The Genius Cannon Fodder's Counterattack 10

Yang Baihua hesitated for a long moment. "Mr. Lou?"

"It's me. Mr. Yang, would you like to come in and sit for a while?"

061 had no idea what he looked like, so he naturally had no reaction. But in Yang Baihua's eyes, that composure took on a subtly different meaning.

...He seemed to have known of Yang Baihua's existence all along and was utterly unsurprised by their resemblance.

Yet Yang Baihua knew absolutely nothing about the man before him.

Yang Baihua had not intended to stay, but that face left him no choice.

061 invited him inside and said, "Xiao Yuan went out. You can wait here for a little while."

"I have things to do. I'll only sit for a moment before I leave."

"In a hurry? ...Would you like wine or tea?"

"Plain water is fine."

061 smiled. "That's no way to receive a guest. Tea, then."

There was a set of gongfu tea ware in the apartment, which Cheng Jian had bought. The procedure was so cumbersome that Cheng Jian had probably used it only two or three times before putting it away for good.

061 took out the tea set, then a tin of premium Phoenix Dancong tea. He lit the stove, fanned the coals, and warmed the pot, his movements unhurried and elegant, carrying the calm assurance of someone at peace with himself.

He had been through a hundred worlds. Putting on airs was no challenge at all.

061 asked, "What did you need Xiao Yuan for?"

Yang Baihua snapped out of his daze. "Hm?"

The man in front of him looked so much like him, yet surpassed him in every respect by just the right margin: nose, eyes, height, leg length, all of it. Not to mention that clean, refined air, clearly nurtured by a good family background.

The feeling was truly bizarre—and suffocating.

061 did not know what he was thinking and had no desire to speculate, so he repeated the question.

Rather than answer, Yang Baihua asked, "Where did Xiao Yuan go?"

061 said, "I don't know."

Yang Baihua said, "He's staying here with you, and you don't know where he went?"

061 replied evenly, "I'm his friend. Not his guardian or his jailer."

Suspicion suddenly rose in Yang Baihua.

He asked suspiciously, "Did Xiao Cheng tell you something?"

Had Cheng Yuan complained to him? Said Yang Baihua was watching him too closely?

But he was doing it for Cheng Yuan's own good.

Cheng Yuan's brother Cheng Jian either hit or cursed him and never treated him like a brother. Was Yang Baihua wrong for not wanting Cheng Yuan to associate with Cheng Jian so much?

Cheng Yuan's friends were all deeply dissatisfied with him. Was Yang Baihua wrong for telling Cheng Yuan to stay away from them?

Cheng Yuan understood nothing but music. Even when he bought groceries, vendors would deliberately charge him twenty or thirty cents more, and he would cheerfully pay the marked price. Was Yang Baihua wrong for making him stay home more and not wander around?

While Yang Baihua's thoughts ran wild, 061 remained as steady as a mountain.

061 had traveled far and wide, piloted mechs, fought zombies, and seen all kinds of scum. At the moment, he was very calm.

Besides, as a lump of data, he was reproductively isolated from this sort of thing. There was no need to lower himself to its level.

His hands never stopped moving as he smiled and said, "He didn't tell me anything. You should trust him."

Beyond that, he offered no further explanation. To press on would only make Yang Baihua look graceless.

Yang Baihua forcibly suppressed his inexplicable irritation. "When will he be back?"

"Whenever he feels like it."

"...You're his childhood friend?"

061 thought, He finally asked it.

Yang Baihua's restraint had been making him feel stifled on his behalf.

He poured out the cup of tea used to warm the cups and answered, "We grew up together, more or less."

Anyone who had grown up with Cheng Yuan—one could imagine what sort of family background they came from.

Yang Baihua put on a show of calm. "You two are close?"

"Fairly."

061 plucked a memory fragment from his vast sea of data and added, "When we were kids, he bet me that whoever lost had to wear a skirt out for the day. Then he lost."

At the memory, a smile unconsciously touched 061's lips.

That person had been quite bold and unconcerned while changing into the skirt, but less than fifteen minutes after they went out, he had grown embarrassed. His face red, he clutched the hem of the little skirt and absolutely refused to take another step, afraid of running into someone he knew.

In the end, 061 had carried him home on his back.

The whole way, he buried his face in 061's back, too embarrassed to lift his head.

Whenever 061 entered that memory, he wanted to see the person's face clearly. Yet the details of his form had long since been shredded into fragments by formatting.

