Researcher Bai Tao likes the ginkgo tree downstairs in the office building.

Her workplace's office building is located in a city that is not a bustling city, and a tall ginkgo tree stands out in the empty green belt below—just one.

She never knew when the ginkgo tree had been standing in their yard, but she remembered that on the summer day when she first started, she sat alone under the tree on her knees in the countless afternoons when she shivered or slipped out of her office, the tall branches and lush canopy of the ginkgo biloba shielding her from the scorching sun. The mottled shadows of the trees fell on her shoulders, and the cascading fan-shaped leaves rustled against each other as the breeze blew. She chuckled softly to herself, touching the ginkgo biloba's rough bark with her fingertips, and then pressed her cheek against the trunk, a pleasant woody scent creeping into her nostrils.

In just a few short minutes, she was able to fully feel the presence of her "self".

Most of the time, she felt like an onion, her fragile skin peeled off layer by layer by layer of tissue, and then poured into the boiling hot water, the only bit of pungency that could identify herself was also consumed as she boiled.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that. She thought that "spicy" probably represented feelings, feelings as human beings. A colleague once told her that she needed to have enough faith and passion to protect humanity in this organization to work, and she smiled wryly and said that I think it's the opposite, and I think that those who persevered until the end of the honorable retirement can no longer be called human.

Who here hasn't been an executioner, directly or indirectly? Even if the purpose of being an executioner was to protect more people, their hands were already stained with blood of unknown origin. What's worse is that everyone is instilling this blood in you.

And she thinks she is still a human being, and she hopes that she will be able to break away from "human" and become a qualified servant of the gods sooner.

Whenever her "human" part was screaming violently, she felt as if an alter ego approached from behind her, silently choking her heart. She considered herself a person of thin affection, and only after coming here did she realize that just being kind was not enough. It stands to reason that the organization that protects the existence of the truth does not need to be described as cold, but it is clear that the servants of the gods need enough decisiveness and willpower to strangle a weeping girl without blinking an eye when they know that the existence of a girl will destroy everything around her.

Well, the analogy may not be appropriate, as a clerical worker she doesn't need to do such a brutal job with her own hands, but she has also witnessed similar incidents happen more than once. At first, most of her colleagues were in tears like her, once, twice, three times, and when she couldn't count them on two hands, she realized that she was the only one left who could be related to such a scene.

Why? She didn't quite understand. She wished she could pack up her excess feelings and stuff them into a garbage bag as soon as possible, and throw them into the combustible garbage recycling bin downstairs, so that everything would be reduced to ashes that would be blown away by the wind. After failing again and again, she realized that it was probably the foundation of "feelings" in her heart that was far deeper and more powerful than she imagined.

She slipped out of the office building again, with her laptop in her backpack behind her, intending to take a breather from work in a different place. In late summer and early autumn, the wind is slightly cool. With the rough trunk against her back, she sat cross-legged on the grass and turned on the computer, her pupils lit up by a cold fluorescent. She stared at the screen for a moment. The unlocked spacebar was not pressed.

She turned her head sideways and muttered to the silent Ginkgo.

"Isn't that a good fit for me to stay in this place, haha. ”

Naturally, Ginkgo wouldn't answer her, only the leaves still rustled in the same way. She had never been tired of the sound, and only today she read a little unease in the sound. Perhaps the uneasiness came from herself, and she inserted her fingers into her unkempt short hair and clawed her head hard, trying to banish the clutter of her thoughts.

Occasionally, she wondered, and the desk across from her seemed to have been empty for a long time.

Daenerys often has employees leave suddenly, either because of an accident or something. And in her impression, the speed at which new arrivals are filled is also amazing. She wondered why no one had filled the position for so long—after all, she remembered that it had never been subordinate to a dedicated employee since she had been hired.

Was that so? She occasionally wondered if her memory was wrong.

And when she saw a ginkgo biloba lying abruptly on the empty desk, her suspicions rose more and more rapidly. Outside the window, the branches and leaves of the tall ginkgo tree have not yet been dyed golden to represent autumn, and the beautifully shaped leaves on the table have long been yellow. She picked up the leaf and looked at it blankly, then realized that it wasn't an ordinary leaf.

