Xin Linhua glances around the white lab.
He’s actually here! On earth! It’s impossible! How can it be!? It shouldn’t be!
He was just soaking in a pond with an unwilling Rong Yizhan and he’s suddenly here? Maybe he’s dreaming!
Believing it to be a dream, Xin Linhua pinches himself. Hard. It hurts...it shouldn’t!
"S-Shit..." He turns pale "Did I die? Did I drown in that pond? My last seven minutes are actually this part of my past?"
On a cold operating table, a small body lies there. Different equipment, different vials containing various colors of liquid are placed on a table beside the body.
Xin Linhua flinches. He turns to the digital clock and checks the date. His pupils shrink as he turns deathly pale. His body quivers uncontrollably.
It’s the same day! The day he had foolishly believed the headmaster and went out to eat with him. The day he smiled the brightest, played, ate, threw away his worries, unbeknown to him, the horrors that awaited him for the next couple of years.
"How many has it been this week?" The headmaster’s voice snaps him awake "You said his chances were high! Well!?"
"Sir..." The first doctor hesitates "The data we collected is not wrong. His body should be adapting to the serum not rejecting it."
"Does this look like an adaptation to you?" The headmaster grits his teeth.
The doctors keep mute.
Xin Linhua walks towards the body. His hand bumps into the edge of a table, a stinging pain travels to his brain. He’s really not dreaming, everything is real...
He stands before the small but familiar body. He reaches his hand out and strokes the small head gently.
"Did you even have a name...?" He murmurs "Subject A34. That’s as far as they could go."
The scenery suddenly changes right before his eyes.
Long gone is the sterile atmosphere that smells of anaesthetics and dread.
He’s in a training room now. Very familiar, very bloody. Every single corner of this place records the growth of Subject A34.
"He has improved."
Xin Linhua turns to the side. The headmaster and the three doctors. The man has a triumphant smile on his face. His eyes stay glued to the small boy who’s wrestling someone twice his size.
"He still looks small now, but that’s due to being malnourished." One of the doctors says.
"Don’t you have something for that?" The headmaster asks without taking his eyes away "Use it. I need him on the field by the end of the year."
"Sir! That’s–"
"Or you can replace him."
The doctors swallow hard. They all lower their gaze, their conscience starts to gnaw at them. A few years too late.
Xin Linhua walks towards the boy. Those dark, lifeless eyes, that unwavering determination that’s fueled by the will to live and yet– it burns deep inside his heart. The source of this chapter is novelping dot com.
The scenery changes once more, back to the lab, to the sterile walls and cold table.
The boy is tied to the bed. His small body trashes repeatedly, purple veins line his skin. He’s in pain. He wants to die, but he can’t. They won’t let him die yet living is worse than death.
"Sir! His body can’t take anymore."
"If he dies, it’s on you."
Xin Linhua isn’t listening to any of their words. His grip on the table is hard, his eyes are red and he’s having trouble breathing.
He wants to wake up, he wants to leave this nightmare. He does not want to be here, anywhere but here...
Just like that, the scenery changes.
The boy is taller now. His once dark eyes are blue, lifeless and dull. Long gone was his scrawny stature, he has grown up to be a fine young man.
Subject A34. Codename:- Hollow.
______
"Veil, what are you doing here?"
Xin Linhua flinches. He raises his head, his ears ring from the rain.
He remembered this night, how can he ever forget? It’s the same night he learned that behind every smile is a hidden dagger. It was the night he had to plunge a knife into his sworn brother who poisoned had him for over a year.
"No..." Xin Linhua staggers forward "Don’t go to him! Don’t trust him!"
"...Linhua."
Xin Linhua tries to stop the young man. He tries to drag him away, talk to him, anything. But he learned a while ago that no one can see him or feel his presence here.
No matter what he does, he can only watch himself trust a man who saw him as nothing but a stepping stone.
"Xin..."
"You poisoned me...?"
Xin Linhua falls before the familiar face. His hands shook uncontrollably. He tries to stop the bleeding, tries to put pressure on the wound, but the blood just seeps out and through his fingers.
"The one you’ve always looked down on is going to be the one who pulls the trigger!" Veil laughs like a maniac.
Xin Linhua shakes his head repeatedly.
He had never looked down on Veil. He loved him like a brother, and treated him like family. Whatever Veil wanted, Hollow never failed to meet up. To think that everything he had done for almost two decades had been summed up to ’pity’ by Veil...
Xin Linhua shuts his eyes tight. He can’t bear to watch...the scene of him plunging the knife into his sworn brother. He can’t bear to witness it...again.
"...Hua."
"What are you doing here?"
Xin snaps his head up, tears streaming down his face. He stares into those familiar eyes.
"Heh!" Hollow snickers "You look ugly when you cry."
Hollow turns his head away, coughing up blood as he hisses softly. He stares at Veil’s dead body.
"Don’t make the same mistake..." His voice is soft "You have a family now. One that loves you. You have two brothers who’ll protect you. You have a friend who’s literally walking through life and death with you. A Sentinel who won’t leave your side."
"I’m sorry..." Xin Linhua crawls forward.
"What are you sorry for? You shouldn’t be. He was the warmth you knew in a bleak world and you embraced the hearth despite the burning flames. You now have everything I never had. Don’t throw it all away."
Xin Linhua nods repeatedly, his hands pressing down on the wounds.
"Shouldn’t you be awake by now?" Hollow stares into his eyes "Or are you willing to become a monster again?"
"What...?"
"Xin Linhua."
A strong grip latch on him, yanking him backwards. He inhales, his body breaks through the surface of the water.
He kneels on the hard cave floor, gasping and coughing up the water he has inhaled.
"What the fuck!" Xin Linhua turns "What just happened?"
"You wouldn’t wake up." Rong Yizhan turns to the pond "You were mumbling and talking about dying."
"Yeah, that sounds like me." Xin Linhua crumbles to the floor "Yaras?...come lie down beside me."
"No."
"I’m not trying to do anything weird to you." Xin Linhua clicks his tongue "Just do it."
Rong Yizhan hesitates. He does not trust Xin Linhua, not even a little bit, but still, he obeys and lies on his back.
"Now, tell me, what’s up there?"
Rong Yizhan places his hand on the ground. The ceiling is not a ceiling, just a thin patch of mud made to cover up the real ceiling.
"Bodies." Rong Yizhan replies calmly "Humans. Yokais. Alive."
"Excellent reply!" Xin Linhua praises "So, tell me, how did humans get into this rift without restrictions and why did the rift close afterwards even though they are living humans within?"
"I’m not sure."
Xin Linhua stands. He dusts himself off, slides his coat back on, dips his hand into the water and picks up a couple of glow worms.
Rong Yizhan grabs his knife, leaping into the air and clearing up the mud ceiling.
Xin Linhua tosses the glow worms towards the real ceiling. The worms attach themselves to the rough rocks, lighting up the whole place.
"Well, well, well, would you look at that?" Xin Linhua chuckles "And they said Yokais were the least intelligent of all monsters. Dumb and gullible, they call them."