My avatar is becoming the final boss

Chapter 17 Goodbye
I was bored and thinking about the past, and three minutes passed by unknowingly.

Looking up, Ji Minghuan saw that the isolation door of the prison cell had not been opened yet, so he leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and continued to recall the past.

Three years after he and Kong Youling first met, Ji Minghuan, who was originally taciturn in the eyes of the children, suddenly transformed into the most mischievous child in the welfare home.

He often made mistakes, such as talking back to the director or deliberately driving away adults who wanted to adopt him. As punishment, he would be locked up in the small attic at the top of the library to sleep alone. The nurses would not only lock the door but also cut off the power to the library before bedtime, so no matter how hard they tried, the attic light would not turn on.

So the children were all afraid of the attic.

Because it was very dark at night and there was no one around, those crooked bookshelves looked like monsters with bared fangs and claws in the moonlight. Every time they were locked in the attic, they would cry loudly and beg the nurse to let them out. Over time, no one dared to be naughty anymore.

But Ji Minghuan is different, he likes that attic.

Rather than sleeping with other boys, he preferred to be locked up in here alone at night, and he also liked to listen quietly in the dark to the "tick-tick" sound coming from the wall clock.

He was the only one in the orphanage who dared to spend the night in that dark attic, without even a word. Therefore, he was also the only one among the children who dared to contradict the director.

The little kids in the orphanage all admired Ji Minghuan, believing he dared to do things they dared not, and treated him as their leader. Perhaps no one in the orphanage knew how this once unremarkable boy had suddenly changed so much.

The nurses only knew that because Ji Minghuan often stayed with Kong Youling, no children dared to bully the deaf and mute girl anymore.

This made them worry less.

In fact, only Ji Minghuan himself understood that the reason why he liked this attic so much was because every time he was locked in the attic of the library, he could always see someone.

The nurses locked the attic door, but left the skylight unlocked. He would read in the attic by moonlight. When the nurses and the director were asleep, he would step over a pile of dusty books in the corner, step onto the old bookshelf, then jump towards the skylight, grab the roof with both hands and climb up.

Whenever he dived into the roof like a fish, he only had to raise his head and the moonlight wrapped in the evening breeze would fall on his face, blowing his hair high and illuminating his clear eyes, like opening a window to the sky.

Looking back, the girls' dormitory was right across from the attic, very close. The girls' dormitory was a little lower. At night, Kong Youling slept on the third floor of the dormitory. Her room had never changed.

Whenever Ji Minghuan was punished to spend the night alone in the attic, Kong Youling would count silently in his bed, suddenly open his eyes in the middle of the night, and try not to wake anyone else up, and sneak out of the dormitory as carefully as a kitten.

She walked barefoot across the corridor and climbed up to the window at the end of the corridor, and then she could see Ji Minghuan sitting on the eaves of the attic opposite.

He would always hold out his hand to her and move his lips silently in the night wind:
"Jump, trust me."

Every time she saw his face, she would muster up the courage to jump from the windowsill to the roof of the library. The girl's figure was as light as a white deer in the moonlight, and her snow-white hair fluttered in the night wind. Ji Minghuan would always catch her hand as expected.

At this time of night, the entire orphanage is quiet. In winter, you can see snow falling, and the trees and eaves are covered with white; in summer, you can hear cicadas chirping and fireflies dancing in the night sky. Sometimes fireworks are set off in the distance, and the dazzling sparks illuminate the night sky amidst the crackling sounds.

No matter spring, summer, autumn or winter, the only thing that remains unchanged is that the long streets of the city are brightly lit. The walls of the welfare home isolate those desirable lights from the outside. Only by climbing onto the roof can you get a glimpse of the city's neon lights and realize how big this world is.

But they were not interested in the red-light district with its bright lights and wine. They always lay on the roof of the attic, quietly looking at the starry night sky.

That was time that belonged only to the two of them.

