Qi Zhimu sneezed a few times in succession.
"What's wrong, Mr. Qi? Do you have a cold, or is someone talking about you behind your back?" Clarice looked at him with concern.
"No one is talking about me; it's probably because the temperature dropped suddenly." Qi Zhimu rubbed his nose.
He had been chatting with Clarice for a long time, and it was already late at night.
"...Then why don't you wear more clothes?"
"Two reasons. The first is likely a habit formed from my childhood experiences... I don't remember it very clearly."
Qi Zhimu searched through his Remembrance, his tone gradually becoming tinged with emotion as he spoke softly.
"When I was a child, a world war broke out in my hometown. Many devastating weapons polluted the land, sky, and sea."
"The air was filled with an extremely unpleasant smell all day long. The flames of war spread across the entire planet, and countless people were displaced."
"Countless biological weapons were used in the war, giving rise to many deadly viruses. No infected person could survive."
"When I was lying in a pile of corpses waiting to die, my Teacher appeared. She was a scientist who studied life. She picked me up and gave me a chance to live..."
This was the first time Qi Zhimu spoke of his past. Clarice was focused, listening with great intent.
"Perhaps I'm just tough. Teacher said I had at least a dozen virus sources in my body, and a few of them kept each other in check, which allowed me to hold on until she arrived."
"From then on, I became her test subject. To survive, I spent the first two years soaked in a Cultivation Pod."
"Once I left, there was a high possibility that the virus outbreak couldn't be suppressed."
"Even when I could leave the Cultivation Pod, I had to have frequent check-ups to monitor the activity of the virus sources in my body and see if they had mutated in real-time."
"Wearing too many clothes would be troublesome, so I basically just threw on something clean all year round. Although my Remembrance is a bit blurry, that's roughly how it was."
"And the second reason?" Clarice asked softly.
Qi Zhimu was silent for a moment before explaining nonchalantly.
"...Although the viruses in my body were all eradicated, they left behind sequelae. Sometimes I lose my physical sensations."
"Physical sensations?" Clarice tilted her head.
"Touch, smell, pressure, temperature, pain... For example, occasionally I can't taste food or sense changes in the weather. It's not that serious."
"It didn't affect me much when I was in good physical condition, but now, perhaps because of my age, I've actually become sensitive to the cold, haha..."
"Mr. Qi doesn't look like an old person."
He spoke lightly, but Clarice didn't entirely believe him.
What she had seen and heard over the years wouldn't lie.
Faced with climate change, people add clothes when they feel cold and wear lighter ones when it's hot.
The frequency with which Mr. Qi lost his physical sensations might not be occasional... He might not sense specific changes in the climate for most of the winter, only knowing whether to add clothes through relevant monitoring information.
Right—and the sense of taste!
Clarice suddenly remembered that when she brought Red-Blue Crystal Fruits last time, Mr. Qi said they were very sweet after tasting them.
But those fruits were clearly sour-sweet; even when fully ripe, the sourness was very distinct.
At first, she thought it was because everyone has different tastes, but looking at it now... Clarice's heart felt like it had been pricked by a needle.
Could it be that he... had long since been unable to taste the true flavor but hadn't realized it...?
But if there was something wrong with his sense of taste, how could he make such delicious pastries and Wine Dew?
Unless—his sense of taste had no problems before and it only started recently.
"Can't even your Teacher cure it?" Clarice suppressed her heartache.
"...If it could be cured, it wouldn't be called a sequela." Qi Zhimu gave an open-minded smile, but he was apologizing in his heart.
This was also a half-lie.
In fact, these symptoms only appeared in recent years.
It was the functional decline brought about by the aging of the human body, not the lingering effects of the virus.
He was a Short-Lived Species; his original lifespan was at most a hundred years or so.
He was able to live until now entirely because Ruan Mei had extended his life back then.
But he didn't plan on saying these things.
A dying person should just take unpleasant things to the grave alone, rather than weaving them into someone else's Remembrance.
Qi Zhimu understood one thing very clearly.
To Clarice, he was just a passerby in her life, the doctor who cured her mother's amnesia.
Nothing more.
Clarice didn't know Qi Zhimu's true thoughts and only sighed faintly.
"Why the sudden sigh?"
"I feel sorry for you, Mr. Qi. Fate has been too unfair to you."
"Haha, it was never fair. I understood that when I was a child, but this is just a part of life."
Qi Zhimu smiled and said gently:
"If you strive to live as the person you want to be, the so-called unfairness of fate isn't that important; you can treat it as if it doesn't exist."
"Then Mr. Qi... have you lived as the person you wanted to be?" Clarice pressed.
"I suppose I have."
"...You don't sound very confident."
Qi Zhimu's smile remained unchanged: "There's no standard answer to this question, just like pi; it can never be calculated to the end."
"Fate left me displaced and suffering, but it also let me meet my Teacher and find redemption."
"Thinking about it this way, fate has been quite fair to me."
Hearing these words, Clarice felt that Mr. Qi was not a pessimist, but rather an optimist.
He was very open-minded.
Or perhaps, those who have experienced life and death since childhood and have stood on the brink of death are more philosophical?
Clarice thought of her hometown.
There were no open wars between nations, but the secret struggles between them never ceased.
Even in her own country, the court politicians all had different stances and would fight to the death for their interests.
But regardless, compared to Mr. Qi's childhood experiences, the environment she grew up in could simply be described as paradise.
Being rejected or isolated... it wasn't even worth mentioning in comparison.
Perhaps that was why she couldn't understand how he could be so philosophical.
"Mr. Qi, you really respect your Teacher."
"Of course. Without her, there would be no me today, and there would be no you today, nor Ms. Durand."
"To be able to teach a doctor as gentle as Mr. Qi, she must be a very gentle person as well."
"Yes, Teacher is the gentlest person in the world."
Qi Zhimu answered from the bottom of his heart without any hesitation, and his expression became even softer when he spoke of his Teacher.
"She always said she was just using me as a test subject to study how to eliminate the viruses in my body... but for that sake, she worked tirelessly for six whole years."
"During those six years, I don't know how many times she went without sleep for several days and nights in a row, just to find a glimmer of hope in me and preserve it."
"After clearing the viruses, seeing that I had nowhere to go, she took me in as a student and taught me much knowledge without reservation."
"From the most basic knowledge to the most cutting-edge studies, she taught me everything personally."
...