Little Pink Starfish

The last thing he saw was Lu Feng’s face. He had never seen such a lost, helpless expression on the colonel’s face before. He wanted to say something—but no words came out—

Darkness filled his vision. His body felt hollow.
Softly, something inside him broke.

—It hurt.

Then, a second one.
He tried to figure out what was happening. Finally, his awareness became like a spark in the void, and he saw what was going on.

That slender, snow-white thread had stretched so thin it was nearly transparent. It was heartbreakingly fragile.
Snap.
With pain like a needle prick, it broke.

His spore.
The mycelium within him, every strand that had connected to the spore, was snapping one by one. Not because he let go—but because the spore was leaving on its own—
No, not even that.
It was simply that the time had come. A force born from the instinct of life was pulling them apart.

An Zhe couldn’t stop it. It was hard to say whether a mushroom and its spore had anything like deep emotion. Their bond wasn’t like that between human parents and children. But still, he didn’t want the spore to leave him so soon. The outside world was still dangerous—if the spore left now, it could easily perish—
Especially because of Lu Feng.

But he had lost all sensation. He couldn’t speak. All he could do was desperately speak to the spore in his mind.

Don’t come out.
Don’t come out.
It’s too dangerous.

When only three strands of mycelium remained, the fear of death reached its peak.

Don’t come out—please.

He broke out in a cold sweat and suddenly opened his eyes.

Above him was the ceiling. He blinked slowly—then jolted upright in the next moment.

—Still there.
He could still feel the spore inside him. Three strands of mycelium still held onto it, barely. Thankfully, it had seemingly listened to his pleading and settled down again.

In the next moment, he heard the Doctor’s voice nearby. At first, he thought he’d made it back to the base—but then realized it was the communicator.

After fixing the deformed copper wires, Lu Feng had successfully contacted the base. And though he shouldn’t have felt that way, in that moment, An Zhe felt a twinge of disappointment.

“…Let me tell you with certainty—humanity is finished,” the Doctor’s grim voice came through the communicator. An Zhe moved slightly, realizing he was lying in Lu Feng’s arms, wrapped in his own jacket. Lu Feng saw that he was awake.

He looked like he wanted to say something, but An Zhe gestured for him to focus on the call and rested his forehead weakly against Lu Feng’s chest.

“This isn’t some predictable disaster—this is a mass extinction. I’m talking about the extinction of all life, all non-life, all physical laws.”
Lu Feng said, “I saw the fusion of materials.”
“That’s not ‘fusion.’ Our latest definition is ‘distortion’—a microscopic structural distortion. Do you understand? A silicon atom turned into… into something we don’t even know. This isn’t genetic contamination—it’s quantum-level change. We can never observe it. According to the uncertainty principle, we’ll never be able to overcome it. Even with ten thousand more years of tech—we still won’t. We just have to accept death.”

The Doctor continued, agitated:
“…We know now that magnetic fields can protect Earth from this change. After the two bases boosted their magnetic field strength, the distortion paused. But you know—the situation always gets worse.

“It used to take a serious injury to be infected. Then a small scratch was enough. Then just touching. Now, it doesn’t even require contact. And just when we thought that was the worst, the very structure of the world began to destabilize—and it’s clearly accelerating. Even with our magnetic fields holding things back for now, what happens next? Our max artificial magnetic strength is Level 9. Right now we’re at 7. We’re almost at the limit. Tomorrow, the next day—within six months, our magnetic poles will fail due to distortion.”

“The base hopes you’ll come back, but… if you want to spend your last days somewhere else, I won’t stop you,” he said. “It’s almost over.”

Lu Feng said, “I understand.”

“If you haven’t found An Zhe, then don’t bother. Let him go. Let yourself go. Just live while you can—there’s not much time left.” The Doctor added, “Even if you bring the sample back, we can’t make any progress anymore. This is beyond science—though the base still clings to the last bit of hope.”

After a pause, the Doctor said, “I’m falling apart. Sorry. The pessimism at the base is contagious. Don’t listen to a word I just said. The sample must be brought back. Since it shows inert behavior in infection, it might also be inert to distortion. This might be the breakthrough—the last hope. Either you die out there, or bring it back. But based on An Zhe’s last sudden disappearance, he might be an unusually powerful variant. Be careful.”

His mistaken assumption made An Zhe smile slightly. But he also knew—the base still hadn’t given up on his spore.

“I’ve sent coordinates to the United Command Center,” Lu Feng said.

The call ended.

Lu Feng looked at An Zhe.
“Are you okay?” he asked.

Lu Feng said, “What happened just now?”
An Zhe shook his head.

“You don’t know either?”
“…I can’t tell you.”

He suddenly noticed Lu Feng’s gaze had gone cold, and it scared him.

“Mm.” Lu Feng gently stroked his hair and said coolly, “So you can’t tell me about the sample either.”

