Part 4: Your Majesty, Please Go Home
"When you ascend high enough, the whole world becomes a silent, glowing map. Every street, every lit window, represents a specific life, a trivial episode of joy and sorrow. You gain the perspective of a god, but you lose your right to be human. Because from that moment on, everything that makes you you—your love, your hate, your fear—becomes as small and distant as those insignificant lights on the ground."
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When Ruby opened his eyes, he thought he was dead.
His gaze met a ceiling of nearly black, deep walnut wood, traced with delicate gold lines forming Baroque patterns he didn't recognize, but which felt expensive. The air had a faint, pleasant woody scent, like a forest after the rain, or the pages of an ancient book being turned.
Is this the VIP suite in heaven? Or hell's... wait, even hell wouldn't be this lavishly decorated, would it?
His memory was like a video file that had been repeatedly corrupted by a virus. It played up to the moment he fell from the helicopter, then the image tore into a million points of harsh static. What came after was just an unreadable, bewildering blank.
"Mr. Ruby, you are awake."
A gentle voice, burnished with age, reached him. He snapped his head to the side. Uncle Fu was standing at the foot of the bed, his black tunic suit as straight and sharp as an old sword.
"Fu... Uncle Fu?" Ruby's voice was as scratchy as if he'd just swallowed a handful of sand. "What... What happened to me? Didn't I... fall?"
"You were merely tired," a cryptic smile touched Uncle Fu's lips. "A stress reaction of the body to a sudden environmental change. Insufficient blood supply to the brain caused a brief loss of consciousness. After you passed out, the accompanying instructor immediately deployed the reserve parachute, ensuring your safe landing."
"Oxygen deprivation, passed out?" Ruby tried to sit up but felt as if all the strength had been drained from his body. He muttered self-deprecatingly, "Figures. I'm just a shut-in who plays video games in a convenience store all day. What did I expect?"
He struggled to a sitting position and finally noticed he was in an absurdly large bed, the sheets some kind of silk that felt as smooth as water. He looked down. His damned monkey-experiment flight suit was gone, replaced by an equally slick set of pajamas.
"Who... Who changed my clothes?" A wave of shame and anger washed over him.
"Emergency medical procedure, sir," Uncle Fu's expression remained unchanged. "Your body temperature was dangerously low. It was necessary to restore it quickly."
A man in a white uniform approached with a silver tray. On it was a glass of warm water and a small crystal vial containing several deep blue capsules.
"A supplement of essential micro-nutrients and neurotransmitters. It will help alleviate your fatigue."
Like a fool, Ruby swallowed the pills of unknown divine origin. A cool, slightly sweet sensation slid down his throat. Almost instantly, the feeling of bone-deep exhaustion miraculously began to fade.
He finally had the strength to look around the unfamiliar room. It was just him, Uncle Fu, and the doctor, who was as silent as a shadow.
"Where's Gao Qiong?" he blurted out.
"The young miss felt you needed an absolutely quiet environment to rest. She asked this old servant to watch over you."
"I... I want to go home."
Uncle Fu looked at him deeply. For the first time, a glimmer of what could be called "appreciation" appeared in his murky, tea-colored eyes. He didn't try to dissuade him. He just glanced at the massive nautical clock on the wall, its hands moving inexorably toward eleven at night.
"It is quite late, Mr. Ruby. Are you certain you wish to leave now?"
Ruby didn't look up, just forced a word through his teeth: "Yeah." He added, as if trying to find the most plausible excuse for his own willfulness, "If I don't go back... my family will worry."
A kind, almost clairvoyant smile appeared on Uncle Fu's face. "Very well. I will make the arrangements." He called towards the door, his voice booming with the ceremony of a bygone era: "Someone! Escort our 'King of the Sky' home!"
King... of the Sky?!
Those words were a thunderclap, jolting the still-listless Ruby. He admitted it was his ridiculously nerdy in-game title, the one and only honor in his twenty-two years as a slacker. But Uncle Fu... this old steward who looked like he'd stepped out of a pre-war photograph, was he this deep into the role-play too?
Before he could figure it out, two assistants in suits had entered and were moving to help him up, one on each side.
He flinched away. "I... I can walk on my own."
"Mr. Ruby, in that case, where shall we take you?" one assistant asked respectfully, as if asking which of his country estates he'd be staying at tonight.
The question was a needle that punctured his last line of defense. "Where? Do all of you people talk like this? Do I look like the kind of guy who has to decide which home to go back to every night?"
"Marin Street! Number XX! The goddamn convenience store with the half-busted sign!"
He practically shouted it. After he did, he felt drained but also incredibly relieved.
The two assistants didn't bat an eye, as if he had named a royal palace instead of a dilapidated shop.
Uncle Fu added from the side, "The young miss is concerned for your safety and insists on a helicopter escort."
A helicopter?
A low, familiar roar grew closer, and a black AW109, like a phantom, hovered silently outside the ship's hull. Ruby's eyes went wide. You've got to be kidding me. Is this some kind of hardcore, twisted after-care service? Are they going to make me jump out of the sky again just to get back to my forty-square-meter store?
"Leaving so soon? Without even a goodbye?"
Gao Qiong was leaning against the doorframe. She had changed into a loose, midnight-purple silk robe and was holding a glass of scarlet wine.
She glided over to Ruby, an aroma of wine and some cold, botanical scent enveloping him. She reached out with a natural grace and straightened the collar of his wrinkled shirt. Her fingertips were cold, and the moment they brushed against the skin of his neck, Ruby felt his blood freeze.
"I thought you would stay," her voice was a soft secret.
"I... I have to get back," he repeated his clumsy excuse. "It's late... my family... they'll yell at me."
Gao Qiong raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, her expression seeming to say: You're twenty-two years old and you're still afraid of your mom checking up on you?
But she didn't call his bluff.
"Go, then," she took a sip of her wine, the red liquid making her lips look even more vivid. "Rest well. I look forward to our next meeting."
"Next... meeting?"
"Of course," her smile held a note of undeniable control. "You don't remember anything about this experience, do you? We can't have that. It wouldn't be complete."
Her words were a gentle spell. Urged by the assistants, Ruby walked toward the ship's hull. A retractable platform made of a lightweight alloy extended silently from the side, docking perfectly with the helicopter's open door.
...
The helicopter descended slowly, hovering precisely over the small, open-air parking lot on Marin Street. The engine's roar was kept to a miraculous minimum, not disturbing a single sleeping resident.
When Ruby stepped out of the cabin and his feet touched the solid, cracked concrete, he was still overwhelmed by a powerful sense of unreality. The black AW109 didn't linger. Like a silent bat from another world, it quickly ascended and vanished into the night sky.
A cold, early-morning breeze blew past, making him shiver. The air finally smelled familiar again—a mix of dust and the greasy smoke from late-night food stalls. The smell of the mortal world.
He turned and walked toward the convenience store, its dim LED sign the only light in the darkness.
The light in his parents' room upstairs was off. An interrogation about "where the hell were you last night" was unavoidable. He felt like a colossal joke. He'd fallen from ten thousand feet, and his memory was a complete blank due to so-called "oxygen deprivation."
He raised his hand and looked at his fingertips. A dull ache still lingered, a phantom pain from where they'd been pinched while pulling on something.
"Oxygen deprivation... really?"
He shook his head, trying to cast out all the chaotic, incomprehensible fragments from his mind.
But it was good to be back.
At least here, everything was familiar. Even the pain was familiar.