“Bro, what does this mean?” Li Ran was forcibly logged out and asked unhappily.
He even pettily grumbled about the game: “Why did it say you’re abnormal? Where are you abnormal? Is there something wrong with this game of yours? Is it broken?”
When the final red warning popped up in Parallel World, Chi Mo laughed.
It was a faint, knowing arc that said I knew it, along with a high level of confidence that proclaimed as expected of the game I developed—it understands me perfectly.
Only when Li Ran innocently voiced his question did Chi Mo secretly think to himself that he was truly a beast. Keeping a straight face under his human skin, he said, “There might be a bit of a bug, yeah.”
“I’ll have the tech department check it tomorrow.”
Li Ran asked, “Can I play tomorrow then?”
“No.” Chi Mo’s answer was firm, like a cold and heartless King of Hell.
“Then when can I play?”
“In 17 days.”
Chi Mo said this aloud, but in his heart, he thought: Even after seventeen days, I won’t let the kid play.
Li Ran let out an “Ah” and asked somewhat disappointedly, “Do I really have to wait 17 days?”
Chi Mo: “Mm.”
“Didn’t you just say you’d have the tech department look at it tomorrow? Can’t they fix it tomorrow?”
“…The tech department’s skills aren’t up to par. I’ll fix it myself when I have time.” Chi Mo swiftly shut down the computer, pulled Li Ran up from the chair—dinner should be ready by now—and said, “I’ve been pretty busy lately. I’ll let you know once it’s fixed. Let’s go downstairs for dinner. Eat more.”
“Oh, okay.” Li Ran’s eyes lit up in an instant, and he immediately dashed downstairs.
The internet-addicted teen Li Ran, hyped up from playing the game, chattered animatedly at the dinner table with Grandpa and Grandma about how great and magical his brother’s game was. Then he turned into a host, interviewing Cheng Ai Mei and Ye Ze about their regrets.
Cheng Ai Mei immediately perked up and said, “I’ve lived to this age, and I’ve got more regrets than I can count—even if I used all my fingers and toes. Of course I know about the game developed by that cold-faced dog king… uh, I mean Xiao Mo. Haha, I got the name wrong just now.”
“So it was you.” Chi Mo suddenly let out a cold huff. He knew the old lady always called him that behind his back and sometimes to his face when she got annoyed by his management, but he wouldn’t let the disrespectful Cheng lady get away with her awkward laugh. He rebuked her even more like a dog king with a cold face: “You’ve gone and corrupted my kid.”
“Haha…” Cheng Ai Mei tugged at the corners of her mouth in a stiff laugh twice more, decided to ignore him, and continued on her own. “I know about this Parallel World thing that Xiao Mo developed. I’d love to play it, but he confiscated my phone, tablet, and computer. He won’t let me stay up late.”
Her voice gradually softened as she cupped her hand by her mouth and whispered to Li Ran, “Little Ran, little Ran… remember to help Grandma get those things back, okay? Stealing them is fine too~”
“You won’t miss out on Grandma’s rewards. The rewards will be huge~”
“Hehe…” Li Ran didn’t dare agree to something that would get him beaten in front of his brother, no matter how big the bribe. He let out a small, silly laugh to play deaf.
But then he felt bad about rejecting Grandma’s face, so he was stuck miserably in the middle. He silently buried his face in his bowl, pretending not to see Grandma’s “tragic later years,” and kept shoveling rice into his mouth nonstop.
Chi Mo pushed a glass of water toward him and said coldly to the insolent woman across the table, “Have some shame, Grandma. I’m warning you—don’t corrupt my kid anymore.”
Cheng Ai Mei: “…”
“Sigh… the world’s morals are declining, and people’s hearts are no longer pure. Juniors controlling elders, sigh!” Cheng Ai Mei sighed dramatically, stopped teasing Li Ran, and picked up vegetables into the two boys’ bowls. Her old childlike face turned much more serious. “Even if the cold-faced dog king hadn’t taken my phone, tablet, and computer, I know his game only has two chances. That’s too few for me.”
“Two chances is still too few?” At this point, Ye Ze suddenly became alert. “So what regrets do you have? Among all those regrets, there aren’t ones like meeting me, dating me, marrying me, and having kids with me, right? There aren’t, right?”
Cheng Ai Mei: “…”
Seeing her go silent, Ye Ze felt hurt: “Old Cheng, I’ve treated you well.”
Cheng Ai Mei smacked his shoulder on the spot. Her old face flushed with embarrassment, and she snapped in fury, “My old Ye, what nonsense are you spouting in front of the kids? Meeting what, dating what, marrying what, having kids what—you got no shame? Can’t you stop being so abstract all day? I really want to smack you dead! I’m even scared to smack you because you might enjoy it, you masochistic old coot!”
