The girl saw Lin Qiushi and stopped her sniffling. Her gaze fell on Lin Qiushi, bleary and lovely.
Of the hundreds and thousands of roses in the world—with their green leaves, red blooms, and stems full of thorns that were all completely identical—there were no differences to be had. Though they were beautiful, their repetitive legions grew tiresome.
Ruan Nanzhu thought that he wouldn't be interested in the roses in the garden. These roses were pretty but easily snapped. A sight that was merely terrifying seemed capable of making them lose their minds; their fragility truly inspired pity.
Ruan Nanzhu was a gardener. Following his own methods, he pruned his garden. This way all of the flowers in his flower garden bloomed in ways that pleased him.
Some flowers couldn't take the pruning, and so wilted. Some flowers changed colors after a pruning, going from a ravishingly gentle red to a tarry black, even giving off an unpleasant scent. When it came to this kind of flower, Ruan Nanzhu was never merciful. He picked up his shears and, with two neat snips, cut off the black flower at the stem. He watched the petals scatter across the ground and crumple into the mud.
This sort of life was plain and tedious. Ruan Nanzhu found it boring. He thought he could only ever be such a gardener, idling about.
This belief persisted for a long time, until one day, he discovered that there was a new flower like no other in his garden.
That flower wasn't exactly pretty, yet was particularly attention-catching. Its petals were just like other roses, big and red. Its stem was healthy, covered with a thicket of defensive thorns. The reason Ruan Nanzhu noticed this flower was because one day, a fierce wind blew through his garden, and all the roses fell to the floor. All except for this one, staunchly standing in full blossom.
A strong little flower, was what Ruan Nanzhu thought at the time.
Though he found the little rose a tad special, Ruan Nanzhu didn't pay much attention. The roses in the garden, after all, bloomed and wilted on the regular. Flowers flourishing today might be withered the very next day.
But very soon, the little rose attracted Ruan Nanzhu's attention a second time.
It seemed to be the little rose's third bloom. All the roses around it were wilted, leaving only that single flower elegantly standing its ground. Its tender green leaves quivered with the breeze, as if it was going to die like all the roses the very next moment. But in the end, the little rose pulled through.
Ruan Nanzhu watched from the side in novel interest. He inspected the little rose and learned for the first time from somebody else this little rose's name…Lin Qiushi. The little rose was named Lin Qiushi.
Ruan Nanzhu remembered the little rose's name.
A gardener's job was leisurely. Besides caring for the flowers, there was nothing else to do. It was rather interesting, sure, to watch the flowers be ravaged in a hundred odd ways. But of course, that was only in the beginning. Having seen too much of it later on, to the point where Ruan Nanzhu could pretty much guess their reactions, it all became far less fun.
In search of entertainment, Ruan Nanzhu planted even more roses. But they were all so ordinary, so ordinary that they couldn't arouse any bit of his interest.
And so, Ruan Nanzhu turned his attentions onto the little rose.
The little rose was not so tough. When he saw something scary, he still got scared, still screamed, still trembled. Yet, the one thing different about it was that it continued to grow.
There were more and more thorns on its body, and its stem stood straighter and straighter.
Upon this sight Ruan Nanzhu was actually a bit disappointed. He'd seen too many roses that got increasingly prickly, and they were all the same. Once more thorns came in, the stems thickened, but the flowers only got smaller. In the end they all became a hateful black.
In peril, delicate roses began to change; they grew aggressive and even began to injure other roses. These roses were not needed, and Ruan Nanzhu's job was precisely to cut these roses from the garden. He thought that, like how he'd cut down all the other roses, he would have to cut down the little rose before him. This seemed like a shame to Ruan Nanzhu. This little rose, after all, seemed somewhat different from all the others. On it was a fascinating quality that was hard to describe.
But unexpectedly, the little rose did not become as he'd worried.
Though the little rose grew thornier and its stem grew thicker, its bloom only grew more tender. The lovely red petals were supple in their spread, and Ruan Nanzhu could never help but reach out and touch to see if they were as soft and lovely as he imagined.
The little rose did not wilt. The little rose grew up.
Ruan Nanzhu began to spend his own time on observing the little rose. He saw how the little rose survived hardships, saw how he and his friends relied on each other, saw how he lost his past teammates, saw him laugh, saw him cry.
