“Xiao Ze… Xiao Ze…”
In the dimness, Gong Ze slowly opened his eyes. The blurry world gradually became clear.
Two people were leaning in front of him, gently shaking him while calling his name.
When Gong Ze clearly saw their faces, his eyes instantly widened and his pupils constricted slightly.
“Dad? Mom?!”
The two, bent over and holding the desk as they called him, heard him shout and immediately smiled.
The middle-aged woman with straight hair lovingly stroked her son’s hair, then remembered her son was grown and no longer let people touch his head, so she immediately withdrew her hand.
“Son, how did you fall asleep at your desk? Are you studying too hard? Are you cold? Does your back hurt?”
And the middle-aged man standing beside the woman was much more clumsy with words.
He was like fathers in everyone’s memories—not good at talking and not knowing how to get along with children, expressing concern stiffly.
Pinching Gong Ze’s chair, he said quietly: “Another day Dad will get you an ergonomic chair.”
His son was too clever. The things he studied, he did not understand any of them. He could only put in effort in this area.
Gong Ze: “…………”
Gong Ze sat up blankly, staring at them unable to process it. Only after a moment did he shift his gaze to the desk in front of him.
That was his desk.
On the desktop was the latest model computer. Plenty of leisure books and honorary medals filled the upper shelves of the desk.
On the far right of the desktop was his photo frame, and on the frame still hung the safety charm his mother had prayed for for him.
And behind the desk was his bed. In the deepest layer of Gong Ze’s memory palace, he clearly remembered the pattern of the letters printed on his gray quilt.
The walls of his room were clean, without any posters. Gong Ze never worshipped anyone. His heaven-granted mind made him disdain all unscientific beliefs, and foolish worship of others.
Gong Ze stiffly lowered his head.
The floor was covered with foam tiles.
That was because Gong Ze was used to walking barefoot at home. After reading obscure books, he would lean by the bed and sit on the floor, close his eyes, meditate, and repeatedly deliberate in his mind.
Those worried, child-loving parents had covered his room with soft, warm foam plush interlocking floor tiles.
They would never interrupt Gong Ze when he was meditating.
They would even desperately lower the sound of their own cooking, activities, and TV watching. Their eyes when looking at their son were careful, as if their son were contemplating matters of human survival.
Gong Ze also saw on it a few ink stains that could not be washed out, left from when his fountain pen had once fallen and Indian blue ink had soaked into it.
…This was the room of eighteen-year-old Gong Ze in the original world.
…He had come back.
…He had really come back!!!
Gong Ze’s hands trembled uncontrollably.
He again looked up blankly at the middle-aged couple gazing at him with concern.
Their expressions had clearly become at a loss… His mother Ruan Aimei and his father Gong Haiping cautiously gathered closer, speaking softly for fear of scaring him.
“Son.”
His mother Ruan Aimei said softly: “Did you have a nightmare? Were you scared? How about Mom call your soul back for you?”
His father Gong Haiping moved his lips, wanting to show concern but unable to say it.
Seeing his son looking dazed, he thought he really had a nightmare and could not recover, and muttered quietly: “Hulu hulu mao, don’t be scared. Gong Ze come home for dinner, Gong Ze come home for dinner… Have you come back?”
“…”
This was the same as the folk custom of chanting “my family has a night-crying child” to treat a child’s night terrors. You had to chant “come home for dinner” seven times, and then the frightened person had to say “I’ve come back” for it to work.
Gong Ze restrained the fire-like emotion in his chest, the urge to roar loudly. He gritted his back teeth, puffed out his cheeks, and stayed calm for a moment before answering: “I’ve come back…”
The moment those three words left his mouth, Gong Ze’s eye rims suddenly ached sourly, and his tear glands could not help but surge with heat.
With difficulty, he smiled at his mother, whom he had not seen for so long and missed endlessly.
“Mom… I’ve come back…”
I missed you so much.
Wanted to see you, wanted to come home, wanted it countless times, countless times over.
He turned his head again and said to Gong Haiping, who was secretly and closely watching him: “Dad, I’ve come back.”
Gong Haiping was stunned, and a smile instantly appeared on his face. He probably wanted to happily express closeness with his son, but did not know how.
In the end, he stiffly raised his hand and pinched Gong Ze’s shoulder, saying vaguely and happily, “Mm”: “What are you afraid of? Dad is right outside. Ghosts are all fake. Dad and Mom will protect you.”
Gong Ze’s throat ached with choking.
His eyes wet, he gave a soft “mm.”
And when Ruan Aimei saw the warm scene between father and son, she was overjoyed from the side and pretended to complain about her husband: “Our son is no worse than you? Since childhood our son hasn’t been afraid of this stuff. For someone like Xiao Ze with a high degree of brain development, his nerves and such—their activity level is different from ours! When the brain is active, it’s easy to dream! I’ve seen it online.”
“That’s indeed true.”
His father Gong Haiping nodded repeatedly.
Gong Ze listened to his mother’s nonsense and could not help curving his lips and laughing along with the two of them.
He could understand why they were so happy just because he softened his attitude and said a few words.
Gong Ze was born with the genius gene known as Asperger’s syndrome, but his family was very ordinary.
His father was a worker, his mother a supermarket employee.
Neither had a high education level, only middle school.
Thirty years ago, this education level was actually already quite good. Thirty years ago, people who graduated from rural elementary and middle school were extremely common.
Toward high intellectuals, there was a kind of reverence and looking up akin to commoners meeting official lords.
In the village and in that era, if any family produced a Tsinghua or Peking University student, the whole village would hold a flowing banquet, the county magistrate would personally deliver the prize money and take photos, and firecrackers, lion dances, and newspaper publication in the city would all happen once.
Saying it brought glory to the family was not false.
But most rural couples who went out to work as migrant workers and could only leave their children as left-behind children—those children often at best only graduated from high school or an ordinary university.
Because the family was poor and could not provide better education, nor a platform for more experience and knowledge. And because the parents were absent and only grandparents were there, when the child left school and studied at home, they could not get more help.
But Ruan Aimei and Gong Haiping had given birth to a genius.
They had never taught Gong Ze anything.
Ever since Gong Ze was seven, the characters Gong Ze knew had already surpassed Ruan Aimei and Gong Haiping.
The quiet child had no extra expressions. Sitting on the floor with legs spread apart, he stared unblinking at the TV news.
Focused as if swallowing invisible knowledge.
And at ten, Gong Ze’s cleverness gradually spread in a small range, and later attracted the local newspaper.
Then online videos, big radio stations, national television…
Young Gong Ze quickly became somewhat famous, published in the papers as a “child prodigy.”
The couple beamed with joy, showing off their son to everyone in the ten-mile-eight-village area, even smiling in their dreams.
However.
At twelve, when Gong Ze passed the brain-domain test and was quietly taken by the state, along with genius children collected from all over the country, for secret cultivation, the couple began to “fear”…
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