Little Mushroom 小蘑菇-Chapter 55: Skylight

An Zhe was up in the front of the vehicle.

The midday sunlight shone down through the armored vehicle's skylight. freёwebnoѵel.com

Today was his first day going with Lu Feng into the Abyss.

When humans carried out missions in the wilderness, the armored vehicles served as their mobile encampments. The driver's cabin was up in front. A massive storage space took up three-quarters of the vehicle body, and the remaining quarter was at the bottom, a low-ceilinged and oppressive rest cabin in which one could barely stand up straight. The rest cabin was nominally divided up by thin sheets of metal, two people per compartment, and in the middle there was only a tea table for putting water cups on. Because they had not seen sunlight in a long time, the quilts and pillows carried a slightly musty scent. Before arriving at the human base for the first time, An Zhe had sat in Vance's team's vehicle, and An Ze's memories also contained some impressions related to the armored vehicles. Those impressions all had to do with the narrow, humid, dark, and cramped conditions.

This impression was so deeply ingrained in his mind that in the past, as soon as he thought of how the Colonel wouldhave to rest in the armored vehicle for six months out of the year, he would feel that it was difficult toil. Maybe when the Colonel got up from the narrow bed in the rest cabin, he would even bump his head against the ceiling.

Then the Colonel would be in a bad mood.

When the Colonel was in a bad mood, the entire team would live beneath a massive shadow, trembling with fear, and nobody would dare to say a single word.

This atmosphere would make the Colonel's mood worsen and then affect his sleep.

So when the Colonel woke up the next morning, due to lack of sleep, his intelligence would decline by a certain nextent and his actions would no longer be immaculate and flawless.

... So he would bump his head again.

Thus, the team's journey within the Abyss would be carried out day after day beneath that massive shadow.

On the first night spent in the Colonel's vehicle, there was a beautiful starry sky outside the skylight. In a roomy space, An Zhe sat on a flat bed, hugging a pillow. As a cool and comfortable breeze blew in from the side window, he described his initial fantasies to the Colonel.

The Colonel looked like he had heard something baffling.

An Zhe had predicted his confusion, but he hadn't predicted the issue that the Colonel paid attention to first.

"Why did you think that my intelligence would decline after waking up in the morning?" Lu Feng asked.

"I expected that you hadn't gotten enough sleep that night," An Zhe replied.

"Even if I don't get enough sleep, that kind of scenario wouldn't happen," the Colonel said. "Furthermore, supposing I bump into the ceiling once, there wouldn't be a second time."

"Then that means you really have bumped into it before," An Zhe said.

This time, he triumphed over Lu Feng in their battle of words.

After a short silence, Lu Feng said, "Such a scenario happened only once, when I was fourteen or fifteen years old."

"But no matter what time it is, my mood and intelligence are always very stable."

"Is that so?" An Zhe looked at him suspiciously. "But a while ago, I often noticed that in the morning, you'd be looking at me and not moving at all, as if your thinking speed was very slow."

"That's because you wake up too late." Lu Feng was expressionless. "If you wake up earlier than me, you can look at me."

What he said was unexpectedly very logical. An Zhe turned his back to Lu Feng, expressing his unwillingness to continue conversing. But three minutes later, he couldn't hold back anymore. He asked Lu Feng, "Why are you treated differently from them?"

The Colonel did not sleep in the rest cabin below. His vehicle had obviously been modified; the roomy and bright space above was the Colonel's actual living area. The fourwalls of the living area were all a beautiful silvery white, there were windows above and on both sides, and in the limited space, even a separate lavatory had been installed.

Next to the bed was a desk, the setup somewhat resembling that of Outer City's standard rooms. The majority of Lu Feng's extremely perfunctory work notebook was completed on that very desk.

In short, this comfortable and bright scene differed from An Zhe's assumptions.

The Colonel said, "One Arbiter went mad inside his vehicle. There were other reasons for his madness, but the supply depot still upgraded the living environments of the later Arbiters."

