Shu Chuanli's Secret

"You still want to be with my sister, right?"

"No." Hu Chuntian answered sincerely and plainly.

"Oh." Mo Aini felt really stupid. So Hu Chuntian got tired of chasing after his sister after all? That's strange. "Then..... you don't want to get into Class A anymore?"

Hu Chuntian didn't answer and instead took the reviewer from him. He flipped the pages and started to seriously read. He then saw a question and asked with his eyebrows knitted.

"What's the answer to this one?"

Mo Aini frowned. "You said 'no', so why are you even bothering to ask about that question? Do you want to study or not—"

"I said I'm not looking forward to getting into Class A because of your sister." Hu Chuntian turned to him. "But I'm still going to get into Class A.... for you."

Then Hu Chuntian looked away, cheeks flushed.

"Uh.... pardon? Say that again?" Mo Aini felt like his brain had just gone haywire. Did he really hear what he thinks he just heard?

"I'm not going to say it again!" Hu Chuntian growled and pointed at the question in the book again. "If you don't like it, then don't help me study. But if you do... then..... help me get into the same class as you."

Mo Aini felt like the physics of the world had reversed and all the fundamentals of existence had gone into chaos, causing his eyeballs to spin.

(Yo, system! Does Hu Chuntian like me??? DOES THIS MEAN HE LIKES ME????)

The system did not respond and everything was quiet. All he can hear is Hu Chuntian's breathing and his blue eyes that seem to be piercing a gigantic hole in him while waiting for his answer.

Hu Chuntian likes him.

Hu Chuntian likes him.

Hu Chuntian likes him.

Hu Chuntian likes him.

Hu Chuntian likes—

Didn't this already happen before?

Mo Aini blinked, as if he had been splashed by cold water. He turned towards the cherry blossom tree and reread the poem. In a daze, he touched the passage... the hard etched scratches.....and even the new cigarette burns.....

"Hey, why are you ignoring me?" Hu Chuntian frowned and waved a hand over his face.

"Wait..... why are you getting pale and sweating so much? Are you ok?"

[ERROR! ERROR— uydgwejewbdhjbkjoejxioj]

[01101001010010100101010101]

[opdkdsdck ERR 01101 OR0101000101001001001]

[Syste,m b90wug.... sya10tem buagggggg....]

Mo Aini's eyes rolled backwards and he collapsed, unconscious.

----------------

"Don't worry, kid. It's probably from malnourishment and fatigue. Your friend must be skipping meals lately, and look at those bags under his eyes. He'd make a panda envious."

"Hmm, he did tell me that he's been working so hard on his portrait and not eating lunch and dinner for a week. As an artist, I can also relate. Maybe that's why Jie-kun.... I mean, Mo-kun, fainted—"

"Shut up, you rat! I know Mo Aini the most than all of you! He wasn't looking close to fainting when he approached me, it must be something else—"

"Mnnnnn..... five minutes, mom! Five more minutes...."

"He's awake! Hey, wimp! Open your eyes if you're awake!"

Mo Aini finally stirred from all the rough shaking. He thought it was his father yelling at him and scolding him for sleeping until 12 noon. But he doesn't have school or a job anyway, so why can't the old fart just leave him alone....

"Hu Chuntian?"

He opened his eyes, a little teary. "Hu Chuntian.... is it really you?"

"Of course, it's me." Hu Chuntian was so relieved that his lackey was awake, but hid it with a scowl. "Who else were you expecting—"

Mo Aini hugged him so tenderly right in front of the two other people in the room that he didn't notice. The clinic doctor just raised an eyebrow and Shu Chuanli who was just on the bed beside him gasped.

"I'm so sorry.... Hu Chuntian, I'm so sorry..... You were never able to hear it from me, but I'm telling you now..... I...."

Yes, the 'side character's' erased memories have returned.

The memories that he asked for the system to delete for him.... all came rushing back.

"....What are you even sorry for? I should be the one who's sorry for not being able to catch you sooner and getting your clothes dirty."

Mo Aini stopped crying and let go of the man he's hugging. Right.....

