Aggrieved, Manman watched his retreating figure. Then her small mouth pursed, and she let out an earth-shattering wail. 

She couldn’t use her mouth to speak, but she could use it to cry. The doubled crying sounds added together sounded unusually demonic and ear-piercing. Kou Tong’s mom quickly dropped her spatula and ran out of the kitchen to pick Manman up, gently patting her on the back. 

But the little girl only looked past her shoulder at Huang Jinchen, standing at the door of the bedroom with his arms crossed in front of his chest. 

There was no expression on the man’s face. The place where he was standing seemed to set him apart from everyone. He watched Manman with no concern, as if she weren’t a little girl he had made cry but a little sparrow hopping to and fro. 

Manman’s eyes were on him, but her body was curling up in Kou Tong’s mom’s arms. Like a little mobile hard disk, she could classify and store everything, but she was particularly sensitive towards others’ indifference. 

Even Yao Shuo was disturbed. He opened the door and frowned, looking at Huang Jinchen. “Why are you lowering yourself to argue with a child?” 

Huang Jinchen glanced at him. Not making a sound, he went back into the room and closed the door. When Manman couldn’t see him, her cries slowly quieted. In the end, she whimpered to a stop. 

In a whole apartment full of grown-ups, there was only this one little girl. They all treated her like a little treasure. Even He Xiaozhi did everything in his power to squeeze out a rather grim-looking smile and pressed down on Manman’s soft hair. 

Huang Jinchen got the gun he had brought with him out from under the bed, picked up a glasses cloth from the glasses case Kou Tong had put on the table, and absent-mindedly began to wipe. 

Sounds from the living room came through the wooden door. Many people were talking. It was very lively. Kou Tong must have said something funny; there was some very lively laughter—Dr. Kou could always easily adjust people’s moods in the direction he wanted. 

This home that had just seemed like a mental asylum seemed to have become warm and happy in an instant. 

Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist letting his attention be drawn by these voices. He was like the little girl standing in the snow on Christmas Eve, looking through the windows at fireplaces and turkeys in people’s homes. 

Sadly, he didn’t sell matches; he sold lives. 

He remembered a long, long time ago, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when he had killed a man under orders. 

That day, he lay on top of a tall building, looking through the telescopic sight at his target’s home. There was a strong warm spell that Mid-Autumn Festival; the temperature was still high. The family had the windows open, all of them sitting in the living room watching TV with fruit and mooncakes on the table. 

There was a little boy in the house, the same age as Manman, who insisted on opening up every mooncake to see what filling it had. He sat in the lap of his father, who was about to have his head blown up. There was also a dachshund that could only stumble around, running to and fro. 

In fact, there was no moonlight that night, only a cloudy sky, but the whole family was together and still very happy. 

On the rooftop, Huang Jinchen smoked three cigarettes, looking through a bloody telescopic sight, like an ill-intentioned peeping Tom. 

In fact, in that moment, he also very much wanted to open a door and walk into a home. It didn’t matter who was inside, as long as they had a place for him, a room. In the evening everyone would have dinner together, ridicule the never-ending news broadcast on TV, have a war over the evening dramas and sports matches, then finally return in a huff to their rooms to watch videos online. 

Cool in summer, warm in winter, getting together to do some simple but interesting commemorative activity for every holiday, frowning and eating things they clearly didn’t like for the sake of the occasion—for example mooncakes, for example zongzi, or gluey and hard to digest tangyuan. 

But before he could awaken from his beautiful dream, the ice-cold order to fire had come over his earpiece. 

So he had to raise his ice-cold gun, which he had nevertheless depended on for survival for many years. When the little boy jumped off his father’s lap and went to chase the little dog, turning his back to him, he pulled the trigger, not even looking at his own achievement. He shut the telescopic sight, turned, and left. 

…And what was still better, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled along the floor with a knife and fork in its breast, right over to the little girl. 

Then the match went out, and she could see only the thick, cold wall.

All his life, there had been nothing for him in the world but a thick, cold wall. 

When he was very little, he had been taken to a secret base to be trained; there had been no door in this vast country that he could open. Every day there was only ice-cold equipment and strict training. He became more and more skilled, and less and less like a person. 

