Even though, based on their observations of Si Di and the strange man’s various intimate actions in front of the elevator and in the hot spring area, Si Chu had pretty much concluded that the two were involved, he still held onto a sliver of hope deep down…
What if there was some misunderstanding?
What if… his brother’s hand on the strange man’s shoulder, leaning in close with all those charming smiles and beautiful eyes, was actually to secretly plant a tracking device on the guy’s collar, and the soft words from his lips weren’t sweet nothings but something like: ‘You better cooperate with me, or I’ll blow your brains out’?
As for sharing an umbrella and putting his hand in the other guy’s pocket, maybe it was because his brother had a spring-loaded knife hidden in his sleeve, pressing the blade tip against the man’s kidney to keep him from making any rash moves.
Soaking in the hot spring could also be a trick to throw others off. Maybe behind the bamboo screen, Si Di was fully armed, squatting by the pool edge, loading a magazine, ready to take down the enemy at any moment.
Si Chu was gullible enough to believe anything Si Di said, as long as Si Di dared to make up an excuse.
But it seemed his good brother Si Di had no plans to explain anything. Like Si Chu, when Si Di heard the cries for help, he didn’t bother putting anything on and rushed over to save people, barefoot on the cold, slippery marble floor.
Tiny snowflakes landed on his skin, melting into droplets of water instantly.
After climbing out of the pool, Si Chu laid the brown-haired man on the ground and, confirming he was only suffering from oxygen deprivation from staying too long in the hot spring, turned his attention entirely to Si Di.
“Who is he?” Si Chu demanded, eyebrows furrowed, his breath visible in the cold air, his tone sharp and aggressive, “Brother, what’s your relationship with him?”
Ye Feiran reacted quickly. As soon as the black-haired man’s silhouette disappeared in the distance, he immediately took off after him. Si Chu wanted to chase too but was blocked by Si Di stepping to the side. Si Di glanced at Ye Feiran, who was already far ahead, and his brows slowly furrowed as well.
The suppressor for the five senses was really troublesome, and he had been too relaxed and complacent. After all, it was rare to take a vacation, and it had been a long time since he had seen Xiao Zhenyun. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, especially when the other person was also enthusiastic. He had put all his attention on the guide, completely unaware that Si Chu and Ye Feiran were also in this hotel, and he didn’t even know how long they had been tracking him.
Has Xiao Zhenyun’s identity been exposed?
He had always been careful to wear a mask when traveling, and he had cut his hair short, looking entirely different from before. Plus, he used to always be in a wheelchair, so others were not familiar with his height and how he walked upright. It was difficult to identify him just from his back.
Si Chu probably hadn’t noticed… Otherwise, the reaction wouldn’t be like this now.
…Although this kind of extreme reaction was quite strange. Si Di was very puzzled. What had Si Chu been imagining during this time?
“Brother!” Si Chu’s tail stood up in anger as he stepped forward, “Answer me.”
“Just a friend,” Si Di avoided his gaze, “Aren’t you cold? It’s quite a coincidence that you and Xiao Fei are here too…”
“Brother, don’t change the subject, answer me honestly. Why did your friend run away? Why didn’t he let us say hello to him?” Si Chu’s eyes widened, “Are you planning to run away too?”
“…He didn’t run away, he’s just… shy. The weather’s too cold, and he’s not feeling well, so he went back to the hotel to rest.”
“You’re lying to me!” Si Chu’s tail was puffed up with anger, “Do you think I’m that easy to fool?”
Si Di: “Um…”
“Brother, are you…” Si Chu took a deep breath, plucking up his courage, “Are you cheating? Is that guy your mistress?”
Si Di had prepared a lot of reasons to refute that the black-haired man ≠ Xiao Zhenyun, completely unprepared for Si Chu to break the problem from such a tricky angle. For a moment, he was dumbfounded.
Seeing his brother not immediately refuting, Si Chu’s eyes turned red, his lips tightened, trembling as he said, “Brother, you… you’re being so unfair to Little Uncle.”
“I…” Si Di stupidly reached out to hold Si Chu’s shoulders, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how to start. His brain was spinning rapidly, wondering whether to go along with Si Chu’s extremely bizarre but oddly reasonable logic, or to deny it and find another reason…
“Feiran said… said that because Little Uncle couldn’t be found, you chose someone you liked, someone who resembled Little Uncle, to alleviate your loneliness… We should understand you, not stand on a moral high ground and demand that you exhaust yourself waiting for a lifetime.” Si Chu’s eyes grew redder as he spoke, quickly wiping away tears, “But I… still feel… is it too soon?… Little Uncle is so pitiful, and that man is also very pitiful… being used as a substitute…”
Si Di: “…”
“Brother.” Si Chu looked up at Si Di with tear-filled eyes, “Can you hold on a little longer? Don’t change your mind… Even if you truly fall in love with someone else in the future, please take every relationship seriously and don’t pointlessly search for shadows of the past in new people.”
