“Xi Yu, where did you go today?”
“Xi Yu, you’re late!”
“Xi Yu, I waited for you for a long time today!”
As soon as Xi Yu logged on, Ye Weifeng looked at him with a grievance. As their familiarity grew, he seemed to grow somewhat accustomed to Xi Yu’s company and couldn’t help acting a bit spoiled with Xi Yu in ways he would never dare with other players.
Because he was certain that Xi Yu would neither abandon him nor get angry over his petty tantrums.
Xi Yu possessed a very stable emotional state, like a mountain that easily inspired trust and reliance. Even if the heavens were to crack and the earth split, as long as Xi Yu was there, one would feel a sense of security.
Xi Yu took off his jacket. Ye Weifeng looked at his broad shoulders with a trace of shyness, wanting to look away yet feeling reluctant.
“The professor kept us late after class this afternoon, so I could only come home at this time,” Xi Yu explained to him. The five o’clock city was still blindingly bright, with not a trace of dusk in sight.
“Is going to school fun? Xi Yu, I’ve never been to school, nor have I ever stepped outside. My entire world is only as big as this single room, and apart from that, there is nothing else,” Ye Weifeng said.
Xi Yu smiled slightly. “School? You can’t really judge it by whether it’s fun or not. It’s for acquiring knowledge, and also for making a living…”
Ye Weifeng wore a somewhat troubled expression. At times, Xi Yu felt this little digital avatar was like an uncivilized little wildman, like a blank sheet of paper upon which one could freely dye their own colors.
Xi Yu frowned, unable to deny his own desire for control, which he usually managed to conceal quite well. “What about you? What do you do when I’m not here?”
Without a second of hesitation, almost reflexively, Ye Weifeng replied, “Waiting for you, of course. Every second you aren’t online, I can’t do anything else. I’m just waiting.”
Xi Yu’s heart gave a slight tremor, like a calm lake stirred by ripples. He rarely established deep connections with people, but at this moment, he suddenly felt a profound closeness to the little person before him.
He stepped forward and stroked Ye Weifeng’s hair. Ye Weifeng looked startled, a trace of instinctive fear flashing across his face, but he endured it and did not dodge, simply because it was Xi Yu.
“The grass outside the house grows so fast. Why is the yard surrounded by it again?” Xi Yu observed.
Ye Weifeng looked aggrieved. “Yeah, this grass grows this tall in just a few days, and since I can’t clear it myself, I can barely step out of the yard.”
“What’s there to worry about? Aren’t I here?” Xi Yu patiently clicked his mouse, dragging the tool to click on the weeds one by one.
Although physical labor wasn’t required in the game, nor was it real farming or weeding, the grass was programmed so it couldn’t be cleared with a single click. Instead, it required the tedious process of clicking on each blade individually. Clearing out all the grass beside the yard took several hours of real-life time.
It was truly an exercise in patience.
Yet Xi Yu never grew impatient. Even though he was exhausted from balancing school and part-time jobs, he still meticulously helped Ye Weifeng clear away all the grass every time, because he knew that as long as the yard was overgrown with weeds, the game coded him to be unable to leave, trapping him inside the small hut—how pitiful.
“Xi Yu, you’re so good. No one has ever been this good to me,” Ye Weifeng murmured, his voice dropping until it sounded like self-talk.
Yet Xi Yu heard it. While patiently clicking his mouse, he couldn’t help smiling. “Is just weeding enough to make me so good?”
Ye Weifeng instinctively retorted, “Not just weeding. You also fix my house, buy me new clothes, and whenever you’re online, you never beat or hurt me. Isn’t that being good?”
Xi Yu suddenly felt he could understand him. If someone had extended a helping hand during those long and arduous years, perhaps he, too, would feel such gratitude.
“I’ll keep the promises I made to you. Don’t worry, I’m already thinking of a way. You won’t have to live like this forever,” Xi Yu promised him.
Ye Weifeng’s gaze suddenly darkened. His emotions always shifted swiftly, making them hard to catch.
“Xi Yu, will you always treat me this way?”
Xi Yu told him, “Always is an illusory word. I can’t guarantee it, but at the moment I make a promise, I will strive to extend it.”
Ye Weifeng asked further, “Xi Yu, are you willing to do anything for me, no matter what it is?”
Xi Yu only replied, “If it’s within my power.”
An answer formed in Ye Weifeng’s heart. Rest assured, this is something you can do. But the very second he made his decision, a lingering reluctance suddenly welled up inside him.
If Xi Yu really did this thing for him, no one would ever weed his yard again.
Yet on second thought, if things truly reached that point, he probably wouldn’t ever need anyone to weed for him again!
“Xi Yu, remember what you said today.”
Lately, Xi Yu kept running to the computer science department’s teaching building. Although the female underclassmen tried their best to look nonchalant, their gazes still inevitably drifted toward Xi Yu.
“Senior, have you asked your professor?” Xi Yu asked the person before him.
