Ji Minghuan sat silently on the chair, gazing motionlessly at the isolation door in the darkness. After a while, he closed his eyes, drooping his shoulders as if he had fallen asleep on the chair.
"I haven't seen her for a long time..." he thought.
These might be the longest five minutes of Ji Minghuan's life.
The feeling was like a clock ticking in his mind, the second hand slowly rotating clockwise, one circle after another, as he longed to end these pointless five minutes;
But the hour hand was rapidly moving backward, bringing him back to memories of the past, back when he was at the Welfare Institute.
Ji Minghuan was only nine years old when he first met Kong Youling.
That was on a morning three years ago.
Ji Minghuan learned from a nurse that a new child had arrived at the Welfare Institute, said to be a frighteningly pale mixed-race girl who was also deaf-mute. Because of her, the nurse made all the children learn sign language in advance. Some children couldn't sit still and blamed it all on her, and everyone initially had a bad impression of her.
She liked to wear a wrinkled white linen dress, with a sketchbook in her hand, a pencil tucked inside.
When she first entered the classroom, the children were startled silent by her appearance. She was unnaturally pale, even her hair and eyelashes were white, unlike anyone they had ever seen.
The classroom window was open, and she lowered her eyes in the incoming sunlight, seemingly unable to open them because albino eyes are weak in bright light.
At that time, she walked onto the podium with her eyes closed, almost falling, and stood up amidst everyone's laughter, then quietly wrote in her sketchbook alone.
Then, amidst the children's curious gazes, she turned the sketchbook towards the class, and they saw three slightly crooked characters written in pencil:
— Kong Youling.
That was her name.
She still had her light-sensitive eyes closed, yet tried to lift her head as much as possible. The teacher didn't draw the curtains, just accompanied the children in their laughter.
As she was a deaf-mute, she couldn't hear the piercing laughter, she vaguely opened her eyelids in the sunlight, seeing the smiles on their faces, thinking everyone liked her.
So, although she didn't much like to smile, or knew how to smile, she still slightly raised the corners of her mouth.
Squeezed out a faint smile.
That day, Ji Minghuan, sitting in the corner of the classroom, was stunned for a moment. The girl smiled alone in the sunlight, her snow-white hair gently swaying in the breeze. He neither laughed nor spoke, just quietly watched her.
Ji Minghuan also realized she could have simply had the teacher write her name on the blackboard, no need for this.
Later, Ji Minghuan asked her why she did it that way, she wrote in her notebook, saying she didn't like others learning sign language just for her, it felt like becoming a burden to others.
She was a sensible child, not liking to trouble others.
But even so, the children often made things difficult for her. Because they all knew the nurse let them learn sign language just to keep them from causing trouble in the classroom, to find them more things to do.
Yet no one dared to provoke the nurse, so they went after the white-haired girl, saying she was a monster even her mom didn't want, too ugly and abandoned, saying she was a foreigner's child, played with and then discarded along with her mother by a foreigner.
Some even said she was a devil, devils have red eyes, not knowing that her iris appeared translucent from lack of pigment, hence her pupils looked red to others.
She couldn't hear what others were saying, so she wrote in her notebook, but no one paid attention to her.
In the notebook, she had written halfway: "Will you play with me?"
At that moment, Ji Minghuan suddenly stood up from the corner of the classroom, taking her hand and running away.
They ran fast, as if riding the wind, with the children chasing behind but never catching up, finally hiding in the attic above the library. The children from the orphanage didn't dare to go there as it was where the director punished people, fearing being locked inside by the nurse, so no one followed up.
In the quiet attic, only the wall clock's ticking could be heard. Ji Minghuan climbed onto a bookshelf built with stacks of old books, then jumped towards the skylight, climbing onto the roof, then reached back a hand to her.
The girl looked up at him, clearly the sunlight was very intense that day, and the light falling from the skylight made it difficult for her to open her eyes, but she hesitated to open them widely, seriously looking at the boy's smile on the roof, and his outstretched hand.
Hesitated for a moment, then... she started to run.
That was the first time Ji Minghuan saw her running.
She ran fast, her slender legs rising and falling, her figure agile like a white deer wading across a river, stepping on two or three increasingly high bookshelves, leaping towards the skylight in the sunlight.
Ji Minghuan caught her hand, pulling her onto the roof.
That evening, the two children sat shoulder to shoulder on the roof covered in twilight, watching the sunset slowly sink beyond the horizon. Ji Minghuan, well-read, knew albinos feared light for their eyes, so he gently placed a book he randomly picked from the attic on her head.
Under the shadow of the book, she opened her eyes, quietly observing this person who usually spoke little.
"Kong Youling, your name is beautiful." The boy took her sketchbook on his own and wrote with a pencil on it.
"You don't dislike me? I can't speak, nor hear." The white-haired girl wrote in the notebook, "Also... very ugly."
Her head still topped with the light-blocking book, like a little frog hiding under a lotus leaf.
Ji Minghuan took her notebook and pen, wrote, then returned it to her.
The notebook had neatly written words: "You're not ugly at all."
Kong Youling lowered her eyes to glance, then wrote in the notebook: "But... everyone dislikes me."
After thinking for a while, she continued writing, then turned the notebook towards Ji Minghuan:
"Is it because I'm disabled?"
Ji Minghuan stared at the words, stunned for a long time.
He took the girl's notebook, wrote in the sketchbook, then hurriedly turned the page towards her: "You're disabled, then I am a lunatic!"
Writing this, he blinked mischievously like a puppy, "Let me tell you, I often see weird scenes. Sometimes I see myself participating in World War II, with soldiers around me shouting something, sometimes I see myself performing the violin on the streets of Paris with everyone clapping for me, sometimes I even see... see myself destroying the world! I dream of sitting on the moon watching the empty Earth, extending my right hand, black bandages like giant snakes wrapping around the entire planet, then..."
Kong Youling was stunned, writing in the notebook: "Then?"
"Then I swallowed the Earth!" he hummed twice, writing seriously in the notebook.
"You're amazing."
"Right, right?" Ji Minghuan wrote, his crooked writing seeming to contain inexplicable pride.
That year, Kong Youling was 8, Ji Minghuan was a year older, only 9, the two children sat on the eaves looking at the distant crimson sky, contrails crossing above their heads.
The sunset fell towards the horizon, taking away the last trace of twilight on the horizon. In the pitch-black darkness, Ji Minghuan pressed his hands against the roof tiles, looking up at the night sky.
The first stroke of moonlight fell from above, he silently mouthed:
"We are both the same, both freaks... you are not alone."