Xin Hexue stepped forward and took the bouquet from Yan Ji’s hands.
The white flowers clustered against his chest, mirroring the pure white scarf he wore. He didn’t look like someone from the mortal world, but rather like a transcendent holy spirit described in mythology.
Yan Ji couldn’t tear his eyes away from him for even a second.
His adrenaline surged wildly, and he couldn’t even tell whether it was a physiological reaction to being lovestruck, or the thrilling rush of confessing with his head metaphorically hanging from his waistband under the threat of the White Tower’s death laser.
It was probably both.
“Thank you.”
Xin Hexue thanked him. His eyelashes lowered slightly as he looked at the bouquet in his arms. The light yellow stamens were nestled within the white petals. This unusual plant seemed to stir up some memory in him. He said softly, “I really like it.”
Yan Ji felt something was off.
Xin Hexue’s expression seemed immersed in some kind of emotion.
He still hadn’t figured out the details of the other party’s past.
But joy clouded his head anyway, his sympathetic nervous system was in full excitement mode, and his palms were sweating.
“Th-then I…” “We…” Xin Hexue gave him a smile.
Yan Ji suddenly went quiet, feeling like his brain was spinning in confusion.
A cool fingertip pressed gently on the bruised area above Yan Ji’s cheekbone. Xin Hexue asked with concern, “Did you get this injury in the Folded Zone?”
The sentinel mumbled in reply, “Mm.”
Yan Ji didn’t want to show his vulnerable side in front of Xin Hexue. Injuries would make him seem less dominant.
He was already three years younger than Xin Hexue. Like most sentinels, he carried a sense of pride. Yan Ji wanted to leave a reliable, dependable impression on Xin Hexue.
So when Xin Hexue touched the side of his face, Yan Ji showed an awkward expression.
Xin Hexue noticed the uncomfortable shift in his demeanor and slightly curved his eyes.
He lowered his hand. “Remember to take care of it.”
From the moment Xin Hexue accepted the bouquet, the red laser dot from the top of the White Tower had already disappeared.
But he had been out for a while now. Those people should’ve finished arguing by now, so he should go back.
Xin Hexue took two steps back, raised his right hand next to his cheek in a phone gesture, and shook it. “Go back for now. If anything comes up, you can call me.”
Yan Ji nodded solemnly, watching as Xin Hexue returned to the White Tower.
He stood in his combat uniform, tall and upright in the freezing cold, like a towering pine tree. Compared to the youthful impulsiveness of six months ago, he had grown taller, and the messy black hair resting over his brow, along with the maturing features, made him resemble He Botian more and more.
The outer elevator slowly rose, and Xin Hexue glanced down at Yan Ji through the glass wall of the White Tower.
[Yan Ji love value +5]
[Yan Ji’s current love value is 85]
When Xin Hexue stepped out of the elevator, he ran into Ji Yushan.
The man had glasses on his tall nose bridge, and their eyes met through the cold lenses.
Ji Yushan said slowly, “It looks like you’ve found a suitable replacement.”
Xin Hexue frowned. He wasn’t particularly interested in interacting with him.
“Your words are a bit unpleasant.”
He dropped his gaze and brushed past Ji Yushan into the room beside the hallway.
……
Xin Hexue never saw Yan Ji as some so-called “substitute for He Botian”.
Even if that was what the script said, and even if he occasionally hinted at it with ambiguous behavior, leaving behind vague traces for Yan Ji to pick up on…
But strictly speaking, He Botian wasn’t that important to Xin Hexue. At least not important enough to warrant finding a substitute to mourn after death.
Then again, doesn’t the very act of looking for a substitute imply that He Botian wasn’t so irreplaceable in the first place?
Xin Hexue didn’t quite understand the logic of the script.
If someone was truly irreplaceable, why find a substitute? If you found a substitute, then the original person couldn’t have been that important.
But Xin Hexue wouldn’t waste energy obsessing over these minor contradictions. What he needed to do was simply gain the target’s love value and heartbreak value, perfectly complete the task, and exit the small world.
Xin Hexue knew the direction of every plotline, and He Botian’s death had also been within his expectations. Under such circumstances, these targets were merely data clusters he had to interact with because of work. Whether it was Yan Ji, He Botian, or Wei Zhuo, it was all the same.
No one would invest genuine emotion in data.
Even if they had flesh and blood and all the things humans were supposed to have.
To Xin Hexue, they were still beings from a different world. You could even say, in his eyes, they were just humanoid creatures.
Even during the most intimate acts, Xin Hexue couldn’t help but feel a strange illusion of interspecies contact.
This illusion may have also come from how beast-like the targets acted during sex. Deep down, Xin Hexue just found them annoying.
As for System K, that was a bionic android.
Naturally, he was different.
Xin Hexue sat by the window, and the pale white light of winter spilled onto his body.
Like a little cat dropped into a strange world, a world where only humanoid creatures and bionic caregivers existed.
Every day, White Tower personnel came to see him, and there were staff assigned to his food and daily needs. If Xin Hexue wanted, he could live a life where he lifted a finger and had everything done for him. When he was bored, someone would come to amuse him and take him for walks in the White Tower’s entertainment and leisure zones.
Inside the White Tower, everything seemed frozen in a time before the apocalypse.
Laughter and chatter. Crowds coming and going.
This was a deliberately constructed utopia. The final Eden.
From the beginning, the White Tower had been the core of the Empire’s future plans.