It was a leaf that had been made into a specimen, or perhaps a bookmark.

Did someone accidentally drop the bookmark here? This is probably the most likely. But her eyes were drawn to the leaves, and every vein and texture seemed familiar to her, as if she had seen it countless times,—— as if she had once held it tightly and tried to give it to someone.

She was shaken by unfounded speculation. Fearing that she was under the influence of some god, she chuckled and casually put the bookmark in her breast pocket. And when she walked into the office again in the afternoon, the leaf appeared intact on the desk opposite her again.

She frantically reached into her breast pocket, which was empty. At one point, she thought that her memory was wrong, so she tucked the leaf into her wallet instead, but the next morning, the leaf remained stubbornly in place, like an employee who came to work on time.

Somehow, a long-lost fear swept over her, and she froze in place, staring at the leaf motionlessly. A passing colleague kindly patted her on the shoulder and asked if she needed help, she pointed to the blade and asked if it was anyone's lost item, and the colleague looked at her like an alien.

"What's the leaf? Are you dazzled? Or are you infected by some dream?"

Fear gripped her heart. She hurried downstairs without saying a word, her instinct telling her that the leaves must have something to do with the ginkgo tree, and when her feet stepped on the lawn she had visited so many times, she looked up and lost the ability to speak. The tall ginkgo tree, which gave a sense of security for no reason, disappeared overnight without a trace, leaving no trace of a stump or anything on the lawn. She thought it was all a ridiculous dream of hers, and she pinched her forearm hard, but she didn't wake up.

She fell to her knees on the grass in despair, not saying a word.

Later, a colleague told her that there had never been any ginkgo trees in the yard.

But the leaves are still there. Every day when she came to work, she would see the ginkgo biloba leaf sitting quietly on the table, and she was still the only one who could see the leaf. She was almost sure she was under some anomaly, but she didn't care. I often walk by the river, how can I not get my shoes wet.

After the ginkgo tree disappeared, she felt as if some foundation in her heart had been strongly shaken, or rather, a part of her personality was gradually disappearing with the tall tree. It's not a bad thing, she told herself over and over again that being able to see the state of the ginkgo tree is some kind of abnormality, it's not a bad thing.

She considered whether or not to tell her superiors about the anomaly, as it could probably be considered a dream effect, or a reality distortion or something. But thinking that this was probably causing trouble for herself, and in the worst case, she was afraid that she would be given a number, so she was silent.

She still picks up the leaves every day when she sees them, sometimes in her pocket, sometimes in her notebook. The taxidermy leaf was supposed to change no more, but she wondered what seemed to be withering. From the perfect golden yellow of the leaf when she first saw it, it gradually turned into a withered yellow with little vitality, as if it was about to be crushed into pieces and turned into dust in a few days.

Is there something going to break completely?

She wanted to figure everything out, but she knew she couldn't figure it all out.

Gods, dreams, anti-dreams, anti-dreams. Has her studio ever been someone working with dream-related anomalous gods?

Ginkgo, autumn, clenched in the hand of the bookmark.

Smooth black hair, pins pinned to the ears, soft and shy smile.

So who is that?

She woke up from a short afternoon nap, vague keywords coming to her mind in patches. On this day she put the leaf in her left breast pocket, and the herbarium felt the beat of her heart closer than anyone else.

What kind of nonsense is this? She felt a little incredulous the moment she realized what she was thinking. Is this taking that leaf as a human being?

As...... Person?

Is it true that no one has ever existed at the desk in front of you?

The office was empty, and she jerked to her feet, her hands on her desk and staring at the empty air in front of her, as if someone was there. In front of her, a leaf quietly swirled and fell, lying lightly on the desk.

“...... Linn。 ”

She unconsciously spat out such syllables.

And the leaf swirled again, and floated silently, as if someone was holding it in the air. She stared at the leaf in a daze, and after a few seconds she ran like a dream, staggering down the stairs and lying down the empty lawn.

The ginkgo tree didn't come back.

And she remembered something. Damn, why did she think of that?