"They may have wanted you guys to cheer up a bit," An Zhe said.

"Mm," Lu Feng said. "Later on when I led my men, I had the supply depot modify all of the Trial Court's vehicles and add five more vehicles to store materials."

"You're so nice," An Zhe said.

Lu Feng's tone was unusually flat. "Because I discovered that they often bumped their heads, and then they would be in a bad mood."

Hugging the pillow, An Zhe began to laugh.

Unexpectedly, what Lu Feng said next was, "Have you bumped your head before?"

"I haven't," An Zhe said.

He was different from foolish humans.

Then Lu Feng looked him over from top to bottom.

"I forgot," he said. "You lack the qualification for it."

An Zhe felt that if there came a day when his life got snuffed out, it would definitely be because Lu Feng angered him to death.

———

An Zhe was on the roof of the car.

The dusk sunlight spilled across the armored vehicle's skylight.

Today was his thirtieth day staying with Lu Feng in the Abyss.

In the Abyss, they had discovered a beautiful valley. Slender blades of verdant grass covered the valley soil, which encircled a clear lake.

The almost-translucent grasses were suffused with a weak fluorescence.

"It's so beautiful," An Zhe said as he looked around.

"No. 29 fine-bladed grass," Lu Feng said, "can secrete strongly-corrosive liquid and begins hunting when night falls. We should go now."

An Zhe got down from the skylight's little ladder, and Lu Feng went to the cabin.

The cabin and the living area were connected. An Zhe could see the Colonel at any time even if he was not sitting in the front passenger seat, and normally he would also stay in the areas that the Colonel could see in the rearview mirror.

In the living area, he read for a while, then began to clean. In fact, though, there wasn't much to clean; it could only be described as tidying up.

He closed the Colonel's work notebook, put the ballpoint pen in the pen cup at a forty-five-degree slant to the right, and placed the books he himself had flipped through back in their original spots. Then he folded the small ladder and stored it in an unobtrusive corner, wiped down the tube lights, and folded the quilt into a perfect square. A bit of dust had landed on the windowsill, and although there seemed to be no need to wipe it off, he always felt that the Colonel had a slight obsession with cleanliness—his rooms in the Main City and the City Defense Agency had an almost neurotic simplicity, bare to the point where they didn't seem lived in. So An Zhe carefully wiped away that bit of dust, then wiped it three more times.

After he was done, he looked up and met the gaze of a small bug.

The bug was very small. He recognized this type of creature; it was a firefly, which contained few nutrients and lived in groups. Because they were often accompanied by poisonous mushrooms, within the Abyss they lived relatively well.

At dusk, the little firefly's stomach was aglow with a faint fluorescence. It was very beautiful, and An Zhe liked ita lot. Back when he was purely a mushroom, he had secretly envied those fluorescent mushrooms that could emit light.

But after a moment's hesitation, he nonetheless gently blew the little bug out of the car. As someone he slightly suspected of having an obsession with cleanliness, the Colonel probably wouldn't like bugs in the room, he thought.

After the bug left, he closed the window and began to wipe away the dust on it.

The entire time, he felt like the Colonel was watching him.

Sure enough, three seconds later, the Colonel asked, "How come you've been wiping the window this whole time? Do you have an obsession with cleanliness?"

An Zhe was rendered speechless.

He turned and left the area that was visible in the rearview mirror.

Over the next three days, An Zhe constantly observed Lu Feng.

First, he discovered that whether the quilt was neatly folded or not would have no effect on the Colonel's mood.

The angle at which the ballpoint pen was placed would have no effect on the Colonel's usage of it either.

Then he deliberately dirtied the desk. At night, when the Colonel saw the tea stain on the desk, he did not show any obvious displeasure. After picking up the cleaning spray and dissolving it, he calmly continued working.

An Zhe began to doubt the importance of his former neurotic cleaning habits.

He felt a little lost.

