It wasn’t until a long time later than the woman against the wall stopped sobbing. Her eyes were red and her hair was messy. She leaned against the wall and looked at the sky in the distance without saying a word. She was like drops of water on a leaf that would be broken when touched.
An Zhe asked carefully, “You aren’t going?”
She shook her head, her voice hoarse, “What does that dead person have to do with you?”
It took a long time for An Zhe to find the right words in his memories. “My… friend. He saved my life.”
“My man saved me.” The moment she said this, she hung her head, her shoulders and back shaking as she occasionally cried. She never talked again.
An Zhe tightly held the ID card belonging to Vance. In this heart, the heart that belonged to a human, came a dull feeling. It was something he had never felt when he was a pure mushroom.
This feeling finally dispelled a bit and he found the strength to follow the flow of the distant crowd, raising his legs to walk through the channel. At the end of the city gate channel was a row of mechanical gates. An Zhe chose the far left and as he walked past, a soft, mechanical female voice was heard. “Please show your ID card and look at the camera.”
The ID card belonging to An Ze was placed on the white light platform at the right end of the gate. Then he looked up at the black camera in front.
“ID3261170514. Name: An Ze. Origin: Outer City 6th District. Departure time: 27 days ago.”
The camera made a slight noise and the white light turned green.
“The face recognition has been passed. Welcome home.”
There was a ding and the floodgates rose. An Zhe walked through. The glare of the morning sun made him squint. Then after 30 seconds, the fuzzy world became clear and a huge grey city appeared before his eyes.
He was in a large area of open land and on the ground, the words ‘buffer zone’ were written in dazzling green paint. In front of his eyes, human creations rose from the ground, tall concrete buildings higher than the highest plants An Zhe had ever seen. They stood there, crowded and stacked as they blocked his view. He looked up and saw the orange sun hidden behind the tallest building. The remaining exposed half was like a drop of dilute blood that would flow down the wall the next moment.
An Zhe turned back. The people who went through the mechanical gates dispersed and then spontaneously gathered together to go in the same direction. An Zhe moved forward and followed them. After taking hundreds of steps, he turned a corner and saw a sign that said ‘rail transit.’ A train stopped on the trace and the body said: Entrance – District 1 – No. 3 Supply Station – District 5 – District 6 – Urban Affairs Office – Exit.
He followed the crowd to a train and found a corner seat in the slightly empty carriage. The front seat contained two strong men who were talking in whispers.
“You came back from Basin 3? You really risked your life this time.”
“Six people died.”
“Okay, are you back?”
“The military is still appraising and deciding but I don’t think I’ll have to go to the wild again until my next life.”
“Ohh.”
“We entered a school in the No. 411 abandoned city. It was full of mutant plants and no one dared enter.” The man smiled. “We went in and pried three hard disks from the library’s reference room. They are priceless and it depends on how much value is in there.”
An Zhe listened quietly. He didn’t understand but he knew the man in front of him was happy, so he was a bit happy. He knew that happy people didn’t mind helping others so he called out, “Sir.”
The head didn’t turn as the person asked, “What is it?”
“How do I get to District 6?”
“Get off at the supply station and change to train 2.”
“Thank you.”
Five minutes later, the train started. There was a mechanical voice reporting the platform name. Everything was strange to An Zhe. After several twists and turns and asking for directions, he finally got on the No. 2 train at the supply station. Then he got off the train correctly and arrived at District 6.
An Ze’s ID number was 3261170514. This wasn’t only a proof of his human identity but also represented his address. It was the 6th District in the Outer City, building 117, door number 0514.
However, shortly after getting off the train and when he was trying to find someone to ask for directions, he was suddenly pulled by a young boy. “Hello friend. Welcome, would you mind looking at this?”
Before An Zhe could speak, he had a white paper filled with large bloody letters shoved toward him. It said: Resist the tyranny of the judges. He didn’t understand but he didn’t ask. He just wondered, “Do you know how to get to Building 117?”
The boy requested, “It is one the way so do you mind going with us, do you?”
“…I don’t mind.”
“Then we’re all comrades.” The boy raised the white paper on his hand. It said in big red letters: Repeal the Judges Act.
