The boys finished the paste one after another,
set their bowls down,
and drifted back to their own corners.
Someone stood up.
He walked to the door
and closed it.
When the bolt slid into place,
it made a very soft sound.
No one looked up.
It was as if they had been waiting for that sound all along.
Wei stood there, bowl in hand, and suddenly realized something—
This place didn't need a lock.
The sticky food churned in his stomach, irritating it until a wave of sour nausea rose up his throat.
The feeling was familiar.
At least it proved one thing:
he was still alive.
For a brief, absurd moment, he even felt relieved.
Looks like I made it through another day.
There was a roof overhead.
Walls on all sides.
No need to worry about insects crawling into his ears in the middle of the night.
When he thought about it that way, living here almost seemed more decent than sleeping in the forest.
And yet—
What was the point of staying alive?
The question came out of nowhere, and he couldn't find an answer.
Freedom felt like something that had been taken from him casually, without ceremony—
as if someone had passed by and picked it up without asking.
Wei lowered his head and continued eating the black paste in his bowl.
The stuff was thick and gluey, like wood shavings mixed with starch, with a few rotten vegetable leaves and grass stems tossed in for good measure. It didn't really taste good or bad. Everything blended into the same dull flavor anyway.
Halfway through, something appeared in the bowl.
Round.
Small.
With a few thin whiskers.
It looked like a mouse's head.
Wei picked it up with his spoon and raised it to eye level, studying it seriously, as if trying to determine exactly which species and genus it belonged to.
"Ugh—"
Hua was the first to lose.
He clapped a hand over his mouth and started dry-heaving.
The guard by the door immediately turned his gaze toward them, cold and sharp like a blade.
Hua's face turned green. He pointed at the"mouse head" in Wei's spoon. The thin whiskers were still trembling slightly, as if the thing had died unwillingly.
"What are you staring at?"
the guard said flatly.
"That's a duck's neck."
"You're all too delicate."
A skinny boy in the corner spoke up in a low voice, though his tone was firm.
"The kitchen doesn't have a choice. Things are a mess outside. We're lucky they give us food at all."
"Exactly,"
another boy chimed in.
"If it weren't for those people outside ruining the world, we wouldn't have to eat this kind of stuff."
"I heard food used to be really good,"
a third boy whispered, as if telling a legend from a distant age.
"It only became like this after the outside was destroyed too badly."
When they said these things, their eyes lit up.
It wasn't hope.
It was the calm that came from being allowed to understand the world.
Wei nodded, showing that he understood. His body remembered being lost in the forest, remembered eating things far worse than this. By comparison, this wasn't much.
He casually tossed the mouse head into the trash bin and lowered his head again, calmly scraping the remaining paste into his mouth.
That was when more boys around him started vomiting.
The air filled with a sour stench.
It smelled like youth and ideals, crushed together with authority and ladled into this room in the form of a careless meal.
Minnow looked up.
There was a trace of helplessness in his eyes, and also something practiced—an exhaustion that came from long familiarity.
He silently swallowed the last mouthful of paste, then lowered his head and dipped his fingers into a bit of clean water, carefully wiping the corners of his mouth.
Slowly.
Meticulously.
He took another sip of water and rinsed his mouth thoroughly.
Then he washed his hands.
The water here—whether for drinking or washing—came endlessly from a single pipe.
Wei guessed it was probably diverted from a ditch or river somewhere.
But only Minnow cleaned himself after eating.
That was when Wei realized it for the first time:
This was someone who cherished his body deeply.
Wei glanced around at the others.
Messy hair.
Grimy clothes.
Some of them slipped a hand down their pant leg, scratched their foot, lifted it to their nose for a sniff, and then went right back to scratching in comfort.
In this place,
Only Minnow
still remembered that people were supposed to wash their hands.
The room gradually grew quiet again.
Outside the door, not far away, footsteps dragged across stone slabs. Each step sounded deliberate, as if the noise itself was intentional.
Like an eye you couldn't see, but that never stopped watching—
a reminder to behave.
"Are those guards… watching us all the time?" Hua asked.
Hua immediately corrected himself when someone shot him a look, his tone turning sharp with forced certainty.
"Don't talk nonsense. They're here to protect our safety!"
"Yeah,"
the skinny boy nodded.
As he nodded,
he reached into his clothes
and pulled out his armband.
As if he were waiting for something.
Minnow didn't answer right away.
He leaned his empty wooden bowl against the wall.
The bottom of the bowl tapped the floor, making a very light sound.
It sounded like a bolt sliding shut.
After a moment, he finally spoke.
"Yeah… that's what they say."
He paused.
"Our blood,"
he said softly,
"is something we hand over ourselves."