Chapter 23
[Remaining Lifespan: 11 hours 1 minute 37 seconds]
"…I wanted to wish you a happy birthday in advance…"
On the steps of the bamboo house, Clarisse held out a beautifully wrapped gift box toward Kanzaki Tomomu.
The girl should have been smiling, but the corners of her mouth felt weighed down and refused to lift.
She tried to force a smile, yet the curve of her lips only drooped weakly.
"Relax. I know exactly when I'll die. There's no need to celebrate early."
"…Kanzaki Tomomu, you're such a big liar. I was afraid you'd trick me again."
"You silly girl. At least give this old man who's almost 175 years old a little trust."
Kanzaki Tomomu chuckled and accepted the gift box with both hands.
He glanced at Clarisse for permission. After she gave a small nod, he opened the package right there.
Inside were a sachet that carried the clear scent of plum blossoms, a scarf, and a hand-knitted sweater.
Kanzaki Tomomu's gaze paused for a moment. His expression grew even softer.
"…Thank you for the birthday gift, Clarisse. I like it very much."
So this was what the girl had been working on all this time.
Life truly was unpredictable.
So many regrets were decided by fate. So many feelings never received the blessing they deserved.
Kanzaki Tomomu knew he could not give Clarisse any promise, and he must not.
Because he was going to die of old age.
"Check if the size fits…" Clarisse said softly.
Without hesitation, Kanzaki Tomomu took off his outer coat and pulled the sweater over his head.
It fit perfectly.
After putting his coat back on and about to speak, Clarisse suddenly stepped closer. She gently tied the scarf around his neck and hung the sachet at his waist.
She was so close he could smell the faint fragrance from her hair.
"The weather really is cold. Thanks to your thoughtful gift."
"Liar. Your body stopped feeling temperature changes a long time ago…"
"Yes, it stopped feeling them long ago. But still, kid…"
Their eyes met. Kanzaki Tomomu took her hand and placed it over his chest. His voice was gentle and warm.
"This heart that hasn't stopped beating yet… feels very warm right now."
Clarisse stared at those deep brown eyes. The same gentle look that had once made her lose herself was still there, unchanged.
But facing that gentleness now, she could only fight back the lump in her throat.
"On this planet, these few days every year have the clearest and most beautiful starry sky. Look up."
"Kanzaki Tomomu, are you going to say that after people die they turn into stars…"
"People don't turn into stars after they die. It's just something people say to hold on to their feelings. Look over there—"
Clarisse lifted her head and gazed in the direction Kanzaki Tomomu pointed.
Stars scattered across the sky like crushed diamonds, quietly twinkling in the deep night.
The edges of the star dust glowed with soft blue and green, forming a motionless river of light. No shooting stars crossed it, and none of the stars suddenly dimmed.
It was peaceful, serene, and beautiful.
Clarisse stared in a daze.
In her memory, she had never once looked up at the night sky so quietly like this.
She had never known the stars could be this beautiful.
"Isn't it especially pretty?"
"Yes… it's beautiful…" Clarisse nodded unconsciously.
If Kanzaki Tomomu weren't about to die of old age, sitting together in front of the bamboo house watching the stars tonight would have been so wonderfully romantic.
"Kanzaki Tomomu, can I lean on your shoulder?"
"Of course."
The girl rested her head against Kanzaki Tomomu's shoulder, greedily breathing in his scent.
The two of them quietly watched the starry sky for a long time without speaking.
"Kanzaki Tomomu, tell me your story. From when you were little to now — the ordinary parts, the dangerous parts, the unfortunate parts, the happy parts. As long as you're willing to tell it, I want to hear everything…"
She wanted to remember more of him.
If possible, she wanted to remember his whole life — even… all of his memories.
Besides her mother, he was all she had left.
But soon, Kanzaki Tomomu would leave her forever.
He would leave nothing behind — except his memories.
Her mother was right… aside from memory, they had nothing.
"My story, huh…"
Kanzaki Tomomu's voice was soft and distant as he unconsciously looked back on the past.
