Chapter 522: The Witch Trials

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

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

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

"I came in a bit of a hurry last night, I forgot to bring these." The customer politely enquired, "I haven't used these, buy the safest pair, would you mind putting them on?"

Naturally, he doesn't mind.

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

-- not the same eyes as last night, after he'd changed into these contact lenses.

The guest looked at him with a look of intense concentration, or ...... nostalgia, as if he had spent countless times in this hazy silence, guarding such a silver-blue spectacled sculpture that would not speak, would not look at him, but would only turn the pages of a book and read, so quietly for millions and billions of years.

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

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

-- although this guest was looking at him intently, it was a different look from those guests.

There was no desire in the way he looked at him, just a simple, calm look - like he was watching a character in a TV show, or an NPC in a game.

The way the guests looked at him, they didn't see him as a human being.

But he always felt that he was already much more human in the eyes of this guest than he was in the eyes of the others.

After a few moments of the two men being silent in this silence, he spoke tentatively, "Are you ...... fond of this child I'm playing?"

The guest pondered for a moment, he seemed to be thinking about his question, then gave a soft laugh, "I don't really understand what you guys are saying about liking."

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

"Is the boy your heir?" He replied subconsciously, "Then you are perfectly free to keep him from leaving if he wants to."

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

Name cards, successors, jobs - everything will be set up.

These children, like him, once born into the families of the men of the inner circle, could never again leave the grip of the inner circle and of the Holy See; the trajectory of their lives was clearly mapped out from the moment of their birth and there was no possibility of deviation.

So he was a little confused in the face of the situation - a man powerful enough to clear the field of men on the inside was actually grieving over the imminent departure of his child from himself.

This is so bizarre.

"It is true that I could easily have kept Him with me when He had no soul and was only a statue." This guest replied to him with a soft smile, "But not after He has a soul."

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

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

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

"You can take me down to the sea." He phrased it somewhat awkwardly, "You're supposed to be like a god, right? Can't you keep this child even then?"

The guest smiled and replied, "Even God cannot leave behind a man who possesses a soul."

He slowly straightened his back, and he repeated his guest's words confusedly, and with a certain uncontrollable yearning, "The man with the soul?"

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

[A wider stage awaits you].

"Thank you for your company tonight." The guest rose as he drew on his cloak and smiled at him in acknowledgement, "Is there anything you would like?"

His mind was in turmoil and he said a lot of things off the top of his head, all of which were accepted by the customer.

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

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

He froze in his tracks.

The guest held out his leather-gloved hand to him with a gentle smile, "I'll show you the universe, the place where I was born, go?"

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

That night, when his guests returned him to the island, his mind was blank, still streaming with those silvery blue vastness of stars, and he collapsed into the thick fleece blanket with a dazed expression before suddenly jumping up in controlled excitement, frantically humming and punching at the air, then falling backwards, collapsing into the fleece blanket and rolling back and forth kicking his legs as he hugged the pillows.

It's so beautiful.

So this world is so big.

It's just like she said, so vast.

Slowly, cherishingly, he pulled the picture out of his heart's clothing, very quickly covering the dog-man on top of the picture, looking only at the sunny her, and then slowly pressing her cherishingly against his heart, before slowly curling up into a ball and huddling under the fleece quilt, falling asleep with a smile on his face.

The starry sky outside the island is brilliant.

The guest came almost every night in those days and he took him to see the most borderline views and did everything he asked for.

Sitting on the ocean watching mermaids swim by, looking at the ancient animals frozen beneath the ice of the Antarctic, squeezing on trains that come and go.

Guests would sometimes jokingly say to him, "That passenger mirror is going to explode one day."

He would ask in confusion, "Why?"

The guest will laugh and say, "Because I thought it was funny, I designed it to explode."

In short 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 get the friend she was talking about.

But what he knew was that this guest would have to leave one day, but he didn't know why, it was as if he was running away from the fact that this guest was leaving.

But one day this guest brought it up himself, he looked at him who was flipping through 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 easy to say goodbye to an after-dinner TV show, as if he had no idea what a cruel thing it was for him.

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

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

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

"Then wait for me for a moment!"

Tears still fell from his eyes, and he wiped them carelessly as he retrieved the sarong - the one that danced to Salome - from a cupboard he had hidden under his flannel bed.

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

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

"May I, may I give you a dance?" He inquired with a trembling voice.

The guest said gently, "Yes."

He had done this dance countless times in the candlelight, by the flannel, as those people gazed at him through the hazy candlelight and flannel with the most hateful, repulsive gaze he had ever known - as they had once gazed at her.

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

The guest sat quietly, not jumping halfway up and rushing up, not lying on the floor and stroking his feet, not insinuating some provocative sentence 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, "Did it look good?"

"It's beautiful." The guest smiled and replied, "Your soul is as beautiful as the dance."

He finally smiled, tears sliding down his face as he took two very reserved steps back, lifted his skirt and bowed his head slightly, making the move he had seen a million times on video, her dance curtain call: the

"Thanks for watching."