Witch trials

From then on, the strange guest, or "God" as he thought, would come every night.

On the second night, the guest still brought the same clothes and books, but the difference was that this time he also wore a pair of contact lenses, or was it contacts?

He hesitantly opened the box of contacts this customer handed him with a smile - inside was a pair of silver-blue contact lenses.

"Came in a bit of a hurry last night, forgot to bring these." The guest politely inquired, "I've never used these, buy the safest pair, would you mind putting them on?"

Naturally, he didn't mind.

After changing behind the curtain into the tattered orphanage clothes and the silver-blue contact lenses, he sat flipping through a book, and for a moment his scalp tingled under the gaze of this guest.

--not the same eyes as last night, after he switched to these contact lenses.

The guest looked at him with eyes that became very focused, or ...... nostalgic, as if he had been countless times in this hazy silence, guarding such a sculpture of silver and blue spectacles that could not speak, could not look at him, and could only turn the pages of a book and read, and had spent millions of billions of years in such silence.

As if sensing his tightness, the guest spoke with a soft smile, "Does my gaze make you uncomfortable?"

After a moment's hesitation, he shook his head honestly, "No."

--While this guest looked at him intently, it was a different look than those guests.

There was no desire in his eyes as he looked at him, simply, calmly - as if he were looking at a character in a TV program, or an NPC in a game.

The guests looked at him without treating him like a human being.

But he always felt that he already looked much more like a human being in the eyes of this guest than he had in the eyes of the others.

After a few moments of the two being wordless in this silence, he spoke tentatively, "Do you ...... like this child I'm playing?"

The guest pondered for a moment, he seemed to be thinking about his question, then laughed softly, "I don't really understand what you guys are talking about like."

"I'm just getting used to His company, even though He never responds to me."

"Is the boy your heir?" He replied subconsciously, "Then if he wants to go, you are perfectly capable of not letting him go."

--That's how every man in this inner circle treats his children, and they can do what they want with their children.

Business cards, successors, jobs - everything will be organized.

These children, like him, as soon as they were born into the families of the men of the inner circle, could never again leave the control of the inner circle and the Church, and the trajectory of their lives had been mapped out clearly from the moment of their birth, with no possibility of deviation.

So he's a little confused in the face of this situation - a man powerful enough to clear out the inner circle of men is actually grieving over the fact that his child is about to leave him.

This is so bizarre.

"While He had no soul and was just a statue, I could indeed easily keep Him by my side." This guest laughed softly and replied to him, "But not after He possesses a soul."

"He will endlessly rebel against my bondage and retention of him for what he aspires to, for those he wants to protect, for the moment he produces his soul."

This guest looked at him with nostalgia and some very deep, unreadable emotion in his eyes, "He understood like and possessed a soul."

"He is no longer my kind, and we can no longer sit under the stars and be quiet like that."

"You can take me down to the sea." He phrased it somewhat clumsily, "You're supposed to be a god-like being, aren't you? Can't you leave this child even then?"

The guest smiled and replied, "Even God can't leave behind someone who has a soul."

Slowly straightening his back, he repeated his guest's words confusedly, and with a certain uncontrollable yearning, "One who possesses a soul?"

Her words rang in her ears again: [Get out of here, get out of Sky City.]

[A wider stage awaits you.]

"Thank you for your company tonight." The guest rose as he donned his cloak and smiled as he thanked him, "Is there anything you would like?"

He was so confused that he blurted out a lot of things, and the customers took it all in stride.

"Will you, will you take me off the island tonight, too?" The last request, he said a little carefully, "Just go down to the sea like you did last night."

"Going down to the sea?" ......" the guest laughed, "Do you like the sky if it's just off the island?"

He froze.

The guest held out his leather-gloved hand to him and smiled gently, "I'll show you the universe, the place where I was born, go?"

His eyes lit up and he put his hand up without hesitation, "Go!"

That night, when the guests returned him to the island, his mind was blank, still streaming with those silvery-blue vast stars, and he collapsed into a trance-like expression into the thick flannel quilt, then suddenly couldn't control his excitement as he jumped up and frantically grunted and punched at the air, then collapsed backward and fell back into the flannel quilt hugging the pillows and rolling back and forth kicking and kicking his legs.

It's so beautiful.

So the world is so big.

It's just like she said. It's so vast.

Slowly, cherishingly, he took out the picture from the shirt over his heart, very quickly covering the dog man who was a cut above the picture, and looking only at the sunny one, then slowly cherishing her against his heart, and then slowly curling up into a ball and shrinking into the flannel quilt, and falling asleep with a smile on his face.

The stars are brilliant off the island.

The guest came almost every night during that time, and he took him to the most borderline views and answered all his requests.

Sitting on the ocean and watching the mermaids swim by, looking at the frozen ancient animals under the Antarctic ice, and squeezing in and out of trains as people come and go.

Guests would sometimes jokingly tell him, "That passenger's mirror is going to explode someday."

He would ask suspiciously, "Why?"

Guests would laugh and say, "Because I thought it was funny, I designed it to explode."

Anyway, it was this kind of talk that he didn't understand at all, but it didn't stop him from having a good time.

No one had ever shown him how to play, and he seemed to have gotten the friend she was talking about.

What he did know, though, was that this guest was going to have to leave someday, but he didn't know why, it was like running away from the fact that this guest was leaving.

But one day this guest brought it up himself, and he looked at him, who was turning the pages of a book, and suddenly said, "I won't be coming tomorrow night."

"Where do you want to go tonight?"

The guest spoke of it with such ease, as if it were as easy as saying goodbye to an after-dinner TV program, as if he had no idea what a cruel thing it was for him to do.

His hand shook as he flipped through the book and he looked up incredulously, then quickly composed himself as he asked, "Is that the only thing that's not coming tomorrow?"

"No." The guest replied with a smile, "It won't even come back."

He sat there for a long time, averting his face, controlling his emotions, making himself look as cold and hard as possible, and then, as if he'd thought of something, he suddenly sprang up from his spot, hastily running as he said, "Wait for me!"

"Wait for me first then!"

Tears still fell from his eyes, and as he wiped them away carelessly, he rummaged through a cupboard he'd hidden under the bed of his flannel quilt and pulled out the saree - the saree from which he'd danced to 'Salome'.

[There will be many people in this world who really look at dance who appreciate your beauty - they exist, I've seen them.]

He took a deep breath, changed into the saree, and walked out almost with shaky shoulders.

"May I, may I give you a dance?" He inquired in a quivering voice.

The guest said gently, "Yes."

He had danced this dance countless times by candlelight, by flannel, and the men had watched him through the haze of candlelight and flannel with the eyes he hated, hated the most-as they had once watched her.

But not this time, not this time from start to finish.

The guest sat quietly, not jumping halfway up and rushing up, not getting down on the floor and caressing his feet, not making subtle teasing sentences that he now understood, but loathed.

After he danced, he spun around, and with tear-filled purple eyes and hands clutching the hem of his skirt, asked his guest very softly, "Was it good?"

"Beautiful." The guest smiled and replied, "Your soul is as beautiful as the dance."

He finally smiled, tears slipping down his face as he took two very reserved steps back, lifting the hem of his skirt and bowing his head slightly, making the same, her choreographic curtain call move he had seen a million times on videotape:

"Thanks for watching."