But an excellent Athena goddess would never care about a harsh environment. The room was damp and moldy, a miserable sight, but she could still go without turning on the light—when it was pitch black, even the room no longer had boundaries. Sometimes it was a splendid golden temple, sometimes a dark little cell, sometimes a sacred snowy mountain or a tranquil plateau lake... The bigger the heart, the bigger the stage—when she understood this, China Central Television had not yet started calling itself CCTV.

Zoe Young stood on the ground, motionless, but she could hear the imagined sound of flowing water—yes, Poseidon was constantly letting water flow into the great hall, and now it was already above her ankles, but she couldn’t move a step, because she was locked in place.

Athena gently held the Sacred Egg, anxiously and worriedly missing those handsome Saint Warrior. No matter how bad the situation, there would always be warriors coming to the rescue—there had to be. Every girl is Athena, as long as we don’t give up. Just as she was thinking this, she suddenly heard someone shouting outside the window: “Zoe Young!” She was so startled her hand shook, and the egg hit the corner of the table. Immediately, she felt a cold, sticky liquid running over her left middle and index fingers. She’d made a mess—what should she do now? The voice outside the window didn’t stop at all.

“Zoe Young, Zoe Young, are you home? You’re ignoring me again!” The childish, timid voice was obviously Benny.

Although his voice wasn’t loud, he just wouldn’t stop calling. Zoe Young was panicking, trying to figure out what to do with the broken “Sacred Egg”, and didn’t have time to answer, feeling completely overwhelmed.

“Zoe Young, Yu—” “Stop shouting! I’m in trouble!”

Many, many years later, whenever Zoe Young thought of that ill-fated white egg, she could never figure it out—just an egg, so why was she so scared, as if the sky was falling?

She took a key from the drawer and hung it around her neck, then went out, still trembling as she held the egg in her hands. With every step, a little more egg white would spill out, making her hands all slippery.

“What happened?” Benny came over. “The holy... egg broke.” “Then just throw it away.”

...Right, just get rid of the evidence, problem solved? She gave an embarrassed smile, but still didn’t know what to do with the egg white on her hands. Back then, there were hardly any tissues, and she didn’t dare wipe it on her clothes, so in a panic, she wiped it on her face.

Anyway, she’d wash her face soon.

But for such a small egg, there was so much egg white—she wiped it all over her little face, and there was still plenty left on her middle and ring fingers. Zoe Young stared at her hand for a few seconds, then decisively reached out— and wiped it on Benny’s face.

“What are you doing?!” “Just borrowing your face.”

Benny blushed. Under the orange bulb at the door, moths circled, and the light was so dim you couldn’t even see his face clearly. Zoe Young naturally couldn’t see his embarrassed, unwilling expression, only his eyes shining especially bright.

Like that lone star in the western sky at dusk. “Why did you come looking for me?” Zoe Young wiped her hands clean, pulled him to stand outside her window, thinking that way she could talk to him and also keep an ear out for any sounds in the house, keeping watch at the same time. Zoe Young had always believed she was smart—after all, she was the saint Athena. “Did your dad get drunk again...” Zoe Young’s question seemed to turn on the faucet in Benny’s eyes; he could cry without any buildup, but because the egg white had dried tight on his face, he couldn’t open his mouth wide, so the tears just streamed down, and his words were choked with sobs.

Sigh, so useless. Zoe Young thought to herself, but also felt anxious, not knowing how to make this pretty little boy in front of her stop crying.

Benny and his father were also resettled families who rented cheap houses on the outskirts of the city. Zoe Young didn’t actually know Benny’s real name; everyone just called him by his nickname, and even his father always said his real name was awkward and hard to write, so why not just make Benny his official name—Zoe Young had been surprised when she heard this. If the name was so awkward, why not give him a simpler one in the first place?

Later, she accidentally overheard the neighbors’ gossip, and the way the adults’ words spread to the children, who imitated them—Benny wasn’t his father’s biological son. Benny’s adoptive parents couldn’t have children, and his adoptive father owed his birth parents a life-saving favor, so his birth parents gave them their youngest son.