Linn。 Yes, Linn, Lin Geci. Ginkgo, with the useless reality bending ability, can make a ginkgo biloba leaf float in the air, her senior.

Lin Geci is not a particularly good or eye-catching senior, but she is her favorite senior. It's a liking in the sense that she wants to be with her for a lifetime, and she knows it.

This kind of emotion should never be present in Daenerys, after all, everyone knows that the colleagues who accompany her may die in a sudden accident the next day, or be affected by a dream and become their target of execution. But she couldn't control her feelings that grew like weeds, and even then, she didn't dare to say anything, just watched her seniors silently not far away.

She thinks that the existence of her predecessors is probably the strongest foundation of her feelings as a "human" that she can never eliminate.

She is so fond of her seniors. She wrote down the work hours of her seniors and set an alarm clock every day, just to create an awkward chance encounter with her seniors downstairs, and most of the time, she didn't even dare to say hello. Every holiday, she would prepare gifts, snacks or clothing, and jewelry for her seniors, most of whom ended up lying in her drawer and never seeing the light of day. The exception was a small ginkgo bookmark, which she thought her seniors might like very much, so she gave the bookmark to her seniors on New Year's Day.

Even when she handed the gift to her, she didn't dare to look up at the beautiful and clear inky eyes of her senior.

When did things start to go wrong? She couldn't remember the time. One day, when she was sent to research an anomaly that she wasn't even allowed to know, maybe a week or two later, she mentioned the name Lin Geci to her colleagues at lunch, and received a question.

"Who's that? Is there any such person on our site?"

That afternoon, she knocked on every office door like crazy, repeating the words Lin over and over to everyone she could see, until she was relieved when she confirmed that everyone except her colleague knew that Lin Geci existed.

She didn't know why she panicked to this point because of someone else's words, maybe it was just because it was Lin Geci.

And things soon turned out to be beyond her imagination. When she mentioned those three words again a few days later, almost every colleague concluded that it was an unfamiliar syllable they had never heard before. She ran back to the office in a panic and saw that her senior was still sitting quietly in place, with clear despair in her beautiful inky eyes.

Please, you're the only one left, please don't forget me.

The seniors said this in the shape of their mouths.

Maybe it's not lip synching, maybe it's because she can't hear the voice of her predecessors anymore. The memory of that day was distant and vague to her, as if it had happened in her past life. In the picture of a layer of frosted paper, she excitedly half-squatted in front of her senior, raised her face and bit her lower lip, looking at her senior steadily. Then she clasped the slender and cold ten fingers of her predecessor with both hands, and that was the first time she grabbed her senior's hand. She said, "No matter who forgets my predecessors, I will never forget them."

Then the seniors cried. Lin Geci, who rarely showed emotion, always calmly read the documents, or showed a shy and soft smile, lay on the desk and twitched his shoulders, crying uncontrollably but without making a sound. The seniors said, you will always forget, that the effect of this anomaly is irreversible, and my entire existence is about to be erased. Forget me, and forget what I just said, it's more troublesome to remember, right?

And she just shook her head vigorously by holding the hand of her senior, repeating categorically.

I won't forget you, senior.

Because I like you, I like you more than anyone else.

She didn't say the latter. She leaned down in front of her senior for a long time, grabbed her hand, and gently stroked her back. She doesn't think she's fit to play a role of appeasement, and only she can play that role at the moment.

The seniors are still young girls in their prime. This is so unfair, why does it have to be a senior? Why is a senior being sent to work on such a dangerous project, just because a senior specializes in antimemes? She swallowed the question into her stomach and swore over and over again in the firmest tone imaginable. his anomaly, his antimeme, the fact that the seniors are here, and her favorite Lin Geci seniors exist here, must not be erased.

And the next day, under their office building, in her world, there was a towering ginkgo tree under their office building.

She didn't realize that the "ginkgo tree" was supernumerous, and the ginkgo tree gave her an inexplicable sense of intimacy. It was as if the intimacy she felt when she first saw a slender black-haired girl in a white coat that attracted her firmly.

And the black-haired girl herself has become a nothingness that never existed.

She wondered why the desk in front of her was empty, but she couldn't remember who was supposed to be sitting there. After a bouting headache, she gave up her memories and turned on her laptop to get to work.