This wasn't the Hu Chuntian he stabbed multiple times under the cherry blossom tree. This was a new Hu Chuntian in another dimension.

He stared at him for a while. The gold hair, the blue eyes, the sharp features that are somehow soft at the same time. The smell of nicotine and cherry blossoms. His husky yet soothing voice. They were all the same but...

Looking back at the times he's spent with this new Hu Chuntian, they really were different. Hu Chuntian 1.0 and Hu Chuntian 2.0 are different. He shouldn't have confused the two.

"Sorry, I had a bad dream." Mo Aini sniffled. "It's fine now, sorry that I hugged you out of nowhere."

The truth hurts and it had now begun to sink in.

"What dream was it?" Hu Chuntian unconsciously took his hand and rubbed it with his thumb. "I can ask them to leave us alone and you can tell me about it."

"It's nothing." Mo Aini pushed his hand away. "I'm... I'm in the clinic, right? Hello, doctor. Wait, you look familiar.... Have we met before?"

The doctor with a long goatee and spectacles shook his head. "I believe we haven't. Anyway, I need to get back to my desk. You boys can rest up more only until 6 pm, the clinic's closing by then."

"Oh. Alright. I must be mistaken." Mo Aini turned to the bed beside him. "Hello, Shu Chuanli—Oops. You probably don't know me yet or didn't remember me much from when I was your seatmate. My name is—"

"I already know the truth, Mo-kun. That you are Jie-kun and just put on disguises so Jiagei-chan wouldn't notice you." Shu Chuanli gently smiled at him. "Hu-san told me."

Hu Chuntian gave him a scary scowl. "Can you stop with the cringey Japanese honorifics? I swear, if I hear another one, I'll cut your little rat tongue off."

"Eeep!" Shu Chuanli held onto Mo Aini.

"Leave Shu Chuanli be, Hu Chuntian." Mo Aini said lazily, emotionally, and physically tired.

He needed to find an excuse to get away from Hu Chuntian for a while so he can gather his thoughts.

"Can you.... get me a bottle of water for a minute? My lips are dry. You can get one from the fountain below this building—"

"Pfft, I have the money to buy you all the contents of the vending machine. I'm not getting you water from a dirty fountain." Hu Chuntian bragged and went to the door.

He gave one last look to Shu Chuanli, causing the frightened green-haired otaku to let go of Mo Aini. "I'll be back VERY quickly."

"Damn, I said I don't like possessive types. But that was kinda hot." Mo Aini muttered to himself and chuckled. "Meimei would worship this guy."

"By 'meimei', you mean Mo Jiagei, right? I really can't believe she was your sister. You two look so different." Shu Chuanli calmed his nerves now that the grumpy Tiger Emperor is away.

Mo Aini gave a dry smile. "Really?" (We basically look like the gender-bent version of each other, dude.)

"Really. And your personalities are so different too." Shu Chuanli adjusted his glasses. "You seem mindful of other people's thoughts and feelings. Mo Jiagei can be.... a little dense and she sometimes does..... not-so-nice things."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, she knows I'm not comfortable going outside, and crowded places make me nauseous. But she woke me up at 5 am anyway to go shopping with her..... We didn't even shop for anything that day, she was too picky to buy anything. I offered that we could hang out by playing games at my house instead or watching a movie but she said it was boring." Shu Chuanli frowned. "She just seems so.... disinterested with me and the things I like."

(That's because she IS disinterested in you. Poor guy.)

Mo Aini gave his shoulder a friendly pat. "Don't think that way. Maybe things will get better for you two eventually."

"Maybe."

(I'll make sure she picks the right choices not because I want her to get the 'Good Ending', but because I don't want you to suffer.) Mo Aini quietly promised.

There was a slightly awkward pause before he asked, "Um..... So why are you here, by the way?"

"I..... I had a blackout from drawing too much." Shu Chuanli answered shyly.

"Ah, the deadline for the animation is coming up so you must have been overworking yourself." Mo Aini nodded. "You should rest up sometimes."

