Chapter 24
◎ Does he really know who did it? ◎
“…Never mind, let’s not talk about that.” Berlin thought on his feet, blinking his round, bright eyes. “Instead of telling dark jokes, how about I tell you some stories from my own life?”
Berlin tried to sell the idea enthusiastically: “It’s full of ups and downs, sweet and sour, joys and sorrows. It’s one hundred percent realistic and will help you get a clearer understanding of the place where I live.”
Cecil was obviously more interested in anything related to Berlin’s life. He sat up a bit straighter, ignoring the slightly stiff transition in topics.
He settled in to listen: “Okay.”
Berlin had plenty of stories to tell. He considered himself to have possessed an interesting soul ever since he was a toddler.
There was a cognitive gap in time and space between him and Cecil. Since Berlin loved sharing his life anyway, he figured recounting his story from age one to the present would be a perfect way to help Cecil gradually understand how modern people grow up.
There was no better way to learn than through storytelling. It was just like how, as a child, Berlin loved reading simplified versions of classics. Children understood the world through simple, illustrated books like Aesop’s Fables, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or One Thousand and One Nights, distinguishing good from evil through stereotypical but easily understood protagonists and villains.
Watching the excitement in a haze of confusion and grasping the general idea was still useful.
Being exposed to overly complex knowledge right away would only be discouraging. It was better to cultivate interest first to avoid killing his enthusiasm.
Teacher Berlin began to reminisce with great seriousness: “When I was one year old…”
Imitating Berlin’s earlier behavior, Cecil silently and hesitantly raised his hand.
Teacher Berlin permitted the question: “What is it?”
Cecil: “…How can you remember things from when you were one year old?”
Berlin explained patiently: “Oh, in the technological age, we invented a recording device called a video camera. It can record events through images and sound. Even many years later, you can watch them whenever you want. Isn’t that convenient?”
Having lived with the existence of the scientifically unexplainable Temple, Cecil digested this quickly: “Mm.”
“Then I’ll continue,” Berlin said with varied intonation, getting into the rhythm of the story. “When I turned one, we had a custom called Zhuazhou, or the ‘First Birthday Grab.’ It’s like drawing lots. They prepare many items and let the one-year-old baby grab one from the pile to predict which path they’ll take in the future.”
“For example, if you grab a book, it means you love reading and will be a cultured person in the future, maybe an academic or something.”
Noticing Cecil’s gaze, Berlin clarified in time: “The world I live in doesn’t have a Temple. This is just a folk custom. It’s more like an activity where everyone gathers to have fun and cheer; it has nothing to do with real prophecy!”
Cecil relaxed: “Oh.”
Recalling the videos he watched when he grew up, Berlin made a face that was half-laughing, half-crying, still shaken by the memory. “At the time, my mom was really into it. She chose over a hundred small items and spread them out flat—there were this many.”
He waved his arms to gesture the size: “I’m not exaggerating at all. With one-year-old me as the center, they spread out in a circle. It looked exactly like a zombie siege.”
Cecil, the good student who never pretended to understand things he didn’t, asked: “What is a zombie?”
Berlin: “…”
He was certain that if he and Cecil were classmates, when the teacher asked, “Any questions? If not, class dismissed,” Student Cecil would be the one firmly and persistently raising his hand amidst the resentful wails of the entire class.
But Berlin was very patient. He treated Cecil like the neighbor’s kid who used to cling to him. Children had many things they didn’t understand and were curious about everything. As a mature and reliable adult, Berlin naturally had to be more tolerant.
So, he stood up and acted it out for Cecil, basing his performance on Plants vs. Zombies: “It’s a corpse that walks like this. They eat people. ‘Zombie Siege’ comes from a horror movie where there are so many zombies they surround the city…”
When Cecil frowned again, Berlin realized a misunderstanding had occurred. Cecil might think the world Berlin lived in was even more terrifying than this one.
Berlin waved his hands repeatedly, shaking his head earnestly: “Stop your wild imagination right there. That’s fabricated by movies. It’s fake. It doesn’t exist.”
Berlin sounded very certain at first, but his voice grew quieter towards the end. He started to feel a little unsure and guilty: after all, not long ago, he had used the same logic to refute Han Yuzhe—demons in movies exist, so could zombies really be impossible…?
Cecil gazed at him, tilting his head as he stated: “You don’t need to be afraid of zombies.”
Berlin’s eyes darted around as he flatly denied it: “What are you talking about? I’m not afraid of zombies.”
Cecil observed him intently for a moment, remaining convinced: “You are.”
Berlin: “…”
He realized that if this continued, they would constantly drift off-topic. It wasn’t working.
To prevent one answer from spawning countless new questions, Teacher Berlin painfully adopted a ‘one size fits all’ approach: “From now on, hold your questions. Wait until I finish speaking to ask them all at once.”
Cecil: “Oh.”
Berlin struggled to pull the topic back to its original track, counting on his fingers: “Right, so, a gold ingot represents wealth, a flute represents music, a dictionary represents knowledge… After I finished grabbing in front of my seven aunts and eight cousins, everyone exclaimed, ‘As expected of Berlin.'”