With habitable land reduced to one-tenth of its former size, billions of humans were swallowed by the already collapsed Folded Zones. In this hopeless era, the conservative faction held power, and the new laws passed each year revealed their ideological agenda.
To this day, there was still no way to fully eliminate all Folded Zones, aside from purification by guides’ mental power.
This was the Empire’s original plan, back in the early days of the apocalypse.
But when they sent the rare guides into Folded Zones to locate one source after another and perform purifications, the results showed the plan had a far higher failure rate than success rate.
The Folded Zones continued to split, fragment, and multiply. The number of sources increased far faster than the guide population. Even with the desperate cooperation of guides and sentinels, human territory still shrank down to just one-tenth its original size.
In the first few years after the apocalypse, half the guides died in the Folded Zones. The other half died on the lab tables developing mental power, or were accidentally killed during sentinels’ riots or mental breakdowns…until the population ratio of guides to sentinels became 1:100.
This period of history was buried and no one brought it up again.
More people began to realize that with such visible losses, humanity’s future was bleak.
Conservatives believed that when the final moment came, as long as the guides remained inside the White Tower with the rest of the survivors, the barrier formed by mental power would be the last impenetrable wall.
They moved all the fruits of human knowledge and technology into the White Tower.
Because of conservative support, the status of guides soared, and ironclad protection laws were passed to ensure the survival of enough guides when the end finally arrived.
Guides were burdened with great expectations. Fanatical supporters believed guides were the future of human evolution, and that only humans with purification ability could adapt to what was to come.
Especially after a 3S-level high-level guide appeared in the Empire.
At this very moment, the highly anticipated guide was taking medication.
It was unknown what Ji Yushan said to the representatives of the White Tower and Black Tower. In any case, after nearly a week of recuperation, the leave request Xin Hexue had submitted to return home from the White Tower was finally approved.
The condition was that he had to return to White Tower every month for check-ups and follow-ups.
The staff at White Tower were reluctant to see him go.
On the day Xin Hexue left the White Tower, the weather was just like it had been when he first left it for independence.
There was no wind or snow, soft sunlight, and it was not cold at all.
Xin Hexue noticed a red banner hanging at the entrance of White Tower: “Guides and Little Cat’s Home.”
He was slightly puzzled.
Xin Hexue turned his head and asked his companion, “What does this mean? Why did they suddenly hang that up?”
The staff at White Tower explained, “Oh, it’s because before we said sentinels and dogs weren’t allowed into the White Tower. The Black Tower representatives took it to the Sentinel-Guide United Congress and accused us of discrimination against sentinels. They said it was not conducive to the grand unity of sentinels and guides.”
Xin Hexue: “…So?”
The staff pointed at the banner and smiled. “Guides and little cats are welcome to enter.”
“This will always be your home.”
The staff at White Tower said gently.
……
Xin Hexue declined White Tower’s offer to send a car to take him home.
He walked toward the young sentinel who was waiting for him outside the tower.
Yan Ji looked a bit confused and asked, “That… what kind of hand signal was that?”
Xin Hexue looked back. Among those seeing him off from White Tower, some were lowering their heads to wipe away tears, some were waving goodbye, and some were signaling into the darkness.
“It’s better that you don’t know.”
Xin Hexue gave Yan Ji a faint smile.
It probably meant… ceasefire, target locked, continue observation.
……
Yan Ji escorted Xin Hexue home, but Xin Hexue only let him walk him to the intersection.
In winter, the sun set quickly. The orange-red afterglow faded, and dusky night fell over the horizon.
Street lamps lit up the road.
Before Xin Hexue turned into the inner villa district, Yan Ji called out to him.
The tall sentinel stood still, his gaze dropping to the ground and then sweeping past the shrubs along the street. “Um… next week is Christmas.”
Two voices overlapped, one hoarse, one gentle.
“Do you want to spend it with me?”
Xin Hexue tilted his head at him, a smile at the corner of his lips.
Yan Ji widened his eyes in surprise, looked at him, and said firmly, “Of course!”
Xin Hexue nodded knowingly. “Mm…”
The deliberately prolonged tone was like a cat’s tail swaying, and Yan Ji looked at him expectantly, waiting for a response.
Xin Hexue’s final syllable was light and cheerful. “Alright then.”
“See you then.”
“See you… then.”
Yan Ji stood there in a daze, waving at the back of the young man walking away.
He couldn’t believe it. He was actually going to spend Christmas with Xin Hexue.
Did this mean their relationship had moved a step forward?!
And Xin Hexue had accepted the bouquet he gave him when he confessed.
A gray wolf howled from the mountain peak in his mental landscape.
This was the only thing that stopped Yan Ji from embarrassing himself by howling with excitement on the street.
As he walked back toward school, he didn’t notice that behind him, in the villa district near Xin Hexue’s house, the streetlight flickered.
Like it had malfunctioned, it flashed eerily twice in the night.
……
The Dryas made into preserved dried flower specimens sat on the table.
Dark green vines crawled across the floor, lifting at the tip to touch the flower.
It matched the token of affection in his memory.
The huge vine shivered excitedly.
Home…
Back home… their home…
A vague thought surfaced in its mind.
Its things… the mug, the shoes, the clothes… where were its things…?!
A huge shadow and vine after vine coiled and thrashed madly inside the closet.
This side of the closet was nearly empty.
Where were its things…?!
The sound of running water came from the bathroom.
White mist steamed up, fogging the frosted glass door.
“Mm…?”
“Did the power go out?”
As hot water poured over his body, Xin Hexue suddenly stopped moving in the dark space.