At bedtime, Lu Feng held him from behind.

"I don't have an obsession with cleanliness. Before, I saw that your rooms were very bare," An Zhe said quietly. "I thought you liked it like that."

Lu Feng kissed his temple.

"Thank you," he said.

An Zhe laid his fingers on Lu Feng's arms, saying nothing.

After a while, Lu Feng said, "I didn't pay attention to it before."

"What about now?" An Zhe asked.

Lu Feng said, "Anything's fine as long as you're comfortable with it."

Pillowed on Lu Feng's arm, An Zhe looked down.

This was only a minor matter, but he had thought about it a lot.

"I just, I just thought..." With some difficulty, he organized his words, his gaze blank. "Sometimes, I don't really understand you."

"It's impossible to completely understand someone," Lu Feng said.

"But..." After saying that, An Zhe's voice trailed off.

Humankind's matters were too numerous, and their emotions were too numerous as well, he thought. Humans were always speculating on and thinking about other humans. Sometimes he really wished that he and Lu Fengcould be two mushrooms, blown by the same wind, drenched by the same rain, and spending their entire lifetimes growing together, nothing more.

He turned to face Lu Feng, but Lu Feng got up.

An Zhe watched him, bewildered. The Colonel pulled open the nightstand drawer, took something out, and held it out to him.

In the darkness, it emitted a beautiful pale green fluorescence. Wide-eyed, An Zhe accepted it. It was a glass bottle, and inside it were more than a dozen little fireflies, the same kind as the one he saw that one evening.

They flew around in the transparent glass bottle. Now that it was nighttime, the sky had completely darkened, and those tiny lights were even more beautiful than they had been at dusk.

"Wow," An Zhe said.

He held the bottle tight.

The Colonel said, "For you to play with."

After saying that, he opened the glass bottle, and the fireflies flew out. As they were social creatures, they flew together from one side of the room to the other and from the floor to the ceiling, resembling tiny floating lights as they did so.

An Zhe sat up in bed and grabbed at them a few times. They were a species that had a close relationship with mushrooms, so they did not avoid him, but rather circled around him.

"When did you catch them? I didn't notice." With a smile, he turned back to look at Lu Feng and discovered that the Colonel seemed to have been attentively watching him ever since he took out the glass bottle.

He suddenly got it.

It was impossible for someone to completely understand another person, but humans have always been trying to understand each other.

This was also a type of joy, like being drenched by the same rain.

———

An Zhe was up against the vehicle door.

Misty drizzle landed on the skylight, turning it all hazy.

This was his third time going with Lu Feng into the Abyss.

He was currently turning into a mushroom.

Hyphae climbed up Lu Feng's clothes, and his shape gradually transformed. After becoming a mushroom and casting off the shackles of his human body, he could freely go here and there in the Abyss.

Halfway through the change, Lu Feng pressed down on his stomach with one hand. The man had always liked to play like this.

Lu Feng asked, "When will you have a baby spore?"

His tone of voice was as natural as if he was asking, "When will you give me a child?"

Of course this wasn't a natural thing.

Firstly, An Zhe could not give birth to children. He could only grow a spore that belonged to himself alone, an endospore, according to Pauli—the embryonic form of a new body.

Secondly, even he himself did not know when he would have a spore. As for when his initial spore had started growing and the reason why it had started growing, he no longer remembered.

He said, "I don't know."

Then he asked, "Do you want a baby spore very badly?"

"I do."

"Why?"

"It's very entertaining."

An Zhe was angered by this man once more.

Was toying with his subconscious really such a joyful thing?

He said, "I won't give it to you to play with."

Lu Feng earnestly rubbed his stomach, as if by doing so he'd be able to speed up the baby spore's growth.

An Zhe couldn't be bothered to acknowledge him. Continuing to change shape, he wound his hyphae securely around the man.

Lu Feng plucked apart some of his hyphae, then tied two wisps of it into a bow. But An Zhe had special knot-untying skills. By reversing the original steps, he untied it.

