Less than half an hour after Jake and Chloe had left, there was another knock on the hospital room door.
Elliot got up to answer it. Outside stood a middle-aged man in a dark jacket, carrying a worn briefcase. He wore black-framed glasses and had stubble on his chin. He looked to be in his forties, his face deeply marked by years of sleepless nights and running about.
He was Grant.
"Officer Elliot." Grant nodded, his voice slightly hoarse.
"Reporter Grant, please come in." Elliot stepped aside to let him enter, then shut the door. "Lance Blue is awake. He just finished speaking with his friends."
"You two talk. I’ll go check on Mrs. Carter." Elliot waved at Lance Blue.
As he left, he gently closed the door behind him.
Only Lance Blue and Grant remained in the room.
Grant did not sit down right away. Instead, he walked to the window and fully closed the gaps in the blinds, shutting out the faint commotion from outside.
Then he turned around. His gaze fell upon Lance Blue’s bandaged wrist and lingered there for a moment before he pulled out a chair and sat down.
This unusual behavior struck Lance Blue as strange. In his eyes, Grant’s emotions were plain to see. He could sense a complicated, weighty emotion within Grant, mixed with exhaustion and anger, as well as an almost stubborn persistence.
"Lance Blue, I’m Grant, an investigative reporter for FOCUS NEWS."
He took a black notebook and pen from his briefcase but did not turn on a recording device.
"Elliot should have mentioned me. I’m not here to interview you. I want to talk about what happened that day."
Lance Blue nodded.
"What did the doctor say about the injury on your back?" Grant first asked an unrelated question.
"Superficial second-degree burns. The dressing needs to be changed," Lance Blue answered, his voice still somewhat hoarse. "And smoke inhalation. I’ll need to recuperate for a while."
"Mm."
"But you’re alive, and the people you saved are alive too." Grant looked into his eyes. "That’s important."
A brief silence followed.
Lance Blue did not know what Grant wanted to ask, but there was a question that had been circling in his own mind ever since he woke up.
"Reporter Grant, since you’re a reporter, you should know about this." He took the initiative, his lake-blue eyes looking directly at the other man.
"That fire was caused by the plane crash."
"When I got out after saving them, just before I passed out, I think... I sensed something unusual."
Grant’s fingers tightened slightly around his pen. "Something unusual?"
"Somewhere far away, probably near the crash site..." Lance Blue tried hard to recall that vague yet intense impression.
"There was... a cluster of emotion. It was enormous, very clear, and its color was... cyan. It was different from everyone else’s fear and pain. Inside it was... an incredibly strong desire to live."
His description was somewhat disordered, but when Grant heard "cyan" and "near the crash site," his expression changed in an extremely subtle way.
It was not surprise. It was more like a heavy confirmation of something.
"You can see the colors of emotions?" Grant asked calmly.
"I’ve always been able to... sense them. But that was the first time I’d ever seen a color so clearly." Lance Blue added, "It’s one of the abilities I gained from becoming a hero."
"Based on my ability, there were survivors after the plane crashed."
"And before you arrived, I borrowed Uncle Elliot’s phone to look at the news from that day. The result was unexpected."
"Why did the official reports and all the major media reports on the crash say there were no survivors?"
Grant did not answer immediately.
He lowered his head and looked at the blank page in his notebook. Several seconds passed before he slowly exhaled.
"The official statement says there were no survivors."
His voice was very low, each word seeming to squeeze through clenched teeth.
"That is what the Hero Association’s search-and-rescue report says, and what every major media headline says. One hundred and forty-seven names have already been placed on tomorrow’s memorial list."
Lance Blue’s heart sank. Had it really been nothing but an illusion brought on by his fading consciousness before he passed out?
"But," Grant raised his head, his gaze sharp as a blade, "I slipped into the scene."
"This air disaster was an unprecedented major catastrophe since the hero system was established. The Hero Association formed a special investigation team, and I had to go to great lengths to disguise myself before I could enter the primary scene."
"And so, amid the ruins... I found a child who was still alive."
Lance Blue held his breath.
"A little girl, about three years old. Cyan hair and eyes—the cyan you described should be the same color."
Grant spoke slowly, as though recreating the scene before his eyes.
"She was trapped between a severely deformed seat and the cabin wall. All around her was... At the time, she was still crying, but there were almost no external injuries on her body. I called to her. She opened her eyes, looked at me, and stopped crying."
"So that’s how it was..." Lance Blue murmured.
"Where is she now?" Lance Blue asked.
"Somewhere safe." Grant did not elaborate, but his tone was certain. "I know the director there."
"The child is too young. She doesn’t remember who she is or where she came from. So I looked into it and found that both her parents died in that accident. She alone was fortunate enough to survive."
