Cen Xie woke up in the middle of the night. Seeing Ying Zhu sitting by the window staring blankly at the night sky, he called out, “What are you thinking about?”
Ying Zhu snapped back to reality and told him about meeting Lin Wan. “Lin Wan said he was injured during training. After his family discussed it with the school, they decided he wasn’t fit for the battlefield, so he dropped out of Ark. That was about half a year before the war started.”
Cen Xie listened and frowned. “You’re saying you were roommates at Ark, yet you have no memory of him dropping out six months early?”
Ying Zhu gave a soft grunt of affirmation. Ordinarily, he might think it was just because too much time had passed, and forgetting something from over a decade ago was normal. But now, they both knew things weren’t that simple.
Ying Zhu had thought a lot while Cen Xie was sleeping. “When I was roommates with Lin Wan, we were basically strangers. He was very introverted; we shared a room but rarely spoke, let alone argued. Recalling my time with him, there are almost no ‘memory anchors.’ Every day I pull from my mind is an identical routine.”
“When a memory breaks, the hippocampus repairs itself. If the memory of that period truly disappeared and the hippocampus covered it with those identical daily routines, I might never have noticed.”
Hearing this eerie narrative, Cen Xie felt a chill run down his spine.
Ying Zhu asked, “What about you? Can you recall anything from your final six months at Ark Academy?”
Cen Xie thought for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s like that summer vacation metaphor you used. I can’t recall any specific events, but I’m not certain if I’ve forgotten them, either.”
That was the situation. To say they remembered felt uncertain; to say they forgot felt forced. They didn’t remember specific details, yet they didn’t know what exactly they were missing.
Cen Xie was silent for a moment before saying, “We originally thought the memory loss was only from about three years ago. Now it seems the time span is much longer than we imagined.”
They were only sixteen or seventeen when they were at Ark Academy. Judging by the memory cards they had collected, their bodies in those clips were no longer those of teenagers. This meant that for at least ten years—starting from their time at Ark until three years ago—their memories were fragmented and incomplete.
The two looked at each other, falling into a heavy silence. After the air stagnated for a long while, Ying Zhu spoke: “We need to go back to Ark.”
…….
In the suburbs of the West District, Ying Zhu drove Cen Xie to Ark Academy. As a school dedicated to training special soldiers before the war, its mission ended when the war began; it was now completely abandoned.
They pushed open the rusted gates covered in vines. Inside, the weeds were nearly as tall as a person, though luckily the brick path in the center hadn’t been completely reclaimed by nature, allowing them to walk through.
Following distant memories, Ying Zhu and Cen Xie arrived at the dormitory building. From the outside, the entire structure was dilapidated, walls covered in creepers, doors and windows looking like hollow, vacant eyes.
Stepping inside, even the air felt ancient. The dense rows of tall, arched windows in the hallway were now just frames; countless beams of sunlight poured in, making the long corridor flicker between light and shadow.
Ying Zhu stopped before a door at the end of the hallway. This was the dorm room where he had lived for two years.
The door frame was rotted and loose. When they pushed it open, the dust was suffocating. The walls were mottled with cracks and mold. The stained glass on the circular arched windows was shattered and draped in cobwebs. A mummified cat corpse lay in the corner.
The room was filled with dust-covered items. Frayed cotton on the floor was barely recognizable as what used to be a quilt, likely having served as a nest for many stray animals. Books were scattered across the floor.
Cen Xie pushed open the bathroom door. This area wasn’t as ruined, likely because the window was intact. No stray animals had entered to cause chaos, and things were still in their original places. He looked at the sink and called out, “Ying Zhu, come here.”
Ying Zhu walked over and froze at the sight.
On the sink were two sets of toiletries: two rinse cups and two toothbrushes.
Though they had been eroded by time to the point where they might crumble into powder with a light snap, there were undeniably two sets.
If Lin Wan had dropped out six months before the war, why were there two sets of toiletries? It wasn’t as if Ying Zhu had kept them there to mourn his old roommate.
Ying Zhu stared at the two cups in silence.
Next, they went to Cen Xie’s dorm room but found nothing. However, that didn’t mean Cen Xie’s memories were intact. Just as Lin Wan’s appearance had alerted Ying Zhu to the anomaly, Cen Xie might simply be missing a “Lin Wan” to jump out and reveal the deviation between his memory and reality.
The two left the decaying dormitory and stepped back into the fresh sunlight, walking toward the main gate to leave.
Ying Zhu remained silent, the gravity of the situation weighing on him.
How many more secrets were hidden? To what extent had their own memories deceived them?