Lu Feng tied a more complex knot.

An Zhe untied it.

Another knot.

Another untying.

In the end, An Zhe completely retracted those two wisps of hyphae.

This game was so childish, even human younglings would not deign to play it.

Lu Feng laughed softly, then scooped up large clumps of hyphae in order to smooth An Zhe's ruffled strands.

By no means did An Zhe need such a service. Every time Lu Feng smoothed down the hyphae, he retracted some of them. Ten minutes later, his body had shrunk by threequarters of its usual shape. He was now only the size of a coconut.

Lu Feng seemed to suddenly realize something. He asked, "You can get smaller?"

He could.

This was something An Zhe himself had only recentlyrealized as well. He could control his own size, but he didn't know if it had anything to do with how he used to eat things willy-nilly. He obviously hadn't eaten such things in a long time.

Then he heard Lu Feng ask, "Can you get even smaller?"

An Zhe tried hard to retract his hyphae and became the size of an apple.

With further shrinking, he became the size of a pingpong ball.

... It seemed that he could still keep going.

Feeling his control over his own hyphae, An Zhe continued getting smaller.

His body suddenly felt weightless as it left the ground.

He was startled, but then he realized that Lu Feng had picked him up.

And after that, he was placed in the chest pocket of Lu Feng's uniform.

With a click, the button snapped into place.

"I'll take you out to play," The Colonel said with a relaxed voice, as though he were in high spirits.

An Zhe was rendered speechless.

The Colonel had definitely obtained some kind of strange joy.

———

An Zhe was in the vehicle.

The early morning sunlight spilled in through the armored vehicle's skylight.

This was the fourth time he and Lu Feng had gone to the Abyss.

He woke up.

But he did not get out of bed.

He also could not get out of bed.

He wrapped himself up in a quilt and refused to get out until Lu Feng had prepared a cup of milk and placed it in front of him.

Lu Feng asked, "Are you feeling a bit better now?"

An Zhe nodded.

"Does it still hurt?"

An Zhe shook his head.

Then he nodded.

With a slight frown, Lu Feng came over to An Zhe and peeled away the thin quilt that he had wrapped himself with. An Zhe allowed him to peel it away.

The surface of the quilt was made from a delicate fabric, both smooth and soft, yet when compared to the translucent and delicate milk-white skin, it seemed coarse.

But now on the skin there were crisscrossing marks, and just below the left side of his chest was broken skin surrounded by a large patch of red. It had originally beennothing at all. An Zhe had gotten up this morning and put on his shirt, but the fabric just happened to rub against the wound, causing it to sting, and he softly gasped.

Lu Feng pulled open a drawer and took out the alcohol, then dipped a cotton ball in it and cleaned the wound before applying medicine.

So the skin turned red again. An Zhe's skin was too delicate, like the white mushrooms newly grown after the rain, leaking juice with only a pinch.

After the medicine was applied, the area around the wound felt chilly. An Zhe wrapped himself up tightly in the quilt again, and he was pulled into Lu Feng's arms along with the quilt, where he rested his head against Lu Feng's right shoulder, leaning against him.

A little while later, it suddenly occurred to him that this man was the culprit responsible for the wound and that he should not peacefully coexist with him.

An Zhe tried to get away, but he had already been restrained in place.

He struggled fruitlessly, and in the process, the fabric of the quilt rubbed against his wound again.

"Don't move," Lu Feng said.

An Zhe was at a loss for words.

This man's tone of voice was not only lacking the slightest hint of guilt, but it also sounded like he was criticizing him for squirming around. It was extremely hateful.

It just so happened that he could see Lu Feng's neck as soon as he looked up. He ground his teeth.

Then he was hugged even tighter, and he could not move at all anymore.

An Zhe mulled over it and was still very unhappy in theend. It was not a temporary unhappiness, but rather a mood that incrementally developed over many days. He had been constantly wishing to find fault with Lu Feng.