"This... I didn’t report it, and I didn’t report it to the authorities either."
Lance Blue looked at him. "Why?"
"Why?"
Grant repeated it, the corner of his mouth pulling into a humorless curve. "Because I know better than to trust certain people."
He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice even further.
"The person in charge at the scene of that crash’s rescue operation was a senior executive from the DOS Hero Office."
"And Fracture and Vortex, whose fight in the sky indirectly caused the crash, are the lead heroes of DOS and MG."
"These two agencies have already suffered a severe blow because of this incident of heroes fighting each other. They need fresh blood to replenish their ranks. And FOMO, which will very likely want to sign you now, is also watching this matter—watching for the power it might gain from it, watching for new unsigned heroes like you, who suddenly emerged out of nowhere."
"A survivor appearing out of thin air, a fact that challenges the official conclusion—those things would disrupt a great many people’s calculations."
Grant leaned back in his chair, looking exhausted. "I’ve been a reporter for nearly twenty years. I’ve seen too many accidents and coincidences."
"That child... the fact that she survived is itself an accident that should not exist."
"In some people’s eyes, it would be best if an accident like that remained silent forever."
A chill ran through Lance Blue.
"You told me all this..." Lance Blue looked at Grant.
"Because you have also become an accident."
Grant was blunt. "In one day, your Trust Value surged from a little over one hundred to more than 2.6 million, and you parachuted straight into seventh place in the rankings. You are more conspicuous than that child, and harder to ignore."
"Right now, every eye is on you. The Hero Offices want to sign you, the Hero Association wants to verify you, and the public worships you. But beneath all that? Some people will sincerely be happy for you. Others will calculate your value, assess the threat you pose, and wonder how you did it."
He paused. "You said you sensed that child’s emotions. If that is true, then your ability may be more unusual than it currently appears."
"And unusual can sometimes mean dangerous."
The hospital room fell quiet.
The noise outside was cut off, leaving only the soft, regular ticking of medical equipment.
"Do you have children too?" Lance Blue suddenly asked what seemed like an unrelated question.
Grant froze for a moment. His eyes softened briefly before being covered over by deeper concern. "I have a daughter. Her name is Yvette Grant. She’s a year or two younger than you."
He paused, his tone complicated. "She really admires heroes."
Grant looked at him for a long time. In the end, he only shook his head and did not continue the subject.
He packed away his notebook and pen, then stood up.
"What I said today goes from my mouth to your ears. Do not mention that child to anyone, including Elliot. This is to protect her, and to protect yourself as well."
Grant walked to the door and placed his hand on the handle. "I’ve watched the video of you saving people many times. In that moment, you were a true hero. But once you set foot on the path of a hero... many things will no longer be up to you."
"People from the Hero Association and the Hero Offices will formally approach you soon. Be mentally prepared."
He opened the door, leaving one final sentence. "If, in the future... you encounter something you can’t figure out, you can contact me. Elliot has my contact information."
Grant left, and the hospital room became quiet once more.
Lance Blue lay back against his pillow and stared at the pure white ceiling. Beneath the bandages, the number on his wrist seemed to still be faintly burning.
Parachuting directly into seventh place in the Hero Association rankings.
The cyan-haired girl who had survived in the wreckage of the plane crash.
These pieces of information spun through his mind like fragments. They had not yet formed a complete picture, but a heavy outline had already emerged.
He raised the hand that could still move and lightly touched the bandages wrapped beneath his chest.
The pain was real and distinct.
Hero.
He had once longed for that word so desperately, believing it represented power, recognition, and a life in which he would no longer go hungry or freeze in the cold.
Now, he had obtained it.
In a way he had never imagined, and at a speed far beyond anything he had expected.
But what came with it was not simple joy. It was a heavy truth, a complicated vortex, and the sorrowful reality that a survivor had to be concealed.
He understood now. This disaster was the price of the Hero Association’s internal power struggle.
The plane crash and the fire alike were both part of that price.
...
Another two days passed.
Perhaps because of his Trust Value, the self-healing ability of Lance Blue’s ten-year-old body was beyond imagination. Injuries that should have kept him bedridden for dozens of days had basically healed within one or two days.
During that time, he tested the abilities that Trust Value had granted him.
And now was also the time for him to reevaluate himself.
Voices came from the corridor outside, drawing closer. There was more than one set of footsteps.
Faint conversation drifted in, carrying the businesslike tone of official dealings.
Elliot’s voice was among them as well, seeming to explain something.
Lance Blue knew that people from the Hero Association had arrived.
He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the bewilderment and shock belonging to a ten-year-old child in his lake-blue eyes had been replaced by a quiet glimmer.
He turned his head toward the hospital room door.
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