(1)
The final semester of ninth grade did not arrive as expected.
An Qing opened her eyes quietly, only to see an unfamiliar ceiling above her.
Beside her, people dressed in hazmat suits were busy at work.
The moment she opened her eyes, a bright light overhead—like the sun—suddenly turned on, making her instinctively close her eyes again.
Those people were talking, seemingly saying something, but she couldn’t hear a thing.
“Uh… where is this…” she murmured to herself, but an inexplicable strange feeling lingered—
it was as if her voice was sounding directly inside her mind.
No one answered her.
Suddenly, a man in a hazmat suit approached her bedside and looked down into her eyes.
Behind his transparent face shield, she could see his mouth opening and closing.
More people gathered around.
They seemed to be exchanging opinions, and suddenly, someone brought a small handheld whiteboard.
The man who had been staring into her eyes took a marker and neatly wrote:
「What is your name?」
“.An Qing?”
「Gender?」
He erased the previous words and wrote something new.
“Male… ah, female…”
「How old are you now?」
“Fifteen years old… by full years.”
Another person in a hazmat suit handed over a photograph, and new words appeared on the whiteboard: 「From left to right, who are they?」
“Huihui sister, me, Fei sister…”
The group glanced at each other, murmuring something under their breath, and finally all nodded in varying degrees.
The lights went off.
Everything in An Qing’s sight plunged back into darkness.
Only a few faint green emergency lights blinked.
Time passed slowly here.
So slowly that she felt herself slipping into sleep again.
But this sleep was different from usual.
…it was the feeling of wanting to sleep, yet unable to.
When she came back to her senses in a daze, she found herself sitting in a cold wheelchair.
A woman in a white lab coat was gently pushing her along a long corridor.
There were many doors along the hallway; they paused briefly at each one. Finally, when the last big door opened, they arrived at a lobby.
Many people busily walked back and forth in the lobby, some throwing curious glances her way but quickly looking away, unwilling to linger.
The woman pushed her into another room, and immediately the atmosphere felt much more comforting.
Because it was spacious enough, and a large floor-to-ceiling window allowed bright sunlight to stream in.
Behind a solid wood tea table sat a simple wooden sofa, and near the window stood a heavy rosewood desk.
On the desk was a computer tower, with cables running behind it to another shelf holding four pieces of hardware with fans that had small lights on them; the fans spun silently.
Besides the tower, there was a very wide monitor that made one wonder what it was used for.
Before she could examine it further, she suddenly felt a figure rushing toward her and then wrapping her in a hug.
Lifting her face, she saw Yu Minghui’s eyes rimmed red.
Minghui opened her mouth as if to say something.
But An Qing heard nothing.
The world… was dead silent.
An old man, bald, gently shook his head; behind him, Yu Mingfei tugged at Yu Minghui’s hand.
The middle-aged woman behind them slowly turned the wheelchair around, facing a huge screen mounted on the wall—
at least a hundred inches large.
「Hello, An Qing.」
These words flashed on the screen.
“Don’t be surprised. Something has happened to you, so you temporarily cannot hear any sounds.”
“How is that possible! I clearly hear my own voice…”
“Listen carefully again. Is it really your own voice you hear?”
“How could it not be…”
An Qing’s eyes widened suddenly.
What she had been hearing was indeed not the sound of her own voice, but her inner voice.
Just like silently reading a novel and hearing the voice in your head.
In fact, it wasn’t actually heard.
Upon realizing this, she couldn’t hear her own spoken voice anymore.
The inner voice in her mind twisted and distorted, sounding unlike her own…
“Don’t be afraid. In theory, this can be restored.”
At this moment, An Qing’s heart skipped a beat.
She turned sharply and saw her father standing at the door as he pushed it open; shortly after, her mother came in quietly and closed the door behind her.
Both their faces were pale and frighteningly so.
“I’m the head of this Research Institute. My surname is Ye.”
“That night, an incident with intense conflict occurred. Do you still remember it?”
An Qing wanted to speak but ended up closing her mouth, only shaking her head blankly.
“That’s fine. We’ll find ways to help you remember gradually.”
An Qing touched her arm and broke out in goosebumps. Somehow that sentence felt like a threat.
“Don’t be afraid, child. In fact, I have a similar experience to yours.”
She tilted her head, frowning in puzzlement.
“You came into close contact with a meteorite that fell from the sky.”
She nodded.
“Me too. Because of that immediate close contact, I developed ‘special abilities.’”
An Qing’s eyes widened.
She glanced back at the Research Institute head, Ye, who looked like a very senior doctor.