This time, there was finally a wound worth noting.

He mumbled, "You're so mean."

Lu Feng asked, "Am I?"

"Yes."

"No I'm not." Lu Feng pulled him over. "I'm being very attentive."

An Zhe did not know what he was talking about.

Supposing all of this was the aftermath of being attentive, then when you are not being attentive, do you take people apart and eat them?

An Zhe frowned. "That's impossible."

"Hm?"

"When you go too far, I struggle every time," An Zhe said, "and I cry."

Lu Feng looked at him.

"But you ignore me," An Zhe said, "and you even become more mean."

The new day began with criticism from a little mushroom—Lu Feng looked down at the mushroom in his arms.

His voice was soft and delicate as he complained under his breath.

An Zhe finished speaking.

But Lu Feng still wished to hear him talk more.

So he asked, "Is there anything else?"

An Zhe glared at him, the meaning of which was, "Is this not yet enough?"

"I thought that was the way to pay attention to you," Lu Feng replied.

An Zhe was confused.

"Is there anything else?" An Zhe asked.

"Yes," Lu Feng said. "You ought to learn to control yourself."

An Zhe did not know what he was talking about.

He could not possibly have done anything wrong.

He looked straight at Lu Feng, his voice cold as he said clearly, "There's something wrong with you."

"See," Lu Feng said, "you're acting childish again."

An Zhe confirmed that there was indeed a species difference between himself and Lu Feng.

If he could reach over to pick up the pillow, the first thing he would do would be to throw the pillow into Lu Feng's face.

But now his hands were both bound by Lu Feng, so he could only maintain a deadlock with this man with his eyes.

After a while, Lu Feng was the first to smile.

He lowered his head to kiss the corner of An Zhe's lips. An Zhe turned his head to avoid his touch, but he was restrained.

First he found himself tilted up by the chin and deeply kissed a few times, only being released after he could not catch his breath. Then Lu Feng gently kissed the corners of his eyes.

Breaths skimmed past his ear. Lu Feng no longer touched him through the quilt, reaching in with his right hand to grasp An Zhe's waist, where there were certainly still red marks from last night.

An Zhe trembled all over.

He said, "I don't want to."

"I can't hear you."

An Zhe brought up the past again. "Then every time I cry, you can't see it either?"

"It's not like I'm beating you. Crying is useless."

The new day began with unspoken criticism of the Colonel.

———

An Zhe was still in the vehicle.

Starlight spilled in through the armored vehicle's skylight.

This was the fourth time he and Lu Feng had gone to the Abyss.

The third time An Zhe mumbled on and on to himself, the Colonel put forth a solution.

Without any expression, he leaned against the back of the bed. "Do it yourself."

With an expression and tone of voice that was like he was at the genetic examination office at the city gates, next to the examination device, he said, "Do it yourself."

Facing him, An Zhe hesitated for a while before several strands of hyphae crept onto the Colonel.

Then he leaned down and kissed the Colonel's Adam's apple.

Then he kissed the side of the Colonel's neck and contemplated his next move.

Then it occurred to him that he was wearing loose white pajamas while the Colonel was still neatly dressed, so he began to struggle with the shirt buttons.

He was intimately familiar with this shirt, for he was an emotionless washing machine after all.

But not only did the shirt not open up as a result of their friendship, it was even more difficult to undo because of the angle.

After undoing the first button, he said to Lu Feng, "Undo them yourself."

Just like how Lu Feng would sometimes say to him.

Colonel Lu remained unmoved.

A few more strands of hyphae climbed up.

Humbling himself, the Colonel undid the second button in an unhurried manner.

An Zhe continued to think.

"You're someone who came from the third underground floor," he heard Lu Feng say, his voice slightly hoarse and containing a hint of a smile. "You should be a bit more practiced."

An Zhe was silent.

Then he said in a small voice, "It's not like I learned anything."

