Autumn paints the sky an almost transparent gray-blue, like a piece of worn frosted glass, hanging coldly above the head.
Chao Youye walked out of the gate of the key municipal high school where he had transferred just five months ago. The metal retractable gate made a slow and heavy friction sound behind him, like a dull sigh.
The crowd at the school gate dispersed in all directions, carrying the clamor of youth. He was like a silent reef, going against the clamorous current and turning into a relatively secluded side road.
The road led to the back gate of an old residential complex. The plane trees were so dense and tall that their canopies almost obscured the entire narrow road. He needed this kind of isolation.
The schoolbag weighed heavily on his thin shoulders. In addition to textbooks, there was also a beautifully wrapped, unopened gift - yesterday was his seventeenth birthday, a routine express delivery notice from a personal assistant on the other side of the ocean.
The gift itself was meaningless, just another precise, cold execution of a procedure by the man he called his father. He didn't even bother to sign for it, leaving it to gather dust in the school's mail room.
There are layers of fallen leaves under my feet, and when I step on them, there is a crisp and somewhat tough cracking sound.
Four months later, he still remembered that night clearly. The air seemed to still linger with the clean, sun-baked scent of Mu Xinrong's soapberry, and that unexpected kiss—soft, tender, and with the burning passion of a young man's desperate gamble.
The next second, his memory violently switched to his father's face with its cold and hard features, immersed in power and distance for many years. The photo taken secretly by his illegitimate son Wu Zeyu, which showed him and Mu Xinrong kissing, was like a cold iron nail, nailed firmly in the center of his father's expensive and heavy mahogany desk.
Next to the photo was Wu Zeyu's face, which was always pretending to be good, with a flash of venomous pride and the pretentious angry look of his so-called "mother".
"Disgusting." His father's voice was low, but like an ice-hardened blade, it easily cut through the hypocritical curtain called "family" that Chao Youye had been accustomed to for seventeen years. Chao Youye automatically blocked out the rest of the words.
Expelling him, transferring him to another school, and cutting off all unnecessary ties were done as neatly as dealing with an invalid asset document. As for that so-called "home"?
Oh, that huge empty shell piled with money and indifference has never been.
He broke up with Mu Xinrong in person. The boy who always had a bright smile and was as bright as the sun suddenly looked at him in disbelief.
Chao Youye forced herself to maintain the coldest mask, and every word she said was like an icicle chiseling the other person's heart, as well as her own.
He couldn't look back, because Wu Zeyu's venomous eyes must be flashing a cold light in the dark.
Only by pushing Mu Xinrong away can he be temporarily placed in a safe area, even if Mu Xinrong will never understand, even if he hates himself.
The dead leaves of the sycamore tree continued to fall, swirling around, brushing against his forehead and shoulders, and finally falling to the ground.
A leaf with an extremely twisted shape and burnt edges was swept by a sudden gust of wind and flew towards his face in an almost uncontrollable, crooked trajectory.
Chao Youye subconsciously turned her head slightly to avoid him.
At the moment when the dead leaf brushed against his temple——
boom!
The world suddenly fell silent, and then exploded!
It was not sound, but pure light and shadow, countless broken images and sharp emotional fragments, like a devastating meteor shower, with the scorching heat of burning everything and the cold and dead silence of the primeval universe, violently smashing into his mind.
His temple suddenly felt a sharp pain, as if it had been pierced by a red-hot iron rod! Everything before him—the gray sky, the withered and yellowed sycamore leaves, the mottled old wall—was like the reflection of a stone thrown into the water, distorted, shattered, and annihilated crazily.
Instead, there is light.
The light, whose color is indescribable, flows, burns, and solidifies coldly.
It surged, exploded, and collapsed in sight.
He saw... no, he "was"!
He sat at an immeasurable height, beneath his feet were the endless swirling nebulae and the countless bubbles of the universe that were born and died.
The faith, fear, prayers and curses of billions of lives merged into a colorful, sticky stream of light that was as thick as substance, violently washing over the suffocatingly huge throne beneath him, which was constructed of pure light and rule runes.
The throne is cold and hard, its edges sharp enough to cut through space and time. He is the center, the origin, the only stationary singularity.
Beneath the throne, countless figures crouched. Some were as massive as mountains, covered in scales or flowing with magma; some were graceful as elves woven from starlight; and some were twisted like the deepest nightmare.
They all have different appearances, but the only thing they have in common is the intense awe and fear in their gazes directed towards the top of the throne.
He is God. He is the only, supreme God who overlooks the universe.
Absolute loneliness was like the vacuum of the universe, coldly enveloping him and seeping into every particle of his being.
Then, he saw Mu Xinrong.
Not in a specific world, but in fragments of countless worlds, like the same figure reflected in countless mirrors at the same time.
Sometimes he wears a luxurious and complicated robe inlaid with stars, with a compassionate face; sometimes he is a farmer in coarse linen clothes, with a simple smile; sometimes he is a bloody general on the battlefield, with a firm look in his eyes.
Sometimes he is a focused scholar in the laboratory, pushing up his glasses... He has countless identities and countless outfits, but the only thing that remains unchanged is his eyes.
Those eyes, when looking at him, were always filled with tenderness, trust, and unreserved...love.
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