“Unlike you, my gender didn’t change, but I was copied—an exact duplicate of myself.”
“As long as one of me doesn’t die, the other will regenerate.”
“Though the abilities granted were different, the meteorite that caused this abnormality was very similar.”
“Your two elder sisters have already informed us about your special powers: entering dreams, reading minds, and modifying memories related to you. Do you have anything else to add?”
An Qing shook her head and then nodded again.
The middle-aged woman handed over a whiteboard for writing.
Her fingers felt weak, barely able to grasp the pen. She scribbled two characters unevenly.
Perhaps unsure, she added a parenthesis with the word ‘possibly.’
“Alright, then the side effect you know of is only urgent urination, correct?”
An Qing nodded lightly and couldn’t help but glance back at her parents.
“Don’t worry, they already know most of the situation.”
She awkwardly cleared her throat but heard no cough, still a bit uneasy.
“Currently, your body shows no abnormalities from radiation exposure. We used the most advanced instruments to examine you and still cannot detect any male traits from before.”
An Qing immediately tensed up.
Yu Minghui gently stroked her head, soothing her emotions warmly.
“Rest assured, we won’t harm you in any way. The meteorite you obtained is still under study. At the moment, we don’t have enough data to restore your hearing.”
An Qing didn’t dare to relax for a moment; instead, she clenched her fists even tighter in tension.
“We will handle all issues related to your identity. You only need to cooperate with us during this period.”
She lowered her head, biting her lip, and wrote on the whiteboard:「What do you want me to do? Will there be surgery?」
“As long as you remain healthy, we will never operate on you.”
Yu Minghui glanced back at the doctor, opening her mouth as if to say something.
She seemed to have gotten a more definite answer, though her face was still full of worry.
“You will be recuperating here for some time, and what we hope is that you can remember what exactly happened that day.”
“What did I do that day?”
“You killed three adult men.”
“Don’t worry. Your situation is special, so you won’t bear legal responsibility. We’ve also verified their identities—they were mercenaries and assassins from an international organization, and it seems you were their target.”
As if recalling something, An Qing quickly erased the words on the whiteboard with the eraser cap and wrote hurriedly:
“Ying, are you okay?”
“That girl is fine, just some superficial injuries.”
An Qing let out a long breath.
“So, have you remembered what happened?”
Facing An Qing’s shake of the head, another line appeared on the screen:
“You need to remember quickly what happened that night.”
She nodded slightly, leaning back in the chair as her eyes began to glaze over…
***
(2)
Even with festive lanterns dotting the city, it was already late at nearly eleven o’clock for the small town.
“My parents aren’t coming home tonight, so I might as well stay at your place!”
Zhu Ying held an umbrella, looking at An Qing with eager anticipation.
“Huh? My place? Eh… no, that’s not really good…”
“But you sleep in the same bed at Qiqi’s, don’t you?”
“Ahem…”
“And besides, it’s thundering and raining today. I’m scared all alone—”
Zhu Ying cupped her cheeks, pouting cutely as she rubbed against An Qing’s arm.
Only when An Qing gently nodded did she burst into a joyful cheer, “Yay~ Going to Xiao Jing’s to sleep!”
So the two walked past the greenhouse shopping street, crossed the national highway without streetlights where cars lit the road, and arrived at the small plaza in front of the apartment.
The plaza should have been livelier earlier, but trash was scattered on the ground.
They walked further inside, the alley narrowing the starlit night sky into a thin strip.
The barbecue shop owner was closing up, the restaurant kitchen was busy washing dishes, and the hardware store owner had already pulled down the shutter…
Outside the barbershop with blue glass doors, the owner, who doubled as the barber, was smoking what was probably his last cigarette of the day.
A little girl in red leather shoes ran quickly to the barber, holding a long-haired, dirty orange cat, excitedly asking, “Boss! You’re still open, right?”
The flickering light of the cigarette’s tip brightened and dimmed as the barber looked up and gave a faint “Mm.”
“Can you trim my cat’s hair?”
“This is a barbershop.”
“The cat’s fur is just like human hair!”
The barber silently stood up and pressed a switch on the wall. The sign outside the door, missing the ‘king’ radical in ‘barber’ to read, lit up immediately.
“Please give my cat a haircut! Please, uncle! My mom said if it stays messy and dirty like this, it can’t come inside, but it’s so big and it was out in this rain—it looked so pitiful…”
“.What kind of hairstyle does your cat want?”
An Qing couldn’t help but pause to watch the barber who took the orange cat, a faint smile curling at her lips.
In this ordinary city, the air was filled everywhere with peace and stability…