One week later. Cangnan City No. 2 High School.
"Hey, look—is that guy from our school? Why are his eyes covered with cloth?"
"He's wearing our uniform, so he has to be."
"He's holding a white cane, too. Looks like he's blind."
"Weird. How come I've never seen him before?"
"Probably one of the new first-years?"
"You know, with those loops of black cloth over his eyes, he actually looks kind of cool."
"But how does a blind person attend class? I don't think our school has a special-needs class."
"No idea."
"..."
As expected, the moment Lin Qiye walked through the school gates, he drew a wave of attention.
But he had been through scenes like this far too many times. As if no one else existed, he crossed the school's maple-lined avenue and headed for the teaching building.
Truth be told, Lin Qiye had come mentally prepared to deal with troublemakers. After all, in every brain-dead power-fantasy novel, this was exactly when some idiotic so-called "school bully" would leap out and mock him up and down, laying the groundwork for his big face-slapping moment later...
But no troublemaker of the sort appeared. Instead, quite a few students came up on their own to ask if he needed help.
Which left Lin Qiye feeling inexplicably deflated.
It made sense, though. These were modern students, nine years of compulsory education behind them—where would you find that many blind fools spoiling for trouble? And even if there were little cliques, they fancied themselves honorable these days. Squaring things away for a brother, blowing off some steam—fine. But actually bullying a disabled student? They'd be drowned in spit by the next morning, their reputations ruined for good.
Lin Qiye climbed the stairs and soon found his classroom: Class 2 of Second Year. He had already done a year of high school at the special school, so after transferring, he counted as a mid-year transfer student.
By the logic of most film, television, and fiction, "transfer student" was a byword for cold shoulders, isolation, and misery—after all, a year into high school, every little clique had already formed. If you didn't take the initiative, it was hard to ever truly fit in.
Lin Qiye knew perfectly well that he wasn't the initiative-taking type.
Honestly, even if he'd been with them since first year, with that keep-your-distance air of his, odds were he'd still be alone by now.
Not that being alone was so bad. Lin Qiye rather enjoyed it. No one to disturb him—he could settle his mind, temper his nature, and focus on his studies...
Ask him to deliberately go make friends, and that he genuinely couldn't do.
Standing at the classroom door, Lin Qiye took a deep breath, steadied his mind, and stepped inside.
The instant he entered, the clamor of the classroom cut off mid-note. The air went abruptly quiet...
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds...
Just as Lin Qiye was about to say something, the classroom exploded!
"You're Lin Qiye, right? Your seat's already set up—it's over there."
"Lin Qiye, you can't see, right? I'll take you over."
"Walk slowly! There's a lot of stuff in the aisle... Hey, you! Get your backpack out of the way!"
"..."
Before Lin Qiye could even react, several classmates had already come up and were carefully guiding him toward his seat. One tall boy simply took Lin Qiye's backpack from him and slung it over his own shoulder.
Escorted by the crowd, Lin Qiye arrived "safely" at his desk.
Lin Qiye: ...?
This wasn't how the script was supposed to go.
"Lin Qiye, I'm Jiang Qian, the class monitor. If you need anything, come find me." A girl with a ponytail thumped her chest.
"I'm Li Yifei. When it's time for lunch, just give a shout—I'll take you there," laughed the boy who had carried his bag.
"Me too! I'm Wang Shao..."
"..."
A crowd pressed in around him, greeting him with warmth.
For a moment, Lin Qiye was actually at a loss.
Honestly, this was nothing like what he'd imagined.
"You all... know me?" Lin Qiye's expression turned odd.
"Our homeroom teacher told us about you," Jiang Qian the class monitor answered. "But what really left an impression was your aunt. The other day she showed up with a basket of eggs and stood right here, handing one to each of us, asking us to look out for you..."
A thunderclap seemed to split through Lin Qiye's mind, and he froze on the spot.
Whatever the classmates said after that, he no longer heard. He could only stare blankly around the classroom while the image rose up in his mind, unbidden: that stooped, middle-aged woman, carrying a basket of freshly boiled eggs, earnestly entrusting her nephew to a room full of students.
"Students, please, do me this favor. That nephew of mine, his eyes aren't good, and he keeps to himself. Look out for him a little..."
"What a pretty girl you are! My nephew's very handsome too, you know. You'd like him, I promise..."
"Qiye is a good child, just cold outside and warm inside. Once you get to know him, I know you'll all get along..."
"..."
At some point, the black satin band had grown ever so slightly damp.
"Auntie..." he murmured.
While everyone chattered away, a woman teacher walked in with her books under one arm. Seeing Lin Qiye in the front row, she came over to say a few words of welcome, gave the class a brief introduction, and then began the lesson.
"Everyone, turn to page ninety-one. Today we'll discuss the history and predicament of modern Great Xia..."
Perhaps because of Lin Qiye's presence, the teacher skipped the usual skim-through of the textbook and launched straight into the content.
"A hundred years ago, this planet held more than two hundred nations, spread across seven continents and four oceans, each with its own customs and cultures. Even in that era of limited technology, we could still board ships and travel to different countries, and feel our cultures collide and mingle..."
"But on March ninth of that year, a mysterious fog appeared out of nowhere over Antarctica—and spread at a terrifying speed. Within a mere twenty-four hours, it had swallowed nearly ninety-eight percent of the Earth's surface."
"The towers humanity built, the primeval forests that had stood since antiquity, the fathomless oceans... everything, everything was buried beneath the Mist. Countless nations fell inside it, and all contact was lost."
"And yet, this impossible fog—just as it was about to press into the territory of Great Xia—stopped."
"No one knows why. It simply, inexplicably, stopped."
"Over the past century, countless theories and conjectures have been proposed. Some say the Mist is in fact a living creature that happened to eat its fill after devouring ninety-eight percent of the Earth, and so it halted at Great Xia's doorstep. Some say a unique magnetic field where Great Xia lies obstructed the fog's advance. Others say it is the accumulated heritage of our Great Xia's five thousand years at work, shielding this land..."
"The composition of the Mist lies entirely beyond human understanding. Light, sound, radio waves, every method of detection we possess—none of it can penetrate the Mist. No one knows whether the nations swallowed a hundred years ago still exist behind that veil..."
"Experts estimate that the probability of survival within the Mist is close to zero—because whether inhaled into the lungs or merely touching bare skin... the Mist is lethal."
"Over the past hundred years, our nation has sent countless fully equipped expeditions into the Mist. Not one person has returned."
"Fifty years ago, our first satellite launched successfully. In the images it sent back from space, the entire planet had turned a gray white—with only Great Xia remaining as a final patch of unspoiled land."
"Great Xia today is like a lone island on this planet. And we... may well be this world's last survivors."
"And so the day the Mist appeared—March ninth of every year—is known as 'Survivor Day.'"