This was not a punishment.
It was one-sided abuse, a cruel and inhumane torment inflicted on someone who trusted her completely.
Body, mind, and even soul, nothing was spared.
He should have resented her, perhaps even hated her with every fiber of his being...
But he didn't.
Rrakavasha attributed all fault to himself and, in the most brutal way possible, stripped away those memories and sealed them at the bottom of an unreachable abyss.
That way, he could return to being the student she liked most, the one she was most satisfied with, the perfect, obedient pupil.
Ruan Mei couldn't help but wonder,
Did Rrakavasha live his entire life like this, only recalling everything at the very last moment...?
Or did he never remember this past at all, even until death claimed him...?
An emotion she had never felt before surged up from the depths of her heart, crashing violently against her chest like waves against stone.
It hurt.
Yet perhaps it was not even one ten-thousandth of what Vash had endured.
And there was another feeling she couldn't name, one that relentlessly drove a single impulse through her mind again and again;
To return to the past, to go back several Amber Eras and undo everything.
To stop the boy from stripping away his memories.
To stop herself from punishing him in the first place.
But she couldn't.
She couldn't reverse time, couldn't return to the past, couldn't change the cause and effect already set in stone.
"Vash... do you hate me...?"
Ruan Mei whispered hoarsely, an indescribable emotion flickering in her eyes.
She wanted to know so badly it nearly drove her mad.
She wished that before leaving this world, Rrakavasha had remembered everything, had felt even a trace of hatred toward her.
That would have made things easier for her to bear. She could have accepted his resentment.
Clinging to that desperate obsession, Ruan Mei followed the thread of memory deeper and deeper.
"From now on, use this ruan."
"Thank you, Teacher!"
Rrakavasha hugged the zhongruan she had given him, his joy plain to see, unguarded and genuine.
"And this white lab coat. It's too big for me, so you can use it."
She didn't tell him it had been made especially for him. Let him think it was simply a surplus.
...
"Teacher, be careful!"
An experiment went wrong. A high-risk substance triggered an energy chain reaction, erupting in a violent explosion that tore through the entire lab.
In that critical instant, Rrakavasha, now taller than her, threw himself in front of her without hesitation, forcibly taking the full force of the blast.
His upper body was mangled beyond recognition, his chest torn open and bleeding, organs visible, half his face shredded down to the bone.
He'd almost died protecting her. She'd saved him, but the scars remained.
...
"Vash, why haven't you made that soybean cake lately?"
"That soybean cake?"
He scratched his head, frowning as he searched his memory, suppressing the confusion rising within him.
"I'm not sure which one you mean, Su Jian? Tao Yin? Or Lingyue?"
"...If you can't remember, then forget it," Ruan Mei said calmly.
It was merely a matter of taste, after all.
Though the flavor had left a deep impression on her, it wasn't indispensable.
But she noticed the brief flash of pain in his eyes when he couldn't remember, another memory stripped away.
...
"Drink this, Vash."
"All right."
Rrakavasha didn't ask what the potion in her hand was for. He drank it without hesitation, trusting her completely.
He trusted that Ruan Mei would never harm him, a trust she didn't deserve. She didn't explain that the potion suppressed the aftereffects of his sensory loss. As long as his body didn't enter a state of senescence, it would remain effective.
...
"Teacher, I've successfully cultivated the genetically mutated species you needed."
"Well done. Place it in the designated culture dish. You can move on to another task."
"Yes."
...
"You haven't slept for a full week, Teacher. Go rest. I'll handle the observation period."
"All right. I've written the precautions in the notes."
"I guarantee nothing will go wrong."
...
"Happy birthday, Teacher. I've prepared dinner. Please stop your research for now and eat before continuing."
"No need."
"There's plum blossom wine."
"Oh? Where did the plum blossoms come from? The ecological conditions have been harsh in recent years. Plum trees shouldn't survive here."
"I took some time to cultivate and harvest them in another world. This jar is only a two-year vintage, not the best flavor, but still quite good."
"You've put thought into it. Very well."
...
Countless memory fragments replayed before her eyes, and Ruan Mei gradually lost herself in them, drowning in moments she'd lived but never truly seen.
Decades passed like a single day; there were accidents, quiet moments, and small surprises.
Everywhere in her life, there was Rrakavasha's shadow, his presence woven into every corner.
Viewing the past from a third-person perspective, she suddenly realized,
She had long grown accustomed to a life with him in it. He'd become as natural as breathing.
Until that day...
...
"These data seem to be related to Teacher's parents...?"
"What about them?"
"...Nothing."
...
"Why did you delete those data without permission?"
They were the most important thing to her, the obsession that drove her forward through centuries.
Though the data were already etched into her mind and deleting them made no practical difference, she wasn't angry about the loss.
But...
Rules had still been broken.
She wanted to know why her student dared to overstep again after decades of perfect obedience.
The young man frowned deeply, his tone grave and uncharacteristically firm.
"Teacher, this is forbidden research that desecrates life, and desecrates your parents as well!"
"Even if you succeed in the end, you could lose yourself and lose many things you don't even realize you value!"
"Some fields must never be touched."
"Is that your reason?" she asked coldly.
"Teacher, I-"
Rrakavasha stopped mid-sentence, hesitated for a moment, then sighed quietly, resignation in his every breath.
"Yes."
"Starting tomorrow, you graduate," she said without warning, the words falling like an executioner's blade.
Though Rrakavasha had long prepared himself for punishment, his face still filled with shock at those words; this was worse than any physical pain.
"You're sending me away? Teacher... punish me however you like, but please don't make me leave. Any punishment but that, I don't want..."
"This is not a punishment."
Ruan Mei turned away calmly, leaving behind her final words with surgical precision.
"I've taught you everything you can learn from me. Staying here would only waste your time. It's meaningless."
"Teacher-!"
Rrakavahsa grabbed her sleeve, his eyes full of pleading, desperate, breaking.
"I'll say it again: you have graduated. Leave. Until my research is complete, I don't want to see you again."
She pulled her sleeve free with deliberate force and added one last sentence:
"If after a hundred years I have not contacted you, then forget me. I do not owe you, and you will no longer owe me."
Rrakavasha stood there blankly for a long time, then finally lowered his head and bent at the waist in a bow she didn't deserve.
"Yes... Teacher..."
In his memories, she was frozen forever at that moment, the last image he'd allowed himself to keep.
Back then, when Rrakavasha left, she hadn't even looked at him, already buried in her research.
Now, watching through his eyes, she followed him until his figure vanished from her view.
From that departing silhouette, Ruan Mei read deep loneliness and desolation, a grief so profound it had no voice.
Rrakavasha left alone, returning to the planet where he once lived during his treatment, back to those mountains, and built a bamboo house not far from her home.
"For the final 111 years... did you live well...?"
Rrakavasha's life held little turbulence after that.
He planted plum trees across the mountains, harvested endless winter blossoms, brewed plum blossom wine of perfect quality; this was his most important task each year, a ritual of devotion.
He regularly cleaned that house, long abandoned yet kept immaculately clean, and regularly trimmed the mountain path that led straight to its door.
He sent the plum blossom wine year after year, never once including a letter, until he passed away quietly, leaving behind a puppet to continue the tradition as before.
The rest of the time, he stayed in the bamboo house, going nowhere, seeing almost no one.
Yu Qingtu would occasionally visit, enjoying his warm hospitality during brief respites from her own work.
Aside from that, his life contained only the occasional patients who came seeking help for ailments no one else could cure.
Thus passed a hundred years in solitude.
Until...
A purple-haired young woman named Clarice appeared, bringing the first real light into his hermitage in decades.