After a simple dinner and cleaning up with toiletries from the Spatial Wizard Artifact, An Luo withdrew his hands from a floating orb of water and shook off the droplets.
Hearing his voice, he approached Meieruita, who seized both hands and meticulously dried them with a towel, as if cleaning lab equipment.
An Luo jumped.
“W-Why so sudden?”
“I don’t know.” An Luo stood while Meieruita sat, looking up at him. “I want more from you, An Luo.”
He said the name first, its final syllable fading into the air. Then those gray-green eyes captured An Luo’s gaze, and Meieruita’s soft voice followed:
“Mother.”
The rain poured harder, carrying the scent of damp earth and chill wind inside. Meieruita put away the towel and enveloped An Luo’s hands with his own. With a gentle pull, the distance between them shrank.
The word sent a shiver through An Luo.
A meme popped into his head: a green frog yelling, Crass!
His heart pounded wildly, an inexplicable tension surging. He didn’t know why, but instinct told him something was off.
Nothing that caught Meieruita’s interest ended well. In the plot, the thing Meieruita was most interested in was a certain Evil God, which ended up locked in a lab, drained of all value, restored as a specimen, and displayed in Meieruita’s Wizard Tower museum.
Though An Luo figured Meieruita probably wouldn’t do that to him, goosebumps still rose on his skin.
“You’re still afraid of me?”
Meieruita gave a forceful pull, and An Luo, who had been standing, tumbled to sit beside him. He gazed at An Luo, his tone flat and emotionless. “But I was created by you, wasn’t I?”
An Luo felt tense at first, but then he sensed something off about Meieruita. Once the initial nervousness passed, he carefully examined him. Those gray-green eyes remained calm, like a lake without a ripple. Hesitantly, he asked, “Meieruita, what’s wrong?”
Meieruita turned his head to the side, facing the cave mouth. The wind howled outside, and his mood grew exceptionally irritable. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was bothering him. An Luo was right there beside him, within arm’s reach, yet it felt like a vast distance separated them.
He couldn’t understand what this invisible barrier was.
Was the distance between creation and creator truly insurmountable?
He refused to believe it. He wanted to drag An Luo down from the clouds, but hadn’t he already done that?
Meieruita felt a hunger. He thought of An Luo, sometimes even fantasizing about devouring him bite by bite.
But that thought quickly dissipated. Meieruita didn’t want An Luo to disappear or suffer. He wanted An Luo to be happy, yet he also craved to consume him slowly, bite by bite, over and over.
“Are you in a bad mood?” An Luo noticed Meieruita had suddenly turned into a statue, his skin feeling cold to the touch.
On a whim, he asked, “Want a hug?”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Meieruita whipped his head around. The firelight danced in his gray-green eyes. He stared fixedly at An Luo for a moment, saying nothing and making no move. An Luo tentatively reached out to hug him. Meieruita didn’t refuse, but his body was rigid, muscles taut. An Luo felt like he was embracing a piece of wood.
People from Flower Country were always reserved, without the Western custom of hugs and cheek kisses. An Luo rarely hugged anyone. He had suggested it purely because Meieruita seemed so restless, and the words had slipped out naturally.
He held Meieruita for a short while, but embarrassment soon crept in, and he wanted to pull away. Just then, Meieruita suddenly wrapped his arms around An Luo in return. An Luo jumped in surprise.
Meieruita held him tightly—too tightly, making An Luo a bit uncomfortable. It felt like being ensnared in a great net that kept drawing tighter. But An Luo didn’t push him away. He waited patiently for Meieruita to calm down.
Strangely, if it had been anyone else, An Luo would have shoved them off immediately. But Meieruita was always different. He was the protagonist. An Luo had loved him while typing away at the keyboard. Now that words had become flesh, An Luo felt that someone like Meieruita was best admired from afar, not up close. Yet after spending so much time with the real thing, he liked him even more than the character on the page.
The rain outside hadn’t stopped, and the air carried a damp chill, mingled with the earthy scent of soil. An Luo stayed quietly in Meieruita’s embrace, his heart calm—even a little regretful. Meieruita was one of a kind, after all, and An Luo could only spend this brief time with him before they parted ways.
He enjoyed a peaceful life, but Meieruita’s future was destined to be tumultuous and grand. An Luo didn’t want to force himself, but he even less wanted Meieruita to live ordinarily. Meieruita couldn’t be ordinary; he was the center of this world. Everything had to make way for him.
