Little Pink Starfish

Holding the handle, An Zhe said expressionlessly, “Am I not committing indecent assault right now?”
“No,” Lu Feng turned and walked back to the bedroom, saying, “Whether indecent assault is established depends on the victim’s will.”
And this guy still has the nerve to call himself the victim.

An Zhe had seen through this man. After dragging the suitcase back home, he placed it in the most inconspicuous corner of the room. He wouldn’t let that Lu Feng inside see the sun again.

At this moment, the news on the TV had ended, switching to tomorrow’s weather forecast. The sweet voice of the host said the plains where the base was located would experience rare strong winds. Everyone was advised to shut doors and windows tightly.

When An Zhe first became a mushroom, he was afraid of strong winds because they could damage mushrooms. Later, after his body transformed from the break, he gradually stopped fearing the wind. On the contrary, he began to enjoy the feeling of being blown by it.

After washing up, he returned to his bedroom and read his textbook for a while. As night deepened, An Zhe decided to sleep.

At that moment, a low, strange sound echoed in his ears.
It was long, undulating, like wind resonating in the narrowest canyon. Sometimes a very low moaning, sometimes suddenly sharp. It sounded like wind outside, yet also like it echoed throughout the entire room, with no clear source.

This wasn’t the first time he had heard the sound. On many nights in this house, the deep, distant noise accompanied the dripping sounds from the kitchen faucet. A strangely harmonious combination, often making him hallucinate that he was still in the abyss—outside the cave, where wind blew from the depths of the dense forest, and the secretions of plants or animals dripped onto moss-covered rocks. Sometimes, the wind and cave structure created an eerie resonance, deep murmurs echoing from all directions, like the mutterings of some unknown creature.

But tonight, the sound was louder than ever before. An Zhe finally confirmed—the source was inside his own room.
He frowned, closed his eyes, and carefully sensed his surroundings. Besides the wind outside the window, there was another sound—near his body—

He suddenly opened his eyes, got out of bed barefoot, picked up the flashlight from the table, turned it on, knelt down, lifted the bed sheet, and shone the light under the bed.

A pitch-black round hole appeared before his eyes—right where the bed touched the wall and floor.
The hole was about the size of a human head, like a man-made pipe opening, completely dark inside, nothing visible. He felt wind blowing from it. The sound that had disturbed him for over a month was exactly the wind inside that pipe.

He stared at the hole for half a minute, then dropped the sheet and climbed back into bed. Houses like this always had some strange structures. He had to sleep early tonight; tomorrow was an important day.

*

“Your bodies
Still struggle
To return.”

“And nameless wildflowers
Already bloom above your heads.”

An Zhe watched Bai Nan transcribe a poem line on his test paper. Today was the final exam for this group of cubs, and he was in charge of patrolling the exam room and preventing cheating.

Last night’s deep sound echoed in the classroom too, but everyone seemed used to it. An Zhe found a similar hole in a corner of the classroom. It seemed this was common in such buildings. He hadn’t noticed before because the daytime noise drowned it out. Today, the strong wind outside amplified the wind in the holes.

Passing Bai Nan’s desk, he walked forward. Ji Sha’s paper was a mess, full of scribbles and erasures, with only a few neat English words scattered in the English section, most of them wrong.

Most of the cubs were like Ji Sha. Some didn’t even make the effort to scribble, leaving their test sheets nearly blank. Of course, a rare few—seven or eight—completed their papers very well.

An Zhe walked and observed, coming to the corner of the classroom beside a cold cub named Si Nan.

—Si Nan had already finished his paper, even though the exam had only started for half an hour. He was faster than everyone else.
At the moment, he wasn’t reviewing or daydreaming, but drawing on the blank parts of the paper with a black pen.

Calling it drawing wasn’t quite right—they were random black lines, tangled in chaos, like vines in the abyss. Some lines seemed to break through the surface in madness. By the time the ninety-minute test ended, the manic lines had filled the whole paper, with only the answer areas still legible.

