Bai Chunian could barely take care of himself and had no time to soothe this bully-who-feared-the-strong fish-ball in front of the president. Even he felt a bit intimidated standing before Yan Yi, let alone an experimental subject still in the cultivation stage.
“You may not fully understand the nature of your mistake,” Yan Yi said coolly, though his tone was severe. “As my subordinate, you violated the rules by assisting in an exam, illegally forming a team, injecting a developing experimental subject with AC hallucinogen, and finally driving your score to a historic high, drawing everyone’s attention to you.”
“I mean, I did okay,” Bai Chunian muttered. “At least we’ll be on the front page all week. Besides, I was helping your son with the exam.”
“Enough.” President Yan rubbed his throbbing temples. “Lu Yan has already been spoiled beyond control by Lu Shangjin. I will deal with him separately.”
“We received information that a serious incident occurred during this ATWL examination,” Yan Yi continued after taking a sip of water. “The test questions were tampered with. It was reportedly done by a crawler omega. He stole a large amount of experimental data from Research Institute 109, then hacked into the ATWL examination system and, in the final second before the test began, implanted a tampering program that jumbled the institute’s data together with the exam questions. We have not yet located him, nor do we know his objective.”
“A crawler omega… what kind of thing is that?”
As everyone knew, “crawler” was a technical term in the internet field referring to data-scraping technology, not a biological species.
“It’s a programming gland,” Yan Yi explained. “One type of non-living gland. A quark chip is implanted into the cells, and differentiation is awakened through programming. It’s an artificial gland. The ability of a crawler omega can be regarded as that of a top-tier hacker.”
“There’s something even more troubling,” Yan Yi went on. “After discovering the data breach, Research Institute 109 immediately transferred backups and destroyed the database. But during the process, a large amount of data vanished into thin air. Along with it, several special-operations experimental subjects stored at the institute disappeared.”
“It should all be the work of that crawler omega behind the scenes,” Yan Yi said. “Research Institute 109 would not dare openly oppose me, but the large-scale disappearance of their special experimental subjects is absolutely not good news for us. We have informants and agents stationed across various regions; they could easily be harmed by these experimental subjects.”
“So I contacted the PBB base and asked them to dispatch special forces to eliminate and recover the experimental subjects. During this period, you and your fish are not to go out and cause any more trouble.”
Yan Yi bit down hard on the words “cause trouble.” “As for you, come back to the Alliance prison with me and reflect.”
“What about Lan Bo?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“…Oh.”
Before leaving, Bai Chunian turned back to replace Lan Bo’s nearly empty anti-inflammatory IV bottle. Changing the drip while wearing handcuffs was extremely inconvenient. The chain accidentally snagged on the IV hook, and he struggled for quite a while to free it. In the end, he gently snapped the handcuffs apart, carefully removed them from the hook, slipped them back onto his wrist, and pressed the broken ends together again as if molding clay. After tucking the blankets more securely around the fish-ball hiding in the corner of the bed, he left.
For a time, agents throughout the Alliance headquarters were abuzz with gossip: the president’s most favored and trusted subordinate had been put in solitary confinement. It was said that guards rotated every seventy-two hours to watch him write a self-criticism, occasionally blasting him with bright lights, dousing him with water, even cutting off the oxygen in the cell— running him through the full set of interrogation tactics on this reckless little white lion who did not know the heights of heaven or the depths of earth.
Three days later, Bai Chunian emerged from solitary with a thick stack of completed self-criticisms in hand— twenty thousand words in total. By the end he had been so sleepy and nauseated that his handwriting had deteriorated into scribbles.
Before coming out, he had looked at himself in the grimy mirror above the sink in the confinement cell. Dark circles nearly sagged off his face; untrimmed stubble clung messily to his chin; his complexion was sallow and haggard.
On the way to the president’s office, quite a few omega agents passed him in the corridor, greeting him in passing.
“Chu-ge is out.”
Bai Chunian mumbled groggily, “Mm, law-abiding citizen, that’s me.”
“Chu-ge, you’ve worked hard. Want to come over later for some drinks? I’ll throw a little welcome-back party for you.”
Bai Chunian: “There are a thousand roads, safety comes first. Drink and drive, and your family will shed tears.”
“Chu-ge, Chu-ge, Chu-ge, let me see how your self-criticism looks!”
