Chapter 8: Midnight Thoughts
Deep in the night, the Regent Hotel.
The darkness draped a black curtain over the tall building, leaving only the meeting room brightly lit, like a lonely flower pinned against a massive sheet of black cloth.
Ye Sheng leaned over his desk, annotating the interview responses of the candidates recorded by Shitoku Aki during the day.
This should not have been the kind of troublesome task that made someone forget to sleep and eat, but because of a guy named Lu Mingfei, Ye Sheng's workload had increased tenfold!
Nono was stoking the flames with Shitoku Aki, complaining that she had run into Lu Mingfei earlier today, and unexpectedly, the brat was extremely arrogant. Not only did he put on airs, but he also showed complete disrespect for her as his Senior Sister. What would he be like once he enrolled? Would he step on the heads of all his senior brothers and sisters and fly straight up to the sky? To knock down that sharp edge of his, they absolutely had to dock a few points from his interview score!
Shitoku Aki, on the other hand, told Nono that she must have mistaken him for someone else; Lu Mingfei was the most polite and erudite child she had ever met. Even if she and Ye Sheng were to answer those interview questions themselves, they wouldn't necessarily answer them as well as Lu Mingfei did. Besides, whether points were docked or not was up to Professor Guderian.
"How did the interview go?" Speak of the devil, the meeting room door was pushed open, and a figure carrying a suitcase strode into the room, looking travel-worn.
It was a burly old man with graying hair, glasses perched on his nose exuding an air of erudition, and a loose-fitting suit that hung awkwardly on his frame, making him look somewhat bloated—more like a cultured professional wrestler.
"Professor Guderian." Ye Sheng stood up. "I'm sorry, I haven't finished the annotations yet. There's a student named Lu Mingfei whose answers were too..."
"Lu Mingfei! How were his answers too much? Spit it out!" The wrinkled, weathered face of the old man of German descent was plastered with tension and anticipation, looking remarkably like an old gambling addict waiting for the lottery results rather than a former Nobel Prize nominee!
"Take a look for yourself." Ye Sheng handed the notebook with a wry smile to the anxiously burning Professor Guderian.
A nervous father waiting for his own son's college entrance examination results couldn't possibly be any more intense than this! If he didn't know Guderian's reputation for keeping a distance from women, he would have suspected that Lu Mingfei was the old professor's illegitimate child wandering out in the world!
"Are... are these all Lu Mingfei's answers?" Professor Guderian's eyes went wide with disbelief, his glasses nearly sliding off the bridge of his nose, which was as towering as the Himalayas.
"Professor, do you think his answers were terrible too?" Nono asked mischievously.
"Perfect! Simply too perfect!" Professor Guderian cradled the notebook infatuatedly, his expression not that of someone reading a student's answers, but rather of someone gazing at a masterpiece painstakingly crafted by a world-class artisan. "More perfect than the best answers I could ever imagine. Distinguishing within rationality, responding within sensibility. So touching, do you have a tissue so I can blow my nose... As expected of you, Lu Mingfei!"
"Is... is he really that amazing?" Shitoku Aki was startled by the old man's tearful expression and asked in a daze.
"Question one: He believes in aliens. His answer touched upon the theory of cosmic dimensions and the agency of human subjective consciousness, directly pointing out the concept of 'loneliness.' Not only that, he even put forward his own insights regarding the flaws in the question itself."
"Question two: He believes in superpowers. Not only did he impart a unique understanding to the word 'superpower,' but he had actually researched so many supernatural events around the world! The most classic part is what he said right here..."
"My very existence as a human is the ability to surpass all other species."
"Question three: Right at the opening, he pointed out that the divergence between idealism and materialism lies in the different objects of world unity. While discussing around consciousness and matter, he actually proposed a direction that no one else in the world had ever considered..."
"Why cannot consciousness be a kind of matter, or in other words, why cannot matter be a kind of consciousness?" Professor Guderian's hands trembled slightly as he clutched the notebook, cherishing it as carefully as if he had discovered some rare and precious treasure.
"Consciousness is matter—what utter nonsense!" Nono shouted.
"If you had read Hegel's famous 'Idealism,' you wouldn't think this is a fantasy. Idealism posits that the objective spirit existing independently of humans and the natural world is the origin of the world, and everything in the universe is the product of that objective spirit."
"And Lu Mingfei's idea is even more extreme; he believes that spirit and matter can, to a certain extent, be interchangeable." Professor Guderian recited those philosophical terms with more emotional fervor than wedding vows.
"Take a stone, for example. Materially speaking, it is merely a mixture of certain elements, but when you gather subjective and abstract words like 'hard,' 'rough,' and 'irregular' together, what you ultimately get is still this stone. Humans are the same, except that human existence is a more complex aggregate of spirit and matter."
"And this question happens to mirror us Hybrids—the combination of humans and the Dragon Race. We cannot strip away any of our own inherent natures. How many Hybrids lose themselves within their Bloodlines? Yet Lu Mingfei... I don't see a shred of confusion in his answers. He possesses such an outstanding Bloodline, yet he can face his own contradictions with such open-minded dignity. He truly is the most exceptional, wonderful child. I can now completely understand the Principal's rating of him as 'S'-Class!" Professor Guderian was moved to tears.
"'S'-Class!" The other three people in the meeting room exclaimed simultaneously, looking at each other in dismay.
"A genuine 'S'-Class! Our only 'S'-Class! His answers are entirely qualified to be entered into Norma's database as the latest full-score answers, or even placed in the library's 'Famous Quotes' section!" Disregarding his dignity, Professor Guderian shouted and frantically searched his pockets for his phone. "I'm going to call his guardians! Enrollment! Let's get his enrollment sorted out right now!"
"Professor!" Ye Sheng hurriedly stopped the visibly crazed old man, pointing out the window at the night sky, now as dark as ink. "Lu Mingfei said his aunt has a rather prickly temper. It's best not to call with acceptance news in the middle of the night, or we'll get chewed out."
"As expected of our 'S'-Class! Even this step was within his anticipation!" The old man put down his phone with a goofy smile, having completely discarded the dignity of a professor and a Cassel College interviewer. "Tomorrow morning, you all will come with me. We will pay a personal visit!"
Ye Sheng, Shitoku Aki, and Nono exchanged glances. They had all heard the rumors at the college that "Professor Guderian and Professor Manstein used to be psychiatric patients together." They had previously thought it was just a joke spread by some old dog idling away eight years at the college with nothing better to do, but at this moment, they firmly believed the rumor.
Crouched in the corner, watching the old man who alternated between weeping, acting like a mad dog, and bursting into laughter, they all felt that this night was unusually cold.
...
That night, Lu Mingfei suffered from insomnia.
However, having maintained a regular sleep schedule for three years, this rare bout of insomnia wasn't all that extreme; it was simply that he had no desire to sleep tonight.
Hiding under the blanket, countless thoughts lingered in his mind.
Just how vibrant red were the maple forests outside Cassel College? How did they compare to begonias? Did they have a bit more vastness and a bit less gentleness?
Senior Brother Chu Zihang, keeping your words few and your heart concealed, how many regrets must you rest your head upon to sleep a sound sleep?
Principal Anjou, what kind of dashing and handsome old man are you? Just how intense is the lifelong, irreconcilable hatred you hide beneath your hedonistic mask? If I gave you a big hug, could it slightly dilute your sadness?
And you, Erii? The story says you are a shrine maiden-like girl; you must be even more beautiful than the cherry blossom trees at Chidorigafuchi—the kind that would make me drown in you.
"Haitai na!" (I really want to see you!)