An Zhe lowered his head. He had nothing to say about the spore. That had been true before, and it still was.

In this world, peaceful times were just illusions. Like a dream ending, he and Lu Feng had returned to where they were days ago.

The judge and the variant. The pursuer and the fugitive. He wouldn’t hand over the spore. Lu Feng wouldn’t let him go.

An Zhe didn’t want to meet his eyes, so he changed the subject. “Is the base doing badly now?”

“Yeah.”
“Then… are you still going back?”
“I am,” Lu Feng said.

“But the Doctor said… there’s no hope.” An Zhe spoke softly.

Then he realized how stupid that sounded. Even if the base were doomed, Lu Feng would never abandon it.

After a long silence, Lu Feng said, “I’m part of the base.”

An Zhe bit his lip. Lu Feng belonged to the base. He belonged to the Abyss. They could never coexist peacefully. Lu Feng had already sent the coordinates. He had refused to reveal the spore’s location. He couldn’t imagine what might happen next.

He looked at Lu Feng. Outside, the rain made everything dim. He couldn’t see Lu Feng clearly, nor understand him.

As the world spiraled further into chaos—even the Doctor saying “humanity is finished”—An Zhe didn’t know what Lu Feng would think in humanity’s final moments. He simply looked at him quietly.

“Sometimes I think, if the base really is doomed within my lifetime…” Lu Feng’s voice was very low, “Then everything I did before…”

He stopped. That ripple of emotion quickly froze again.

“Maybe there’ll be a miracle,” An Zhe whispered—his only attempt to comfort him.

Lu Feng looked down at him. “Do you believe that?”

“Maybe. Like… the world’s so big, but when your plane crashed, it just happened to fall next to me,” An Zhe said. “If it hadn’t, you would’ve died.”

If Lu Feng had died, there would be no An Zhe in this city today. Everything would have changed.

Lu Feng just stared at him. An Zhe lay in his arms. He looked down from above, those green eyes cold and distant.

“You know how big the world is?” Lu Feng asked.

An Zhe thought—he hadn’t traveled much, hadn’t seen much. He was just a lazy mushroom. But the world must be huge. That was why Lu Feng’s plane falling nearby could be called a miracle.

So he nodded gently.

He had only wanted to make Lu Feng smile—but now, Lu Feng looked terrifying. Looking at his cold profile, An Zhe instinctively shrank.

“You don’t know,” Lu Feng said coldly. “It wasn’t coincidence. I didn’t fall next to you by chance. I came to catch you.”

“No.” An Zhe couldn’t bear his gaze. He tried to get up, but Lu Feng held him tight. His voice was hoarse. “That day, there were many planes—you were going to kill the bees. You met me by accident and only then decided to catch me.”

“They’re already dead,” Lu Feng said calmly.

An Zhe’s eyes widened.

“…Who?” he asked, trembling.

“She.”

He couldn’t even process the syllable. He didn’t know if it was “he,” “she,” or “it.” But if Lu Feng had said it—it could only be one person.

Madam Lu.

Lu Feng had killed her himself.
An Zhe couldn’t breathe. His chest heaved.

Lu Feng reached out, pressing his fingers against the side of An Zhe’s neck, feeling his warm, vulnerable artery. His voice had no emotion. “My final mission was to kill you. Didn’t you hear the order in the communicator?”

An Zhe had heard.
His neck hurt where Lu Feng pressed. He tried to push his hand away—couldn’t. His throat ached. “But… the world’s so big… you didn’t even know where I was.”

Lu Feng looked down at him.
An Zhe, in his arms, was so small. The Doctor had said he might be a powerful variant, but Lu Feng knew him—so fragile, so small. Anyone could hurt him—physically or mentally.

An Zhe was still talking. Lu Feng didn’t hear the words. Just saw the red rim around his eyes. He was desperately trying to prove it had all been coincidence—that it wasn’t intentional. Trying to convince himself and absolve himself.

Lu Feng pulled something from his uniform pocket.

A small glass vial, thumb-sized, containing a pale green liquid. A barcode and string of numbers marked the label.

An Zhe looked at it. “What’s that?”

“Tracking agent,” Lu Feng said flatly.

An Zhe had heard the name. Lily once said she’d been injected with one. The name said it all.

“Lighthouse says, by exposing the agent to a special frequency pulse, you get a unique signature. One part’s injected, one part stored. Put the stored part into a scanner—it’ll point to the injected one. No matter the distance,” Lu Feng said.

An Zhe reached out, touched the cold vial, and held it.

“You injected me with it?” he asked, voice trembling. “When? I… I didn’t know.”

Then a thought hit him.

His voice got softer, choked. “You suspected I was a variant all along?”

