Chapter 17 See You Again

I was bored and thinking about the past, and three minutes passed by unknowingly.

Looking up, Ji Minghuan saw that the isolation door of the prison cell had not been opened yet, so he leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and continued to recall the past.

Three years after he and Kong Youling first met, Ji Minghuan, who was originally taciturn in the eyes of the children, suddenly transformed into the most mischievous child in the welfare home.

He often made mistakes, such as talking back to the dean, or deliberately driving away adults who were willing to adopt him. As punishment, he would be locked up in the small attic at the top of the library to sleep alone. The nurses would not only lock the door, but also cut off the power supply to the library before going to bed, so that the light in the attic would not turn on no matter how hard they pressed it.

So the children were all afraid of the attic.

Because it was very dark at night and there was no one around, those crooked bookshelves looked like monsters with bared fangs and claws in the moonlight. Every time they were locked in the attic, they would cry loudly that they were wrong and beg the nurse to let them out. Over time, no one dared to be a naughty ghost anymore.

But Ji Minghuan is different, he likes that attic.

Compared with sleeping with other boys, he preferred to spend the night locked up in here alone, and he also liked to listen quietly in the dark to the "tick-tick" sound coming from the wall clock.

He was the only one in the orphanage who dared to spend the night in that gloomy attic without making a sound. Therefore, he was also the only one among the children who dared to talk back to the director.

The little kids in the orphanage admired Ji Minghuan very much, thinking that he dared to do things that they dared not do, and regarded him as a leader. I am afraid that no one in the entire orphanage knew how this boy who used to be inconspicuous suddenly changed so much.

The nurses only knew that because Ji Minghuan often stayed with Kong Youling, no children dared to bully the deaf-mute girl anymore.

This actually made them worry less.

In fact, only Ji Minghuan himself understood that the reason why he liked this attic so much was because every time he was locked in the attic of the library, he could always see someone.

The nurses locked the attic door but left the skylight unlocked. He read in the attic by moonlight. When the nurses and the dean fell asleep, he would step over a pile of dusty books in the corner, step onto the old bookshelf, then jump towards the skylight, grab the roof with both hands and climb up.

Whenever he dived into the roof like a fish, he only had to raise his head and the moonlight carried by the evening breeze would fall on his face, blowing his hair high and illuminating his clear eyes, like opening a window to the sky.

Turning her head, she saw that the girls' dormitory was very close to the attic. The girls' dormitory was a little lower. At night, Kong Youling slept on the third floor of the dormitory. Her room had never been moved.

Whenever Ji Minghuan was punished to spend the night alone in the attic, Kong Youling would count silently in his bed, suddenly open his eyes in the middle of the night, and try his best not to wake up others, and sneak out of the dormitory as carefully as a kitten.

She walked barefoot across the corridor and climbed up to the window at the end of the corridor, and then she could see Ji Minghuan sitting on the eaves of the attic opposite.

He would always reach out his hand to her and move his lips silently in the night breeze:

"Jump, trust me."

Every time she saw his face, she would muster up the courage to jump from the windowsill to the roof of the library. The girl's figure was as light as a white deer in the moonlight, and her snow-white hair fluttered in the night wind. Ji Minghuan would always catch her hand as expected.

At this point in the night, the entire orphanage is silent. In winter, you can see snow falling, and the trees and eaves are all covered in white; in summer, you can hear cicadas chirping and fireflies dancing in the night sky, and sometimes fireworks are set off in the distance, with crackling sounds and dazzling sparks lighting up the night sky.

No matter spring, summer, autumn or winter, the only thing that remains unchanged is that the long streets of the city are brightly lit. The walls of the welfare home block out those desirable lights. Only by climbing onto the roof can you get a glimpse of the city’s neon lights and know how big this world is.

But they were not interested in the red-light district with its bustling lights and nightlife. The two of them always lay on the roof of the attic, quietly looking at the starry night sky.