Noticing the faint, nostalgic smile on 061's face, Yang Baihua clenched his molars for two seconds before relaxing them.

...They really did seem close.

Fortunately, he was good at controlling his emotions. "Thank you for looking after Xiao Cheng these past few days. It's a shame we never had the chance to meet before."

061 brought his mind back on track, handed Yang Baihua a teacup, and followed the story Chi Xiaochi had made up. "I moved abroad a long time ago."

Yang Baihua brought the tea to his lips and blew on it. "But I never saw you two keep in touch, and I never heard Xiao Cheng mention you. So I was quite surprised to hear he was coming to stay with you."

...There was a barb in that.

061 was beginning to understand.

If Yang Baihua had always subtly guided Cheng Yuan this way, peeling him away from his circle of friends and turning him into a doll that belonged to him alone, it was no wonder that Cheng Yuan had not even been able to find a confidant to talk to during his hardest days.

Leaning one arm against the armrest of the single sofa, 061 smiled as warmly as a spring breeze and effortlessly parried, "No need to be surprised. We keep in touch privately."

Yang Baihua choked on a mouthful of water.

About fifteen minutes later.

Chi Xiaochi, sitting on a rest bench in a shopping mall and playing a shooting game on his phone, heard a long, faint sigh in his mind.

He set down his phone. "You sent him away?"

061 said, "He left."

"Good results?"

061 thought it over carefully and reported honestly, "His face looked green when he left."

Chi Xiaochi sighed. "Ah. No wonder he called me six times just now."

061 asked, "You answered? What did he say?"

Chi Xiaochi said, "The constant buzzing was throwing off my controls, so I put my phone on silent."

061 said, "..." That works.

Before he had finished speaking, Chi Xiaochi slapped his thigh regretfully. "Oh, I should've had you record your conversation."

061 smiled. "Want to see it?"

He uploaded a recorded video to the shared panel. "You're welcome."

With great feeling, Chi Xiaochi said, "Six-six, you're so good to me."

061 said, "..."

Fine. Six-six it was. Six-six sounded pretty nice.

Chi Xiaochi began studying the report 061 had sent back from the scene.

061, meanwhile, noticed that as Chi Xiaochi watched the recording with keen interest, he was cupping his hands over his mouth and breathing warm air into them.

Cheng Yuan's body could not stand the cold. Though the department store had the heat on, his palms were still cold.

Chi Xiaochi did not care much about that, but as a system, 061 ought to be conscious of serving his host.

He corrected and adjusted the data in Chi Xiaochi's internal thermoregulation system, then reorganized a stream of data along the way.

Soon, an open thermos appeared beside Chi Xiaochi's right hand, steaming and fragrant with tea.

Chi Xiaochi said, "...Where did you get this?"

"I brewed it at home. I just datafied the thermos and restored it here, so I could bring it over. It's not too difficult," 061 explained. "This Phoenix Dancong is authentic. He barely drank any, and it would be a shame to waste it. Also, this tea protects the liver and improves eyesight. Your sleep is restless, so drinking more of it would be good for you."

Chi Xiaochi said nothing.

061 took it as being moved and kindly did not say anything more. Instead, he turned to study the current values on the panel.

The affection points were actually bouncing back and forth between 75 and 55, extremely unstable.

061 thought that was understandable.

After all, Yang Baihua had always worn the halo of first love in Cheng Yuan's mind, and Cheng Yuan had obeyed him in everything. Naturally, Yang Baihua regarded Cheng Yuan as something in the palm of his hand, to knead round or pinch flat at will.

Now a formidable rival had appeared out of nowhere, carrying the halo of a childhood friend. Yang Baihua's feelings for Cheng Yuan were not entirely fake, so it was easy to imagine his sense of crisis. It was not strange for the affection points to fluctuate.

But the regret value—the key to completing the mission—was still pitifully in the single digits.

061 was a little worried.

So he decided to watch one of Chi Xiaochi's variety shows to calm down.

061 watched the variety show while Chi Xiaochi watched the recording. One person and one system were quite harmonious.

Holding his thermos, Chi Xiaochi sipped tea and watched the show, but his mind was still turning over the words he had just heard.

"When he lost a bet as a child, I made him wear a skirt and go out with me for a day."

Chi Xiaochi shrugged to himself. Looks like he investigated me quite thoroughly. He even dug up things from my childhood.

