They're All Afraid of Me

Joanna might not have fully understood, but she remembered what he said.

With the memory she had inherited from his watered-down Super Brain, she could retain almost every important word Lin Mo said.

As their time together gradually increased, the researchers began allowing the two children to leave the designated Game Room and visit certain areas they had specially modified in the research wing.

Their range was still limited, but Joanna clearly enjoyed herself. She also got quite a few new toys.

That day, the two had just finished eating together. A caregiver led the way, with Lin Mo and Joanna behind her.

Joanna held a blue plastic ball she had just received. Lately, she had been practicing controlling the strength in her fingers while she walked.

The ball was perfectly ordinary, but it still counted as a new toy. With the strength she used to have, a moment's distraction would have crushed it.

Yet it had stayed intact since they left the dining hall.

Just then, a door at the end of the corridor opened.

An ordinary researcher came out carrying a stack of documents. She was a young woman in her twenties.

She clearly hadn't been told Joanna would be passing through.

The instant she looked up and saw Joanna, her whole body stiffened. The documents nearly slipped from her hands.

Joanna noticed her and stopped. The woman instinctively took a step back.

It was only a small step, but it was obvious enough to startle Lin Mo.

Alarmed, Lin Mo quickly looked Joanna over.

Nothing's changed. She's obviously cute. Does that woman really need to be so scared?

But then Lin Mo sensed the woman's shoulders tense and her breathing quicken. She wasn't pretending. Her gaze had gone straight to Joanna.

The caregiver leading them reacted at once. "Don't stop. Keep moving."

The young woman pressed herself against the wall to let them through.

Joanna didn't move. She studied the woman's face and thought back to a year ago.

In the past, she had often seen caregivers retreat and heard their breathing quicken when she came near.

Back then, she hadn't understood. To her, those reactions had been as predictable as lights coming on when a door opened or an announcement sounding when an experiment ended.

But after spending time with Lin Mo, she had begun to recognize emotions.

Happiness, anger, reluctance, nervousness... and fear.

The expression on the young researcher's face looked almost exactly like those of the people in her picture books who encountered criminals or Superheroes.

After a moment, Joanna looked down at her hand. The blue plastic ball was still intact.

"Let's go."

Lin Mo spoke softly, and Joanna followed him in silence.

As they passed the young woman, she nearly held her breath. Only after they had gone a long way did a brief, stifled exhale come from behind them.

Joanna stayed unusually quiet for the rest of that day's activities.

She didn't drag her chair over beside Lin Mo as usual, nor did she choose a game on her own.

But Lin Mo knew she was thinking about what had happened in the corridor. Look at that. They've stressed the kid out, and now I'm the one who has to comfort her. How stupid.

"What's wrong?" Lin Mo asked.

Joanna shook her head slightly.

"Nothing."

Forget it. Maybe she'll work through it herself. Lin Mo didn't press her. Understanding someone else's fear was complicated for Joanna.

She needed time to process it on her own. She didn't bring it up again after their activities ended that day.

It wasn't until they met again the next day.

After a long silence, she suddenly asked, "Why are they afraid of me?"

Lin Mo put down the picture card in his hand.

Joanna was looking right at him.

"Who?"

"The person in the corridor."

She remembered clearly. She gestured with both hands to show him how the woman had looked, even making a frightened face.

"She saw me and stepped back."

Such an expressive display was rare even around Lin Mo. He thought for a moment. He could give her plenty of gentler answers.

He could say the woman didn't know her, or that she was easily frightened.

Those explanations might comfort Joanna for now, but they didn't sit right with Lin Mo. They would dodge the real reason.

Lin Mo didn't want to build her understanding on a lie. So he gave Joanna an answer she had never heard before.

"Because you're strong."

Lin Mo spoke plainly.

Joanna looked at him. Her pale eyes narrowed slightly, confusion spreading across her face.

"Why would being strong make people afraid?"

"If someone doesn't know whether you'll hurt her, she might be afraid."

"But I didn't hurt her." Joanna sounded anxious to explain.

"But she doesn't know that." Lin Mo paused, then continued, "People naturally feel wary of someone stronger than they are. For one reason or another, that wariness often turns into fear."

"You've hurt people before, so others might think you'll hurt them too."

Joanna frowned and protested reluctantly.

"I didn't mean to before."

"I know."

"She doesn't know?"

"She might know."

Lin Mo fell silent for a moment. "But knowing you didn't mean to doesn't mean she'll stop being afraid right away."

Joanna said nothing. After a while, she asked an unexpected question. "Then why aren't you afraid?"

The question stopped Lin Mo short.

The most direct answer was that Joanna couldn't hurt him. Given the defensive ability he had shown so far, even if she lost control, she would have a hard time seriously injuring him.

There was an answer she would understand more easily: he was stronger than she was.

If Joanna believed that, she would see Lin Mo as someone beyond her power to threaten. But then her sense of security would rest on a comparison of strength.

Lin Mo didn't want to answer that way. He looked into Joanna's pale eyes.

A few seconds passed before he said, "Maybe because I'm like you."

Joanna visibly froze.

"Like me?"

"We both have abilities other people don't, and we live in the same place."

"So I know you don't always mean to hurt people," Lin Mo said.

Joanna studied him earnestly. At last, she nodded with equal seriousness and said nothing more. She turned back to what they had been doing, acting like her old self again.

Except she seemed even more attached to Lin Mo.

Before, she had sometimes played on her own, leaving Lin Mo to browse some trashy little storybook and assault his eyes in peace.

But in the days that followed, Joanna always clung to him, insisting he play with her.

Perhaps what Joanna remembered most clearly from that day was still his saying, I'm like you.

For the first time since her birth, she had a real sense of what it meant to have someone like herself.

Lin Mo was the only one who wasn't afraid. He could withstand her strength.

He knew why she struggled to control it, and he understood that she didn't always mean to hurt people.

They had similar abilities, were confined to similar rooms, and underwent similar experiments.

To Joanna's simple understanding, that meant Lin Mo was on her side. In other words—

Lin Mo would be hers. He could only be hers.