Later, he received one assignment after another, starting to become all-conquering in the nonstop career of killing. He lived behind a telescopic sight, making his world henceforth infinitely great, and also infinitesimally small. 

All that met his eye were shabby rooftops or empty old houses, a gun, and other people’s lives, other people’s endless comings and goings. 

But now, when he finally had such a door, which he could open to hear the conversations, celebrations, and sorrows he had imagined, he found that it was still hard for these things to touch him. 

Outside, they were crying and laughing. In front of him, there was still only a wall. 

When the little girl had opened her skinny arms and demanded a hug from him, for a moment, Huang Jinchen had even been angry. 

A weak person didn’t have the right to survive, even if she was only a child. 

What do you have to feel wronged over? What do any of you have to feel wronged over? he thought. All over the world, there are so many unfortunate people. Every second, there are countless people who won’t hear the next second’s tick of the clock. Clutching your insignificant pain, what reason do you have to demand hugs so hysterically? 

Twenty minutes later, Kou Tong opened the door and came in. He silently pulled up a chair in front of Huang Jinchen and sat down. 

Neither took any notice of the other. Kou Tong was looking Huang Jinchen up and down, and Huang Jinchen was wiping his gun. After a long time, Huang Jinchen, with his head down, finally asked, “Dr. Kou, have you suddenly noticed that I’m very handsome and become interested in me?” 

Kou Tong laughed, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, put one in his mouth, gave another to Huang Jinchen, and drew close to light it for him. 

Neither of these two had good living habits. Points they had somewhat in common were a lack of moral integrity and a serious cigarette habit. 

Faint tobacco scent floated up from the flame. Kou Tong’s shadow fell over Huang Jinchen’s gun. The mouth of the gun coincidentally touched his underbelly, but he lit Huang Jinchen’s cigarette without any scruples, then sat back into his original position. 

Huang Jinchen suddenly raised his head and looked at him. His gaze was sharp. He narrowed his eyes. “Dr. Kou, why is there a smell of gun smoke about you?” 

Kou Tong said, “Hm?” 

Huang Jinchen’s expression became solemn. He looked Kou Tong up and down, paused for a moment, then said, “Why do you call General Zhong…instructor?” 

Kou Tong smiled, gave an “ah,” crossed one leg over the other, and leaned back in his chair in a very relaxed posture. “You may have noticed that in the campaign where we suppressed Utopia, General Zhong temporarily lost control of the base. At that time, I had the highest authority.” 

Huang Jinchen waited for him to keep talking. 

Kou Tong’s words paused for a moment, as though he didn’t know how to continue. He lowered his eyes, thought for a long time, then suddenly asked, “Actually, what you want to ask me about is the Seed Project, right?” 

Huang Jinchen, indolently leaning against the head of the bed, suddenly sat up straight. He was like a bow that had been pulled, seeming to hold an arrow on the verge of being shot. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands holding the gun. 

He lowered his voice and urgently asked, “What did you say?” 

Kou Tong hesitated, twisted cigarette ash into an ashtray on the table, and walked two circles around the room. “This isn’t a good time. Our emotions are unstable. Perhaps we can discuss this question tomorrow.” 

“You…” Huang Jinchen seemed to want to say something, but after a while, he strangely held back. He relaxed his spine once more and leaned back. “That makes sense. We can find a time to go out and talk about it.” 

Kou Tong looked at him appreciatively. What a sniper lacked for least was always perfect psychological quality and patience. Then he leaned down and picked up his pillow, turned, and left the bedroom, leaving behind the sentence, “Rest up, I’m going to the study to arrange my notes.” 

Kou Tong spent that night in the study, leaving his bedroom to Huang Jinchen while he himself cozied up to a stack of old, yellowed documents. 

He pushed two chairs together, and that still wasn’t long enough. He had to lay the table in the middle as well. While the result was uneven, he could manage to lie on it. 

By the middle of the night, Kou Tong had finally made some progress arranging the messy notes. When he had just lain down, someone knocked gently on the study door. He had to get up amidst the ping-pong collisions of table and chairs, smooth down his wild hair, and open the door. He looked and found his mom standing there. 

