The Bug

And as he said this... Hu Chuntian woke up.

Mo Aini was still sleeping beside him. The alarm for their early scheduled visit to Lao Yeye's retirement home had already gone off for 15 minutes. He found himself crying, his Da Ge's shirt wet, and grumbled to slam the alarm clock to the wall!

The thing broke to pieces, and he went back to snuggling with His Da Ge.

Mo Aini woke up, and saw the tinge of his eyes were red. He kissed it. "Had a nightmare?"

"No..." Hu Chuntian mumbled. "No.... It was a good dream."

"Then why are you crying?" Mo Aini asked, but somehow, he already knows the answer. It was probably a dream that was so good that it hurts.

"Da Ge..." Hu Chuntian pouted, rolling on top of him. "I want to have babies with you....."

This made Mo Aini burst out cackling. "Hahaha! What are you saying so early in the morning!?"

He saw the broken alarm clock, and remembered. "Oh, right. We still have to visit lao yeye....."

Hu Chuntian held him firmly in place, pushing him back. "Da Ge, I'm serious. Let's make babies. I want a little cub....."

Mo Aini chuckled, deciding to entertain him for a while. "Is that what you dreamed about?" What's the child's name?"

"Meng....." Hu Chuntian mumbled coyly, twisting his middle finger* that still felt warm.

"Huh. Meng. I expected something more like 'Xiatian*'." Mo Aini said. "Because you know, after spring comes summer."

"Nnn..... I don't really care about the name, Da Ge. We can make more than one baby and name them anything we want." Hu Chuntian held on to his neck. "Come on, Da Ge. Impregnate me already..."

"Hahaha, if it's possible, A-Tian. If it's possible. But it isn't, no matter how many seeds I plant inside you." Mo Aini squeezed his cheek. "Besides, aren't we too young? You're acting more like a baby than a possible parent."

"I'm not, Da Ge....." Hu Chuntian grumbled. "I'm mature and responsible, I swear."

"Yeah, right, little Tiger." Mo Aini kissed his cheek. "As much as I love you being all cute like this..... let's leave all the baby talk for later, okay? We still have old people to meet, a system to beat. Let's secure our future first one step at a time."

Hu Chuntian frowned, but he's right. He's not even sure if he and Mo Aini can still be together in the future, it was all hopefulness, not certainty.

He had to make the most of this borrowed time, and try his best to fight to borrow some more.

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The retirement home was a really simple wide 3-story house with a large lawn. It serves about 34 old men and women, with less than 10 staff. These old people can be found in wheelchairs, or holding canes, and those who can still manage to play miniature golf and tennis to pass the time.

Most of them just enjoy talking and talking at tables for hours about past memories with each other, some mixed up or exaggerated or completely made up by their increasingly senile minds.

In a nice corner that seems to be a garden, Ma Jianyu and lao yeye, which they learned bears the surname Qu, were sitting on the pretty white chairs with intricate design. They were having tea like 18th century English gentlemen.

She Haoran wasn't easily convinced in going here, ever since the whole drama, and because there's no reason to find inspiration from the book about the youth here in the house full of old people.

But Hu Chuntian and Mo Aini smartly replied to him:

"Wouldn't this be the perfect ending? The group of youngsters that are the protagonist of our book would learn not to take for granted their memories once they saw how lonesome the future years will be, but also be hopeful from the friendship of the grannies and grandpas they encountered, wishing they could be like that too someday!"

So, he was convinced, though not willing to give eye contact to Ma Jianyu who just had an argument with his girlfriend because of him.

Ma Jianyu ignored him too, but he wasn't with Mo Jiagei anymore, and that somehow made She Haoran feel relieved. He was also a little hostile towards both Mo Aini and Hu Chuntian now, after the whole fiasco of Mo Aini 'harassing' his girl and Hu Chuntian always being an annoying prick, who revealed the whole Shimeifen plot to She Haoran, who in turn revealed it to him and put a large slash in his heart forever.

But they were Qu-yeye's friends, and they are guests, so he will act amicable to them. Just as any gentlemen should.

After all... they seem to mean well. He already knows that Sir Taime didn't really harass 'Mo Jiagei, and only did it to steal her phone and gain evidence of her using him for the competition. His method was brutish, but without it, and Hu Chuntian's scathing words, he wouldn't know the truth.

So with all these thoughts running in the four boys' minds, they start their little rendezvous with a bit of awkwardness in the air.

"How did you say you came to know my Qu-yeye again?" Ma Jianyu broke the silence, since it's customary for the host to do so according to his books.

Mo Aini explained the taxi story, with lao yeye interjecting his hilarious and embarrassing dialogue word for word about how he should make this girl his wife and adopt a kitten.

"Are people in the retirement house still allowed to take jobs outside?" She Haoran pointed out the most obvious issue in the story.

"Qu-yeye was supposed to just drive to the airport to fetch Jack-yeye, who had gone to Britain for his granddaughter's birthday." Ma Jianyu said. "That taxi used to belong to one of the people here, who passed away a few years back. So we used it for transport to all sorts of things."

"It wasn't even him who's supposed to drive at first, it was Brother Ching, but he got diarrhea and Qu-yeye volunteered since he and Jack-yeye are good friends." He turned to the old man. "What made you think of going to the taxi lane, yeye?"

"Well....." Qu-yeye set down his cup. "I was paid to do so. I wanted to give Old Jack a gift since I'm sure he'll be giving everyone gifts once he returned, but I don't have money. Then, with luck, a kind gentleman offered me 15,000 yuan if I deliver a friend of his to the airport."

He pointed to Mo Aini. "That friend is you."

