My name is Ma Yan. I'm an orphan who grew up dependent on relatives, always at their mercy. Everyone says I'm gentle and soft, the kind of fool who'd get cheated and still help the scammer count the money. Then one day, I "accidentally" overheard them laughing as they discussed how to take the last apartment my parents left me. For the first time, I "heard" a line appear above my uncle's head, visible only to me: [This kid's an idiot. A few sweet words will do the trick.]
That was when I realized my supposedly "well-behaved and obedient" nature had never been something I was born with. Three years ago, I woke up after being hit by a car with a secret: I could see the true inner monologue floating above everyone's head. The more someone went on about benevolence and morality, the filthier the words above them became. So I learned to act, to seem more innocent, blameless, and pitiful than anyone else. Only by hiding behind the "idiot" everyone thought I was could I see who was going to come after me.
But when I started fighting back, I discovered things weren't so simple. My uncle's evil wasn't in his nature. Some kind of experimental chip had been implanted in his brain. And there were many others around me just like him, "people who'd been programmed." My family, my parents' disappearance, and the so-called "car accident" all pointed to a massive organization codenamed "The Lab." They were conducting experiments on real human nature, and my family was just a breeding tank labeled "A-07."
The most tragic part was that I was the very subject of their research: a "human nature sample" meant to find out whether someone betrayed would turn evil and fight back, or break down completely.
They wanted results. So I'd show them just how many tricks a "fake innocent" sample could pull.
