The Genius Cannon Fodder's Counterattack 7

A few days later, Chi Xiaochi started packing, getting ready to move into the apartment Cheng Jian had bought.

He specially hired a moving company to come and haul his beloved piano out of Yang Baihua's place.

With the piano gone, the living room looked a great deal emptier.

Even though the piano's legs had had pads on them, the spot where it had stood still left a pale mark, a shade different from the floor around it.

Chi Xiaochi filled a bucket with clean water and scrubbed the floor, humming a tune as he worked.

Yang Baihua was busy cleaning too, getting ready to welcome his parents.

The tune Cheng Yuan was humming was the song that had been played for him in the car that day; he bobbed his head along to it, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

That cheerfulness, seen through Yang Baihua's eyes, only stirred up a measure of irritation in him instead.

Back when Cheng Yuan had been in college, the thing he'd been fanatically obsessed with was some kind of avant-garde "vocal-instrumentalization" music—an extremely obscure niche with brutally high standards for professional skill—which was exactly why the little ensemble Cheng Yuan had pulled together had never, in four years, managed to grow past five members.

Yang Baihua had gone to watch them perform at Cheng Yuan's school once. Those few kids had been beating hand drums, playing violins, singing and dancing all at once in a tiny little music room—no lyrics at all, just loose, scatting, improvised singing, trading melodies back and forth, harmonizing with each other.

When the singing was over, Cheng Yuan had clutched his guitar and come running, thump-thump-thump, straight to Yang Baihua's side.

Yang Baihua had twisted open a bottle of water and handed it to him. "You guys performing somewhere?"

Cheng Yuan had hugged the water bottle. "Nope. We're just messing around."

He'd chugged down a couple of mouthfuls. "You like it?"

Yang Baihua had smiled and turned the question back on him: "Were you happy?"

Cheng Yuan had grinned, baring a row of small white teeth. "Happy."

Yang Baihua had smoothed his hair for him. "If you're happy, then I like it too."

Cheng Yuan had still been young back then, just a sophomore, a kid who'd been raised steeped in honey—what did he understand? All he knew was how to play around, and that was only natural.

...But why, even now, had he still never grown up?

Four years of college, and all he'd cared about was "playing around"—to this day he had no particular skill to his name, and he was still counting on music to make a living. Was he planning to coast on "playing around" for the rest of his life?

Chi Xiaochi couldn't be bothered to guess at whatever complicated thoughts were running through Yang Baihua's head right now, and just kept humming.

Yang Baihua set the rinsed-out mop out on the balcony to dry, wiped his hands, ruffled Chi Xiaochi's hair, and said, in the helpless tone of someone coaxing a child, "Why does it feel like you're actually happy about moving out?"

Chi Xiaochi really was quite pleased—pleased enough that he almost wanted to set off a 3-point fireworks display to celebrate.

After all, he didn't want to waste an extra 4 points every single day just to keep his and Yang Baihua's chastity safely intact.

Chi Xiaochi lied through his teeth without missing a beat. "No, no, it's not that. I haven't seen a friend of mine in ages, and since I'm staying at his place this time, the two of us will finally have plenty to catch up on."

Yang Baihua's brow creased, almost imperceptibly. "What friend?"

Chi Xiaochi said, "A childhood friend."

"...What's his name?"

Chi Xiaochi answered softly, "Lou Ying."

Whether it was his imagination or not, when the name "Lou Ying" came up, Yang Baihua noticed that something in "Cheng Yuan's" eyes and tone turned gentle for just a flicker of a moment, in a way that seemed almost absurd—as if that name were a treasure he kept tucked away against his heart, something he never let anyone see, only occasionally taking it out to hold up to the light and polish.

Yang Baihua grew wary. "How come you've never mentioned him before?"

Chi Xiaochi dunked the rag in the bucket, swished it around, then pulled it out and wrung it. "He went abroad a long time ago."

Only then did Yang Baihua remember he hadn't actually asked an important question. "You only told me you'd found a place to stay—you still haven't told me where."

Chi Xiaochi named the housing complex, then settled in to thoroughly enjoy the change in Yang Baihua's expression.

—The monthly property-management fee there alone was higher than Yang Baihua's salary.

The system said, "That place isn't owned by Cheng Jian—"

Chi Xiaochi said, "Shh. Don't talk. Just feel it."

The system: "...Feel what?"

Chi Xiaochi: "That rush of getting crushed by a whale-level spender."

The system: "..."

Yang Baihua snapped back to himself and asked, "What's he like, this friend of yours?"

Chi Xiaochi answered, "Really good. He was my best friend when I was little."

Yang Baihua pressed his thin lips together. "Xiao Cheng, how long has it been since you two saw each other?"

Chi Xiaochi answered without even thinking, "Twelve years."

