Little Pink Starfish

He kissed with such ferocity, such force, tinged with the scent of blood. An Zhe couldn’t breathe at all. He turned his head away, but it was forced back.

Just moments ago, he was feeling sorry for Lu Feng. Now, he was trembling with rage, mycelium spreading in thick clusters. All he had left was instinctual resistance, wanting to wrap himself entirely around Lu Feng.

But then his vision suddenly blurred—a scene appeared before his eyes.

A silhouette collapsed in front of him. His heart clenched sharply, and he caught him, holding him tightly in his arms. “An Zhe?”

In a daze, An Zhe realized this was a fragment of Lu Feng’s memory. He had drunk Lu Feng’s blood and received something from it. And what was happening now—was the moment when he had just fainted.

“An Zhe?” Lu Feng called his name several times, but the person in his arms showed no response, only furrowing his brows gently, trembling all over, as if enduring immense pain.

He didn’t know why it had suddenly become like this. All he could do was hold him tighter.

It felt like he was suddenly going to die—just like this ever-changing world.

An Zhe stared blankly, feeling that moment—his feelings overlapped with Lu Feng’s.

Lu Feng was afraid.

He was actually afraid.

Afraid of what?

Afraid of losing the person in his arms. As if… as if losing him meant losing everything.

An Zhe’s body trembled violently.

This person—

Why could he be so kind to him, and also so cruel?

The strength on his shoulder brought him out of that memory briefly. His consciousness split in two—half of it being kissed by Lu Feng as if punished, the other half sinking into past memories, witnessing this man holding him tightly and calling his name over and over.

But he could not be awakened. He looked so pained, so obedient, so fragile, yet he was enduring such intense pain.

Lu Feng wiped the fine cold sweat from his brow. Unconsciously, he grasped Lu Feng’s wrist like a drowning man clinging to a lifeline. What was Lu Feng thinking in that moment?

He was thinking: I can suffer in his place, do anything—just as long as he wakes up.

An Zhe closed his eyes. He was still resisting—but he didn’t have much strength. It was as if he deflated all at once, finally giving up all resistance, letting Lu Feng take everything—his lips, his mind, his everything.

Like a long, drawn-out war.

Intense emotions slowly exhausted themselves in this prolonged standoff.

When he was finally released, he leaned against Lu Feng’s chest, not wanting to think about anything.

And Lu Feng held him, silent as well.

A blank stretch of time passed infinitely. A judge and a variant didn’t have much to say to each other.

After a long silence, Lu Feng suddenly spoke.

He said, “How did you become human?”

“Because of An Ze,” An Zhe said.

He leaned against Lu Feng’s chest. They had already fully confessed to each other—right there, in that kiss driven by impulse, they had torn each other open.

So he no longer hid anything.

He wasn’t like the other variants.

He was quite useless, unable to infect anyone. He was a mushroom infected by humans.

Lu Feng glanced at his mycelium. The snow-white threads still held traces of blood—bitten out by An Zhe just now. So this little mushroom could be fierce when angry.

The blood was slowly fading—being absorbed by the mycelium.

An Zhe looked at it too.

Suddenly he said, “You should die.”

Lu Feng tightened his grip on his fingers and asked, “Why?”

“I’ll grow on you,” An Zhe said expressionlessly, “Eat all your blood, organs, and flesh, and finally grow on your bones.”

Lu Feng’s other hand slowly gripped his wrist, fingertips sliding over the pale skin, leaving a faint red mark. Like a white mushroom burst by a squeeze after the rain, oozing liquid. He said softly, “Do you know what you’re saying?”

An Zhe shook his head. His throat choked up. He had no tears in his eyes, looking up at the walls stained with moldy green and the twisted, melting chandelier. The window had been cracked by the storm, rainwater pouring in, accompanied by the moaning wind.

He thought—he didn’t even know how to define his emotions. But if he wanted to stay peacefully with Lu Feng, there really was no other path to take.

He just stared up at the unreachable sky.

Lu Feng said, “You’re crying again.”