After collecting the papers, the cubs were led back to the dorms by the life instructor. An Zhe carried the exams to the office, where Lin Zuo and Ke Lin were already present. Lin Zuo had just finished grading the math and logic papers. Seeing An Zhe enter, he took the papers and said, “You and Ke Lin handle the score entry.”

An Zhe obediently agreed and sat next to Ke Lin, who read out the cubs’ names and scores while An Zhe entered them into the computer.

While entering scores, An Zhe softly said, “He’s amazing.”

He had looked through the math and logic paper. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were the easiest parts. Some geometry and logic questions—An Zhe wasn’t sure he could solve them.

At this moment, someone said, “Si Nan is a very rare genius.”
An Zhe: “Mm.”

“But I don’t plan to let him advance to Class A,” Lin Zuo said.

After a month of living here, An Zhe had learned the cubs’ advancement rules.
Life instructors had a points chart, and there was another one for classes. These recorded bonuses and penalties. At the end, the total scores determined final placement. Some cubs would move up to Class A to continue their education in the main city and eventually serve in its institutions. Others went to military bases for training and selection. One month later, the military might pick promising cubs to train as soldiers. The rest would be sent to outer cities to await adoption. If no one adopted them, they would become outer city residents.

But Lin Zuo said he wouldn’t let Si Nan into Class A.
An Zhe asked, “Why?”
“His personality is problematic,” Lin Zuo said. “He’s also unfit for the military. He lacks emotions and harbors hatred toward the base. He can’t serve the main city. Eden agrees with my evaluation. He’ll be placed in Class C. He’ll be your responsibility now.”

An Zhe: “…Okay.”

“He’s a very strange child,” Lin Zuo added. “The life instructor said he wakes up frequently at night, sometimes trembling, but there’s no clear illness. The caregiver who looked after him before age three said he lost a friend, possibly leaving a psychological shadow.”

The morning passed. After calculating the final scores, five cubs including Bai Nan were selected and sent to the seventh floor of Eden for further education. Lin Zuo rotated to the third floor to lead new level-one students. An Zhe and Ke Lin officially became class teachers for the remaining cubs, tasked with taking them to the military base and supervising their training and assessments.

The main city was efficient. That afternoon, they took a shuttle to a military training ground on the city’s edge, accompanied by cubs from other classes.

The training ground was very windy, raising fine sand. But the cubs were excited, running and jumping around the open field—
Military personnel would soon arrive to take over. An Zhe and Ke Lin had nothing to do but watch from the sidelines.

Sitting side by side on a metal bench, Ke Lin suddenly spoke—he and An Zhe hadn’t exchanged a word all month.

“I’m willing to let go of some hatred toward the Judges,” he said.
An Zhe looked at him and found his gaze pierced through layers of buildings, toward a distant gray corner of Eden. It was a very cold gaze.

“Because the entire main city is as cold and heartless as the Judges,” Ke Lin said, staring into the distance.
An Zhe: “Why?”

“Do you see Eden?” Ke Lin said. “It looks like a beehive.”

Eden was a massive hexagonal structure, indeed resembling a hive. An Zhe said nothing. Ke Lin continued on his own.

“Eden is the queen bee. Every year it produces tens of thousands of children. From age three, they undergo harsh assessments to select the top percentile of intelligence. These are retained in the main city for research or other elite work. These kids are valuable to the main city—they’re the drones, so they get the best living conditions.”
“The rest are worker bees, assigned to the poor outer cities. The base controls food and water, so the workers become mercenaries, risking their lives outside to bring back supplies that the base uses to benefit the main city.”

He sneered. “That’s how the base operates. Only people useful to the main city are considered people. They blew up District 6 without a second thought because outer city people are just discarded goods to them.”

An Zhe said, “But the main city can only support so few people.”
Ke Lin turned to him: “Do you think what they’re doing is right?”

After a pause, An Zhe nodded.