The male student addressed as senior turned around. “Xi Yu, when you asked for my help a few days ago, I went to ask, but the professor only returned from a business trip yesterday, which is why I can give you an answer today.”
Xi Yu’s breath tightened imperceptibly, though a casual observer would not have noticed his tension.
“Is it the answer I wanted?”
The senior shook his head and sighed.
Walking out of the computer science building, Xi Yu still felt a lingering sense of loss. Although he had prepared himself mentally, discovering that even a top university’s computer science professor dismissed the possibility left Xi Yu somewhat disappointed.
He had asked his senior to help inquire about Ye Weifeng’s situation. Of course, he couldn’t reveal all the facts and details lest he be taken for mentally unstable, so he only vaguely asked the crucial point…
If coding technology capable of trapping a person truly existed, what methods could rescue a virtual person from it?
He remembered his senior’s rather heavy tone: “If such technology truly exists, the price of rescue is destruction.”
You cannot rescue Ye Weifeng from the game while keeping him intact, because the prerequisite for his existence is that specific string of code. If the program is destroyed, the virtual person created by the program will also inevitably vanish.
Xi Yu’s steps toward his rental room felt somewhat heavy. He had also thought of hunting down the mastermind behind the creation of this game, but that was like searching for a needle in a haystack. After all, even Ye Weifeng himself couldn’t explain it clearly; someone capable of making such a dark game would certainly keep their privacy tightly guarded.
And now, with the professor’s unpromising response, Xi Yu suddenly found himself at a loss—how should he help Ye Weifeng?
He had spent all the money he earned from part-time jobs on Ye Weifeng, yet this still couldn’t prevent the continuous accumulation of fresh wounds on Ye Weifeng’s body. He was still suffering abuse in places out of his sight.
Those wounds grew even more severe at night, hiding nowhere…
To those unfamiliar with him, Xi Yu might have appeared aloof and unapproachable, but anyone who knew him well understood that Xi Yu had always possessed a soft heart.
Xi Yu pressed his lips together, seemingly deep in thought.
He unlocked his phone and unblocked a person who had been blacklisted for a long time. Suddenly, messages that had long been dormant flooded into Xi Yu’s phone like snowflakes.
With every message Xi Yu read, his handsome brows knitted tighter. He felt a suffocating, painful sensation in his chest, and his hand holding the phone trembled slightly. It took a great deal of effort for him to finish reading those messages.
Yet the button to reply to the text message remained unpressed. Feeling somewhat distressed, Xi Yu closed his phone and slid it into his pocket.
Forget it, he couldn’t do it.
When he returned to his rental apartment and familiarly opened his computer, it was already nine o’clock in the evening. After logging on, Xi Yu avoided the avatar’s gaze.
“Xi Yu?” The little avatar was emotionally acute, seemingly sensing his unusual demeanor. “What happened? Are you unhappy?”
Those amber eyes were filled with worry. He looked as though he wanted to step forward and pat Xi Yu in comfort, but ultimately withdrew his hand—he was merely a string of code without tactile sensation.
“Xi Yu, if you trust me, you can talk to me about it.”
Xi Yu loved staring into the other’s eyes, because words could lie, but eyes could not.
“The promise to bring you out of this world… I’m afraid I… can’t do it for now. I’m sorry.” Xi Yu apologized to him.
Shock filled the small avatar’s eyes. He hadn’t expected Xi Yu’s dejected expression to stem from an inability to help him.
Even if other players didn’t torture or abuse him when they logged on, they merely treated him as a pastime toy. No one had ever wanted to take him out of this world, nor had anyone ever been this good to him.
“Xi Yu…” Ye Weifeng’s tone was strained, as if he were on the verge of tears. He ran toward Xi Yu, then extended his hands in a gesture of embrace.
Xi Yu also extended his hands and caught the embrace. Clearly, they weren’t even from the same dimension, yet both drew warmth from each other.
“Xi Yu, don’t grieve for me. You’ve already done enough for me. If you have to do something you don’t want to do in order to help me, I will blame myself and be sad.”
Xi Yu heard the other whisper in his ear. At that moment, he suddenly found it difficult to distinguish what was real and what was virtual.
“If my fate cannot be changed, I’ve long since prepared to accept it, but I cannot drag you into this, Xi Yu.”
He felt the other’s slight tremor, his tone laden with moisture. As Xi Yu looked at the exposed wounds on his arms, he knew in his heart that he had made his decision once again.
That text message had to be sent, and that home had to be returned to, even though it was fundamentally the very source of his pain.
Yet when Xi Yu looked into those amber eyes, he admitted he had been shaken.
Once upon a time, he too had thought games were merely pastimes, and 2D paper dolls were merely programs created by programmers. Yet Ye Weifeng at this moment was so vivid, so real. When he held the other person, their heartbeats seemed to synchronize, and those wounds felt almost as if he were experiencing them himself.
“I am Xi Yu.” The moment the send button was pressed, Xi Yu had crossed the point of no return.