"How could it be like this…"
The truth was revealed. Ruan Mei felt as if a massive weight had traveled through time to crush her. She was the culprit. She hadn't given him a chance to explain before punishing him. Everything was her own doing.
Two years of drunken behavior had planted a seed in the young boy's heart. That seed had sprouted and grown. He had heard her say those same things so many times that they became his reality. His four and five-year-old brews made her drunk, but the three-year-old version didn't.
She was certain now: The Plum Blossom Brew brewed by his hands was a Curio. Curios don't follow logic; they have supernatural effects. If it weren't special, it wouldn't be a Curio.
In the memory, Qi Zhimu froze at her ice-cold words. He even forgot to let go of her ankle.
"Still not letting go?"
He let go instinctively, looking dazed. He didn't say a word as he was thrown into the confinement room. It was only then that he realized the truth.
"Five years… four years… three… I see…"
Hearing his murmur as he was swallowed by the absolute darkness of the room, Ruan Mei felt a sharp pain in her heart. His voice sounded like a puppet that had lost its soul. No… even the puppet he left behind had more "life" in its voice than he did then.
For the next five days, Qi Zhimu stayed in a room with zero light and zero sound. Only those who have experienced long-term absolute silence and darkness know how agonizing it is. It was a torture of both body and soul.
Back then, though his illness was cured, he didn't know there were side effects. Without regular medication, he would lose all physical sensation—touch, smell, pressure, taste, temperature, pain. Ruan Mei remembered this clearly.
She hadn't given him his medicine for those five days. She only ended the punishment and gave him the medicine on the sixth day. By then, the boy was curled in a corner, his eyes hollow and lifeless. If his body hadn't been strengthened during his treatment, he wouldn't have survived five days without food or water. Even with the medicine, it took two days for his senses to return.
At the time, she thought she was just teaching him a lesson about rules and respect. Looking back, she realized how monstrous she had been. He was already in a darkness where one loses the sense of "existence," and she had added sensory deprivation on top of it. The experience was something she shuddered to even imagine.
"Reflect on this for a few days. If you do it again, I will throw you into the vacuum of space."
She had left him with those cold words and buried herself back in her research. She never asked what happened while he was recovering. Three days later, he came out and was respectful as always. She thought he had learned his lesson.
Now, she had a premonition. Something huge happened in those three days.
She watched the memory. For two days, the boy lay on the bed without moving. He didn't even blink. He looked like a corpse. Ruan Mei's eyes stung, her hands clenching. On the third day, his cracked lips finally moved.
"So it was all… just the wine…"
He got out of bed, staggering. He fell to the floor after two steps, but he seemed to feel no pain. He stood up and shuffled toward his private research lab. He stopped in front of a device and began typing, compiling a program.
Ruan Mei recognized it immediately: a memory-deletion program. Back then, his research on memories was rudimentary, yet he had written a sequence to seal specific memories. It was an immature program with severe side effects. The process was like peeling silk from a cocoon—pulling out memories bit by bit, isolating them, and throwing them into the depths of the subconscious with a "boulder" tied to them. Unless the surface was broken, they would never be remembered.
The process caused the sensation of ten thousand ants biting the brain. Most would go insane from the pain. But Qi Zhimu didn't even flinch. It was as if he truly couldn't feel anything.
He slumped against the console, sliding to the floor as he whispered:
"The wine for Teacher… must never be more than three years old…"
"Teacher… must be respected…"
"The rules… must be followed…"
The progress bar on the screen moved slowly. From 1% to 90%. He was silent, wrapped in a deathly loneliness. 99%…
Just before it hit 100%, he looked up. His dull brown eyes had no spark left. Two tracks of tears rolled down his cheeks.
"Teacher is a liar…"
100%.
The boy closed his eyes and slumped over. When he woke up, he climbed to his feet, life returning to his eyes as he looked around in confusion. "Why was I lying here? …I'm so hungry… and cold…"
With the click of the door as he walked out, the boy who loved his teacher was forever sealed behind that door. The one who walked out was a "good student" who followed every rule and respected his teacher.
A crushing sense of suffocation enveloped Ruan Mei.
....
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