On the cold marble tiles, the brown-haired man gradually regained consciousness as the cold wind blew. He was stiff all over, shivering as he climbed up from the ground, only to be greeted by a bristling tail and a pair of excited, trembling buttocks.
Brown-haired man: “…”
Two naked men seemed to be having an intense conversation beside him. When he opened his eyes, they immediately fell silent. The one with silver-white hair glanced at him as if to confirm he was alright, then whispered, “I understand.” and quickly walked away.
The other man with dog ears and a dog tail sniffled, wiping away tears, then turned to him with a sad look, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine…” The brown-haired man’s accent was strange, presumably a foreigner. He asked curiously, “Are you a special individual?”
“Yes.” Si Chu bent down to help him up.
The brown-haired man was also naked, unabashedly showing his body, while his gaze also observed Si Chu’s muscular physique, “Are you a sentinel? A guide?”
“I’m a sentinel.” Si Chu didn’t want to linger. While he had a good constitution, it didn’t mean he wasn’t affected by the cold. “I’m leaving now. Take care and don’t soak in the hot spring for too long.”
The brown-haired man quickly stopped him, “Oh, you saved me. Can we exchange contact information? I want to express my gratitude.”
“No need.” Si Chu kept walking, heading to the pool Si Di had just been in, unsurprisingly finding it empty. He then returned to the pool he and Ye Feiran had been in, hastily picking up their clothes and hurrying back to the hotel.
Before leaving, Si Di didn’t immediately return to his room. Instead, he received a text message from Xiao Zhenyun and headed to the massage room on the top floor. Xiao Zhenyun wore only a loose down jacket, zipped all the way up, his mask lost somewhere in the chaos, sitting awkwardly on the waiting chair across from the front desk, a thin blanket borrowed from who knows where draped over his legs, impatiently flipping through a magazine.
As Si Di walked in, he happened to overhear two young men and women at the front desk jokingly speculating that this handsome man with a dark expression looked like he had been caught cheating in bed and thrown out by the aggrieved party, too flustered to even put on his pants, seeking refuge here.
Although this guess was completely off, it strangely matched Xiao Zhenyun’s current state.
Xiao Zhenyun alertly raised his eyes and only put down the magazine covering his face after seeing that it was Si Di. He lowered his voice unhappily, “How did Ye Feiran know which floor our room is on? He blocked me in the corridor. Fortunately, the elevator I was in was crowded, so I didn’t get out and just went straight to the top floor to avoid him.”
“I guess they spotted me as soon as I arrived at the hotel and have been following us…” Si Di chuckled, tossing other clothes to Xiao Zhenyun, “They’re quite skilled. I underestimated them.”
“They spotted me?” Xiao Zhenyun frowned, wrapping the thin blanket around himself as he went into the restroom cubicle to put on his pants. When he came out, he looked neat and tidy, “How unfortunate to run into them here… Xiao Nian will go crazy again when he finds out.”
“No, they don’t know who you are yet.” Si Di licked his canine teeth, chuckling before he could explain himself. After a while, he said, amidst Xiao Zhenyun’s disdainful gaze, “They mistakenly think I’m cheating, and you’re my mistress.”
Xiao Zhenyun: “…”
With a little thought, Xiao Zhenyun understood Si Chu and Ye Feiran’s thought process. “Well… it’s the answer they could come up with. Someone who looks a bit like Little Uncle but isn’t Little Uncle. Who else could it be? It’s reasonable to think it’s a new lover their brother found who resembles Little Uncle.”
Xiao Zhenyun thought for a moment and then chuckled, “That’s a pretty good answer. You can just let this misunderstanding continue.”
“In that case, what kind of terrible image do I have?” Si Di squinted, “How can I establish authority in front of Xiao Chu and Xiao Fei in the future?”
“Your towering image will probably completely shattered from now on.” Xiao Zhenyun couldn’t help but feel a bit amused, “For the sake of world stability, sacrificing a little dignity is nothing to worry about.”
“How come you sound like you’ve been through it all?”
“Am I not? If it weren’t for Si Chu and Ye Feiran bleaching me clean before I knew it, I’d probably be some weirdo image wanting to eat my nephew’s rice bowl.”