In the afternoon, she slipped out of the office building alone, staring at the grass with her back to the ginkgo tree. Falling leaves swept past her cheeks, and some visceral impulse made her cling to the trunk of the ginkgo tree. This may seem to others to be quite an unusual move, and she didn't realize it at the time. Every inch of her bare skin clung to the trunk of the tree, as if in the next second, she was about to merge with the tall tree.

When she came back to her senses, she realized that she was crying, and the uncontrollable tears rolling down her eyes had wet her collar.

She wanted to hold on to the trunk of the ginkgo tree again, and wanted to grab the hand of her predecessor again, but at the moment, she only saw a lonely leaf floating in mid-air. She realized that it was a bookmark she had given to her seniors, and at the moment when she couldn't see her predecessors, or even the tree, she could still recognize the existence of the bookmark, I was afraid that it was the last bit of tenderness left to her by this world,—— it was better to say that she was too cold.

She lay alone on the lawn, looking out at the autumn sky, weeping silently, her features twisted into a ball.

She said that she likes autumn and really wants to see her seniors standing under the ginkgo tree in their private clothes. The senior must be very commensurate with the dazzling golden yellow of the patches, and the blue of the autumn sky, can I see you again, senior?

...... It's superfluous, isn't it? After all, you can't help yourself anyway. A calm, mechanical question sounded in her ears.

Probably yes. But what could she do? She could only cry.

She once again recalled the Qi Qiran in her heart that should not have existed in the scenes that her colleagues had long been accustomed to. Then she realized that she had been covered by a hard shell of ninety-nine percent of her heart, and that the softest piece had always had a ginkgo biloba lying quietly.

And now the ginkgo biloba leaf swayed to its own devices, and the long-haired second-level researcher in a white lab coat held the petiole and frowned behind her eyes and chuckled.

...... She wants to change anything, no matter what it takes. Whatever the cost?, the voice echoed silently again, and she nodded slightly.

She never thought about how to make her seniors remember her, or to save her seniors in exchange for a happy ending for the two, perhaps even she didn't realize that at the moment when she bowed her head without hesitation, the armament in her heart had already collapsed - she moved herself, and she could only move herself. - but that's enough.

It was as if someone was answering her thirst, and the wind was blowing stronger and stronger.

Out of nowhere, a ginkgo biloba leaf drifted in the wind, and then another, and another. She got up in surprise, and the ginkgo biloba did not hit the ground, but swirled and fluttered in the air with the wind, as if it was about to coalesce into some shape. Each leaf was so similar that she realized that it was the same leaf specimen that she had put in her pocket and tucked into her book every morning and afternoon, and each one was perfectly golden.

It turns out that the leaves haven't really disappeared.

A figure gradually appeared in the cracks of the ginkgo biloba leaves, which were almost dancing like a storm. Her already dry eyes moistened again when she noticed the familiar figure, and she tried to rush over and hug the slender woman surrounded by golden leaves, but she fell to the ground with a stumble. The wind gradually stopped, and the ginkgo biloba fell to the ground one by one, and the grass was dyed a dazzling yellow. The woman's figure was finally completely clear, it was Lin Geci's predecessor who had long inky hair and a shy smile as always.

The senior smiled, crouched down and grabbed her hand.

"Thank you. I am back. ”

She seemed to have 10,000 words to say to her predecessors who had worked so hard to get back, but she couldn't say a word, she could only open her mouth stiffly and close her lips, she tried to stand up, but her eyes were dark.

Her field of vision is completely covered by ginkgo biloba. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was a ginkgo leaf falling on her forehead.

The moment before she sank into the darkness, it was as if an angel had dropped a light kiss on her forehead.

Researcher Lin Geci likes the ginkgo tree downstairs very much.

When was the ginkgo tree planted there? She didn't know. The tree doesn't seem to have been growing here for long, but she's looking forward to the golden leaves that will decorate the bleak courtyard the following autumn.

She's been working here for a long time, but she still wonders why there's no one at the desk across from her.

That morning, she saw a ginkgo biloba lying alone on that empty desk.