And he could not go back and learn again.

"I can see that," Lu Feng said. When this man lowered his voice, it contained a distant magnetism. An Zhe gave a start, feeling numb from his ears to his back.

So he once again recalled the past.

When he first met Lu Feng, he had even personally said "I work on the third underground floor," and the Colonel had responded with an "oh."

An Zhe was very curious about the impression the Colonel had of him at that time.

Seeming to understand him, the Colonel said, "I didn't know you were a mushroom then. I thought that if you didn't work on the third floor, there'd be no way for you to survive in the base."

He nonchalantly glanced at An Zhe, then continued. "Now it seems that even so, you can't support yourself."

The number of hyphae increased.

The Colonel stopped talking.

Right now, An Zhe's greatest wish was that the Colonel would be like that of his mannequin, unable to say a single word.

He lay his slender white fingers on Lu Feng's chest, waiting for the other man to finish undoing the buttons so he could hold his hand.

Then he saw the Colonel look at that place, seemingly also contemplating—and it was the kind of expression he only had when contemplating something serious.

A few seconds later, Lu Feng said, "In the past, you deceived me."

An Zhe tilted his head.

"Slow on the uptake, ignorant of what the crime of indecency is, doing illegal work with monthly wages lower than the baseline." The Colonel listed these three items, seemingly deep in thought. "These can't be explained by excessive simple-mindedness and limited intelligence."

An Zhe was at a loss for words.

He said, "Stop right there."

But it was obvious that the Colonel's hearing would selectively stop working.

"That night was also very unusual. You invited me to stay in your room."

An Zhe said, "That was because you had nowhere to go."

"The problem lay with how you wanted to give your toothbrush to me. You didn't understand human social etiquette at all."

An Zhe said nothing, as though his hearing had also selectively stopped working.

"Unless that was a clumsy flirting method you learned on the third floor... But that night, you were very well behaved," the Colonel said.

An Zhe knew the Colonel was talking about the night of Judgment Day, when he had invited this man to sleep for a night in his room.

He went to hold Lu Feng, pressing his forehead against the other man's chest. Even through a layer of fabric, there was a warm and solid sensation, and he could hear a steady heartbeat in his ears. All sorts of things had happened, just like a dream.

An Zhe imagined another possibility.

"Then," An Zhe said, "supposing that, at that time..."

Supposing that, at that time, it truly was a coincidental mistake—

If he truly was a worker on the third underground floor, or if he had mindlessly followed Mr. Shaw's suggestion, using another method to get close to the Arbiter—what would he have done that night?

The xenogenic with ulterior motives took in the Arbiter who had nowhere to return to.

When they did not yet know each other well and were even on their guard against the other.

But it was also at a time full of death, unrest, and abandonment.

Supposing that, at that time, An Zhe had leaned over to kiss Lu Feng on the lips or undid the buttons of his coat, what would they have been like?

An Zhe didn't know.

He only knew that to this day, when he thought of Lu Feng's back on the night of Judgment Day, his heart would violently tremble. He looked at those green eyes and seemed to return to that moment, when the blood-scented evening wind howled through the city.

So that expression appeared on his face again.

A quiet, grief-laden expression.

God did not love the world.

God loved the world.

The bed, the desk, and the decorations here used to be like the base's standard rooms. At night, the room darkened. The sound of the wind came from an unknown place, much like that night.

The An Zhe from that time was also like this, with snow white soft cotton pajamas and an innocent face.

Lu Feng put a hand on his shoulder, his gaze seeming tangible. An Zhe first dropped his gaze slightly, then lifted it again to meet his eyes. His eyelashes also trembledslightly, like the minute shake of flowers and leaves when a butterfly perched upon them.

Lu Feng stared at him for a long time, as though he were staring at the twilight above fields of snow.

Until this twilight descended, and An Zhe leaned over to kiss him on the corner of his lips.

Soundlessly, he moved to kiss him on the lips.

The past flickered out.