“You think they’re right because you survived. You’re standing here, from the main city’s perspective.” Ke Lin grew emotional, his chest heaving.
“If human interests come first, then everything they do is justified,” he said. “But those who died—the ones they bombed to death—your family, your friends, what did they do wrong? Weren’t they human too?”

An Zhe said nothing. He wasn’t confused by Ke Lin’s questions. In the abyss, there were also social creatures. From long-term observation, he knew that for an individual animal, survival was the most important. But for a group, the continuation of the group was paramount. He didn’t think Ke Lin was wrong—just that he might not be suited to live in Virginia Base.

Ke Lin looked into his eyes and said at last, “I understand now. You have no emotions at all.”
Their conversation ended there.

An Zhe turned his gaze back to the cubs. They were much cuter than Ke Lin.

But at that moment, chaos broke out among the cubs. A fight had started.

An Zhe stood up and walked into the group. Ke Lin followed.

The fighters were Si Nan and another strong boy. Si Nan’s eyes were a little red, pinning the boy to the ground.

“Let him go,” Ke Lin said. “Si Nan, points deducted.”
Si Nan still didn’t let go. Ke Lin had to step in and forcefully separate them. An adult’s strength was far greater than a child’s.

Si Nan stood off to the side, expression cold. An Zhe looked down and asked, “What happened?”

Si Nan said nothing. The other boy shouted, “You were talking in your sleep last night, shouting Lily’s name! Lily was already taken away and locked up—you’ll never find her!”

An Zhe saw Si Nan clench his fists.

Lily—sounded like a girl’s name.

He asked, “Who is Lily?”
Si Nan finally answered: “My friend.”
“Where is she?”
“In Eden,” Si Nan said coldly.

An Zhe recalled Lin Zuo’s words: “He lost a friend.” He guessed the cause of the argument—the other boy brought up Si Nan’s pain.

“Don’t be angry.” He knelt down to look Si Nan in the eye and gently patted his shoulder. “I’ll make sure he never brings it up again.”

Si Nan’s expression didn’t change. He was clearly a cub, yet colder than any other cub.
An Zhe could only stroke his hair, then stood up. The training ground was in chaos. Ke Lin was scolding another cub, more effectively—just saying “points deducted” made the cubs instantly behave.

Inspired, An Zhe told Si Nan, “No more fighting next time. You’ll lose points.”

Si Nan smirked slightly and said, “You don’t want me to stay in the main city anyway.”

—While other cubs still stuttered, this one understood everything.

An Zhe felt helpless, but no one could help him.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a black car stop, and three people got out.

An Zhe looked over—and locked eyes with one of them in the center.
He blinked.

Lu Feng saw him too. He raised an eyebrow slightly and walked over.

An Zhe: “You came here too?”
“Just for a meeting,” Lu Feng said. “What’s wrong with you?”

An Zhe’s voice carried a hint of helplessness and plea: “Some kids got into a fight.”
“Just beat them both up,” Lu Feng said.

That made An Zhe involuntarily laugh. He bent down and told Si Nan, “Next time you fight, I’ll have to beat you up.”

Lu Feng looked at him.
“You’re too soft,” he said coolly. “They’ll not only keep fighting—they’ll start hitting you too.”
An Zhe: “…”

He adjusted his expression, trying to look fiercer. If he could be even one-tenth as fierce as Lu Feng, educating cubs would be much easier.

Lu Feng looked at him, curled his lips slightly, then shifted his gaze to Si Nan.
His expression suddenly froze.

“Stay away from him.” The next moment, Lu Feng said coldly.

An Zhe didn’t understand, but instinctively took a step back at his words.

Lu Feng stepped forward, blocking between An Zhe and Si Nan. He put on gloves and gripped Si Nan’s jaw, forcing him to face the sun.
The sunlight was blinding. Si Nan’s pupils contracted.

“There’s something wrong with him.” Lu Feng flipped Si Nan over and said, “Contact the Lighthouse.”