“Why aren’t you sleeping yet?”  Kou Tong asked in a low voice. 

“I saw that the light in your study was still on. I thought you must have been doing some urgent work.” Kou Tong’s mom looked inside and brought over a small plate of fruit. “You have to hydrate when you’re staying up late. Can you sleep in here? Why don’t you come sleep in my room?” 

Kou Tong had put an apple segment in his mouth and nearly spat it up. He frowned and looked disbelievingly at her. Like when she had wanted to go to sleep hugging him when he was little, he blurted out, “How could I? You’re a woman!” 

Kou Tong’s mom was speechless. “Hey, brother, you really are a true man.” 

Kou Tong rolled his eyes at her, and she laughed. She quietly took a quilt from a cabinet and laid it over his unusually simple bed, then reached out to smooth it. She still didn’t think it was soft enough. “Will this do?” 

“It’s fine, it’s fine, don’t fuss. You’ll wake everyone up.” There was a stack of documents no one else could see under Kou Tong’s pillow. Though he knew that she wouldn’t understand them, he still couldn’t resist being a little flustered. He hastily pushed her out. “Go on, mom, you’ll get wrinkles if you go to sleep too late.” 

Forced out by him, Kou Tong’s mom took a swipe at his nose. “Traitor.” 

Kou Tong turned and leaned on the doorframe, silently eating a plate full of fruit. Then he lay back down on his temporary bed, but suddenly he didn’t feel like sleeping. The warm quilt was real, and the fruit he had eaten was also real. The elderly Smurfs poster stuck to the wall of the study was also real. 

Since he had called out “mom,” Kou Tong had suddenly had the feeling that he had integrated into this space and could live out his life here. 

Unconsciously, Kou Tong took out the document pouch under his pillow. The notes he had spent half the night arranging were inside. As if another person were controlling his body, Kou Tong thought, Why do I have to get out?

This space was like a place where your dreams came true. All the things he had revered but hadn’t dared to hope for in his wildest dreams could be had here. A person’s life and struggles, weren’t they for the sake of making a better life? Here, all hidden, true wishes could be realized. What was bad about it? 

If he didn’t get out, if he grew old here, died here, then…

By the time he came back to himself, he had nearly torn the papers in half. Kou Tong immediately sat up. Chair legs scraped the floor, letting out a teeth-aching screech. Kou Tong quickly took tape out from the bottom of the bookcase, sat on the ground with the coverlet draped over him, and stuck the torn notes back together. 

Deep night always made people lose the vigilance they ought to have. Kou Tong lowered his eyes. There was only one dim desk lamp that had temporarily been moved onto the floor in the study; in the light, his features looked like a carved relief hanging on a wall, cold and deep, with an undetectable dejection. 

His slightly rolled up sleeve revealed a few deep scars. Looking at it for a long time almost gave you a false impression—as if these weren’t scars, but a human face, features forever twisted, looking at him from close up, following him like a shadow, reminding him at every moment of the things he had tried every means to forget. 

Kou Tong finished sticking the notes together and curled up, hugging his long legs, one hand tightly clasping his forearm. He had never thought that he could one day be this weak, unable even to tell reality from illusion, trapped in an enormous dilemma created by the machine he had personally planned and taken part in making. 

He sat unmoving in the shadows. From the dimness of starlight he sat until pale ashen white like a fish’s belly rose over the horizon. Then the first glimmer of dawn lit the first shout of the morning, and the street once again became full of people coming and going. The endless night had passed. 

What was reality? What was illusion? 

Kou Tong heard someone outside tiptoe out and guessed that it was probably his mother, still alive in this space, planning to go buy breakfast “for the whole family.” 

He raised his stiff arms, rubbed his face, and thought, It would be better if Lao Ji were also here. 

Then he picked up a slightly weatherbeaten mirror from the bookcase, looked at his own pale, weary face for a while, closed his eyes for a long moment, and then, without any alteration, put on a smile identical to his usual one, ready to appear on the scene full of spring sunshine.