The man with gray hair in front of me brought me a picture. I wouldn't exactly call it a photograph; it was more of a hand-drawn image, resembling a photo.
In the image, there was a bck piano, with a small gray mouse standing on the keys.
This was the first time I truly saw Lu A'cang, and it would be the st.
"She asked me to find you and have someone draw what I saw at that time, as if it were a photo,” the man said with a wry smile. "She said it was a gift for you.”
"What else did she say?” I tucked the “photo” away, my face betraying no emotion.
"She said, There are no one's teeth in the world that could be more powerful than a rat yokai's.” The man took a sip of tea, not from a floating leaf, but from a cup of green mountain water. Yet, he clearly still disliked the bitterness of the tea.
I've said before that Lu A'cang was the only person I've ever known who could drink floating life without flinching. Because, in order to become the formless, she had endured far too much pain. The bitterness of floating life was nothing compared to that.
I can no longer specute on what thoughts ran through Lu A'cang's mind when she reverted to her rat yaokai form and used her teeth—said to be the sharpest in the world—to sever the power supply of Sean's collider. All I know is that the humans, who pride themselves on being the most intelligent of all beings, were saved by a rat they deemed lowly and filthy.
Of course, they would never know that on a certain day, at a certain hour, in some underground area of Paris, a strange machine exploded. A peculiar substance named Neptune vanished in that explosion.
They could never know that it was the rat who had once become formless, abandoning immortality, who crawled into the machine and bit through the power supply.
After sending the man off, I took the photo and went to the backyard, burying it under the ginkgo tree. A leisurely ant crawled past the spot where I buried the photo.
Pang Zi was shouting from the other side, calling for dinner, but I felt no hunger. The air of this summer carried a scent that made me uneasy.
I don′t want to judge whether Lu A'cang′s final choice was right or foolish; that was her decision. I also don't wish to delve into whether the existence of someone like Sean was his own fault or a mistake of the world.
What I understand is that every life, no matter how small, deserves respect as long as it has not harmed or acted in malice.
Even if it's just an ant, a rabbit, or a rat.
I hope that more people can understand this truth, truly.
