Klet didn’t immediately speak, revealing a pensive expression.
After waiting for a while without any continuation, Shen Siwei raised an eyebrow slightly. “What’s the matter? Haven’t come up with a story yet?”
“No,” Klet refocused his gaze and looked at Shen Siwei. “I’m thinking whether to tell you the truth or not.”
This person is honest, Shen Siwei thought.
“Whatever,” Shen Siwei casually scooped up some water from the pool and poured it on his neck. “I wouldn’t believe it anyway.”
Klet chuckled softly with a somewhat helpless expression. “Fair enough.”
He straightened his head, looked at the aurora in the distance, and a deep voice slowly overflowed from his lips. “At first, I found you annoying. I didn’t want to negotiate with you, but you insisted on sticking around me.”
“You don’t believe it, right?” Klet looked at Shen Siwei with an amused expression.
“Continue.” Shen Siwei replied blantly
“In the beginning, I insisted on sending you away but I found you suspicious. You claimed to be a civilian, but you were too accustomed to gunfire.” Klet paused and continued, “Through this flaw, I immediately realized that you were an undercover agent sent by the military.”
“So you’re saying,” Shen Siwei interjected with skepticism, “I was exposed as soon as I started the mission?”
Shen Siwei couldn’t help but frown. “Be honest with me.”
Perhaps seeing this, Klet continued in a good mood, “To confirm your identity, I took you to a self-service hotel. When you registered your identity…”
“A self-service hotel?” Shen Siwei suddenly recalled the strange sense of familiarity he had before. “Is the check-in machine on the right side after entering the door?”
“You remember?” Klet looked surprised.
“No,” Shen Siwei moved his lips. “I just passed by.”
With half-lowered eyes, he looked at the pool water reflecting the aurora. His expression remained calm like the surface of the water, but his heart was already in turmoil.
Perhaps Klet wasn’t making up a story.
Shen Siwei felt that he had indeed been to that self-service hotel. If Klet was fabricating a story, he wouldn’t have accurately hit his sense of familiarity.
So, he really woke up five years ago? Could Moran have tampered with his memories?
Suddenly, Shen Siwei’s brain became somewhat confused. Which of his memories were true and which were false?
The sound of snapping fingers in his ears broke his chaotic thoughts.
“Are you still listening?” Klet asked.
“Mm,” Shen Siwei said, “Continue.”
“Just now, I mentioned that you killed Barn, and I found you in the self-service bathhouse.” Klet said, “Actually, at that time, I already strongly suspected you. But you were actually pretending to be weak.”
“I can pretend to be weak?”
“I slapped your butt, and you pulled my hair.”
Shen Siwei’s eyes widened instantly, overturning all his previous thoughts. “That definitely wasn’t me,” he asserted. “If you dared to slap my butt, you definitely wouldn’t have survived.”
“Is that so?” Klet smiled. “I remembere that you said anyone who touched your butt died. So, by that count, I’ve touched it twice.”
“I told you,” Shen Siwei frowned, “that wasn’t me.”
“But you were really angry at that time and said you would kill me.” Klet restrained his smile and continued to recall, “I always thought you were just saying it casually until later when I saw you stomp on the Desert Wolf’s head.”
“So, in your story, we drove away the distorted monsters,” Shen Siwei calmly asked.
“When the distorted monsters broke into City Z, most of the refugees chose to flee. I fought against the desert wolves with about ten people and gradually found ourselves at a disadvantage. That’s when you descended from the sky and helped me.”
At this point, Klet paused, looking at Shen Siwei and said, “You looked really cool.”
No one dislikes praise. Shen Siwei asked calmly, “And then?”
“Then we hunted down the alpha wolf together, and the wolf pack willingly left the Tree of Life.”
Shen Siwei couldn’t help but have preconceived notions. But upon careful consideration, if he were in City Z at the time, he wouldn’t have stood idly by.
“Why did the military bomb civilians?” he asked again.
“Because you discovered that City Z’s energy supply comes from the deep sea,” Klet said in a deep voice, “the military didn’t want this information to leak out and decided to silence the entire city.”
Everything started to connect.
The reason Moran ordered Shen Siwei to capture Klet was because Klet knew how to reach the deep sea.
This at least proved that the military’s reason for bombing civilians, as stated by Klet, was factual
After all, energy was the foundation of the stability of the Tree of Life, and sacrificing an entire city for energy was indeed more convincing than distorted monsters.
—So, should I coax him and ask how exactly he reached the deep sea?
This thought suddenly came to Shen Siwei’s mind.
Judging by the current atmosphere, Klet seemed to trust him quite a bit.
“When I discovered that you had deceived me, I was very angry,” Klet continued , “But later, when you informed me about the military’s bombing plan and helped me evacuate the civilians, that’s when I began to realize that you were actually on my side”
Shen Siwei: “…”
Well, Shen Siwei inexplicably felt a little guilty, and the idea of coaxing him gradually disappeared.
According to Klet, it seemed that Shen Siwei had deceived him badly before, which made Shen Siwei somewhat hesitant.
“Later, you were captured,” Klet said casually, “Before being captured, you destroyed two aircrafts. I had never seen you like that before and it was so attractive.”
both of them fell silent.
Shen Siwei wanted to accept Klet’s praise, but he honestly couldn’t remember anything.
“You still have no recollection,” Klet sighed helplessly.