They say that right before death, a person's life flashes before their eyes like a revolving lantern.
He hadn't reached that point yet, but he still saw many things.
"From the moment I have memories, my home planet was already engulfed in war. People lived as wanderers, drifting from place to place…"
"No one knew what fate awaited them the next moment."
"My parents might have died early, or perhaps they lived a little longer. I don't know."
"I was captured as emergency food. When people were starving and couldn't find anything else, they often turned on their own kind."
"The end of the world was cruel. To survive, there was no right or wrong — only different sides of human nature."
"I was locked in different cages with a group of children and others who had no way to fight back. It lasted more than ten days."
"During that time, many of the emergency food supplies caught various deadly bio-viruses. Ironically, that saved them from being eaten by the others."
"As for how long any of us could live after that, no one had the right to hope for anything. We simply lived one day at a time…"
Clarisse's already heavy heart felt even more weighed down by his words.
She finally understood why Kanzaki Tomomu respected his teacher so deeply.
Pulling someone out of bottomless darkness — sometimes the reason was that simple.
...
In a place with no other people, a manor stood alone.
Ruan Mei set down the observation lens in her hand and lifted her indifferent face toward the ceiling.
Even deep underground in the laboratory, the sound of thunder could be faintly heard. The storm outside must be fierce.
She glanced at the failed specimen on the test bench and habitually ordered her "Kanzaki Tomomu" to clean it up.
But when she saw that familiar yet lifeless face, the words Yu Qingtu had said before leaving echoed in her mind.
For no clear reason, a rare trace of irritation rose in her heart.
Ruan Mei naturally refused to believe it had anything to do with those words. After a brief moment of thought, she attributed the feeling to the stalled progress of her research.
"…I should take a walk."
She took the elevator up from the underground laboratory. The moment the heavy door opened, a bolt of lightning tore through the pitch-black sky.
Rain poured down like a waterfall.
Ruan Mei's steps paused.
She didn't think she had ever seen rain this heavy.
No… she had.
Countless memory fragments flashed by, finally stopping on a scene from one hundred and seventy years ago.
The first time she met Kanzaki Tomomu, it had also been a storm like this.
She had stood at the edge of a deep pit holding an oil-paper umbrella, looking down at the small figure curled up in a pile of corpses with an indifferent gaze.
She remembered his eyes—
Numb. Empty.
When those eyes, which were slowly losing focus, noticed her, a faint light appeared — so faint it might have been an illusion.
Before the light completely faded, it trembled slightly and turned into something she had never seen before: something very light and very quiet…
Relief… and worry.
Yes, worry.
Not worry for himself as he was about to die, but worry that she would catch the same deadly virus.
He had probably already accepted his fate, but he didn't want to see anyone else suffer the way he had.
The thunder was deafening. The rain fell with the force of something determined to swallow the world.
"Do you want to keep living?"
Her voice was soft, almost lost in the storm.
Yet the small figure's gray lips moved slowly and formed silent words.
"…Yes…"
And so she let him live.
She never expected time to pass so quickly. Nearly 169 years had gone by in the blink of an eye.
Suddenly remembering all of this, a faint thought rose in her heart — the desire to see him again and talk about the old days.
But the thought was snuffed out in less than a second.
Kanzaki Tomomu had left as a fully trained student more than a hundred years ago. Where was he now…?
He had never told her.
Never mind. The research was still far from the point where she could stop. There was no need to contact him.
With his mind, even if he couldn't match the most famous scholars in the universe, he could easily advance biological technology in an ordinary world.
The knowledge she had taught him was more than enough to solve every incurable disease known to ordinary people, and it included multiple methods to extend life by at least eight hundred years.
He had said he wanted to keep living.
Only a little over a hundred years had passed since then. It was still far too early for her to worry.
"I'll take a bath, then continue the research."
Ruan Mei walked steadily toward the hot spring pool.
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T/N: Will translate this for another week to see if people are still reading it, if not I'm gonna focus on another fic, please do comment if you guys still reading it.
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