Sometimes the world is very small, and they can only move around in the narrow welfare home, restricted in every way;
But every time this happened, they felt that the world became very big... so big that it seemed as if the entire night sky belonged to them.

Ji Minghuan put his arms behind his head and pointed to the sky with his other hand, introducing the names of the stars to her one by one.

Kong Youling sat beside him, holding a sketchbook, listening quietly, occasionally writing on it and asking him, "How do you know all this?" In Kong Youling's eyes, Ji Minghuan knew everything, even more than many adults, as if he was not a child of his age.

At this time, Ji Minghuan would always say that he learned it from the books in the library: he was locked up in the attic with nothing to do, so he would take time to read all the miscellaneous books piled up there. Over time, he developed a reading habit, and he read faster and faster. Later, he even developed the ability to read ten lines at a glance. After he finished reading the books in the attic, he would secretly bring the books from the library up before being locked up. Over time, he naturally knew more than his peers.

Kong Youling nodded, and from then on, when other children were playing in the playground and Ji Minghuan was reading alone in the library, there would always be a figure beside him.

One night, on the eaves of the attic, she talked about her mother.

She wrote in the notebook that her mother was from Iceland and moved to China for her father, but later her father abandoned them because of debt. Her mother took her to live in an unfamiliar place where she was not even proficient in the language and eventually died of overwork.

She said her mother died because of her.

Ji Minghuan shook her head and said that it was not her who was wrong, but her father. She also said that her mother was also wrong. If people want to truly live in this world, they can only rely on themselves. Those who rely on others to survive can only get a temporary respite.

She thought for a long time and asked, "Can I rely on you?"

Ji Minghuan was stunned for a moment, then nodded, coughed twice, and overturned what he had just said: "I'm different. Relying on me is very cost-effective because I am very kind to the people around me."

He paused. “Well, even though you’re the only one around me, you’re like family to me.”

She said, you are my family too.

As they chatted, the two talked about their first impressions of each other.

"First impression?" Ji Minghuan thought for a moment. "Oh, the first impression you gave me was... the little snowmen that children made on the streets when winter first arrived."

The girl asked, "Snowman?"

"That's right, a little snowman," he said seriously. "Not a very big snowman, but the kind that will break into pieces if you touch it with just the slightest bit of force."

Kong Youling glanced at him emotionlessly, her cheeks puffed up slightly, as if she was angry.

"Okay, I'm just kidding."

Kong Youling was silent for a while, then wrote to him and asked, "The nurse said that when you were a child, you liked to lock yourself up. Why was that?"

Ji Minghuan stared at the night sky for a long moment, then said, "The last time I saw my parents, they locked me in the closet and told me to wait there, not to make any noise, and that they would be back soon." He raised the corner of his mouth, "I was so stupid when I was little, I actually believed what they said was true. Even after being sent to an orphanage, I would still foolishly lock myself away, thinking...if I did that, would they come back for me?"

"But not even once. Later..." He paused, and the smile on his face slowly disappeared. "Later, I grew up and didn't need them to come to me anymore."

"I always feel that... I don't understand you yet." The girl looked at his lost expression, stunned, and wrote on the notebook.

Ji Minghuan was silent for a long time before whispering, "Actually, I have a different personality in front of everyone, always pretending to be myself. I'm terrified of being abandoned, just like my parents abandoned me... I always try to please others and pretend to be the person they like. Sometimes I really want to get close to someone, but when I think of myself being abandoned, I'll take the initiative to cut off the relationship. I really don't want to... I don't want to be thrown away like trash."

"But you are different. I hope you are by my side. With you, I don't need to pretend to be myself or cater to others. So I want to be with you forever."

At this point, he suddenly lowered his voice: "Kong Youling...will you abandon me like my parents did?"

Kong Youling glanced sideways and stared at him quietly for a while.