By the time Ruan Nanzhu realized, his gaze could no longer turn away from the little rose.
What a pretty little flower, Ruan Nanzhu thought. Who knew how long it could blossom for?
The garden was big and the roses were many. They all looked exactly the same. To Ruan Nanzhu, there was no difference between them.
So when exactly did he discover that the little rose was special to him? Was it one early morning when he found a few extra dewdrops on the little rose's petals? Or was it one darkening night when he saw the golden sunset spilled on its green leaves? Or perhaps it was on a chilly evening when he saw the little rose trembling in the dark, and an idea came to his head to put a glass cover over it to block away the wind and rain?
Ruan Nanzhu wasn't certain. He thought that it was difficult to find the answer by himself.
The little rose was still blooming, and there were other flowers beside it again. No, maybe he couldn't call it the little rose now, because its leaves were wide enough to shelter the piercing sunlight for other newborn blooms.
Ruan Nanzhu sat watching by its side. His black pupils were as if marked by fiery brands the color of roses.
Gods were gods because gods had no desires.
When the gardener began to play favorites, it was as if a god had developed desires—perhaps he was no longer suited to this job.
Ruan Nanzhu did not restrain himself for the very first time, reaching out to cup that tender rose blossom. He lightly caressed those splayed petals, breathing in the scent unique to the flower.
It was exquisite to the touch, as if the lightest exertion of force would damage the dainty petals. This frightened but also delighted him.
The rose did not know the gardener's thoughts. It bloomed on its own in startling beauty.
Ruan Nanzhu was not careful and cut his palm on the rose's thorns. He looked at the blood in his palm and discovered just how similar the color of his blood was to the color of the rose.
If that was so, then could he also become a rose? This absurd thought suddenly surfaced in the gardener's mind.
If there were other gardeners around, they would for sure think that Ruan Nanzhu had gone crazy. But luckily, in this world, there was no second gardener, just as there was no second rose like the one in Ruan Nanzhu's palm.
They were both unique.
Ruan Nanzhu no longer knew the number of years he'd spent living in the rose garden, but from the very beginning, he'd never once seen the roses' seeds.
These exceedingly beautiful flowers drew all attention to their blooms. Nobody cared what their fruits looked like. All plants, however, did not exist for the sake of blooming flowers. Their most ideal ending was to wilt naturally and then form a fruit that belonged definitively to them.
As the time Ruan Nanzhu spent with the little rose grew, the love he had for the little rose too grew stronger. At last this exceedingly fervent love led the gardener to make a decision.
He relinquished his identity as a gardener and sought to become a rose, in order to go with his beloved little rose into the final challenge.
The name of that challenge was the Twelfth Door.
That little rose named Lin Qiushi did not know what it was facing. It even comforted its teammates in a gentle tone. It didn't know that roses that passed the Twelfth Door would be taken out of the garden, and all the other roses would forget its existence.
It would lose everything that it had in the garden.
Ruan Nanzhu smiled gently. He molded a shape for himself and forgot that he was a gardener.
But Ruan Nanzhu still remembered that Lin Qiushi was his most beloved flower.
All roses were the same, but once you began cultivating one bloom in particular, that rose gained a particular meaning.
When Lin Qiushi came out of the Eleventh Door, he did not know what his Twelfth Door would be like. Only, the sensitive sixth sense he'd developed inside the scary worlds was telling him that he was being watched by some particular gaze.
That gaze did not have source, yet was everywhere.
"I keep thinking that I'm being watched," Lin Qiushi, holding Chestnut, said to his teammates in Obsidian. "Can you guys feel it?"
"Feel what?" a teammates said, with a face of confusion. "Boss, could it be that because you're about to go into the twelfth door, you're a bit on edge?"
"Could it?" A cigarette hung from Lin Qiushi's mouth. He was no longer the newbie from years ago who panicked at every little thing, but when he knew he was about to enter the Twelfth Door, faint distress still surfaced in his chest. He'd sensed something—nothing bad, but it couldn't be called good either.
"Boss, you have to come out," the teammate said. "We're all waiting for you outside."
Lin Qiushi exhaled smoke.
"I'll try."
This was already the best answer. Nobody could guarantee that they could come out. The world of the doors, after all, was filled with adversity. His full strength was needed each and every time to face the challenges.
