Not A God

Chapter 19 - The Smiling Man

"Hmm?"

Zen, who had suffered a flying accident, stopped in his tracks and took his eyes off his phone to look at the red leather ball that had hit his arm and rolled down to his feet. The crimson leather ball was old, obviously from the last century, and the torn cartoon design on it looked like it belonged to a child.

Which child did this?

As he thought about it, Zen caught a glimpse of a young boy out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to see the figure of a young black-haired boy with excessively white skin and eyes without whites, seemingly wearing some kind of contacts. Because the university campus in this country was not completely closed, outsiders would often come in and hang out, and it didn't surprise Koshu that there was a small child.

It looked like it was the kid's ball, and Zen picked it up off the ground and looked over at him.

"Your ball?"

"Why didn't you say sorry when you hit someone?" he thought.

Looking at the strange boy, Zen felt as if he had met an otherworldly version of a naughty child. The blind boy looked at Zen dumbly, his 5'3" head looking weak and pitiful and helpless in front of him, trembling violently. As if he was facing an existence so incomparably horrible that he was too scared to move. Seeing that the little boy had remained frozen a short distance away, Zen frowned suspiciously, thinking that the boy was afraid of life, so he took a few steps forward and tried to return the leather ball in his hand to him.

Although he had been smashed, he wasn't too angry with a five or six-year-old.When the blind boy saw Ke Su's action, his originally stiff face snapped into an almost frightened expression and he turned his head to run, accidentally failing to stand and falling, but not even daring to get up, he just ran away on his hands and knees, rolling and crawling.

"......"

It was as if Zen had witnessed the birth of an Olympic long-distance running champion.

Zen, who felt not so intimidated, thought. "Don't want your ball back?"

He looked at the red ball in his hand and thought bitterly, but left it by the side of the road, waiting for the boy to come back for it. Putting the ball down, Zen continued to walk forward. Behind him, the ball that had struck him on the ground slowly decayed until it finally turned into a pile of ashes and disappeared into the air, and at the same moment, the baseball bat held in Zhou Shi's hand in the inner world also suddenly cracked a huge crack and was already ruined.

Zen walked unnoticed on the unoccupied roadside, having just been interrupted by a ball, and lost his mind to play with his phone, putting it away to look around. It was even quieter than before and there was no one on campus. Although he was a little surprised at how quiet it had become, the disgust he felt for the school made him reluctant to stay any longer, so he didn't think much of it and quickened his pace, wanting to leave the university that he resented.

Not far ahead, Zen finally saw a figure in a strange pose, seemingly engaged in performance art. From a distance, he saw a fit man in a suit wearing a smiley mask, his left hand raised upwards, his right hand around his neck holding his left wrist, his legs crossed, his body leaning forward, moving in a comical pose. Looking closer, Zen realised that there was more than one person doing performance art, there was also a young man.

The young man held the same pose as the smiling masked man, motionless, except that he was not wearing a mask or a suit, and his face was stiff and full of fear. With sweat faintly falling from his forehead, looking very hard. Zen watched for a moment, saw the young man's eyes roll up to his own, and raised his phone in a friendly manner.