Chapter Six: The Cage

The next day, Lily carried her small notebook and asked Aiden a few questions, such as whether John had ever borrowed a dictionary from him, or if he had noticed any strange behavior from John.

She received affirmative answers to both.

The former had already been confirmed in John's diary, so Lily hurriedly pressed further on the latter, asking Aiden what strange behaviors he had observed in John.

Aiden replied that John often ran up and down the stairs and would frequently lie on the floor, seemingly looking at something.

This immediately reminded Lily of John's diary entry describing how he saw strange golden cube-shaped characters rising from beneath the ground and eventually soaring into the sky.

Having confirmed that there was no more information to gather, Lily borrowed the dictionary from Aiden and then headed to the gym in the corner of the third floor to look for Camille.

She needed to confirm with Camille whether anything unusual had happened during that “sifting patrol.”

As she reached the gym, it was no surprise to see Camille there, apparently in the midst of strength training with a pair of dumbbells.

Camille had her blond hair cropped short in a smart style, and she wore the standard orphanage athletic suit. The dumbbell training made her tracksuit bulge with muscle, and the parts of her arms that were exposed were clearly defined with muscle lines.

Lily couldn't help but touch her own forearm as she watched... Well, slender but resilient, hmm...

Shaking her head to banish the distraction, Lily immediately knocked on the half-open gym door, successfully catching Camille's attention.

“Morning, Lily! What brings you to the gym?” Camille asked, a little pleased but also a bit puzzled.

She was happy because the gym was usually her private domain—though that was also the reason for her confusion.

“It’s like this.” Lily glanced at Camille's “pectorals,” explained her purpose, and showed her the list she had copied down of the patrol team from August 29th.

“So, why did you replace Bana in that ‘sifting patrol’ that day?” Lily asked directly.

“Bana... Oh, I remember now. Bana had a high fever that day and couldn’t participate in the patrol. But John said the patrol would need to go south to a sports center to carry some things back, so he called me in since he needed someone strong,” Camille recalled after a brief moment of thought.

“Then... did you encounter anything strange that day? And—though this might sound odd—did you notice anything unusual about John that day?”

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Lily chose her words carefully as she questioned Camille.

“Strange things...” Camille pondered for a few seconds, then spoke slowly, “I’m not sure if this counts as strange, but we never went to the southern sports center. Instead, John led us straight to Dunlun’s Eye.” Camille turned to fetch her water bottle from a piece of gym equipment, then returned to Lily. After a drink, she continued, “You know me, I rarely think too much about these things. At the time, I thought it was odd that John suddenly changed destinations, but I didn’t dwell on it. No one else in the team said anything either, so I assumed it was a common occurrence.”

With that, Camille filled the cup lid with water and handed it to Lily.

Lily accepted it reflexively and took a sip, only to cough softly—Camille’s water was salty, apparently with added salt.

Returning the cup lid, Lily coughed again and continued, “Did you feel John was acting out of character that day?”

“Out of character...?” Camille seemed perplexed.

“For example, did he separate from the team to act alone, or try to hide something?” Lily’s questions were informed by John’s diary.

“I’m sorry, Lily. Nothing stands out in my memory that would make me think John was acting strange.” Camille simply shook her head.

Lily was a bit disappointed with this answer, but she still gleaned something useful—

John tended to change the patrol’s destination, and the rest of the team seemed used to it.

After a moment’s thought, Lily gestured for Camille to sit. She found a spot herself and began asking about the details of their trip to Dunlun’s Eye. All she learned was that Dunlun’s Eye had continued rotating on its own after people abandoned it due to the mist, and that the supporting structure seemed to be weakening and might collapse in another eight or nine years.

Thanking Camille, Lily wandered alone to the attic on the fifth floor of the orphanage—a place she liked, as it was the quietest spot in the building during daylight hours.

She sat down slowly, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her chin in the gap between them, silently gazing out the attic window at the world beyond the orphanage.

The mist outside flowed like water, slowly but brimming with a kind of vitality. Though it moved silently, no one knew what secrets it concealed, nor why it had become connected to the numbers 2 and 4 of Earth's Arabic numerals.

“‘Mist of 2.4’...,” Lily repeated the name of the haze outside, her pronunciation a little awkward.

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Since that day ten years ago, February 4th, humanity had completely lost the right to soar in the sky. The mist had become a cage, trapping every human being within its confines, from which they could not escape.

Human technological means had also been severely restricted. All devices related to communication ceased to function, turning into heaps of scrap metal, and all equipment capable of observing the microscopic world at the atomic scale or larger had lost their precision.

It was said that a writer named Liu from the Summer Nation had written a masterful science fiction novel inspired by this phenomenon, apparently called “Four Bodies.” In it, he cleverly described a theory called the “technology lock,” making the book a bestseller in many countries and translated into multiple languages, even without the help of the internet for its dissemination.

Now, John had disappeared as well, and Lily herself was about to face the terrifying uncertainty of the coming-of-age ceremony.

She desperately wanted to find someone to hold her while she cried, but she couldn’t think of anyone she could let herself be so vulnerable with. If only Mama Chatan were still at the orphanage...

“If only Mama Chatan were still here... wouldn’t that be nice?”

Suddenly, a male voice came from the spiral staircase leading to the attic.

Lily was startled, but quickly realized who it was, feeling both embarrassed and a little annoyed:

“Ander, aren’t you supposed to be helping in the kitchen at this hour? What are you doing up in the attic?”

The newcomer was Ander—apart from John, Hugh, and Aiden, he was the child Lily felt closest to in the orphanage. She almost regarded Ander as her own younger brother.

Ander didn’t rush to answer. Instead, he bent slightly at the waist, hands behind his back, and came to sit in front of Lily.

“Ta-da!” Ander suddenly whipped his hands out from behind his back and held them out to Lily.

In his hands was a little turtle-like creature made from all sorts of parts. With a twist of the little key on its side, the “turtle” began to move in Ander’s hands.

“Happy birthday, sis,” Ander said with a smile, placing the little contraption into Lily’s hands.