Events that had clearly occurred had simply vanished, yet they felt like loose threads—pull one, and the entire tapestry unravels. It was as if you peeled back a layer of skin only to find the structure beneath riddled with hollows. Their memories had been severed and then crudely patched back together; the connections were forced, a deceptive work of “grafting” one reality onto another.
Ying Zhu possessed an intuition far beyond the average person, and in this moment, he felt a nameless dread regarding the truth. He couldn’t distinguish whether this fear was a byproduct of his psychic abilities or simply a primal terror of the unknown.
Cen Xie, noticing his grim expression, asked, “What are you thinking about?”
Ying Zhu stopped walking. “I’m wondering… do we really want to find those lost memories?”
Cen Xie froze for a moment. “What’s wrong? Why the sudden hesitation?”
Ying Zhu shook his head. He couldn’t use something as ethereal as “intuition” as a justification, but his chest felt tight, constricted by an uncomfortable weight. Without another word, he quickened his pace toward the main gate.
After a few steps, Cen Xie suddenly called out to him. Ying Zhu stopped and turned around.
Cen Xie stood there, radiant in the brilliant sunlight. “I’ll tell you whether we should find them or not.”
He strode toward Ying Zhu and stopped in front of him. “Look, in Chinese, the characters for ‘seek’ (找) and ‘me’ (我) look very similar—they’re only different by one small stroke. But if I don’t find (找) that missing stroke, I will never truly be me (我).”
“This is how I see it: I don’t know who stole our memories, but they belong to us. Even if we eventually choose to forget, that decision should be ours to make.”
Cen Xie’s eyes were steady and resolute. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but you have me by your side. No matter what the situation is, I’m on your side.”
As Ying Zhu looked into Cen Xie’s eyes, the ambient noise of the world and the fear in his heart gradually faded. The chaotic thoughts vanished, replaced by a grounded sense of security.
By the time they exited the gates of Ark Academy, Ying Zhu had regained his composure. He spent the walk back to the car tapping away at his phone. Cen Xie, assuming he was busy with work, didn’t disturb him.
A few minutes later, Ying Zhu put his phone away. “Clear your schedule for tomorrow.”
Cen Xie: “For what?”
Ying Zhu: “To get married.”
Cen Xie thought he had misheard. His expression turned bizarre, his mouth twitching. “Marriage? You… and me?”
Ying Zhu: “Is there a third person here?”
Cen Xie: “But why?”
Ying Zhu: “What kind of power can erase our memories simultaneously, leave no trace, and keep us from even noticing? It has to be something incredibly formidable.”
Cen Xie blinked at him. “Right. But what does that have to do with marriage?”
Ying Zhu: “Right now, we are in the light and the enemy is in the dark. Since they can wipe our memories once, there’s no guarantee they won’t do it again. I only realized my memory was faulty because I stumbled upon that first memory card; we might not be so lucky next time.”
“We need to leave a trace for ourselves. I’ve thought it over, and the most stable relationship with the hardest-to-erase trail is a marriage registered through government agencies. It creates a concrete, legal social bond.”
Cen Xie agreed with the logic, but had another concern: “But what if—”
Ying Zhu knew what he was going to say—what if the enemy could even erase the record of the marriage?
“We have to try,” he said.
Then Ying Zhu added, “I intend to run in the next mayoral election…”
Cen Xie cut him off: “If you win, does that make me the Mayor’s husband?”
Ying Zhu looked at him for a moment, ignoring the quip. “Voters are easily swayed. I don’t know how the public would react to a double-Omega marriage yet, so I can’t take that risk. Therefore—”
His eyes held a hint of a warning. “Our marriage must remain a secret for now. You must ensure the news doesn’t leak.”
On the ID cards of the Star County, there is a field for marital status: Single or Married. Even if no one around them knew, if they were to lose their memories again, they would see the “Married” status on their IDs and realize something was wrong.
Cen Xie shut his mouth. Fine, he thought, a secret marriage. The “hidden” Omega spouse behind the great Mayor.
Having finished his explanation, Ying Zhu turned toward the car.
Cen Xie spoke up behind him: “The election isn’t the only reason you want to keep this secret, is it?”
Ying Zhu stopped and turned.
Cen Xie: “You don’t want people to know you’re connected to the Canaan Society. You think it would damage your public image.”
Ying Zhu was blunt: “Are you saying I’m wrong to think that?”
Cen Xie pursed his lips, feeling a twinge of bitterness. Rationally, he knew Ying Zhu was being practical, but emotionally, it stung.
Ying Zhu pulled out his keys and pressed the unlock button. Beep-beep. He turned back to Cen Xie. “Let’s go.”
Cen Xie: “Where to?”
Ying Zhu: “To take our wedding ID photos.”
Cen Xie tilted his head, offered no further objection, and followed him into the car.