Zhang Qiming woke up early again the next morning.
But this time, his head was heavy with a thought that had grown through the night like ripples in dark water.
Same cracked walls, same windless air, same worn blanket... and yet, everything carried a subtle shift in meaning.
As if the world was unchanged, but the one who looked at it had altered.
His younger brother was still asleep. His tiny hands clutched the edge of the pillow, as if trying not to fall even in his dreams.
Qiming stared at his face for a long while.
He realized—his brother was a child.
And he... he was merely a small human.
Their ages might be close, but their souls stood on opposite banks.
His brother still believed, perhaps.
But Zhang Qiming could no longer afford belief. He needed to understand.
That day, he didn't go to school.
Not that anyone noticed.
Teachers barely remembered his name, classmates wouldn't even realize the empty chair.
One's "absence" was only felt where one had once left a mark.
And Qiming had mastered the art of leaving none.
When he returned to the lid hidden among the garbage, he no longer trembled.
That cold iron no longer represented forbidden danger —
it was simply the gateway to a question.
Not the steps of a child, but of a mind beginning to awaken.
He descended again.
The damp stone walls were still there.
The light still pulsed from the small spherical device in the room below.
But this time, he did not touch it.
He watched.
Not only with his eyes, but with his mind, his silence, his emptiness.
He memorized the location of shattered glass on the tables.
Etched the colors of the strange liquids into memory.
Tracked each wire, noted which screen flickered when.
He was no longer a boy stumbling into a mystery.
This room had become a map.
And then he found a notebook.
No cover. Yellowing pages.
A lab journal, old and frayed.
Handwritten lines sprawled across its pages.
Some words were smudged, some faded, but what remained...
was clear.
"It is possible to expand the boundaries of perception.
Subject 003 has developed abnormal sensitivity to external stimuli.
He no longer simply sees the world—he interprets it.
However, emotional fatigue is evident.
The mind begins to break under the weight of too much reality."
As Qiming read those lines, his heart did not race.
It slowed.
Each word stitched itself into his silence like rhythm into a song.
It felt like these notes were written not in the past — but for his future.
He read the journal slowly.
Then stood up.
In the corner of the room, he spotted a camera — dead and dusty.
Yet it still pointed directly at the glowing orb.
And in that moment, a thought struck him.
How many other children had climbed down through this hatch?
How many had touched that orb?
Why was he the one still here?
"Maybe…" he whispered in his mind, "my touch was not like theirs."
That evening, he walked home even more quietly than before.
Because silence was no longer a symptom of weakness — it was a tool.
Noise demanded attention.
But silence... worked.
And that voice inside him continued to whisper:
"People believe what they see.
But I... I can see without belief now.
And one day… they will see me."
That night, he didn't dream of his mother.
Nor of his brother.
His dream was a white room, and a man behind glass panels staring at him.
The man had no face.
But he had eyes.
And those eyes pierced into him as a single sentence echoed:
"Talented children are not always chosen.
But the child who chooses himself... can rewrite the world."