"Yes.... But it's not just the animation. I have a weird habit, you see...." Shu Chuanli fiddled with his glasses, wiping them with a handkerchief when there's no dirt in them. "Whenever I'm emotionally frustrated, I end up drawing comics."

"As a stress-reliever?"

"No." Shu Chuanli's face became dark. "As a way to vent my intrusive thoughts."

Mo Aini blinked several times. "Intrusive thoughts?"

"You never had them, Mo-kun?" Shu Chuanli's eyes started to go wide and a little crazed. "I have them almost every night that I can't sleep. Intrusive thoughts mean—"

"I know what intrusive thoughts are." Mo Aini patted his back to assure him, to calm him down. "Just.... what kind of intrusive thoughts do you have?"

"Oh, all kinds of things. Sometimes, I imagined myself turning Mo Jiagei into a life-size Sakuranohime-chan figurine." Shu Chuanli giggled in a demented way, biting the side of his fist.

"I drew a comic about it last night. Those eyes of hers that always seem so disinterested, I'll replace them with beautiful glass orbs that will always look at me, so that I'll never feel unwanted again. I'll pull her tongue out so that she wouldn't say things like 'Let's go to the mall' or 'I don't care if you're scared of heights, let's go to the rollercoaster!'. I'll dress her in the Sakuranohime-chan cosplay that she didn't want to try and said was ugly, and then I'll—"

"Shu Chuanli!" Mo Aini gripped his shoulder to bring him back to his senses. "Snap out of it!"

"Oh....."

Shu Chuanli broke out of it like he was possessed when he said those things, and Mo Ain finally exorcised him.

"I'm really sorry, Mo-kun!" Shu Chuanli choked and teared up. "W-W-What the hell am I saying!? She's your sister after all! I didn't mean any of it, I wouldn't dare to do something like that... I...."

"I know." Mo Aini gave him a hug. "I know, don't cry. It's perfectly normal to think of irrational things to the people who hurt us, but don't let it get into you. You must remember that this isn't you, Shu Chuanli. The person that you draw in the comics who did those heinous things.... You're not him as long as you can fight it."

"Sob...I'll remember that, Mo-kun." Shu Chuanli took off his glasses and wiped his tears. "You're the kindest friend I had...."

Mo Aini nodded, and asked the system telepathically. (Is this his so-called 'Bad End'?)

[Yes. We can foresee the results of certain actions in these alternate universes with 97.69% percent accuracy. If Mo Jiagei doesn't make the right decision, Shu Chuanli will do what he has drawn in the comics.]

(I will never let that happen.) Mo Aini gritted his teeth, and pulled Shu Chuanli closer.

"Hey, I got your water now....."

Hu Chuntian came with a large plastic bag of that can't possibly contain just one measly bottled water. He came to a stop when he saw the two in a tight embrace and Mo Aini quickly pulled away.

"It's not what you think, I was just—"

"Why is the rat crying? What kind of drama are you talking about now?" Hu Chuntian came and got a can of fizzy apple juice. "Here, drink up. Don't wipe your snot on Mo Aini's clothes."

"T-Thank you." Shu Chuanli took the canned juice meekly, surprised by the kind gesture from the delinquent.

Even Mo Aini was pleasantly amazed by this. "I thought you hated Shu Chuanli."

"Yeah, but it looked like he was having an emotional breakdown and I'm not an asshole." Hu Chuntian sat beside Mo Aini and drank his own can of lemon soda. "I'm the great Tiger Emperor! My eyes are perceptive enough to know that you're just comforting him with.... whatever he's going through."

Hu Chuntian gave him the bag. "Pick whatever you like. I bought some chips too. The rat can eat some if he wants."

Mo Aini's felt his chest warm up and he was about to do something stupid like kiss this 'bad boy' who was actually damn better than everyone else in the room—

But he remembered that he'll be leaving this world eventually, and showing any affection will just make this version of Hu Chuntian suffer like the one before him.

"Thanks." He said coldly, moving away from him as he got the bottle of water from the bag.

From now on, he should keep his distance for the sake of Hu Chuntian's heart.... and his own.

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