At that, Yang Baihua let out a breath of relief and said, gently, "Twelve years—that long, he's bound to be different from before."

Chi Xiaochi shrugged, utterly unbothered. "Probably."

"People's hearts are hidden behind their skin. He's inviting you to stay at his place—do you even know what he's really thinking?"

Chi Xiaochi looked back at him with Cheng Yuan's innocent, little-rabbit eyes, as if he had no idea what Yang Baihua was even talking about.

Some people could be together morning and night for years and you still couldn't see through what was in their heart.

Seeing that Cheng Yuan wasn't taking his roundabout advice to heart at all, Yang Baihua felt even more unsettled.

Cheng Yuan might have a mild, soft-spoken temperament, but given his family background, his circle of friends would never, ever be on the same level as Yang Baihua's.

Every time one of Cheng Yuan's friends showed up, it was just another reminder to Yang Baihua that he and Cheng Yuan didn't belong to the same world.

Yang Baihua needed to pull him into his own circle.

And so, through careful planning and persuasion, he had already helped Cheng Yuan draw a clean line between himself and plenty of people from his old circle whom Yang Baihua had judged not worth knowing.

But who could have guessed that now, out of nowhere, some "Lou Ying" would turn up?

This exchange left the mood between the two of them rather unpleasant.

To be precise, the unpleasantness was entirely one-sided—Yang Baihua's alone.

That night, he texted Cheng Yuan to say the manager had suddenly called him in for overtime, and he wouldn't be coming home to sleep.

Cheng Yuan texted back almost immediately: "Go get 'em." followed by three little hearts.

Yang Baihua: "..."

After replying to Yang Baihua's text, Chi Xiaochi lay down on the soft, big bed in the apartment and said to the system, "I wonder what kind of face he'll make when he gets home and finds out I've already moved out."

The system figured it would probably be the kind of face that came with an affection-point drop of -20.

Chi Xiaochi stretched lazily. "His parents are coming the day after tomorrow, right? Before they got here he wanted me to move out, and now that I've moved out he's not happy about it either. Men—every last one of them, big pigs' trotters."

The system admired Chi Xiaochi's composure about all this, but still couldn't help reminding him, "Mr. Chi, please keep an eye on your mission progress."

These past few days, Chi Xiaochi had been treading the razor's edge of just barely passing on Yang Baihua's affection points, while the regret value—the one and only metric that actually determined mission completion—had been completely ignored.

Chi Xiaochi shot back at the system, "Aren't you tired?"

The system: "...Hm?"

Chi Xiaochi said, "You've been calling me 'Mr. Chi' for days now straight. Are we really that unfamiliar with each other?"

The system said nothing.

It hadn't always been like this. It used to get along fine with every host.

That had held true right up until the moment its eighth host reported it.

Starting with the ninth host, it had taken to addressing hosts as "Mr./Ms. X."

"If we're not close, we're not close, I guess." Chi Xiaochi quickly read the system's hesitation out of its silence and said, generously, "Better not to get too attached—otherwise when I eventually leave, you'll end up crying your eyes out."

The system: "..."

Chi Xiaochi: "Because you'll never find another host as good as me again, one who lets you watch movies inside his head in the middle of the night."

The system: "......"

Chi Xiaochi said, "Next time, remember not to play it out loud."

The system said, "...Sorry."

Chi Xiaochi said, "It's fine. I hadn't seen that movie in a long time, so it was nice to rewatch it along with you."

Even through its guilt, the system still had a question. "Mr. Chi, didn't you already use a hypnosis card on him?"

These past few days, every point of affection Chi Xiaochi had farmed had gone straight into redeeming hypnosis cards—first to knock Yang Baihua out, then to knock himself out, until the system felt it had been demoted from a proper system to some kind of knockout-drug peddler.

"I'm a light sleeper," Chi Xiaochi said. "Besides, that hypnosis card isn't a dead-pig card."

The system apologized again. "Sorry."

Chi Xiaochi asked, "Was my movie any good?"

The system: "...Very good."

Chi Xiaochi said, "Good to hear. If you can pull up the movies I starred in on your end, then once I finish the mission and head back, there's a chance you'll still get to see me."

Hearing him say that, the system asked back, "Is your wish to go back to your original world?"

Chi Xiaochi raised an eyebrow. "Of course."

The system laughed bitterly to itself.

The "Scumbag Gong Redemption System" that 061 worked for was just one branch among the countless world-systems out there. Every host carrying out missions through it had, without exception, suffered a life-threatening accident in their own world; the moment their fading brainwaves were caught by the Master System, a survey-system network extended across countless parallel worlds was what made it possible to ferry them across.

The Master System would sign a contract with each host, issue them a system, and have them carry out certain missions.