For the first time, she saw this arrogant, reckless, and always at ease man reveal his vulnerable side - loneliness, fear, and worry. Only then did she remember that he was just a teenager like her, just a child who had been abandoned by his parents since childhood and had been hiding his insecurity, fear, and loneliness.

The girl lowered her eyes and looked at the tiles on the eaves and thought for a long, long time.

Surprisingly, she didn't write or use lip reading. She just put down the notebook in her arms and slowly, slowly moved closer to him, tentatively like a kitten, then opened her arms and hugged him in her arms, her white hair pressed against his cheek.

At that time, Ji Minghuan was looking at the eaves of the welfare home with his eyes lowered, and felt a slight chill coming from his side. Before he could come to his senses, the girl had already hugged him.

He was stunned for a long time.

This girl, who was often laughed at by other children for not being able to speak or talk, since she could not write and did not use her special abilities, just used this simple way to express her care for him. It was clumsy, but also sincere.

His eyes reddened slightly, he hesitated for a moment, then gently raised his hand and hugged her back.

The two of them embraced on the eaves. This was the first time Ji Minghuan had been hugged since he could remember. Although her skin was cold, he felt warm and gently buried his head in her snow-white hair.

It was a fish-scale sky, with waves of cloud patterns filling the deep blue sky, and the moonlight seemed to have dimmed.

After a long time, the girl suddenly lowered her eyes, wrote seriously on the notebook, and turned the notebook towards him.

Ji Minghuan glanced over.

"Let's run away." These were the words written on the notebook. These simple words left Ji Minghuan confused.

Ji Minghuan asked curiously, "You said you were going to escape, but where are you going?"

"Anywhere is fine."

"But...if I leave the orphanage, I probably won't survive. I have no parents, no identification, no education, and I can't find a job or a place to live." Ji Minghuan paused, "But you're different."

"Why?" the girl asked.

"Because you have superpowers, the country treats them very well. If you tell them about this one day, some powerful people will come to pick you up in a big car, let you live in the best house, eat good food, and sleep well." Ji Minghuan touched his nose. "As long as you use your abilities well, you will be very popular everywhere. And as for me..."

He looked up at the night sky, where the moonlight flickered among the clouds. "If I leave this orphanage, I'll be nothing. I'll just be an abandoned homeless child. No one will care if I live or die. The people outside might not be as good as the director."

Kong Youling didn't write anything, but just lowered his head and thought for a while, then glanced at him secretly from the side, raised his right hand and extended his little finger.

"Promise." She put down the notebook and spoke silently with her lips.

"what?"

"I've been with you forever, so it's not 'I' anymore, it's 'we'..."

Having said that, Kong Youling silently repeated what he had said before, except that he replaced the "I" with "we".

She said: "We have no parents, no identity documents, and if we leave the orphanage, we may not be able to find a job or a place to live, but we... as long as we are together, we will find a way, and as long as we are together, we can survive."

The moonlight that day was bright and clear, and the girl's hair was like a ribbon made of early winter snow, dancing in the evening breeze.

Her light-sensitive eyes were wide open, never brighter than before. Although the girl couldn't utter a single sound, every word she said resonated deeply with Ji Minghuan.

Ji Minghuan was stunned for a long time.

Then he chuckled softly, stretched out his finger, touched her white little finger, and made a pinky promise with her.

"Mom said that once we make a promise, we have to keep it."

She raised the corners of her mouth and said silently, "We will always be together."

"Okay, then we'll always be together."

These words seemed to pass through those moonlit memories and echoed softly in Ji Minghuan's ears.

In the pitch-black cell, he drowsily raised his eyes and saw the isolation door had opened. A figure walked through the entrance. It was... a white-haired girl wearing a coded hospital gown. Her figure was as graceful as ever. When she saw Ji Minghuan, she stopped and froze in place.

Ji Minghuan was stunned for a moment, then blinked at her.

"haven't seen you for a long time."

(End of this chapter)