At the end of the corridor, a tiny figure watched them, quiet and silent. This unexpected development interrupted Kale’s rising fury and the reckless words that were about to follow.
Kale regained his reason. He subconsciously glanced at the flustered female Zerg and pursed his lips. “Get yourself together.”
Leaving behind that cold sentence, Kale walked slowly toward Li Xi.
Li Xi’s expression was as normal as ever. He showed not a shred of guilt for eavesdropping on their conversation, standing his ground with utter composure.
“When did you get here?” Kale stood before Li Xi. His gaze flickered restlessly, not daring to settle on the cub for long. He asked with an uneasy, low cough.
Li Xi tilted his head. His gaze swept past Kale, traveled down the long corridor, and finally landed on the slightly hunched figure of the female Zerg. The female Zerg was picking at a crack in the wall with his fingertips, head bowed, not daring to look at him. He looked somewhat helpless.
After watching for a moment, Li Xi retracted his gaze and looked up. “You two…”
Kale’s heart tightened. Countless defensive questions flashed through his mind as he scrambled for a way to smooth over this sudden argument. It was never a good thing for a cub to see his parents fighting; Kale was panicking internally.
To his surprise, Li Xi didn’t follow the script at all. He rubbed his stomach and asked innocently, “Are you hungry?”
Kale froze. “…”
I was ready for a cross-examination, and you give me this?
Li Xi glanced at the deep night outside and repeated himself: “Are you hungry?”
Kale’s mouth twitched. He replied helplessly, “…Hungry.”
It’s his cub who’s hungry, isn’t it?
He knew it. This cub was so cold he had no heart. All that nervous tension for nothing!
Inside the ward.
Li Xi had run out for a bit of cold air, and upon returning, he sat on the bed looking listless. Kale and Ren reached a tacit, unusual agreement not to mention the fierce argument from earlier.
Ren was sent away to change out of his travel-worn combat uniform. Kale sat silently on a worn-out chair, staring at Li Xi. The emotions in the depths of his eyes were complex.
Kale didn’t speak, and Li Xi wasn’t one to initiate conversation. Silence reigned supreme.
The cold atmosphere didn’t last long before an attendant arrived with steaming hot food. Kale hurriedly stood up to take it, even personally arranging the dishes in front of Li Xi—acting with a touch of a guilty conscience.
Li Xi didn’t realize at all how excessive it was to have a noble S-rank Excellency act as a servant. He picked out a piece of caramel pudding. To be honest, having had a nutrient solution before bed, he wasn’t hungry at all.
Kale ate with Li Xi for a while. Watching the cub eat absentmindedly, he hesitated repeatedly before finally unable to stop himself from asking: “Um… how much did you hear?”
Kale didn’t know how to describe his current mood. Should he be relieved that it was this mature persona who witnessed the scene, rather than the innocent one? Or should he be happy that the cub was so sensible he didn’t ask questions and acted as if he knew nothing?
Perhaps he should be more regretful for his impulsive argument with Ren.
Li Xi didn’t answer directly. He swallowed the caramel pudding and spoke bluntly: “A bit.”
As expected, he heard.
Kale tried to explain: “It’s not because of you, Zai-zai. Your Female Father and I…” He paused, choosing his words carefully for a long time before continuing, “We’ve always had our disagreements.”
Li Xi let out a cold “Oh.”
Kale and Ren almost never appeared before him at the same time. He knew nothing of their dynamic or their conflicts. The crying last time and the shouting this time gave him a faint inkling that things weren’t as peaceful as they seemed on the surface.
Kale didn’t say anything more. Their gazes met in the air. The buzzing vibration of an optical computer was particularly jarring in the quiet environment.
The optical computer buzzed incessantly. Kale glanced at the name, his Male Father. His irritation spiked. He knew the cub’s personality; he couldn’t be fooled by one or two dismissive sentences, so he gave up on explaining.
He turned off the vibrating device, a trace of suppressed helplessness flashing between his brows. He rose from the chair, tucked the small blanket around the cub’s shoulders, and said, “I have to go. Your Female Father will come to stay with you.”
“Mm.”
Kale didn’t leave immediately after speaking. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed, pinched the little cheek where the baby fat was starting to fade, and then brushed away the hair covering the cub’s eyes. His voice was soft: “If you like that little female cub, I’ll tell the Shiya family to have him come and keep you company.”
