I knew that everything Mister Yuan and Mister Return had said, as well as everything I had seen in Yuan Valley and Guixu, was real.
Yet I was the only one who remembered this experience.
Maru remembered none of it.
What was even stranger was that, in Maru's eyes, I had only been distracted for an instant. Yet during that instant, I had gone through so much.
This experience had really told me only one thing: time did not exist, and the beginning was the end.
Was this science or pseudoscience?
I shook my head with a bitter smile. I had never imagined that one day, I would lose myself between science and pseudoscience.
"Father, there's someone ahead!"
Maru spoke softly, but I had seen it even without him telling me.
There really was a figure ahead.
The figure looked thin and short. It was probably an eleven- or twelve-year-old child, though I could not tell whether the child was a boy or a girl.
"Father, it's a child!" Maru saw it too.
We walked toward the child, and gradually, the child's features became clear.
The moment I saw the child, my heart jolted. Wasn't that exactly what I had looked like as a child?
He smiled at me. "You're here? You finally came!"
I frowned. "Who are you?"
When he heard that, the smile on his face froze. "You don't recognize me?"
Maru said from the side, "Father, he looks so much like you. Don't tell me he's your son too?"
The child glared at Maru. "Maru, shut up!"
Maru was utterly stunned by his words. He looked at the child. "You know me?"
"Of course I know you. He is your Father, and I am your Father too, because he is me, and I am him."
Maru looked