The seventh night in the orphanage, the moonlight was equally pale as it streamed into the dormitory.
Qian Hui had finally managed to fall asleep on the iron-framed bed, but that night, a calm voice from the lower bunk cut through the silence.
"Qian Hui," Shan Jue's voice came clearly from below. "Do you know the unwritten rules of this orphanage?"
Qian Hui peered down from the upper bunk. In the darkness, she couldn't make out her brother's face, but she could sense his alert gaze.
"Just like that time your classmate stole your homework," Shan Jue continued, his voice carrying a surgical knife-like calmness, "and that classmate who deliberately knocked over your lunchbox. Do you remember?"
"I remember very clearly," Qian Hui whispered, "but I don't really understand... why did things resolve that way?"
**In the darkness, Shan Jue let out a soft sigh. The sound was less like weariness and more akin to someone arranging precise thoughts.**
**"Alright, I'll explain. Let's use the stolen homework as an example," he said, lowering his voice a touch, each word as clear as placing chess pieces. "I did possess proof he stole it, but do you know? Within the school's rules, that still wasn't 'perfect' enough."**
**He paused, letting the statement settle in the silence.**
**"According to Article 5, Chapter 3 of the Student Handbook, 'Personal items must be properly safeguarded. Loss or damage incurred through personal negligence entails management responsibility.' Your homework being stolen means, in theory, you also bear the responsibility of 'improper safeguarding.' If I had simply reported him, the most probable outcome would have been—you receiving one demerit for management dereliction, and him receiving three for theft."**
**Qian Hui's eyes widened in the dark. It had never occurred to her that she too could be punished.**
**"See, that's the key," Shan Jue's voice took on a sharper, analytical edge. "Evidence can only prove 'he stole it,' but it doesn't automatically clear you of the suspicion that 'you lost it.' More importantly, the rules themselves are lifeless. They cannot automatically judge whether the homework in his hand was truly 'stolen,' or merely 'picked up' after you lost it. In the rigid logic of the rules, 'an item appearing in the possession of someone who shouldn't have it' constitutes the entire fact. It cannot see motive, nor distinguish between malice and accident."**
**He paused briefly, allowing this deeper layer of absurdity to sink in.**
**"So, in the eyes of the rules, the harmed you and the one who harmed you are both parties simultaneously present at the 'scene of the problem.' From this perspective of the rules, you both have issues. The very state of 'being wronged' itself is your original sin—'until' the perpetrator 'confesses,' until he personally defines the nature of the act with his own words, your original sin cannot be washed away."**
**"So, I gave him two choices," Shan Jue's voice was as steady as stating a mathematical theorem. "The first choice: He insists on not confessing. The result: you get one demerit, he gets three. But beyond that, from that day forth, I would begin to 'pay attention' to him until he couldn't graduate."**
**"The second choice: He publicly admits the theft and returns the homework. Your demerit is naturally voided. And he would still, due to the act of theft, receive three demerits—that's the baseline of the school regulations, I cannot circumvent it, but I would tutor his homework until graduation."**
**A trace of something extremely faint, almost cruelly gentle, flickered in Shan Jue's voice:**
**"However, as part of the 'reconciliation agreement,' I promised to 'tutor' his subsequent homework. I would personally check every single one of his solutions, ensuring he truly 'understood' and wasn't just 'copying.' He chose this option."**
**A chill crept up Qian Hui's spine. She suddenly understood—why during that period, that classmate went to the library with her brother every day after school, why he looked both exhausted and terrified.**
**"Do you see it now, Qian Hui?" Shan Jue's voice was so clear in the darkness. "In both choices, his three demerits were inescapable. This is the ironclad punishment. But the first choice was punishment plus my unlimited hostile attention; the second choice was punishment plus my legitimate, 'close-up tutoring.'"**
He paused, as the moonlight happened to shift across the window, briefly illuminating his calm profile:
"He chose the option that, in that moment, made him feel he could still breathe. But in reality, he personally signed his consent for me to become part of every learning moment of his life. This is not mercy. It is a more concealed, long-term method of taking over the autonomy of his studies."
Shan Jue turned over, facing the ceiling, his voice spreading in the darkness:
"The logic with the classmate who knocked over your lunchbox is the same. What I gave him was never 'confess and the punishment is waived,' but rather, 'you choose *in what way* you will be punished, and *who* will define the path ahead of you afterward.'"
Qian Hui remained silent for a long time. She finally understood the precise, cold logic behind those events.
"So," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly, "did you do all of this... for revenge?"
"Revenge?" For the first time, something approximating "emotion" appeared in Shan Jue's tone—a faint trace of mockery, directed not at his sister, but at the word itself. "No, Qian Hui. There is only one rule, the one I just taught you."
His voice settled into stillness, as if unveiling a fundamental law of the universe:
"Harming others is authorizing them to resolve you. And the art of 'resolution' lies not in destruction, but in making you walk into the program of your own destruction, all the while believing you hold the power of choice."
A deathly silence filled the dormitory. Qian Hui felt her breath catch in that instant, while her heart hammered a heavy beat against her eardrums.
"Those two choices..." she heard her own voice, parched and unfamiliar, "...they were the program."
"They were the entrance," Shan Jue corrected, his tone carrying the calm of a lesson completed. "I design the entrance; they walk in themselves. They sign, they seal it, completing the loop. From then on, a part of their time, their fear, their future, comes under my orchestration. It is more efficient than mere punishment, and more... elegant than mere revenge."
Qian Hui was left speechless. She suddenly saw the true framework beneath her brother's precise maneuvers — it was a self-operating, dark program. First, it establishes an inviolable red line (do not be harmed). Once that line is crossed, the program activates automatically, funneling the transgressor into an execution process with no exit, compelling them to persuade themselves and reach their own conclusion within it.
"Our previous school, and even this orphanage," Shan Jue's voice came again, light as a sigh, "every rule written on the wall hides such a program behind it. What we must learn is not obedience, but how to read. To understand its default entry design, to decipher its pre-set paths of resolution."
The moonlight vanished entirely. The darkness thickened into something tangible.
Lying on her bunk with eyes open, Qian Hui watched as the printed words from the rules manual faded and dissolved in her mind, only to reassemble into another, never-before-seen yet startlingly clear set of instructions. A cold shiver ran through her — not from fear, but from a kind of understanding that had arrived... prematurely.
And her brother understood it too. The purpose of this unwritten code was to make everyone: do not harm others, do not create enemies, and resolve, by their own hand, the problems they themselves create.