“…” Who said he liked a kid?
Li Xi rejected the arrangement: “No.”
Kale teased with a smile: “Really? I thought you quite liked him. You even slept together.”
Li Xi’s cold eyes finally flickered, looking at Kale in disbelief.
Under that gaze, Kale raised his hands in surrender and laughed. “Alright, alright. If you don’t want it, you don’t want it. I’m going, I’m going.”
Before leaving, Kale stood by the door and suddenly turned back to look at Li Xi, making a rare joke: “Zai-zai has a second chance to change his mind. Are you sure?”
Li Xi: “No.”
The rain fell continuously for over half a month. After the rain, a rainbow drifted far off in the blue sky, with various flight vehicles weaving through it, leaving trails of colored exhaust.
When Li Xi had nothing to do, he would lean by the window, finding enough interest in a single rainbow to watch it all day. His mental sea was as quiet as usual. Tuanzi remained asleep in a corner; the life force it had painstakingly gathered had become exceptionally weak again. He didn’t know how long it would take to recover this time.
He didn’t know how long he had stayed at the Research Institute. The sun set and rose. One afternoon, Jing came to the ward with a stack of documents, happily informing him that his mental sea was stable and he could leave at any time. Only then did Li Xi let out a silent sigh of relief. Finally, he could leave.
Sitting in the steady flight vehicle, Li Xi couldn’t help but feel drowsy. When he woke again, a large shadow was cast over his eyelids, flickering back and forth.
He opened his eyes to find a pair of purple eyes right in his face. The child was propping his head up with both hands, staring at him with round, wide eyes. They were very close, so close that Li Xi almost instinctively threw the black shadow in front of him away.
Li Xi suppressed the impulse, silently pulling a corner of the quilt to cover half his face, leaving only his eyes exposed. He reminded himself: This is the Zerg race.
“You’re awake?!” Seeing the sleeping cub wake up, Yun excitedly lunged forward.
They were already close; with the child’s movement, their cheeks were about to touch. Li Xi moved aside before the child could flop onto him, looking at Yun with confusion: “Why are you here?”
Yun missed his mark. Not getting to hug the cub didn’t discourage him; he tugged the quilt toward himself. “Waiting for you! I’ve been waiting for a long time!”
“Hmm?” Li Xi didn’t let go. Why is this kid pulling my quilt?
“You really scared me to death,” Yun said, subtly trying to steal the quilt. “You just made one call and fell unconscious. No matter how much I called, you wouldn’t wake up…”
The child poured everything out like beans from a jar, telling him what happened after he passed out.
After he fainted, the person on the other end of the call told Yun to stay put. However, Li Xi’s high fever persisted, the flush on his face wouldn’t fade, and no rescue Zerg appeared for a long time. In desperation, Yun had to carry the cub toward the nearest hospital. Halfway there, his flight vehicle was forced to an emergency stop by one carrying an S-rank marker.
Excellency Kale had taken the unconscious Li Xi from his arms with a panicked expression and hurried away. Yun wanted to follow but was blocked by guards, leaving him only able to watch the flight vehicle vanish.
During this time, he once thought Li Xi hadn’t survived the childhood awakening. He had been downcast and sad, unable even to focus on his classes. After school, he would subconsciously walk toward the path leading here, only realizing after standing outside the dark house that its master had not yet returned.
Li Xi listened patiently and said, “Thank you.”
In a moment of distraction, the quilt in his hand was gone.
Yun waved his hand dismissively, taking the chance to scoop the entire quilt into his arms and refusing to let go. “You’ve grown taller, and your face has changed a little bit, but that milky scent on you hasn’t faded! Did you sneak a lot of milk candies?!”
Li Xi tugged at his collar and took a sniff. What scent was there?
Yun buried his face in the quilt and took a deep breath, looking up excitedly again. “It smells so good! Li He, you smell so good! There’s even a bit of another fragrance mixed in with the milk.”
Watching Yun’s series of actions, Li Xi felt a bit of alarm and pulled his collar up. He wasn’t taken advantage of by this kid while he was asleep, was he?
Yun noticed nothing. “Wait for me a second.”
Without a word, Yun flipped off the bed and ran out with a “patter-patter.” He returned with a palm-sized mirror, holding it up in front of Li Xi. “Here, look! You look so good, and your height has increased!”