Mo Aini and Hu Chuntian looked at each other with narrowed eyes, going on their detective mode.

"Did this person introduce himself? Or you noticed something he was wearing?" Mo Aini interrogated.

"Like a logo or something?" Hu Chuntian added.

"Oh..... yes. He didn't give me a name, but he seemed to be working at a factory or delivery express. The logo was a broken sword..... The name is Shi---"

"Shimeifen!" The couple exclaimed.

"Yes, yes. Shimeifen. I remember now. Very kind company." Qu-yeye chuckled, sipping his tea.

Even She Haoran and Ma Jianyu were shocked by this. Ma Jianyu asked, "What does Shimeifen want to do with my yeye? Why would they ask him to deliver Mo Aini to the airport?"

"And why does it seem like you two already guessed about their involvement from the start?" She Haoran asked.

"It's complicated. Some really shady stuff." Mo Aini answered.

The president narrowed his eyes even further. "Nothing illegal, I hope?"

"Can't promise that." Hu Chuntian answered, frowning. "Anyway, we don't know if they are good guys or bad guys. All we know is they're playing us like puppets, with the novel competition, the AI companion contest, and now lao yeye----"

"Don't frown, child." Lao yeye suddenly interrupted. " You look prettier when you don't frown."

Hu Chuntian was baffled. "Oh.... Alright, sir."

He smiled at lao yeye, and the old man also smiled at him. The old man asked: "Tell me, do you have other country's blood mixed in your veins? You have pretty blue eyes and blonde hair, like my dear friend Jack when he was younger."

"No, sir." Hu Chuntian didn't expect the conversation to turn to his appearance, but it's better to entertain senile old people first. Serious business can wait later, after all, he is like a fairy godfather in Hu Chuntian's eyes now. "My whole ancestry is Chinese, and my yellow hair is just dyed, but my family always had blue eyes without integrating with any other race."

"It must be a rare genetic trait that the Hu family have." She Haoran suggested. "Human genetics is very complicated after all, and there's always mutation and adaptation. There's been news of an entire village with ancient Roman ancestry too, your family can be linked there."

Even Ma Jianyu is interested in Hu Chuntian's physical traits now. "I don't know much about genetics, but I heard of a legend one of my grannies here told me."

"She said that since the Tiger became a protector of the earth and its three disasters*, it sometimes takes form into a human. The longer he stayed in the human realm, the more he became attached to the people, and never left, only favoring a certain family, and his soul inhabiting the next generation at the age of three."

Hu Chuntian's eyes go wide. "Where did your grandma hear such a thing?"

"Er, she didn't tell me."

Mo Aini noticed the change in Hu Chuntian's expression when he heard the number 'three'. "What's wrong? Did it remind you of something?"

"My eyes..." Hu Chuntian faltered. "My eyes aren't blue until I turned three years old... So was my dad, according to my grandfather."

Ma Jianyu felt proud of himself and his grandmother for having their knowledge of myths to be helpful in this situation. "Three is the Tiger's perfect number, since he is the 3rd in the Great Race*, and also fights three evils: fire, thieves, and ghosts. But since going permanently in the human realm, the Jade Emperor found that he had gone lax, no longer the tough beast he was. He became too attached with someone, chasing after that person after every reincarnation."

"So every time he becomes attached to this person, the world will suffer greatly. He is presented with two choices: to abandon this person or let the world continue to suffer. "

"What did the Tiger choose?" Mo Aini asked.

"The world, of course." Ma Jianyu raised an eyebrow, like this should have been obvious. "Otherwise, how could we be alive until now?"

"We'd still be alive, because that is just a legend." She Haoran scoffed. "Anyway, back to Shimeifen. If we can't handle what they are planning on our own, the better option would have been to contact the police..... But I'm afraid they would be powerful enough to even have a hold over the police."

"Then what do you suggest we do, Mr. President?" Ma Jianyu finally looked at him, hopeful for answers.

This caught She Haoran off-guard, and he lost his bearings for a bit. "I... I don't know either."

He closed his laptop, and paced his hand together. "Listen everyone. We're too young for this. The best thing we could do is to comply with their schemes and see if that can lead us to something. But if it can't, directly countering them is dangerous. "

"Anyway, we don't even know if they have bad intentions. All they have ever done so far are good and beneficial to us. " She Haoran finally took a sip of the tea prepared in front of him. "I can't judge them until I have the full picture of their operations and....."

"You two seem to have that." She Haoran looked at the boyfriends. "Yet you're withholding information, even though it involved us already. Why? You set up this meeting for us to help you, right? But how can we help you if we don't know everything?"

Mo Aini and Hu Chuntian gave a look to each other again, like they're already speaking telepathically through it, knowing each other so well that they could guess just from a few expressions.

(Should we tell them, Da Ge?)

(Liu Sha might be listening!)

(Why don't you check first?)

(.... Nothing. He's not around. But what if he re-watch what happened anyway?)

(Then we'll make sure he doesn't later. Find a distraction.)

The two other LIs look at them with confusion, while the old man just smiled from ear to ear.

Mo Aini then turned to them. "Alright. We've reached a decision."

Ma Jianyu just blinked, amazed. "Did you two just communicate with your faces?"

Qu-yeye chuckled. "That's how love is for you, children. That's how love is."

She Haoran just raised an eyebrow, waiting for what decision they have reached. "Go on, Mr. Mo. Speak."

Mo Aini breathed in, ready to explain the secret of their whole 2D universe itself. "First, I want to ask. If you happen to live in a world being controlled by a bunch of technicians and coders, whichI'mnotsayingyoudothisisallhypotheticalhaha.... Would you still believe your will is your own?"

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