"Sadly, I was too dull. Even grasping two tenths of what my teacher taught felt painfully difficult."
"Even so, she never showed displeasure at my dullness. She indulged me everywhere, raised me up, and brought me to adulthood."
Qi Zhimu's voice was soft, but every word was clear.
"They say a teacher for a day is a father for life. For me, my teacher is more than a second parent."
"…I understand your answer about fate now," Clarisse said quietly.
"You little girl—so young and already obsessed with heavy topics. When I was your age…"
Qi Zhimu suddenly went silent.
"What's wrong?" Clarisse asked.
"…Nothing. When I was eighteen, I was still a reckless kid—about the same as a middle schooler."
"But, Mr. Qi…"
Clarisse's face flooded with worry; her voice trembled.
"Why… are you crying?"
Qi Zhimu raised a hand to wipe his cheek. His fingertips came away wet. He stared at the tear marks on his finger, stunned.
"How strange…"
He murmured, pressing a palm to his chest to feel his heartbeat.
His heart flashed with a moment of pain.
Why?
As he tried to think, his throat suddenly tightened.
Feeling his condition shift sharply, he forced down the blood rising into his throat.
"Sorry. Excuse me for a moment."
Qi Zhimu quickly left the clinic room, returned to his own room, and shut the door. Without thinking, he took out a pill bottle.
He swallowed four tablets of a special drug. The medicine spread through his body fast—yet his expression didn't ease. It grew more grim.
He had still underestimated how hard it was to fight aging.
The drug's effect had dropped drastically—not only shorter lasting, but his increased dosage lately had also built up resistance.
He couldn't raise the maximum dosage again. If he did, the side effects would kill him in two days.
He had to produce a better new drug within a few days.
Otherwise, when his lifespan ran out, he would be forced to live out his remaining time as a withered old man who couldn't even leave his bed.
Qi Zhimu wasn't afraid of death.
He just wanted to leave without regrets.
There were things he hadn't finished. He couldn't lie down and wait to die—and he definitely couldn't let Yu Qingtu find out.
He didn't know Yu Qingtu well, but he understood one thing: in terms of extremity, Yu Qingtu and his teacher Ruan Mei were remarkably alike.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be friends across ages.
"Mr. Qi! Are you okay?!" Clarisse's concerned voice came from outside the tightly closed door.
"I'm fine…"
Qi Zhimu steadied his voice and feigned calm. He looked at himself in the mirror—white hair everywhere, his face recovering slowly—and sighed silently.
"I suddenly remembered something very important that I forgot to tell my teacher. About half an hour."
"Then… that's good."
Clarisse still felt uncertain, but she finally relaxed and returned to the clinic.
On the screen, the treatment progress ticked from 81% to 82%.
Clarisse's heart settled. She scanned the room.
No phantom figures—almost as if what she'd seen earlier had been an illusion.
But she knew it hadn't been.
She walked slowly through the area where the phantom of Qi Zhimu had appeared. Her expression grew complicated; her thoughts drifted far away.
After an unknown time, she suddenly turned, staring hard at a spot.
No one was there…
Yet she had a strange sense that something there had been watching her.
Clarisse frowned, focusing on subtle information most people couldn't perceive.
Growing up isolated and excluded by her peers, she'd learned to read the emotions in people's eyes with painful clarity.
Was it Qi Zhimu's phantom gaze?
No.
Mr. Qi's eyes were always gentle. Even if he stared at you, it felt like spring wind—never uncomfortable.
This gaze—this almost-illusory gaze—didn't seem malicious, but it wasn't benevolent either.
It felt more like… appraisal.
Like a teacher scanning students when choosing class officers.
Clarisse concentrated, as if trying to see through whatever had once been there.
But even when Qi Zhimu returned, she still found nothing.
"Mr. Qi… do you think ghosts exist in this world?"
"Why ask that all of a sudden?"
"…Just curious."
"Then it depends on what kind of 'ghost' you mean. If you mean the kind from horror films, strictly speaking—no."
"So… in a non-strict sense, they do exist?" Clarisse suddenly felt chills along her spine.
"You could put it that way."
Qi Zhimu glanced at the progress bar, checked the program libraries, confirmed there were no anomalies, and continued.
"My teacher mentioned that there are peculiar energy-based lifeforms in the universe."
"In their normal state, they have no fixed form. You can see them but can't touch them—or you can't even see or touch them."
"Unless they're willing to be seen… or unless we use special abilities or methods to perceive them."
"Have you heard of Pathstriders?"
Pathstriders… Clarisse thought, then answered hesitantly.
"There's a chemistry professor at our academy who's completely bulletproof. Whenever experiments go wrong—explosions and such—he can always handle it in time."
"The Pathstriders you mean are humans who have special powers, right?"
Qi Zhimu nodded. "Not everyone with special powers is a Pathstrider. But anyone who has walked far enough on a Path will have special powers."
"As far as I know, some Path factions have the ability to 'ghostify' themselves."
"Which factions?" Clarisse asked.
"The one I can be sure about is Remembrance. Also Enigmata. The others, I'm not certain."
Enigmata was what Yu Qingtu had told him; Ruan Mei had only mentioned Remembrance.
"Why ask this?"
"Um… Mr. Qi, what I'm about to say—please don't be scared…"
"Go on."
"This place… might have a ghost. Not long ago, it felt like something was watching me from the shadows."
"Is that so?" Qi Zhimu looked surprised. He thought for a moment, then his brows relaxed.
"No need to worry. If it truly is Pathstriders, they probably mean no harm—and they wouldn't dare to."
Thinking of the warning he'd written about memory, he suspected it was related to Memokeepers.
This place had traces left by Genius Society #55. No one would casually offend a genius.
That was what Yu Qingtu had personally told him.
She had even said that a Remembrance "Cremator" had once offended her—and she'd turned them into a special vial of medicine…
"Then I'm relieved," Clarisse nodded softly.
…
As dawn slowly painted the horizon pale, the moment the screen hit 100%, Durand opened her eyes.
When Clarisse met her mother's gaze and saw that familiar tenderness again, tears welled up instantly.
Qi Zhimu ran post-op checks, then finally let out a breath, smiling with genuine warmth.
"Mrs. Durand—congratulations. From this moment on, amnesia will never trouble you again."
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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