After completing ten worlds, a host could make a single wish; once the Master System granted that wish, the contract with the host would automatically dissolve.

As for the physical body each of them had left behind in the real world, the system could only guarantee the bare minimum needed to keep it alive.

According to what the systems shared with each other privately, almost every host they'd ever handled had, upon first entering, held onto the wish of "going home."

And yet the flow of time inside a mission world ran at exactly the same rate as the flow of time in a host's real-world body.

What it meant, for a person, to lie on a bed like a living corpse for months or even years—that hardly needed spelling out.

On that point alone, it was enough to make every host 061 had ever handled change their wish by the back half of a mission.

Part of the reason 061 chased efficiency so relentlessly was to get hosts home as fast as possible—and yet, to this day, it had never once succeeded.

—Every one of them had, without exception, chosen to stay behind in some mission world or another, letting their original body die instead.

The reason it kept pushing Chi Xiaochi to act quickly was also, in part, fear that he would linger too long in a mission world and forget where he'd actually come from.

These past few days, 061 had gone through no small amount of material on Chi Xiaochi, and had also gotten a look at Chi Xiaochi's true appearance through his films.

He was even more striking than the system had imagined.

His gaze was faint and distant, his face carrying a trace of weariness that came only after desire had been fully satisfied; his thick, half-long black hair was simply tied back, leaving his neck looking long and slender, his build lean and taut, his bones fine-boned, yet his waist dimples and muscle definition were not the least bit lacking.

Even playing a boy from a fishing village, he carried an air of refinement unlike anyone around him, lending real vitality to a boy whose ambitions had reached for the sky while his fate turned out so tragic.

Unlike his somewhat noble-leaning looks, Chi Xiaochi's actual background was astonishingly ordinary.

His father was a toothbrush-factory worker, his mother a female worker at a local small food-processing workshop; they lived in a shabby little room in an old communal tenement building passed down through the family, and his relationship with his parents wasn't good. After entering the industry, he hadn't made any especially close friends, and his romantic history amounted to exactly zero—yet he was, strangely enough, well-liked by a number of the industry's senior figures and heavyweights, the screenwriting giant Sun Guangren chief among them.

Weighing all the information and data together, 061 concluded that, to Chi Xiaochi, his career was probably the single most important thing in his original world, the thing he'd be most reluctant to leave behind.

And so, 061 hinted, with a loaded undertone, "You were pretty successful back in your original world. It'd be such a shame not to go back."

Unexpectedly, Chi Xiaochi said, "It's not a shame."

"I have to go back. Because if I don't, no one's left to sweep his grave."

The system: "..."

It thought of Beiman Cemetery, and then of the "Lou Ying" Chi Xiaochi had brought up in front of Yang Baihua, and found itself lost in thought.

"Is Lou Ying your friend?"

Chi Xiaochi didn't answer, just reached a hand out toward the nightstand.

Sitting there were the sleeping pills he'd bought that day.

This week he wouldn't have any access to Yang Baihua, so he couldn't farm much affection, and he didn't want to go burning through the barely-passing amount he'd scraped together.

The key trigger event hadn't gone off yet, and if his affection points dropped too low, there was no telling what kind of unexpected complication might crop up—so he'd decided to be frugal and, just like back in his real life, substitute medication for a hypnosis card.

He popped one pill, thought about it, then took a second one, and swallowed them dry without any water.

Only after getting the pills down did Chi Xiaochi answer the system's question: "He's my best friend."

...The exact same words he'd said to Yang Baihua.

061 wanted to ask whether his insomnia had anything to do with him, but just as the words were about to leave his mouth, he held them back.

This wasn't something a system should be fretting over. Just as it had told itself before—one host, one system, no need to get too deeply entangled, since in the end they'd always be going their separate ways regardless.

The system resolved to be a cold, emotionless system.

Better to go on pushing him to think more carefully about the mission instead.

The medication was gradually starting to take effect.

Listening to the system's urging, Chi Xiaochi pulled the blanket in tight around himself and gave a lazy yawn. "...To break the deadlock, there's a best plan, a middle plan, and a worst plan—three ways to do it, total."

061: "...Hm?"

Chi Xiaochi stretched one hand out and tucked it behind his head. "Remember the thing I asked you to do when I first got here?"

061 certainly remembered, though he still couldn't quite grasp what Chi Xiaochi was getting at with it.

Chi Xiaochi had demanded that 061 play the entire worldline from start to finish three times over, and had gone back to watch certain parts more than three times.

He'd demanded to be immersed in the despair Cheng Yuan felt right before his suicide, and had asked 061 about several specific details besides.

After that, he'd spent a long while turning Cheng Yuan's phone over in his hands.

Chi Xiaochi closed his eyes. "...Let's set his starting regret value at 9 points. No rush. We'll take it slow."