That was the time that belonged only to the two of us.

The world is sometimes very small, and they can only move around in a narrow welfare home, restricted in every way;

But every time this happened, they felt that the world became very, very big... so big that it seemed as if the entire night sky belonged to them.

Ji Minghuan put his arms behind his head and pointed his other hand to the sky, introducing the names of the stars to her one by one.

Kong Youling sat beside him, holding a sketchbook and listening quietly, occasionally writing on the sketchbook, and asked him, "How do you know all this?" In Kong Youling's eyes, Ji Minghuan knew everything, even more than many adults, as if he was not a child of this age.

At this time, Ji Minghuan would always say that he learned it from the books in the library: he was locked in the attic with nothing to do, so he would take time to read all the miscellaneous books piled up in there. Over time, he developed a reading habit, and he read faster and faster, and later he even developed the ability to read ten lines at a glance. After finishing the books in the attic, he would secretly bring the books from the library up before being confined. Over time, he naturally knew more than his peers.

Kong Youling nodded, and from then on, when other children were playing in the playground or Ji Minghuan was reading alone in the library, there would always be a figure beside him.

One night, on the eaves of the attic, she talked about her mother.

She wrote in the notebook that her mother was from Iceland and moved to China for her father, but later her father abandoned them because of debt. Her mother raised her to live in an unfamiliar place where she was not even proficient in the language and eventually died of overwork.

She said her mother died because of her.

Ji Minghuan shook her head and said that it was not her who was wrong, but her father. She also said that her mother was also wrong. If people want to truly live in this world, they can only rely on themselves. Those who rely on others to survive can only get a temporary respite.

She thought for a long time and asked, "Can I rely on you?"

Ji Minghuan was stunned for a moment, then nodded, coughed twice, and overturned what he had just said: "I'm different. Relying on me is a very cost-effective thing, because I am very good to the people around me."

He paused and said, "Well, even though you're the only one around me, you're like family to me."

She said, you are my family too.

As they chatted, the two talked about their first impressions of each other.

"First impression?" Ji Minghuan thought for a moment, "Oh, the first impression you gave me was... the little snowmen that children made on the streets when winter just came."

The girl asked, "Snowman?"

"Yes, a little snowman." He said seriously, "Not a very big snowman, but the kind that will break into pieces even if you touch it with very little force."

Kong Youling glanced at him emotionlessly, her cheeks puffed up slightly, as if she was angry.

"Okay, I'm just kidding."

Kong Youling was silent for a while, then wrote to him and asked, "The nurse said that you liked to lock yourself up when you were a child. Why was that?"

Ji Minghuan stared at the night sky for a long time, then said: "The last time I saw my parents, they locked me in the closet and told me to wait for them there and not to make any noise, because they would be back soon."

He raised the corner of his mouth, "When I was little, I was so stupid that I thought what they said was true. Then, even if I was sent to an orphanage, I would still foolishly lock myself up, thinking...if I do this, will they come back to find me?"

"But not even once. Later on..." He paused, and the smile on his face slowly disappeared. "Later on, I grew up and didn't need them to come to me anymore."

"I always feel...that I don't understand you yet." The girl looked at his lost expression, stunned, and wrote on the notebook.

Ji Minghuan was silent for a long time, and whispered: "In fact, I have a different personality in front of everyone, and I am always pretending to be myself. I am very afraid of being abandoned, just like being abandoned by my parents... I always cater to others and pretend to be the way they like. Sometimes I want to get close to others, but when I think of the scene of being abandoned, I will take the initiative to cut off the relationship. I really don't want to... I don't want to be thrown away like garbage."

"But you are different. I want you to be by my side. With you, I don't need to pretend to be myself or cater to others. So I want to be with you forever."

At this point, he suddenly lowered his voice: "Kong Youling...will you abandon me like my parents did?"

Kong Youling glanced at him sideways and stared at him quietly for a while.