Ye Ze, smacked into embarrassment, finally completed his abstract statement: “The Qing Dynasty fell ages ago. There are no more ‘masters’.”
Cheng Ai Mei ignored him and said, “My biggest regret was, back when I was still relatively young, obstructing Chi Wei and Xiao Wan. Their relationship was already difficult, with societal ethics against it, and I gave them even more trouble. Ye Ze and I were wrong about that. I didn’t expect the Chi Family to be such a damned mess—they nearly ruined them.”
“I’m old now, past the age of spring sorrows and autumn griefs. Parallel World is for those who still have the energy to regret. Besides, Chi Wei and Xiao Wan had a good ending, so I don’t need to regret it anymore.” Cheng Ai Mei looked kindly at Li Ran, then at Chi Mo.
Her gaze finally settled on Li Ran’s face.
The teen calmly lifted his face to meet hers and couldn’t help calling out:
“…Grandma.”
“Yeah.” Grandma responded. “Those things taught me a lesson. My lesson made me realize that as long as you two are serious, no matter who opposes you, Grandpa and I won’t. Go forward with confidence.”
“I don’t want you two to suffer like that either.”
Cheng Ai Mei’s words were almost explicit.
She was so open-minded it didn’t seem like she was 70.
But toward Li Ran, it wasn’t the kind of “you two will definitely end up together and married.” He probably understood, yet deep in his subconscious, he refused to let himself fully grasp it.
After Grandma finished speaking, Li Ran shoveled rice even more quietly, restrained himself from thinking anything, and let his mind sink into chaos. It was as if, as long as he didn’t think about it, he could frequently forget that Chi Mo had said he loved him—like a scumbag even worse than a scumbag.
After dinner, a thought circled in the chaos and somehow found a crack. The crack was irregular, torn open by hand by someone, and a domineering beam of light squeezed in through the gap. It finally made Li Ran realize: Grandma using Xiao Shu and Wan Shu as an example proved that he and Chi Mo were the same.
He and his brother… were the same as Xiao Shu and Wan Shu.
Tomorrow was school, but that night Li Ran didn’t choose to sleep early. He sat in Chi Mo’s study doing practice sheets—cramming as much as he could. Chi Mo had brought back the documents Hua Xue Fan had delivered to his office that evening and was now flipping through them in detail.
The atmosphere between them was no different from countless previous nights. The study had already become their shared living room.
“…Bro.” Li Ran finished calculating an answer without looking up.
Chi Mo raised his eyes to him: “Hm?”
Li Ran asked, “Why… did I become your inspiration? It’s the Parallel World you created. Why was I the inspiration?”
He had originally wanted to figure it out himself while playing the game, but he’d only seen his brother as a kid recording him nearby. He hadn’t gleaned anything else.
Could just jotting down a few notes really let him casually create a Parallel World kingdom?
Now that the game had a glitch and couldn’t be fixed anytime soon, Li Ran could only wait 17 days to log in again.
Li Ran, whose personality was always unhurried, unflappable, laid-back, never one to overwork himself inwardly or outwardly, surprisingly felt a rare impatience—like a little snail.
He really wanted to know the answer.
“This, huh…” Chi Mo fully set aside the documents, not sparing another glance at Chi Wei’s company data. With a look that said this little fool’s IQ really isn’t up to it—I have to break the answer into bits and feed it to him before he gets it, he indulged him and said, “At first, I was just purely observing you and recording you.”
“You’re different from others. You were always the one waiting, always the one overlooked, always the one getting bullied. And even when I helped you, you’d forget who I was because of your bad memory. Tsk, really heartless.”
Li Ran mumbled, “…I’m not like that. Don’t twist things and badmouth me out of personal grudge… Hmph.”
Chi Mo laughed: “I won’t talk about you anymore.”
Li Ran’s memory was poor, but not truly poor. For example, after reuniting with Chi Mo, he remembered every single thing that had happened between them, piece by piece.
Because at that time, the memories weren’t bad.
His poor childhood memory was, in today’s terms, more like a self-protection mechanism. Li Ran didn’t want to remember the unhappy experiences and would periodically clear his cache, including his parents’ arguments.
He only remembered that his parents often quarreled, and when he occasionally recalled it, there’d be his mom’s questioning shouts in his mind, but he couldn’t remember the specific reasons for their fights.
So asking him how much he remembered from before 17 was asking too much.
Afraid his brother would be sad, Li Ran said, “I didn’t do it on purpose…”
“Mm,” Chi Mo reached out and patted his head. The little curls bounced, and he chuckled softly to coax him. “I know.”
After observing Li Ran for so long, during his chuunibyou phase, Chi Mo considered himself a genius while everyone else was a dumbass idiot. When he saw Li Ran pitifully getting bullied, he’d help, but deep down, he didn’t want to be friends with Li Ran because the kid always forgot him.
There was never any self-introduction opener. He’d help and leave. High and aloof.