An Zhe turned back to look at him. From this angle, he had to tilt his head slightly upward.

And they made eye contact.

He didn’t know why—looking at Lu Feng, An Zhe suddenly laughed.

His lips were slightly flushed, the corners of his eyes still damp.

Lu Feng also smiled faintly.

He cupped An Zhe’s face. “…So silly.”

An Zhe just looked at him. Long after, he asked, “Has the base already come to pick you up?”

Lu Feng said, “They have.”

An Zhe didn’t say anything. Lu Feng asked, “Do you like the base?”

As soon as the word “base” was spoken, An Zhe shivered involuntarily, burying himself—

Lu Feng hugged him from behind and said, “Sorry.”

An Zhe shook his head.

It took another three minutes for him to finally calm down.

He looked up at Lu Feng, holding his hand tightly.

Then, Lu Feng had a thought.

And he acted on that thought—something impulsive and irrational. Lu Feng leaned down and—

There was no intense action, no resistance. Just a deep, quiet kiss.

An Zhe’s soft lips and tongue no longer resisted. During a brief breath, Lu Feng looked at his expression—breathing lightly and rapidly, his lashes lowered, the droplets on them sparkling. His hands gently clutched Lu Feng’s shoulders. It was a timid kind of response—gentle innocence, so pure it bordered on compassion, with a hint of divinity—as if offering something of the soul. In that moment, he was completely yielding.

But he was still crying.

Lu Feng kissed his tears away, as if that could erase all the sorrow between them.

When it ended, the rain outside had gradually stopped. It was dusk, and the sky was lit with a murky yellow light.

An Zhe knelt on the bed. His fingers trembled as he held Lu Feng, gently, slowly laying him down.

Lu Feng’s eyes were closed. He had fallen asleep, breathing evenly—now nothing could wake him. Accomplishing this was simple: during the kiss, a portion of his tongue had transformed into soft mycelium—so subtle that even Lu Feng didn’t notice.

Now that Lu Feng was asleep, he couldn’t catch him. He was powerless against him. An Zhe smiled. In fact, Lu Feng had never had any power over him. He suddenly realized that.

To leave, or to stay—he would decide.

Then suddenly—

Darkness fell over An Zhe’s vision. A sharp pain struck. The last strand of mycelium had snapped.

Something left him—like a human losing an arm or an eye—but not quite. Not something as trivial as that. The spore’s presence surpassed limbs, surpassed organs.

His body was suddenly empty. It was a deeper, more hollow emptiness than losing an immature spore. Like a rest note—his connection to the world was suddenly severed. The most important thing had been stripped from him. He was left with nothing but a broken, decaying shell.

Just a shell.

An Zhe froze.

In that moment, he was certain he heard fate whispering like a demon in his ear.

He stared blankly ahead and trembled as he raised his hand.

Until that very moment, he had thought he still had a choice.

He truly believed he could choose.

But when it happened—he realized he never had a choice.

He was utterly stunned.

The spore floated out from his body, and he cradled it in his hands. An Zhe stared at the little white thing, finally forcing a smile.

“…Sorry,” he said.
“I…” he said, “What should I do? Do you want to come with me? I might not be able to… raise you well.”

The spore’s mycelium just nuzzled his fingers. It didn’t understand. An Zhe knew. But in the next moment, the mycelium slowly moved in one direction, sliding from his fingers onto Lu Feng’s black uniform, and continued crawling forward.

An Zhe watched this. It wasn’t the first time the spore had acted like this. He smiled. “Why do you like him so much?”

The end of the spore that stayed with him rubbed his finger again. It couldn’t speak.

An Zhe sighed gently and placed it on Lu Feng.

Once it was put down, it climbed onto Lu Feng’s chest with its soft, newborn threads, and burrowed into his pocket. It looked so happy—as if it had always wanted to do that.

An Zhe watched this. Just as he didn’t understand why the spore was so close to Lu Feng, he didn’t understand how things had come to this.

He took out a piece of paper from his backpack, knelt at the coffee table, and wrote a line.