They weren’t the only ones holding paper. Soon, they were pulled into a group of people. There were around 40 of them, each one holding a similar white paper or long banner. The sentences on the paper and banner were similar.
“We will voluntarily bear the cost of genetic testing.”
“The judges are human sinners.”
“Dissolve the court and seek justice for the innocent.”
At the same time, the crowd slowly moved forward and An Zhe could only move with them.
The city’s roads were narrowed. The sun shone on buildings and cast undulating shadows on the ground. In addition to them on the road, there were many adults who walked with their heads bowed. They looked up to this side but quickly looked away.
An Zhe questioned, “What are we doing?”
“A silent demonstration,” the boy replied. “We will wait until the day the Trial Court is dissolved.”
“…Oh.”
After walking for half an hour, he asked the boy next to him again, “Where is Building 117?”
“In front, we’re almost there.”
After another hour and a half, An Zhe asked again, “Where is Building 117?”
“I’m sorry!”The boy scratched his head. “I forgot about you. We walked past it. It is behind us.”
As he spoke, he turned to a place, “That direction. It isn’t far away. The building number is written on the side and you can see them.”
An Zhe told him, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
An Zhe returned the paper to the boy. “I’ll give this back to you.”
“No need!” The boy returned the paper to his hands. “Remember to come again next week. We are meeting in Building 1!”
Thus, An Zhe stacked the ‘resist the tyranny of the judges’ paper together with the genetic report sheet. He held it in his arms as he left these strange young people and walked in the direction indicated.
As he walked, he felt the surrounding environment become familiar. The memories in his mind that originally belonged to An Ze were awakened and he followed his intuition to turn a few corners, smoothly arriving in front of the building labelled ‘117.’ This was a rectangular building that was 10 stories high and was very wide. He entered Unit 0 and climbed the steep stairs to the fifth floor. He entered a dark corridor and found room 14.
A white seal was pasted on the door. An Zhe gently tore it open and revealed the sensing area below. He stuck the ID card on it and the door lock popped open as he went inside.
This was a very small room. It was smaller than the cave where he once lived but it was more spacious and brighter than the rest area in the armoured vehicle. There was a wooden desk with a dozen old books against the wall, paper and notebooks stacked to one side. The desk was facing a single bed with a cabinet at the end. There was a glass of water, a mirror and some clutter. In addition, there was a one-person wardrobe at the end of the bed.
The window was on the other side of the bed and the grey curtains were half open. The sun shone in and the quilt was shining with the same colour. There was a dry fragrance that reminded him of An Ze’s smell.
He went to the bed and reached for the big mirror that showed his face. He looked like An Ze, with soft black hair and eyes of the same colour. Many places were similar but there were some different details. Moreover, he didn’t have An Ze’s gentle and calm look.
At that time, An Ze had said to him, “I feel like I have one more brother. I’ll give you a name, little mushroom.”
“Do you have a deep impression of anything, little mushroom?”
There were only two things in his limited memories that were profound. One was when he lost his spore and the other happened when he was very young, probably when he was as long as a human finger.
During the mushroom growing rainy season, he was hit on his slender stem by a splash of rain and his waist folded. Then, like any injured creature, try to grow back and live. Gradually, there was a vague consciousness and he healed.
Since then, he seemed to be different from his own kind. He could control his own mycelium, he could flow between the jungle ad wilderness and also found the sounds and movements outside. He was a free mushroom.
“Poor little thing.” At that time, An Ze had touched his hair. “Did it hurt when you broke?”
“I forgot.”
An Ze had said, “Let’s call you An Zhe.”
He said, “Okay.”
Thinking of this, An Zhe smiled into the mirror. Once the man in the mirror smiled, he seemed to see An Ze’s shadow again.
“Thank you,” he told the mirror.
An Zhe put down the mirror and sat at the desk. What next?
Thinking this, An Zhe reached out his left hand and gazed at the tip of his finger in the light. The snow-white mycelium quietly started to spread from his fingertips, condensing into a solid body. He picked up the dagger and cut a thin piece. Then he picked it up with his right hand, placed it to his mouth and pushed it in gently, biting it. He had decided to explore if he was poisonous or not.
Soft, sweet and delicious—this was his first impression. The next second, the whole world in front of him shook.
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