But it was not anything serious, and Chi Xiaochi had no intention of questioning the system.

With great interest, he began examining the precious footage.

The video had been filmed from 061's perspective; 061's eyes were the camera, and the recording began when Yang Baihua rang the doorbell.

From this angle, Chi Xiaochi judged that 061's materialized body was at least two or three inches taller than Yang Baihua.

Though he could not see his face, 061's bearing was exceptionally elegant. After needling Yang Baihua, 061 had even discussed software engineering with him for a while.

Clearly, in the realm of specialized knowledge, Yang Baihua's human brain could never withstand the vast database 061 had accumulated over years of traversing different planes.

All one could say was that Yang Baihua had done his best.

As 061 had said, Yang Baihua's face really was spinach-green when he left.

Chi Xiaochi decided to save the video and watch it whenever he was bored. It was guaranteed to make any meal more enjoyable.

When Yang Baihua drove home, his parents were still asleep, thunderous snores coming from the bedroom.

His third sister had taken her child to visit a sister working in the city, and Xiaoyan had been busy these past two days and had not come to keep them company.

Seething with agitation, Yang Baihua called Cheng Yuan again.

Chi Xiaochi was engrossed in the recording and ignored him.

Like a trapped beast, Yang Baihua paced the living room several times. The more he looked at the more-than-five-hundred-square-foot rental, the more it irritated him. When he came around to the full-length mirror and saw his reflection, his fury surged to the skies. He grabbed a sofa cushion and viciously hurled it against the wall.

Hadn't Cheng Yuan said Yang Baihua was his first love? Then what was this guy surnamed Lou?

If he had simply been a childhood friend, Yang Baihua might not have thought much of it. But that face? That face!

According to Lou, he had gone abroad when Xiao Cheng was fourteen. Since then, they had not seen one another, only kept in touch by phone and video at most.

Then why had Xiao Cheng never mentioned him after meeting Yang Baihua? That was far too strange.

Was he deliberately hiding something?

Was he deliberately looking for someone's shadow in Yang Baihua?

The more Yang Baihua thought about it, the more indignant he became.

If Cheng Yuan had not appeared, pursued him, and turned him gay, perhaps he would now be normally married to a girl from the city. Why would he need to tremble in fear before his parents?

How could Cheng Yuan do this to him?

His thoughts were in chaos and his hands shook with rage. He composed and deleted a text demanding answers from Cheng Yuan over and over, but in the end only sent: "Why aren't you answering your phone?"

He wanted to see how Cheng Yuan would explain himself.

Only after staring at his phone for nearly three hours did he receive a reply: "Sorry, sorry, Old Yang. I went out to have fun with friends and didn't notice my phone."

That explanation did not satisfy Yang Baihua.

He was about to send back another demand for answers when Mother Yang said, "You've been staring at that phone all afternoon. Stop looking at that thing all the time—it gives off radiation and hurts your eyes."

Yang Baihua heeded her words and simply tossed his phone aside, intending to leave Cheng Yuan hanging for a while.

He was not someone who could keep his composure. Without a response, Cheng Yuan would surely be unable to hold back and contact him first.

Yet until the dead of night, he lay on the sofa bed glaring at his phone and still did not get a reply from Cheng Yuan.

Gritting his teeth, Yang Baihua replied, "Why don't you call me back?"

The message vanished like a mud ox into the sea, and Yang Baihua fell asleep clutching his phone.

It was not until breakfast the next morning that his phone vibrated again: "I didn't know you wanted a call."

Yang Baihua nearly snapped his chopsticks in half.

Once his parents went back to the village, he would definitely have a proper talk with Cheng Yuan!

Since Yang Baihua deliberately wanted to leave him hanging, Chi Xiaochi had no objection to playing a little time-zone game with him.

But after the new text went out, Yang Baihua did not reply again.

Having lost his teasing target, Chi Xiaochi felt rather lonely, like snow.

However, two days later, Chi Xiaochi's real business came knocking.

He received a call from an unfamiliar number.

"Is this Mr. Cheng?" the caller asked. "I'm a staff member at Nebula Entertainment. We received the demo tape you sent us. May I ask whether all the songs on it are your original compositions?"

Chi Xiaochi answered with perfect composure, "Yes."

"Then would it be convenient for you to come to the Nebula Entertainment Building at 18 Jinsong Road, East District Three, at nine this Friday morning? We would like to give you an audition."