His eyes sparkled: “Guess what I picked?”
Meeting Berlin’s expectant gaze, Cecil fell into thought.
After a long while, he looked like he wanted to speak but stopped: “…Berlin.”
Berlin instinctively responded: “Hmm?”
Cecil was silent for a long time, his eyes apologetic: “I’ll ask just one last question, and then I won’t interrupt again until you’re finished.”
Berlin nodded curiously: “Okay, go ahead.”
Cecil’s brilliant golden eyes were filled with confusion: “What is a ‘Berlin’?”
Berlin didn’t understand: “?”
Berlin fell into thought: “…?”
Berlin finally realized with a jolt: “……………………”
How could this happen?
A massive blunder.
…He forgot to tell Cecil his name.
Berlin looked up at the ceiling with difficulty, muttering softly: “My name.”
Cecil didn’t hear clearly: “Hmm?”
Berlin glanced at him, scratching his head in embarrassment: “Berlin is my name. meeting you was too chaotic earlier, I forgot to tell you.”
Cecil slowly digested this information.
Sudden silence is the scariest kind.
The two looked at each other for a long time, unsure who should feel more awkward.
Cecil silently repeated the name twice, then calmly took a bite of bread: “It sounds very nice. I’ll remember it.”
Berlin let out a subconscious, silly laugh: “Your name sounds nice too. It suits you.”
Cecil paused, looking at him quietly: “Thank you, but my name means ‘The Fallen’.”
The Temple never mentioned his name to the outside world, referring to him only as the Divine Child.
Berlin: “…………”
If it were anyone else, the awkwardness might have made them want to flee the scene immediately.
But Berlin quickly adjusted his mindset. He thought about it optimistically and comforted him: “It doesn’t matter. ‘Fallen’ isn’t a word just anyone can use. First, you have to stand at a high enough altitude to have the opportunity to fall! Doesn’t that actually prove you were inherently an amazing person to begin with?”
Cecil was stunned.
Berlin chuckled, looking at him with a gaze Cecil couldn’t quite comprehend: “Secondly, where I’m from, there’s a saying that the more powerful a figure is, the more likely they were called by some perfunctory and unpleasant earthy nicknames when they were young. It makes them easier to raise safely: like Dog Egg, Cat Egg, Iron Pillar, or Cuihua.”
Cecil: “…”
It was a strange feeling.
He felt like he didn’t quite understand, yet at the same time, he truly understood.
So, when Berlin enthusiastically asked if Cecil wanted to adopt “Cecil Dog Egg” (Sai Goudan) as a nickname, Cecil, relying on a survival instinct, firmly and unhesitatingly refused.
Rejected, Berlin looked regretful but nodded in respect of Cecil’s opinion: “Alright then.”
Cecil breathed a sigh of relief, though he didn’t know why.
In the past, whenever he thought of his cursed name, he might have felt uncomfortable. But right now, all his thoughts had been led by Berlin to places he had never imagined, leaving him no energy to feel depressed.
Berlin had many ideas and never followed anyone else’s train of thought: “Names don’t signify anything. Bearing the name ‘The Fallen’ but being the one who hasn’t fallen is actually really cool!”
He thought for a moment and added: “Besides, who says someone who has fallen can’t become positive again? As long as life isn’t over, there’s still a chance to change. Moreover, only you can decide where you want to go.”
“Others can stop you from climbing up, and there will be people standing below waving at you, wanting you to join them in a deeper abyss.”
“But you have always been yourself.”
Berlin shook his head back and forth with his hands behind his back, like an energetic little old man, nagging and reasoning with a stubborn junior: “What others call you cannot change who you essentially are.”
“If you want to become a certain kind of person, just work hard to move in that direction.”
“My mom often told me that the ‘Law of Attraction’ is the hardest thing in the world to explain. When you strongly desire to achieve something and strive for it without giving up, even the Heavens will come to help you.”
“The meaning of ‘Cecil’ was given by others, so why can’t you give it a new meaning?”
“You just need to think about what meaning you want people to think of when ‘Cecil’ is mentioned from now on.”
“If you want it to be ‘Light’, it’s Light. If you want it to be ‘Happiness’, it’s Happiness. Don’t listen to what others say; you can define your own life forever.”
Cecil looked up blankly, seeing Berlin’s smile—intelligent yet silly, brilliant and radiant.
“It’s just a name, after all. Cecil, Sai Goudan, Saiyan… See, no matter what I call you, does it affect who you are?”
The invisible haze at the bottom of Cecil’s heart seemed to dissipate significantly in that moment.
For the first time, he truly wanted to laugh from the bottom of his heart, and he did.
It wasn’t the stiff smile he used when dealing with the priests, nor the perfunctory fake smile he used when facing Asan’s probing.
In this moment, Berlin looked truly carefree.
But he wasn’t happy simply because he was ignorant, as Cecil had initially thought.
He clearly knew the world had a dark side; he just had a simple, direct way of accepting and resolving it. He faced it without weakness and experienced disappointment without running away.
Just before Berlin woke up, he vaguely saw a fleeting smile on Cecil’s face.
