I came to Fontaine,
on a windless morning.
A gray flag hung in the sky,
The city whispered in the water, like a suppressed poem.
This is a country shaped by trial,
but the real trial is never to judge others,
but to judge oneself.
Every step must pass the eyes of the system,
and every word echoes in the transparent court.
I walked through the streets,
The slabs were damp and dust-free.
People passed by without speaking.
They are like machines, but they nod occasionally.
I don’t know why I came here.
Some people say it’s a mission, some people say it’s a reward,
but I believe more –
to find the truth that no one has said.
– Daily commission.
Four things every day, like fragments of fate.
You take them, just like taking silent orders.
No emotions, no choices.
You just execute.
But one evening,
when I repaired the mechanical arm of a speechless engineer,
he smiled slightly.
There was no happiness in that smile,
only a brief light of “being understood”.
At that moment, I remembered him.
Like remembering a word.
—
I know that reputation is a currency.
But it is not money.
It can’t buy food, but it can buy trust.
It is the city’s tacit consent to your existence,
and the silent seal after your day-to-day work.
Every time you level up, someone will tell you:
You can make more complex devices,
You can open locks, repair bridges, and have certain rights of passage.
But no one will tell you——
whether these things can really bring you closer to freedom.
I began to doubt the logic of all this.
Is reputation just a carefully designed domestication?
Let us be between control and being controlled,
get used to becoming part of the system,
and forget——we are originally travelers.
—
This world doesn’t like blank space.
So we fill it with tasks.
It needs order, so we obey;
It gives rewards, so we are grateful.
But one day, I stood on Marine Avenue,
and the rain fell from the sky, silently.
I suddenly realized that
what really changed me was not the value called “reputation”,
but the faces of the people I saw in commissions again and again.
Those faces, strange, tired, sometimes gentle,
sometimes just raised their eyelids briefly, like saying goodbye.
I want to remember them.
Because this world is too easy to forget.
—
“As if the light rain falls for no reason” —
The name of the task is like a line of poetry, but it lacks the tenderness of poetry.
After completing it,
you unlock not only the system, but also a history —
a myth about justice and judgment hidden under the water.
But in these myths,
who is the hero and who is the sinner?
The boundary is as blurred as the fog on the lake,
everyone is trapped in his own judgment.
Including me.
Someone asked me:
“Why are you still doing these tasks?”
I can’t give an answer.
Maybe I’m just waiting for a word,
waiting for a person,
waiting for a lifestyle that is no longer empty.
Perhaps this is the dilemma designed by Fontaine.
It doesn’t force you to choose,
but makes you accustomed to accepting.
Just like we have walked through too many cities,
in the end we are not forced to stay,
but forget the reason for leaving.
—
I wake up every morning,
open the task panel,
four small things,
no poetry, no gunshots,
only life.
But in the gaps of life,
I sometimes think of a country far away,
a name that has not yet been named on the map,
may not be famous there,
but there is a more real “me”.
And that me,
is still on the way.
—