Because that’s how An Luo had written it.
He thought about finding a chance to jot down these feelings in the notebook, to savor them later during his solitary life. It was a shame there were no phones; otherwise, he could have taken photos or recorded videos.
As he mused, he felt Meieruita’s arms gradually relax. An Luo started to pull back, but Meieruita’s arms suddenly tightened again, pressing him close. An Luo pondered for a moment, then gently patted Meieruita’s back a few times. Meieruita’s mood seemed poor, carrying a cold, gloomy chill.
An Luo asked, “Are you unhappy?”
Meieruita grunted an “Mm,” his voice muffled through the fabric of the wizard robe.
An Luo didn’t ask why—not out of indifference, but to avoid digging up painful matters and causing more hurt. He wasn’t good at comforting people anyway. After thinking, he asked, “Does the hug help at all?”
Meieruita responded with another sound. An Luo said, “Then let’s hug a bit longer.”
The damp rain scent, the earthy smell, the aroma of burning firewood, and the faint bitter ink that always clung to Meieruita—all mixed together. An Luo grew drowsy, his eyelids growing heavy. In a daze, he met Meieruita’s gray-green eyes.
At some point, Meieruita had let go.
He appeared calm again, but like a volcano on the verge of eruption, merely holding back for now. His voice was slightly hoarse as he asked An Luo, “Are you sleepy?”
“Mm.” An Luo yawned, physiological tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, clinging to his lashes.
Small translucent circles floated before him, blurring together. Meieruita’s figure grew indistinct. Then Meieruita turned away. He stood and said, “I’ll set up the bed.”
The spatial wizard artifact was truly a must-have for home or travel. An Luo sometimes wished he had one back in the modern world; it would have made post-graduation life so much easier.
Meieruita’s spatial wizard artifact was spacious enough for an entire bed. He had packed it before they left, and now it came in handy.
An Luo stood to help.
The bed had been against the wall before, so two quilts weren’t an issue. But now both sides were open, and quilts would slip off. Meieruita stowed one away, and An Luo had no objections. He rolled up his pant legs, sat on the bed’s edge, and dipped his feet into the suspended hot water orb—a witchcraft-enhanced foot soak without a basin.
Wizard technology was mind-blowing.
An Luo shed his outer robe and slipped under the covers. “Meieruita, aren’t you sleeping?”
Meieruita sat by the fire, reading a book. “No, I can’t sleep outdoors.”
“You sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
“Alright.”
It made sense. With Meieruita’s personality, he’d at most meditate briefly in the wild.
Meieruita didn’t need much sleep anyway, maintaining only the bare minimum for his body. The original story hadn’t detailed this; An Luo had skimmed over his daily life. Only after entering this world and spending time with him did he notice.
“Then I’m off to sleep. Good night.”
“Mm, good night.”
Once An Luo was asleep, Meieruita set the book aside. He hadn’t read much anyway; he couldn’t recall what he’d flipped through. He walked to the bed and gazed at the sleeping An Luo. He leaned down and hugged him carefully, then withdrew as if shocked.
He stared at An Luo’s face for a while, then longer.
Nothing extraordinary—An Luo was just asleep. But his hair splayed across the pillow, the slight rise and fall of his chest with each breath, the cheeks gradually flushing pink from the warmth—they were all alluring. Meieruita reached out, gently scraping his fingertip across An Luo’s cheek. The soft smoothness reminded him of the cream cake at Lan Lian’s birthday banquet: snow-white and sweet.
Suddenly aware of his own calloused finger, he pulled back, like a child hiding a hole in his shoe. He sat quietly for a moment. An Luo didn’t wake, so he reached out again—just a fleeting touch, then withdrew swiftly.
He sat on the bed’s edge. For once, a rare peace settled over him. No frantic urge to master more witchcraft knowledge. The book stayed closed. The rain outside turned the cave into a self-contained small world, with only him, An Luo, and the flickering fire like a shrub.
No one else would disturb them.
This tranquility made Meieruita close his eyes. He took a deep breath, then opened them to look at An Luo. He longed to hug him again but feared waking him, so he stayed still, just watching.
Beneath the satisfaction lurked something stirring restlessly—greed like a seed not yet sprouted, dormant for now. A single spring rain would make it burst forth again.
But for the moment, Meieruita truly felt content.
