Chapter 2
The wind swept across the ground, and the fallen leaves were picked up by invisible hands, spinning in vain in the air, chasing each other and separating.
On the cold stone wall of the welfare home, Kurozuka Aoi held her chin with her hands, her eyes following the drifting leaves, feeling bored.
Suddenly, on the street corner,
A figure stood there abruptly, like a piece of rotten wood abandoned by the tide.
Her long, soaked hair was tangled with strands of dark green waterweed, and her heavy, gray clothes were dripping with water, which formed a muddy puddle at her feet.
The overly long bangs are like a dense curtain, covering the face tightly.
Only when the wind blew and the curtains moved, a glimpse of the extremely pale skin underneath and the dark circles under the eyes that were so thick that they could not be removed was revealed.
Pedestrians hurriedly detoured, leaving behind a clear vacuum zone.
The figure just stood there, out of tune with the world around it, exuding a silent, cold sense of isolation.
"elder sister--!"
The call, so sweet that it seemed to be able to pull out sugar threads, hit the eardrum. The black mound fog stopped three meters away from the wall.
She seemed to be pulled by an invisible thread. Her hands, which were hanging at her sides and stained with the smell of the sea, rose a few inches very slowly and with a certain awkward heaviness.
Made an instinctive preparatory move.
The next second, the weight of the body temperature and the scent of soap slammed into his arms, but Kurozuka Kirishi's slender body didn't even shake, as if it was rooted to the spot.
Her slender arms, in an almost mechanical and stiff posture, wrapped around the girl who rushed over.
Kurozuka Aoi hung tightly around her neck like a koala, and his warm cheek rubbed affectionately against the cold and wet skin on the side of her neck.
"...It will get dirty." Kurozuka Kirishi's lips moved and he squeezed out a word dryly, his voice without any ups and downs.
The girl in his arms immediately widened her ocean-blue eyes, her eyes filled with disapproval: "Sister is not dirty!"
Like a little animal, she sniffed again, "...it smells like the sea, salty and cool."
Kurozuka Wushi's hollow black eyes met those scorching eyes. After a few seconds, she looked away silently.
Without arguing, he just squatted down slowly, little by little.
As if he had unloaded a heavy burden, he gently placed the warm life in his arms back on the ground, his movements cautious and distant.
Then, instead of getting up, she squatted there, with a pale, knuckle-baring hand spread out in front of Aoi. In her palm lay a pearl bracelet.
The pearls are round and plump, emitting a soft yet cold luster in the gray and cloudy sky. They are so beautiful that they seem unreal, like solidified moonlight bubbles salvaged from the deep sea.
"Today," she paused, as if struggling to find the right words, each syllable pronounced clearly but isolatedly, "is your birthday." The words fell out one by one like scattered beads.
Fortunately, Kurozuka Aoi seemed to have a dedicated decoder for Wu Shi. Her charming blue eyes instantly curved into crescents, filled with pure joy: "Thank you, sister!"
But the next second, that joy was mixed with wrinkles of worry, "...But sister, please don't go into the sea again, okay? It's too dangerous! Even if you... I'm scared!"
Kurozuka Kirishi nodded slowly, his eyes falling on his soaked trouser legs: "I won't do that again."
After saying that, she paused for a few seconds before adding, "I found a new job." Her tone was flat, and there was no trace of joy in her finding a job.
"Really?" Kurozuka Aoi's voice immediately rose, filled with a child's unique curiosity and innocent longing for the "adult world." "What kind of job is it?"
"Defense Force."
The bright smile on Kurozuka Aoi's face froze instantly. She opened her eyes wide in disbelief, as if she had heard the most absurd story in the world.
Did she... hear it wrong? Defense Force—?! But my sister is obviously not an ordinary human!!!
A document bag with softened edges from being soaked in water was handed to her.
Kurozuka Aoi almost held her breath as she carefully pulled out the paper with her slightly trembling fingers. Her eyes eagerly scanned the lines of cold black words.
Really passed...
She suddenly raised her head and looked at the sister in front of her who, in her cognition, always needed someone to take care of her, was always slow to react, and had a lingering gloomy aura.
Is it really possible to go? What if I get caught?
Kurozuka Kirishi looked at Kurozuka Aoi's expression, which was "shocked" to the point of being almost blank, and his thoughts slowly turned a few corners.