“You passed all judgment protocols. I didn’t kill you,” Lu Feng said coldly. He pried open An Zhe’s fingers, took the vial, and put it back into his pocket. “But I have a duty to the base.”

An Zhe stared blankly. A tear slipped down his cheek. He thought Lu Feng would wipe it away—but he didn’t. The trail of water just stayed there, growing cold.

What Lu Feng said was cruel—but it revealed who he really was. He had coldly killed Madam Lu, who had become the queen bee.

An Zhe had always known what kind of person Lu Feng was. Maybe the Lu Feng of those few days—the one who treated him kindly—was only a fleeting illusion.

Now that contact with the base was restored, where had An Zhe found the confidence to think Lu Feng would keep treating him differently? That he would let him go?

Lu Feng looked down as An Zhe’s lashes slowly lowered, then closed. The softness in his eyes vanished. He seemed heartbroken—like someone who had just confessed everything. Lu Feng thought—

—like all those people he had killed.

Then An Zhe opened his eyes again and looked up at him. His voice was very soft—Lu Feng had to lean in to hear.

“When Madam Lu became the queen bee, she had already lost her human mind,” An Zhe said. “She told me… she didn’t hate the base. She just wanted to experience a new form of life. She didn’t hate you.”

In the dead silence, Lu Feng didn’t speak. Time ticked on. When An Zhe reached up to touch his cheek—to check if he was still alive—he saw Lu Feng curl his lips into a cold, thin smile.

His voice was soft, but certain.

“She hated me.”

An Zhe looked into his eyes.

Madam Lu had said he would never get what he wanted. That he would die poorly. That he would go mad.

“Why?” An Zhe asked.

“After I was born, her relationship with my father was exposed. She was never allowed to see me again. I killed my father. I killed many of her children. When her youngest daughter escaped Eden with her help—she ran into me. In fact, the friend she was waiting for was right across the street when we met Lily.”

Lu Feng rarely said such long sentences. An Zhe hung onto every word—by the time he finished, An Zhe could barely breathe.

Three seconds of silence.

“She had very few happy things in her life,” Lu Feng said. “But I destroyed them all. She, like everyone in the base, hated me.”

An Zhe opened his mouth.

Finally, he knew what he wanted to say.

“I don’t hate you,” he said.

Long silence.

“Why?” Lu Feng’s hoarse voice suddenly broke the silence.

“What… why?” An Zhe asked.

“Why…” Lu Feng looked at him, “Why do you always forgive me?”

An Zhe looked up. For a moment, he didn’t see the cold Lu Feng anymore.

The colonel’s voice trembled—barely noticeable. He asked again:
“Why?”

An Zhe wanted to answer. But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the intelligence or the words humans did. He thought for a long time.

“I understand you,” he said.

“You’re not even human,” Lu Feng’s fingers gripped his shoulders. His gaze was still cold, but his voice cracked. “What do you understand?”

—He still wanted to ask.

But An Zhe couldn’t say anything more. He shook his head desperately.

He felt cornered by Lu Feng again, and wanted to cry. He didn’t know why this person was so cruel, why he insisted on tearing himself open like this. An Zhe felt like a judge forced to pronounce guilt, while the accused kept listing his own crimes, insisting on the death sentence.

He didn’t know how it had come to this. Just moments ago, they had been talking about whether the base could survive, and whether Lu Feng falling beside him was a miracle.

Lu Feng said it wasn’t. It was all planned, inevitable.
But it wasn’t. Truly, it wasn’t.

“But…” An Zhe raised his hand. His fingers—human and defined—began to change.

Snow-white mycelium crept up Lu Feng’s black uniform, across his judge’s epaulets and silver insignia.

Tears streamed from An Zhe’s eyes. He couldn’t see Lu Feng’s expression. All he knew was that Lu Feng’s hand trembled as it held him—and that Lu Feng pulled him tighter.

He knew Lu Feng would recognize him—this mushroom that had once rolled through the Abyss.

His voice choked.
“But I still… I still met you.”

In such a vast world, Lu Feng had insisted on going to the Abyss.
And in that massive Abyss, An Zhe had insisted on rolling across that desolate plain.

They weren’t supposed to meet.

He had never hurt anyone. Never harmed any animal. He just wanted to grow his spore quietly. He could have lived peacefully, without love or sorrow.

But why did someone like Lu Feng exist in this world?

This human held him so tightly—it felt like he wanted to kill him. An Zhe’s back hit the bedpost. He struggled, but it was useless. Still, he refused to escape into mycelium. He didn’t want to surrender.

In desperation, he bit Lu Feng’s neck with all his strength.

The taste of blood filled his mouth—and An Zhe froze.

What am I doing? he thought.

But he had no more chances.

In that instant of hesitation—Lu Feng seized control again.

His shoulder was pinned. His back hit the bedpost. His chin was forcefully tilted upward.

—And Lu Feng kissed him hard.