Four Split Personalities

Le Le, the sister from back then by the big insulated pot?!

Motan was momentarily stunned, then quickly searched his mind for the keywords ’big insulated pot’ and ’Le Le sister,’ and within twenty seconds, he precisely located the answer.

He did indeed know such a person!

That was back when Motan was in the fourth grade of elementary school. By then, he had already become an independent good child and had left the orphanage where he grew up years before. He moved to a cheap apartment on the north side of City B, living a life full of happiness and contentment, absorbing knowledge from the internet while biding his time in a no-name elementary school nearby.

Looking back, Motan was quite certain that he already had a sound mind of a mentally ill person back then, it was just that his knowledge reserve hadn’t been sufficient so he didn’t diagnose himself until he was thirteen. But even before the diagnosis, his spirit was troubled.

Correspondingly, young Motan couldn’t possibly fit in with the crowd. At that time, he wasn’t fully able to conceal his various ’abnormalities’ but was already aware that his peculiar mental state could potentially cause a lot of trouble. Thus, he naturally distanced himself from his teachers, classmates, and neighbors, keeping his grades at a very inconspicuous level—never high enough to be singled out for praise, not so low as to be unbearable to witness and warrant a parent-teacher conference.

This process was immensely beneficial to him, for it involved reasons so complex that they could give any normal child a brain hemorrhage.

Firstly, he needed to analyze the personality and mood of every teacher to minimize his presence in class. Which teachers paid attention to kids who raised their hands often, which looked out for those who were quiet, what the criteria for a ’good child’ and ’bad student’ were in the hearts of the teachers, the difference in the homeroom teacher’s behavior before and after her period, and so on...

Secondly, he had to understand the character and temperament of his little friends so that he could be naturally excluded without leaving any trace. He couldn’t let the teachers feel that everyone was deliberately isolating him, nor could he match any classmate’s taste. Therefore, he studied which child was precocious, which was immature, which boy took grades seriously so that his own couldn’t be better or worse, which girl was interested in cool guys so he wouldn’t appear too indifferent at the appropriate moments, and so on...

As for the last point, it was simple: based on the above two sets of information, he would make corresponding actions and score the appropriate marks. The former is easy to understand. The general process for the latter usually involved estimating a score for each question, calculating the total score for the paper, and then doing a reverse verification to finally obtain a theory-based inconspicuous score without confusing the teachers.

Basically, that was it. If there was anything difficult about it, it might have been that every now and then, he had to suppress ’one aspect’ of himself using reason along with his other two aspects.

Yes, Motan back then also seemed to have three personalities, similar to now, but they weren’t the same three. To explain this in layman’s terms—it was ’Orderly Kindhearted,’ ’Chaotic Neutral,’ and ’Chaotic Evil.’

So, to be honest, Motan back then was actually quite tired.

Mainly mentally tired...

Of course, because his ’Chaotic Evil’ side was also an ignorant youth and didn’t have the intensity of a human-shaped automatic cheat in games. Plus, when Motan was in the state of his other two personalities, he deliberately suppressed it, so there were no major issues.

Well, at least no major issues seemed to surface...

All in all, even though he was young and neither his knowledge nor his abilities had become monstrous, Motan had already learned how to protect himself and made many choices and measures that seemed unwise but were effective enough. For instance, he left the orphanage early, secretly destroyed his records and documentation before he left, and never contacted them again in subsequent years.

However, even so, he didn’t completely isolate himself socially. Even though he had severed ties with the orphanage and had built a shell for himself in that school, Motan still had a long-term friend whom he could be completely unconstrained with, someone he could be himself around without any disguise.

That’s right, it was his best friend A, a pitiful child named Yi Dong who had the misfortune of meeting the wrong people and making imprudent friendships. Even though the two didn’t attend the same elementary school after leaving the orphanage, they frequently exchanged letters, and since they were in the same city—even though one lived to the far north and the other to the extreme south—they occasionally managed to meet up for some gluten and soda.

While the lives and environments of these two orphanage alumni had diverged significantly, they still considered each other their best friend. For two precocious children, relying on each other in the orphanage... well, making trouble for others during their time at the orphanage was invaluable.

Yes, Yi Dong was a precocious child, although it didn’t show much. In reality, he was truly precocious, it was just that Motan was too aberrant, which made him seem not as mature, and even occasionally a bit slow to catch on.