In the mirror was a small, stoic face. The skin was smooth and white; the chubby baby fat on the sides of his cheeks had vanished, making his chin look lean. His eyelashes were long and slender, and his pupils were a shining black, like precious black crystals embedded in his eyes.
Li Xi only looked for a moment before shifting his gaze, catching the key word: “Grown taller?”
Yun nodded vigorously, gesturing a vague height in the air. “Mm-hmm! Taller!”
Li Xi’s heart stirred. He asked, “As tall as you?”
Yun: “…”
After five seconds of silence, Li Xi rephrased: “Same height?”
Yun was stumped by these two questions. He hadn’t expected Li He to be concerned about height. He shook his head and explained, “…No, that wish for now…” Yun looked troubled. Sensing that saying the truth might hurt the cub’s self-esteem, he added a compensatory comfort: “But there are exceptions. You might become an exception!”
The higher the mental power, the more superior the appearance. Li Xi had no mental power but was very handsome. If one day…
Li Xi, who caught the hidden meaning: “…”
No need to add that last sentence as a cover-up.
Yun stole a quick glance at the cub with his messy clothes. He didn’t want to discourage a cub who clearly cared about height but the possibility of being taller than him wasn’t very high. After the scare of the awakening period, he even felt it was a miracle that this cub could grow up safely at all.
Li Xi was confused by the way he was being looked at. He wasn’t necessarily obsessed with height, but he felt that being shorter than those of the same age would imply he was malnourished.
Two cubs were under the same roof, but their thoughts were flying in opposite directions.
Knock—knock—
A rhythmic knocking sounded. Ren stood at the door, interrupting the subtle atmosphere between the two cubs. “Little ones, it’s time for dinner.”
He had seen Yun go downstairs, rummage around, and then go back up with something, so he guessed his cub was awake. He figured these two hadn’t seen each other in a long time and might have things to say, so he waited downstairs for a bit before coming up to call them.
“Okay, Uncle,” Yun replied obediently.
Li Xi spoke slowly but also answered, “Okay.”
The room echoed with the soft, sweet responses of the two cubs, who then went back to staring at each other in silence.
Ren: “…”
“Ahem…” Ren didn’t want to pry into their little secrets, so he changed the subject. “Zai-zai, get up and wash up.”
Li Xi replied slowly, “Okay…”
When Li Xi went downstairs, the child was sitting at the dining table, waiting expectantly. Seeing him appear, Yun straightened up and knelt on his chair, pointing to the empty seat next to him. “Here, here!”
Li Xi wanted to sit opposite him, but the child’s burning gaze followed him the whole way.
Five dishes and one soup were neatly arranged on the table; two of them Li Xi hadn’t seen before. Ren finished cleaning the mess in the kitchen and sat down opposite the two cubs. Looking at the untouched food, he asked in confusion, “Why aren’t you eating?”
Yun blinked and looked at the person beside him.
Ren’s body suddenly stiffened, his voice softening by several degrees as if searching for an uncertain answer: “Zai-zai?”
Could it be that Zai-zai… isn’t letting him eat?
There was another major reason why the Zerg valued male cubs: after the awakening period, a male cub’s hidden personality would gradually emerge, a phenomenon that didn’t occur in female cubs. Violent, irritable, sensitive, or pure and kind… Once these traits emerged, they were like seeds taking root in the bone, sprouting and merging with the blood, unchangeable. No one dared to predict what personality a male cub would develop; it was like opening a blind box, and one could only pray to be the lucky one.
He remembered a colleague’s male cub who was lively and cute, only to become gloomy and depressed after his awakening, refusing to let anyone close and speaking cruelly to his relatives. If not handled carefully, a male cub might not accept the sudden personality shift and suffer from chronic mental atrophy, slowly dying in depression.
He had always been afraid that Zai-zai would turn into one of those arrogant and selfish male Zerg found in the outside world, and he had been paying extra attention to the cub’s psychological changes during this time. Looking at this situation now, a wave of worry pressed upon his heart.
Under the gaze of two intense pairs of eyes, Li Xi reacted a beat late and looked up: “Huh…?”
Ren pushed down the unease in his heart and asked as usual, “Why aren’t you eating?”
Li Xi asked Yun in confusion, “Aren’t you eating?”
Yun: “You haven’t eaten yet.”
“Me…?” Li Xi looked at Ren, his face innocent. “Waiting for you.”
“…”