“Mhm,” Shen Siwei replied softly.
“Do you believe anything I said?”
Shen Siwei remained silent for a moment and then said, “Half and half.”
And by saying he believed half and half, Shen Siwei was already indicating that he leaned toward believing he had woken up five years ago, otherwise he wouldn’t believe it at all.
Klet clearly sensed this underlying meaning and his mouth curled up slightly, his tone shifting from helplessness to lightness. “Why do you still wear an oxygen mask like a sickly child after all these years?”
“My cardiopulmonary function is still not good,
“What’s the difference between this new and the old one?”
“I don’t remember the old one, how would I know?”
“I remember, let me see this one.”
After saying that, Klet’s hand reached directly for Shen Siwei’s oxygen mask.
But Shen Siwei couldn’t possibly hand over his lifeline, so he immediately slapped Klet’s hand away. “Are we that comfortable with each other to act like this?”
“We will be in the future.” The large hand reached out again.
Shen Siwei held onto the mask with one hand while dodging backward. “If you dare snatch my mask, I’ll pull out all your hair.”
Upon hearing those words, Klet seemed to suddenly gain strength and became determined to snatch Shen Siwei’s mask.
The calm water in the hot spring pool stirred up intense waves as Shen Siwei kicked Klet.
He had intended to hold back his strength, fearing that he might accidentally kick Klet to death. As a result, the kick landed on Klet with no pain.
Klet wasn’t pushed far enough and pounced again, his left hand pressing down on Shen Siwei’s left shoulder.
Shen Siwei twisted his shoulder and easily broke free.
Klet realized that he couldn’t hold him down due to Shen Siwei’s slippery skin, so he switched to circling his waist with his left hand, pressing his entire body down, while his right hand tried to snatch the mask.
Their bodies were tightly pressed together, Shen Siwei’s lower abdomen against the icy road, freezing him, while the person behind him felt like a burning iron, making him experience the feeling of being caught between ice and fire.
“Klet!” Shen Siwei turned his upper body angrily, pushing Klet’s chest, “Stop rubbing against my ass!”
“Uh…” Klet seemed to just then realize that their positions were somewhat inappropriate, and he slightly moved aside.
He rubbed the back of his head and avoided eye contact with Shen Siwei’s body. “The aurora is about to disappear. Let’s go inside.”
The small wooden house on the ice dome was as tiny as ever, but it became even more cramped with two big men squeezed inside.
Shen Siwei couldn’t be bothered to talk to Klet and lay on the bed, browsing web pages.
Now that he found out that Amor left the Tree of Life to travel with his lover, he could only search if there were other suitable places for couples.
But after searching for a long time, Shen Siwei couldn’t find any clues on the webpage because places outside the Tree of Life were not suitable for traveling.
Klet, who was beside him, must have felt bored and spoke to Shen Siwei, “What are you looking for?”
Shen Siwei didn’t answer.
Klet continued, “I know more about the areas outside the Tree of Life than you do.”
This reason convinced Shen Siwei.
He finally closed the webpage and replied, “Amor, Miller’s youngest son.”
Klet raised his index finger, pointing to the sky. “You mean that Miller?”
“yes” Shen Siwei said,
Klete added “What does his son look like?”
Amor rarely appeared in public, so it wasn’t surprising that Klet didn’t know.
Shen Siwei sat up from the bed and retrieved a photo from a file, saying, “All we know is that he probably eloped with his lover.”
Klet tilted his head and examined the young man in the photo, furrowing his brows slightly. “I’ve seen this person.”
Shen Siwei immediately asked, “When?”
“About a week ago,” Klet said, “He and his companion, or perhaps his lover as you’ve said, appeared in the underground city in the desert.”
Shen Siwei: “…”
“We’ll depart for the underground city in the desert tomorrow,” he said, lying back on the bed, “Rest early today.”
Klet sat on the chair without moving. “So, can I sleep on the bed today?”
Shen Siwei shifted from lying flat to lying on his side, leaving only his back for Klet to see.
The room fell completely silent, and Shen Siwei could hear the steady sound of breathing behind him.
Klet fell asleep, his forehead against the nape of Shen Siwei’s neck, like a child.
Shen Siwei thought about what Klet had said, his thoughts still a mess, unable to sleep carefree like Klet.
After some time had passed, even the sound of wind outside the window stopped. Shen Siwei couldn’t fall asleep and sat up from the bed.
He turned over Klet’s body and came to the edge of the table, absentmindedly picking up the message book.
Not many people came to the ice dome, maybe only two or three teams in several months.
Shen Siwei flipped through the messages out of boredom,but as he flipped, he suddenly stopped his hand on a particular page.
The messages on the page were from over a month ago, the font resembling that of a primary school student, written freely without aligning to the lines–
Arrived before the meteor shower.
This year, I still hope he is alive.
Actually, when he was taken away at the beginning, I just felt helpless. I clearly had the ability to save him if it weren’t for a few civilians at that time.
At this point, the word “civilians” was smeared into a black blob, indicating laziness to write further and starting a new line.
I never expected that the feeling of unwillingness could linger in one’s heart for so long, slowly turning into an obsession.
And then at some point, the obsession damnably turned into longing.
Longing for someone is really painful. It feels like I’ve been longing for him all these twenty-something years.
I don’t want to long for anyone anymore.
Damn it.
The signature below: Klet.
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