His attention was caught by the golden favorability value above Cecil’s head, so he didn’t see the smile clearly.
The next second—
Berlin’s eyes snapped open.
He blinked hard in a daze. After adjusting to the dim light, he looked around carefully and confirmed it was indeed the hotel ceiling.
Ah, he was back.
But… he scratched his hair and muttered blankly, “What just happened?”
Cecil, who had been incredibly stingy since they met, with a record high of increasing his favorability by only two points at a time, had just increased it by 10.
Berlin couldn’t help but grab the duvet happily, giggling foolishly as he pulled it over his head. He wrapped himself up like a caterpillar and rolled around on the bed.
This feeling was probably like taking a test where initially he could only get the lowest-value multiple-choice questions right, but suddenly, he had scored full marks on a major essay question.
Berlin: Such a sense of accomplishment.
He found the long-lost joy of leveling up in a childhood game. He rubbed his hands together, eager to try again.
Berlin sat up and began to plan how he would continue to draw green grass and bright suns on that blank sheet of paper the next time he saw Cecil.
Since he couldn’t fall back asleep anyway, he checked the time and decided to get up.
Berlin mapped out a plan in his head while staring at the ceiling, then spiritedly threw open the curtains. He summoned the energy he had during his exam prep days, ready to seize every spare moment to absorb knowledge and take responsibility for his unique ‘blank slate’.
Berlin: Dreaming back to the childhood pet-raising games, setting an alarm for 5 AM just to crawl out of bed and feed nutrient solution to the little character in the game. (.)
His only slight regret was that Cecil had led his train of thought astray again, and he hadn’t managed to finish telling him what he actually grabbed during the Zhuazhou.
Well, it didn’t matter.
He’d treat it like leaving Cecil some homework. He could ask him next time they met, giving Cecil a bit more space to think!
After washing up, he habitually opened Bilibili (B Station), ready to practice the Baduanjin (Eight Brocades).
The Shaolin Uploader updated with a frequency that was neither high nor low. Aside from posting videos, he never updated his status or mentioned the incident of a “fan” coming up the mountain to mooch a vegetarian meal.
Thinking of this, Berlin felt a bit gloomy: the manager had eventually made his assistant, Xiao Li, cancel the order. He would have to find another way to buy snacks for Chen Qingqiu.
He’d talk about it after today’s recording ended. If it was still early… no, actually, to avoid the watchful eyes of the manager and Assistant Xiao Li, it would be better to go later in the evening.
With a simple plan in place, Berlin focused on completing a set of Baduanjin, finishing his daily morning workout check-in.
He casually left a comment in the section: [Daily check-in complete! [Cat Power.jpg]].
The hotel’s breakfast buffet opened very early. Berlin held his phone, reading an e-book as he walked, engaging in some simple “lesson prep,” keeping his head down the whole way.
At this hour, the corridors were empty; there was no one around.
He buried his head and walked into the elevator, checking his peripheral vision to confirm it was empty.
Just as the doors of the empty elevator were closing, a black shadow suddenly flashed in. Berlin almost crashed headfirst into the person’s chest, giving him a fright.
Looking up to find it was Han Yuzhe, Berlin touched the tip of his nose, which had been slightly bumped. He didn’t understand why, if Han Yuzhe was going to teleport, he didn’t just teleport directly to his destination. “Morning.”
He secretly glanced at the surveillance camera in the elevator, trying hard to signal Han Yuzhe with his eyes: ‘Is this okay?’
Han Yuzhe’s pitch-black eyes absorbed all light. He lowered his gaze to stare at Berlin, waving his hand without looking up. The surveillance camera seemed to be slapped askew by an invisible force, emitting a static fizzing sound.
He hadn’t controlled his strength well; spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the camera lens.
He looked at Berlin eerily, his tone heavy, yet inexplicably carrying a hint of confusion and grievance: “The mark I left is gone.”
Berlin looked up from his e-book: …Oops, forgot about that.
He didn’t know why he felt a sudden pang of guilt, considering it was just a simple warming spell.
But Berlin felt that discovering it had been wiped away after just one night was indeed a disservice to the other person’s kindness. It wasn’t good.
It was just that Cecil had acted too quickly at the time; Berlin was in a daze and hadn’t had time to stop it.
He scratched his head in distress, starting to seriously think about how to explain this to Han Yuzhe.
“Sorry. Actually, it was…” While he was organizing his words, Han Yuzhe kept a straight face and handed him a small bag.
Berlin sniffed and smelled the sweet aroma of Tiramisu.
A flash of scarlet passed through Han Yuzhe’s deep pupils. He drawled, “We’re at the restaurant.”
The elevator dinged, signaling their arrival.
“You eat first. I know exactly who did it.” Han Yuzhe strode out of the elevator, his back imposing like the wind. “I’m going to settle the score with him.”
Berlin didn’t have time to call him back. He watched blankly as Han Yuzhe stormed off like a gust of wind.
Ah.
Berlin blinked, hugging the bag and walking toward the restaurant in confusion.
Cecil could only be seen in dreams; he wasn’t in this world at all.
Does Han Yuzhe really know who did it?
Who exactly is he going to find…?
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