Bai Chunian: “If it’s not written to death, scram.”
He didn’t even remember how he had walked into the president’s office, set his stack of self-criticism papers on the desk, nodded when the president gave a curt acknowledgment, and then drifted back to his city apartment, collapsing into bed without climbing back up.
He didn’t notice that the other side of the bed now held an enormous glass fish tank, filled with water, where Lan Bo lay sleeping at the bottom. Hearing a noise, he swam up to peek out.
Bai Chunian was fast asleep, pale and haggard. Lan Bo climbed to the edge of the bed, gently tracing the alpha’s narrow, straight nose with his fingertip and brushing aside his lashes.
Looking at the bedroom chandelier, Lan Bo snapped his fingers and cut the power. The room plunged into darkness.
“En…” Lan Bo stirred the water with the tip of his tail, and the bubbles formed tiny glowing blue jellyfish. They floated and clustered in the tank, turning it into a soft blue night lamp that filled the bedroom with the calm hue of the deep sea.
Lan Bo crawled to Bai Chunian’s side, releasing gentle white-rose pheromones around him. With arms and tail, he curled around the alpha in a protective embrace and fell asleep beside him.
Bai Chunian hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in five days and was in severe sleep deprivation, barely conscious. He didn’t fully awaken until the third morning, his body aching, eyes swollen shut.
As he lay groggy in bed, a faint burnt smell drifted into his nose. He jolted awake. “Did I leave the gas on?”
Barefoot and half-dressed, he dashed into the kitchen and found a mermaid there. A strip of tape covered the gland on the back of his neck; it seemed the inhibitor had been removed.
Lan Bo wore a blue polka-dot apron, sitting on the stove with his tail curled around the frying pan, using metal conduction and pure electricity to cook toast.
On the plate beside him were charred crumbs, likely from overpowered electric heat, carefully stacked into the shape of a heart. Despite the destruction, the makeshift breakfast was arranged with painstaking effort into shapes of love.
Bai Chunian thought of many encouraging phrases, but only managed to mutter, “Energy-saving, eco-friendly.” He went over, took off Lan Bo’s apron to wear it himself, washed the pan, dried it, poured oil, and cracked two eggs in.
The alpha had just woken, hair messy and unkempt, wearing only a black fitted tank top and loose shorts, quietly flipping eggs at the stove.
Lan Bo sat on the cupboard, head bowed, gazing at Bai Chunian’s long, pale legs—exposed only during missions in combat suits, these parts remained delicate and fair.
Bai Chunian finished cooking, seasoned the eggs, and pushed the plate toward Lan Bo. “Make do. I’m not much of a cook.”
Lan Bo stared at the eggs, blue eyes sparkling, then carefully ate, preserved the rest with cling film, and placed it on his tank as decoration.
Bai Chunian: “The longest I can tolerate is until it grows mold.”
After breakfast, Lan Bo left the kitchen via electromagnetic levitation, pulling out a police uniform from the wardrobe.
Bai Chunian: “?”
Lan Bo took a note from the pocket of the uniform and showed it to him. Bai Chunian glanced at it—President Yan’s handwriting:
“I’ve arranged a position at the Alliance police station for Lan Bo, to help him familiarize with the human environment. Salary will be paid on time, and your living expenses are included. After six months’ bonus deductions, you can’t live off nothing. Use this time at home to do some chores and avoid seeming useless. (Yan Yi)”
“…Still caring so much,” Bai Chunian murmured, rubbing his nose. He looked up to see Lan Bo fully dressed in the custom-fitted black short-sleeve shirt and leather vest, wrapped over his moisture-bandaged torso.
“The collar’s too low. Look down and you can see the chest—(bandages covering it)…and the abs.” Bai Chunian lit a cigarette, bending to tighten Lan Bo’s tie. “I still don’t know what job you can actually handle.”
Lan Bo sat on the table, eyes lowered, looking at the alpha’s long lashes. Tiny blood vessels crawled across his thin eyelids, petal-like when he raised them. His long, slender fingers expertly tied the tie.
Suddenly, Lan Bo curled his lips, loosened the tie, revealing chest muscles and collarbone outlined perfectly by the moisture bandages.
Many creatures are drawn to beauty. He wanted to see that move again.