For the first time, she saw this arrogant, reckless, and always at ease man reveal his vulnerable side - loneliness, fear, and worry. Only then did she remember that he was just a teenager like herself, just a child who had been abandoned by his parents since childhood and had been hiding his anxiety, fear, and loneliness.

The girl lowered her eyes and looked at the tiles on the roof and thought for a long, long time.

Unexpectedly, she did not write or use lip reading. She just put down the notebook in her arms and slowly, slowly moved closer to him, tentatively like a kitten. Then she opened her arms and hugged him in her arms, her white hair pressed against his cheek.

At that time, Ji Minghuan was looking at the eaves of the welfare home with his eyes lowered, feeling a slight chill coming from his side. Before he could come to his senses, the girl had already hugged him.

He was stunned for a long time.

This girl, who was often laughed at by other children for not being able to speak or talk, since she could not write and did not use her special abilities, just used this simple way to express her care for him, clumsy but also sincere.

His eyes reddened slightly, he hesitated for a moment, then gently raised his hand and hugged her back.

The two of them hugged each other on the roof. This was the first time Ji Minghuan had been hugged since he could remember. Although her skin was very cold, he felt very warm and buried his head gently in her snow-white hair.

It was a fish-scale sky. Waves of cloud patterns filled the deep blue sky, and the moonlight seemed to have dimmed.

After a long time, the girl suddenly lowered her eyes, wrote seriously on the notebook, and turned the notebook towards him.

Ji Minghuan glanced over.

"Let's run away." These were written on the notebook. These simple words left Ji Minghuan confused.

Ji Minghuan asked curiously, "You said you were going to escape, but where are you going?"

"Anywhere is fine."

"But...if I leave the orphanage, I will most likely not survive. I have no parents, no ID, no education, and I can't find a job or a place to live." Ji Minghuan paused, "But you are different."

"Why?" the girl asked.

"Because you are a person with super powers, the country treats people with super powers very well. As long as you tell them about this one day, some powerful people will drive a big car to pick you up, let you live in the best house, eat good food, and sleep well." Ji Minghuan touched his nose, "As long as you use your abilities well, you will be very popular wherever you are. And as for me..."

He looked up at the night sky, where the moon was flickering among the clouds. "If I leave this orphanage, I will be nothing. I will just be an abandoned homeless child. No one will care whether I live or die. People outside may not be as good as the director."

Kong Youling did not write anything, but just lowered his head and thought for a while, then glanced at him secretly from the side, raised his right hand and extended his little finger.

"Pin it down." She put down the notebook and spoke silently with her lips.

"ha?"

"I've been with you forever, so it's not 'I' anymore, it's 'we'..."

Having said that, Kong Youling silently repeated what he had said before, except that he replaced the "I" with "we".

She said: "We have no parents, no identity documents, and if we leave the orphanage, we may not be able to find a job or a place to live, but we... as long as we are together, we will find a way and we can survive as long as we are together."

The moonlight that day was clear and bright, and the girl's hair was like silk ribbons made of early winter snow, dancing in the evening breeze.

Her pair of light-fearing eyes opened wide, never so bright before. It was clear that the girl could not make any sound, but every word she said fell into Ji Minghuan's heart.

Ji Minghuan was stunned for a long time.

Then he chuckled softly, stretched out his finger, touched her white little finger, and made a pinky promise with her.

"Mom said that once we make a promise, we must keep our word."

She raised the corners of her mouth and said silently, "We will always be together."

"Okay, then we'll always be together."

These words seemed to pass through those moonlit memories and echoed softly in Ji Minghuan's ears.

In the dark cell, he looked up drowsily and saw that the isolation door had been opened. A figure walked in from the entrance. It was... a white-haired girl wearing a coded hospital gown. Her figure was as graceful as ever. When she saw Ji Minghuan, she stopped and stayed where she was quietly.

Ji Minghuan was stunned for a moment, then blinked at her.

"haven't seen you for a long time."

(End of this chapter)