Chapter 35
"…"
The truth of the past lay bare, and Ruan Mei felt as if a massive cauldron had crossed time itself to drop squarely onto the head of the one who deserved it most.
Herself.
Back then she had given her student no chance to explain and pinned the entire fault on him, handing down punishment without hesitation.
She had never imagined that the true culprit behind everything was her.
She had created it all with her own hands.
More than two years of drunken behavior had planted a seed deep in the heart of a young man whose blood still ran hot.
That seed grew with time, slowly sprouting and spreading…
The same or similar words she had spoken to him so many times had become habit for Kanzaki Tomomu.
Her student's plum blossom brew would always leave her drunk when aged four or five years, yet never when aged three years.
Ruan Mei could now confirm it without doubt: the brew Kanzaki Tomomu made was a consumable curio.
A curio's effect never bothered with reason. Its power always defied common sense.
Touch it, and it would take hold it's effect.
If it were not special, it would never have been called a curio.
In the memory, Kanzaki Tomomu heard his teacher's voice turn cold as frost and froze in place, not the least bit surprised.
He even forgot to release the ankle still held in his hands.
"Are you still not letting go?"
Kanzaki Tomomu let go by reflex, yet remained dazed, saying not a single word.
Only after his teacher threw him into the confinement room did he begin to piece together the truth.
"Five-year… four-year… three-year… so that's how it is…"
Listening to Kanzaki Tomomu's low murmur and watching him swallowed by absolute darkness, Ruan Mei felt a sharp pain in her chest.
His voice sounded like that of a doll stripped of its soul.
No…
The doll he left behind spoke with far more life than these broken, halting words.
For the next five days, Kanzaki Tomomu existed in a world without light or sound.
Only those who had endured long periods of total darkness and silence could understand how cruel such punishment truly was.
Calling it double torment for both mind and body would not be an exaggeration.
At the time, although his illness had been cured, Kanzaki Tomomu did not yet know he carried aftereffects.
Without the special medicine taken at regular intervals, he would lose all bodily sensation.
Touch, smell, pressure, taste, temperature, pain…
Ruan Mei remembered it clearly.
For five full days she gave him no medicine.
Only on the sixth day did she end the confinement and resume the dosage.
By then the youth had curled into a corner, eyes dull and lifeless.
Had his body not been strengthened by the earlier treatments, five days without food or water would have been impossible to survive.
Even so, he looked no different from a hollow shell whose soul had already departed.
Even after the medicine was restored, it took two full days before sensation slowly returned.
Back then she had believed this was simply a proper lesson to make her student remember the correct etiquette between teacher and student. Nothing serious.
Now, looking back and witnessing it all again, Ruan Mei finally understood just how cruel her actions had been.
Kanzaki Tomomu was already living in darkness, barely able to feel his own existence, and she had piled the loss of bodily sensation on top of it.
Merely imagining that experience was enough to make the body tremble.
And what had she done afterward?
"Take a few days to rest and calm down. If you overstep again, I will throw you into the cosmos."
She left those cold words without expression, then walked out of the youth's room and buried herself once more in her research.
She never asked what had happened to Kanzaki Tomomu during those three days of recovery, nor what he had done.
Three days later Kanzaki Tomomu stepped out of his room, once again the respectful, rule-abiding student.
It was as if the overstep had never occurred.
Her student had recognized his mistake and corrected it.
…That was what she had believed at the time.
Now it was clear—
Ruan Mei had a premonition that something enormous had happened during those three days, something she had never known.
She stared at the memory scene without blinking.
Two whole days passed, and the youth lying on the bed did not move at all.
He did not even blink, like a corpse.
Watching it, Ruan Mei's nose stung. She clenched her fists unconsciously.
The way Kanzaki Tomomu looked then was truly… heartbreaking?
She was not sure if that was the right word, but it probably was…
Only on the third day did the youth's dry, cracked lips finally move, letting out a whisper almost too faint to hear.
"So everything happned… was only because of the wine…"
Kanzaki Tomomu rose from the bed, took two shaky steps, and collapsed to the floor.
Yet he seemed to feel no pain at all. He stood up again.
Still staggering, he continued in a certain direction, falling several more times along the way.
He kept moving as though he felt nothing, like a walking corpse, until he reached the personal research room inside his quarters.
Finally he stopped in front of a machine.
His fingers, so withered that the joints were visible, slowly tapped across the keys, compiling a program.
Ruan Mei followed his gaze and recognized it at once: the code was related to memory deletion.
Back then Kanzaki Tomomu's research on memory had only scratched the surface, yet he had written a full sequence for sealing specific memories.
The program was immature and carried severe side effects.
Sealing memory was like peeling silk from a cocoon, slowly extracting and isolating every related fragment.
In the end the memories were thrown out of the subconscious and weighted with a "boulder," then sunk to the bottom of the memory sea.
Unless the surface was broken, they would never surface again.
During execution the brain would feel as if being gnawed by ten thousand ants. Anyone with insufficient willpower could be driven mad by the pain long before the process finished.
And Kanzaki Tomomu?
He pressed the device to his head and slowly pushed the start key.
The terrible pain began, yet he did not even frown.
It was as if he could not feel his brain being devoured by countless ants.
Kanzaki Tomomu leaned back against the control console and slid down to the floor, murmuring in a low voice.
"The plum blossom brew I give Teacher… must never exceed three years…"
"Teacher… must always be respected…"
"The rules… must be obeyed…"
Time crawled forward. The progress bar on the screen crept from 1%, through an agonizingly long wait, and gradually rose toward 90%.
Throughout the entire process Kanzaki Tomomu showed no further reaction. A deathly loneliness wrapped around him.
95%…
96%…
97%…
When the bar reached 99% and was about to hit 100%, Kanzaki Tomomu slowly lifted his lowered eyes.
The once-bright brown pupils had lost all light.
Two lines of tears spilled from the corners.
"Teacher is a liar…"
100%!
The youth finally closed his eyes and toppled sideways. His consciousness sank into total silence.
When he woke again, he crawled up with great effort. Light returned to his eyes. He looked around in confusion.
"Why am I lying here…?"
"Hiss… so hungry… so cold…"
Kanzaki Tomomu's voice was weak as he pushed open the door and stepped out.
With the soft click of that door closing, the boy who had loved his teacher with all his heart was sealed forever behind it.
The one who walked out had become the rule-abiding, respectful student once more.
"…"
A crushing sense of suffocation swept over Ruan Mei to the point she even forgot how to breath.
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200 Stones - 1 chapter
400 Stones - 2 chapter
600 Stones - 3 chapters
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