So the neighbors said, “See, they must be people with connections, daring to have so many kids.” They all said Benny’s birth family was rich, not living in the provincial capital, but in a fast-developing port city to the east. Benny’s adoptive father would hit him when he was drunk. On quiet nights, many families were still awake, but they all just listened to Benny’s cries—no one went to intervene.

Benny’s adoptive father, eyes red with rage, would always curse loudly and incoherently. He said Benny was a jinx, that his birth parents had repaid kindness with betrayal, that he’d lost two fingers for them, and they’d sent him a jinx who killed his wife, made him lose his job this year, and even got cheated by the relocation office when calculating the house area...

“Cry, go on and cry! If you’ve got guts, go find your real parents! Aren’t they rich?!”

Many times, Zoe Young sat on her bed, staring at the dim light of the little house in the distance, unable to sleep. In her ears were Benny’s cries, the man’s curses, and her own mother’s helpless sighs beside her.

She never asked her mother to step in. Even though she was still little, she vaguely understood that she and her mother were also just a widow and her child—in fact, to put it bluntly, she was an illegitimate child. Back then, her grandparents had gone to great lengths to pull strings and get her registered, or else she’d still be undocumented, and if that were the case, she wouldn’t even be able to start elementary school next year.

The neighbors’ gossip was actually the gentlest way for children to grow up. No matter what Zoe Young heard, she would never react like people in TV dramas—face turning pale, dropping the bowl or vase or soda bottle in her hands, then running away in tears... She wouldn’t. She just held a popsicle stick she’d picked up and drew lines in the dirt, hiding where no one could see her, remembering every word they said, slowly chewing it over.

Even if there were many things she didn’t understand, it didn’t matter. She just needed to remember them first, and once she remembered, she could wait.

Wait to grow up. Because her mother always said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

So she never asked anything. A child’s simple, sharp intuition told her that some questions, if asked, would bring deep hurt.

The cool summer night breeze ruffled Zoe Young’s bangs. Benny kept sobbing as he told her how scary his father was, how afraid he was, how he didn’t dare go home... Zoe Young gently scratched the huge swollen bump on her left arm from a mosquito bite and said, “Play with me.”

Benny’s crying stopped abruptly. “What?”

“Play with me, stop crying.” Zoe Young didn’t even know what she was saying. “You’re a boy, and you just keep crying and crying...”

Some nosy neighbors had once crudely but vividly said that, for Benny, even if Zoe Young farted, it was like an imperial decree.

So the pure-hearted Benny listened to Zoe Young and started to sincerely feel embarrassed and guilty for crying. “What should we play? It’s already dark. I saw Yueyue and the others playing ‘Red Light, Green Light, Little White Light’ by the wall in the dark, we...”

“Just the two of us, we’re not going to find them.” “Oh?”

“Let’s play ‘Saint Seiya’.” Zoe Young made up her mind and said softly. Back then, Benny didn’t understand that this strange little drama was Zoe Young’s precious, private world, and her inviting him in was a huge concession. At that time, there was a cartoon on TV, and the main character was a little yellow car that looked like a bumper car—

Zoe Young awkwardly explained the basic rules of the game, and Benny slapped his forehead as if he’d suddenly understood. “So you’re Athena?”

He beamed, but Zoe Young shook her head. “No, I’m Seiya, you’re Athena.” “But I’m a boy!” “That doesn’t matter.” Zoe Young shook her head like a little grown-up. Athena and Seiya were never just about being male or female. It was about protection and being protected. She was Seiya, so she was the protector.

Athena was Benny, was also Mom, was the sickly grandmother, was many, many others. Seiya had to carry everything alone, so he kept unleashing his cosmos, he might fall for a while, but he would never die.

Of course, Zoe Young hadn’t really thought all this through. Back then, all she had was a vague, inexpressible sense of heroism, full of righteousness.