“…”
But Xiao Zhenyun’s words came too early. He wasn’t someone who had been through it all but the ongoing one—
The next morning at six o’clock, Xiao Nian’s video call invitation came in fiercely, sounding like thunder.
Having developed a good biological clock over the past six months, Xiao Zhenyun received the video call without any morning grumpiness. But on the other end of the floating screen, Xiao Nian was like an angry frog, croaking loudly, “Xiao Zhenyun! Where are you right now!”
Si Di opened his eyes groggily, “Nian Nian, good morning…”
“I’m not good at all!”
“Um…?” Si Di rubbed his face against Xiao Zhenyun’s pajamas a couple of times, puzzled, “Why are you mad? Didn’t Xiao Chu and the others not find Zhenyun?”
Xiao Nian took a deep breath, gritting his teeth, “If they really found out, I’ll take a watermelon knife and end it all with you guys right now.”
“What’s wrong with you then?” Xiao Zhenyun’s voice still carried the hoarseness of just waking up, which made Si Di’s heart itch. He squeezed Xiao Zhenyun’s waist under the covers and dared to move his hand a bit further down.
“Both of you have read plot books…” Xiao Nian asked with restrained anger, “Why did you both choose to go on vacation to the same hot spring hotel? Is it deliberate? Are you not satisfied with this world and want to play god?”
“I don’t even remember this part.” Xiao Zhenyun said, and Si Di nodded along, “Me neither. After that ‘Xiao Zhenyun’ in the original story went offline, I didn’t pay much attention to the rest.”
Xiao Nian knew it would be like this. He held his head in pain, which was throbbing slightly, “So everything is fate, right? It’s fate that you guys are meant to change the plot, fate that the establishment of this new world is full of twists and turns, fate that the world will collapse in three years and we’ll all perish together…”
“Is this a crucial plot?” Xiao Zhenyun’s words were laden with a refusal to work overtime. “I feel like the protagonists soaking in the hot spring should be just a heartwarming daily plot, the kind of transitional chapter used to ease the pace. If it’s not that important, let it pass like that… Si Di and I will check out and go home now.”
“If it’s not important, why would I vent my anger to you here early in the morning?” Xiao Nian retorted angrily. “You two shutting down the MP early, because it’s inevitable due to the overall trend, I’ve endured it. But the main plotline has deviated by a whopping 15% because of this, and yet here you are…”
“…”
“So what’s the situation exactly?” Xiao Zhenyun sighed. “Let me see if I can salvage it.”
Xiao Nian probably waited for this question, immediately sending a photo. “Do you remember this important character in the plot, Jefferson Barlow?”
Si Di looked up, very familiar with him; he was the brown-haired man who almost drowned from lack of oxygen while soaking in the hot spring last night. “I know him, what about him?” Si Di was afraid that Xiao Zhenyun had hurriedly left earlier without paying attention to the appearance of the ‘corpse’ in the pool, so he explained the man’s identity.
“In the original story, when Jefferson called for help, Si Chu left the pool to buy ice-cold cola at the front desk. Only Ye Feiran heard the noise and completed the rescue independently.”
Just from the previous summary, Xiao Zhenyun roughly understood. It seemed that after Si Chu’s illicit love imprisonment plotline, it would be Ye Feiran’s turn for a messy love-struck admirer subplot.
Ye Feiran stayed with Jefferson until he regained consciousness. After learning that Jefferson had fainted due to lack of oxygen and low blood sugar, Ye Feiran carefully took him to the front desk and bought him food. Jefferson had a very good impression of him. Then, he repaid Ye Feiran, claiming to be a foreigner who loved traveling the world and was visiting here for the first time, not familiar with the local situation, and got Ye Feiran’s contact information for various reasons.
The next morning, he coincidentally met Ye Feiran and Si Chu who were planning to go out for sightseeing, and casually joined their trip. Jefferson was very talkative, and Ye Feiran happened to speak his native language, so the two communicated very smoothly… Jefferson’s behavior during the sightseeing trip was still decent, but that night when they parted ways, Jefferson asked Ye Feiran out alone, expressing a strong interest in him and longing to have a fling with him.
Ye Feiran was startled and immediately rejected him, saying that he and Si Chu were lovers, and the union of special individuals was equivalent to marriage among ordinary people, meaning he was already married. But Jefferson didn’t mind and showed the mark left by the wedding ring on his ring finger, indicating that he was also married. However, he didn’t see it as a problem because he and his husband maintained an open relationship for a long time. He believed Ye Feiran could do the same, after all, it would be a pity to only taste the flavor of one man for a lifetime.