“It has matured. It’s not like before. If kept somewhere constantly moist, it can grow.”
“It needs a lot of water. It’s afraid of rodents. Afraid of insects.”
“If you do research, please don’t let it hurt too much. Don’t let it die.”
“Thank you for taking care of me.”
“I’m leaving.”

Leaving the note, he reached into Lu Feng’s chest pocket, took out the tracking agent vial, and opened it.

Splash.
The pale green liquid spilled entirely, flowing into the cracks of the floor. Then he let go—a crisp crash—the bottle shattered on the ground.

As if making the most important decision of his life, he reached out, unpinned the emblem on Lu Feng’s chest, and put it in his own pocket.

Finally, he slung the backpack over his shoulder, took one last look at Lu Feng, and left the room.

Xibei saw him. “Where are you going?”

An Zhe said, “To check the surroundings.”

“Okay,” Xibei said, now a bit calmer. “Be careful.”

An Zhe nodded. “Okay.”

He pushed open the rusty security door and stepped out with one foot. At that moment, he glanced back inside. His gaze passed over the skeleton on the sofa to the door of the room where Lu Feng was. That gray-white door seemed to hold a silent pull. If he could, if there were nothing tying him down, he would have liked to stay by Lu Feng’s side like the spore. But he couldn’t.

He closed the door and walked upstairs. The stairs were so tall, and his body felt utterly drained. It took a long time to reach the rooftop. From the top opening, An Zhe stepped onto the roof.

After the rain, the air was chillingly cold.

When the artificial magnetic field had disappeared in recent days, with the thinning atmosphere—he had heard the scientists back at the lighthouse predict that this year’s climate would be abnormally extreme. Winter would come two or three months early.

—And his winter was also coming.

The moment the spore matured, instinct from life flickered briefly—he received fate’s silent command.

Just as he had never seen the mushroom that raised him again after sprouting, he too was destined not to protect his spore’s safe growth.

Outside was dry, winds raged, monsters lurked. Even in the Abyss, free of rodents and arthropods, it might be trampled by a large beast or caught in battle. In the end, he had no choice but to trust Lu Feng.

Because he was going to die.

The life of a mushroom was never long. He was already one of the lucky ones. Everyone has a purpose. Once they complete it, their reason for living ends. For a mushroom, maturing a spore was its only mission.

In the cold wind, An Zhe trembled. He hugged his arms. He didn’t need to feel—it was obvious. His body was about to collapse.

He had seen mushrooms die—when spores dispersed, the cap would begin to shrivel, dry up, rot. In the end, all parts—the stalk, mycelium, roots in the soil—would dissolve into black fluid, eventually consumed by other things in the earth.

Now, what he had witnessed countless times—he would begin to experience himself. He didn’t know how long it would take, but it wouldn’t be long. Before the total extinction of humanity.

As he left, he had wanted to return to the base with Lu Feng, no matter what came next.

But now—let Lu Feng believe he still lived somewhere out here. That judge had seen too much death.

On the rooftop was a ruined garden. He sat behind a flowerbed, knees hugged to his chest, watching the east. Watching night fall, and dawn rise.

This place wasn’t far from the base—only about a day’s flight for a bee.

Just as he expected, when the morning sun shone through the mist, human armored vehicles rolled into the plaza in front of the compound. Lu Feng must have told them what to expect. They brought enough heavy weapons—not too afraid of monster attacks. The giant eagle circled overhead, eyeing them but not daring to swoop in.

Gray clouds, the eagle, endless ruins, armored vehicles—it looked like a scene from a dream. The wind howled.

An Zhe watched Lu Feng and Xibei emerge from the building. After a brief exchange with the troops, they boarded the vehicle—he vaguely saw the Doctor among them. The doors closed. The convoy departed this ruined city.

Would Lu Feng look back at the city through the window?

He wouldn’t know. He had a place to return to—the Abyss. He would go back to that cave, find that skeleton. Everything began there, and would end there.

In the face of inevitable extinction, Lu Feng had his destiny.

And he had his.

It was all over.