To be able to survive until now was his good fortune, Lin Qiushi thought.
At that moment, a sudden wind gusted, and a few scattered rose petals followed the wind before Lin Qiushi's face. He reached out and caught these tender petals, watching them crumple into mud in his palm.
"When did we plant roses in the garden?" Lin Qiushi asked in surprise as he stared at the petals in his hand.
"There are no roses," a teammate answered. "Who likes fragile little flowers like this?"
"Are they fragile?" Lin Qiushi asked.
The teammate, at a loss, "of course they're fragile." Didn't all humans see roses as representative of fragility?
But Lin Qiushi laughed, saying, "but they have thorns."
"What?" the teammate asked.
Lin Qiushi didn't continue. He put out his cigarette, waved at his teammate, and turned back to the house.
This was the evening before he entered the Twelfth Door. He was already prepared to die, but he didn't tell his teammates that he was about to leave. This was because he'd already guessed how his teammates would react if he had.
Tears, farewell, a final mad revelry. As if they were sending off someone who could never return.
Lin Qiushi did not like this sort of feeling. He only wanted to enjoy the final peace and quiet, just like all the peaceful nights he'd fallen in love with before. He did not need tearful farewells, nor did he need woeful embraces. To him, these weren't sources of comfort, rather burdens.
Having experienced so many years inside the world of the doors, Lin Qiushi's heart had long since become as still as an ancient well. If he had to name a regret, it might be that he'd never met somebody he could depend on, and on whom he could depend in turn.
Things were bustling when he first came, but all the people who'd bustled with him were no longer around. But life, he guessed, could never be entirely fulfilled.
Lin Qiushi lit another cigarette, watching as the room grew blurry in the billowing smoke. The door that looked so plain and yet led straight to hell too became hard to see in the haze.
Time passed in ticks and drips. The time to leave arrived in a blink of an eye.
Lin Qiushi walked to the door and pulled it open. He saw a long corridor and the icy metal doors on either side.
Lin Qiushi stepped into that corridor as usual, not knowing that this would be a completely new journey.
The moment his feet touched the floor of that corridor, something was swiftly extracted from his body. His memories began to distort and everything before his eyes grew indistinct. This change, however, happened in a single moment. By the time Lin Qiushi braced the wall, new memories had already been born inside his mind.
He forgot that Eleventh Door, forgot that he was the leader of Obsidian. He turned back to that clunky newbie going into his first door.
He looked at the twelve doors in the corridor, a lost expression appearing on his face. The thought that came to mind was: why am I here? Why are there twelve metal doors in the hallway of my home?
At a loss for answer, Lin Qiushi continued ahead. He began trying to pull open the doors before him, but none of them budged an inch, as if they were sealed to the wall. Lin Qiushi could only try them door by door, until…he pulled open the twelfth one.
With a clack and a low, deep groan, the metal door opened at Lin Qiushi's pull.
Right after, a strong pull came from inside, yanking him through the door.
By the time Lin Qiushi came back to, he was already standing on an unfamiliar little path. Beside him was a weeping girl. The girl was tall and wore a long skirt. The way she sniffled particularly inspired compassion.
The girl saw Lin Qiushi and stopped her sniffling. Her gaze fell on Lin Qiushi, bleary and lovely.
And this was Ruan Nanzhu and Lin Qiushi's first meeting.
Though he'd never mentioned, the moment Ruan Nanzhu saw Lin Qiushi, he caught in his nose the scent of roses. This scent was so faint as to be nonexistent, to the point where Ruan Nanzhu doubted his own senses. This scent caught Ruan Nanzhu's attention at once, and though he didn't know why, his instincts gave him an answer before his logic could: this person before him named Lin Qiushi was an existence special to him.
"Hello, I'm Ruan Baijie," Ruan Nanzhu told him his name.
"Hello, I'm Lin Qiushi." The smiling rose began to grin.
The two's hands entwined. Ruan Nanzhu felt in Lin Qiushi's palm muscle, warmth, and a delicacy as soft as rose petals.
It was the same touch as in his memories.
The gardener had found his rose. He could finally fulfill his own dream and accompany the rose through wind and rain.
No matter wilting or blooming, all toil was as sweet as sweet.
Just as he'd hoped it would be.