents, these people did not give up, determined to capture Noel back.

He never thought these people would be so lawless.

Desiring "love" is inadvisable.

"[... I know the twilight is fleeting]." Facing everyone, he didn't cry or plead.

They looked at him puzzled, not understanding what he meant.

"[Night has fallen from the sky.]" He stared at the blood flowing on the ground.

—I see vast land baring its solid chest, a posture of summoning.

—Walk over there, leaves will wave to you, stones will smile at you, rivers will greet you. There is no poverty or wealth, no sadness or pain, no hatred or animosity... There everyone is dead and equal.

He asked, "What place is that?"

I said, "A place where there is no grave for the dead."

(—Yu Hua "The Seventh Day")

...

If I hadn't seen light, I wouldn't crave it in the darkness.

If I hadn't felt happiness, I wouldn't miss the past amidst endless pain.

But, dear, tell me.

Why have those days gone forever?

...

Noel's body time was forever frozen in his teenage state.

The pain endured for it, he told no one.

His happy childhood lasted only three short years, and all after was long torment. But when Su Ming'an asked, he just smiled and said—

—[I had a happy childhood].

For him, those brief three years.

Were everything.

...

Su Ming'an opened his eyes.

Why Noel before eight years old became an experimental subject, and how Noel at twelve grew to twenty-five... These memories he did not have. He wanted to save Noel but had no chance. The story abruptly stopped when Noel was captured.

But he can fill in himself—why Noel would see his younger self by the roadside.

At that time, Noel should be close to twenty, having already escaped the claws of human experimentation. So Noel followed his father's dying words and came to Dragon Country to travel. Hence, the future true friend appeared by chance in his years.

Moreover, Noel knew well how painful human experimentation is, so when he wielded the scalpel to grant children self-defense abilities, he had long trained the least painful surgical method.

As for those painful, detour surgical wounds... he had long personally tested them.

All the pain had been left to his childhood, no new child would suffer for it.

"It turns out that even before the World Game started, high-dimensional forces had been spying on Zhai Xing... The eternal life information from the Polar Region was clearly not a human creation." Su Ming'an mused.

Now it seems, Noel should have already completed his revenge, and that cult was long gone. The infatuation with "eternal life" was not realized, only the body time was frozen.

If Su Ming'an could still assist Lv Shu in getting revenge, completing regrets. But for Noel... Su Ming'an couldn't interfere with his past. Noel was already complete, there was nothing left to remedy. If not for seeing the memory fragments, Su Ming'an had never imagined Noel had suffered such cruel experiments—almost no different from the childhood of Su Wensheng.

Noel looked extremely optimistic, like a standard child who grew from a happy original family. No one would suspect his brutal childhood.

"... Su Ming'an?" Little A Ba's voice came from behind: "I picked up Lv Shu's fragments, do you want to take a look?"

Su Ming'an turned to look at him.

After a moment, he asked softly:

"Little A Ba, how did you get through it?"

Little A Ba's eyes flickered for a moment, switching to a deep blue belonging to Dieying: "... that's not called 'getting through'."

"Hmm?"

"It should be called... 'experience'. I do not acknowledge my childhood as tragic and do not need pity and sympathy."

"Would Noel think like you?" Su Ming'an said.

"I have nothing to do with him, so I don't know." As if touching upon an unhappy topic, the deep blue eyes soon switched to azure.

Su Ming'an gazed into the distance at the Ferris wheel.

Pairs of parents took their children into the Ferris wheel, the gentle multicolored lights suffusing with radiance, laughter drifting far away.

Some children wore mechanical arms and bones, presumably members of the New World Guild. Their faces showed no pain, nor silent despair.

No need to cry in personal space, no need to be treated as meat pigs by adults—in Noel's surgery, they gained self-protection capabilities, would not taste helplessness like under the Ferris wheel.

—Walk over there.

Leaves will wave to you, stones will smile at you, rivers will greet you. There is no poverty or wealth, no sadness or pain, no hatred or animosity.

The blood shed by predecessors, the scalpel with changed directions, the smile on the genius' face.

—When Noel Agnini confronted the painful past, when wielding the scalpel for children wishing to grow stronger, repeatedly recollecting his own trauma and PTSD, thus obtaining surgical experience—he never cared—

Others' judgment of him, whether angel or demon.

So, when he smiled responding to Su Ming'an's query, he also never cared—

—his past, whether it should belong to conceptualized pain, or "happiness".

...

[I indulge in imagination, yet tightly grasped by reality, I clearly feel the division of self.]

[The moment of happiness is to savor the good tea before me, letting the delightful feeling of the moment grow richer, while you before me conversing are my source of happiness.]

["—'Alive'"]

...

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