She lowered her eyelashes, and her thick eyelashes cast a darker shadow on the deep black under her eyes.
Staring at the small dark stain on the ground that was wet and expanding due to the water dripping from her trouser legs, she seemed to be able to see something from the water stain.
The sound of shuffling papers, the cold answer sheet, the neatly arranged score columns... a slight stiffness passed through her shoulders.
She raised her head, her hollow black eyes meeting Kurozaka Aoi's doubtful gaze. Her voice remained calm, but seemed a little more husky than before:
"Well, the written test." She paused for a long time, so long that Kurozuka Aoi thought she would not continue, before finally uttering two dry words, "It's not difficult."
But—" The girl's voice was filled with tears, and her hands tightly grasped the cold and wet sleeves of Kurozuka Kirishi, as if grasping the last straw, "Join the defense team...you might die, sister!"
"die?"
Kurozuka Kirishi tilted his head very slowly, his cervical vertebrae making a rasping sound.
Her distracted gaze did not fall on Kurozuka Aoi's face, but instead penetrated her vaguely and cast towards the gray sky in the distance.
Under that sky, something seemed to be rapidly falling and shrinking - real or an illusion, no one knew.
Her Adam's apple rolled, as if she had swallowed a mouthful of invisible gravel. Her cracked lips opened slightly, and the sound that came out was as light as ashes blown away by the wind:
"rich……"
There was a cold silence, with only the whimpering of the wind sweeping through the ruins. The girl's fingers hanging at her side curled unconsciously, her knuckles tense and white.
“…That’s good.”
After the last syllable fell, Heizhong Wushi pulled his sight back from the void, as if he was burned, nailed to his feet.
There, the water drops dripping from the trouser legs were constantly spreading a small dark mark, the shape of the edge of which strangely resembled a pool of dried black blood.
She stared at the water stain, motionless, like a child standing in the corner as punishment for doing something wrong.
"So, sister, is this for me? I don't want this." Kurozuka Aoi's fingertips pinched the edge of the document, and the paper let out a dying groan.
Kurozuka Kirishi raised her head slightly, her eyes sliding across Aoi's trembling shoulders, falling into the depths of the mire of memories.
The phone screen glowed a faint blue like phosphorescent light in the dim light, and the receiver boomed with the roars of his parents, "… useless! I'd rather have a dog than you! Dogs even wag their tails!"
"Her" cold fingers shattered the tearful moon on the screen, and she hung up, followed by a dead silence.
My spine froze into ice behind the door, and every slight sound in the corridor felt like the tip of a rusty knife scraping across my nerves—a knock was coming.
Countless nights, condensed into a blurry shadow in the corner of the window: "She" curled up, forehead pressed against the cold glass, staring at the broken lights in the distance outside,
Gradually, "her" face twisted into another blurry appearance - Kurozuka Aoi.
A strong taste of rust rose in his throat. Heizhong Wushi wanted to speak, but found that the root of his tongue seemed to be welded by a block of frozen lead.
She could only stretch out her dry branch-like hand and very slowly touch the back of Kurozuka Aoi's hand with her index finger joint.
Kurozuka Aoi shrank subconsciously, and the back of her hand felt cold, like touching the metal table in the morgue.
"It's not for you..." The girl's vocal cords rubbed against each other, making a gravel-like noise. "Don't be unhappy." Each word was like pulling a rusty nail out of rotten meat.
Kurozuka Kirishi suddenly hunched over, and this movement made her spine groan like a broken piece of wood.
My sight dropped to the girl's level—she crashed into the blue tide surging with fear.
It was too bright. These eyes, the only part that didn't match "her", were so bright that they burned her retinas.
Looking at those eyes, all the words I wanted to say were lost in the depths of my throat.
She wanted to say: You have to live a dazzling life for me, to prove that even in rotten soil, flowers can grow that are not crushed.
But these words were too heavy, so heavy that they might break the other person's slender neck. If that were the case, then what was the difference between her and her parents at the time?
So she finally just let go and let Kurozuka Aoi's wrist slip, like giving up the last life-saving rope.
The setting sun was like coagulated blood, blurred between the two of them. The wind blew up her hair, revealing the old scar swollen by the sea water.
Like a drowned centipede, forever gnawing at her skull.
She can't escape death, it's always with her.
What's more, as she is now an alien, joining the defense team may... be her best choice.
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