Chapter 1: The Older Lover – 1: The Nameless Little Housekeeper

“System, why do I feel like someone’s following me?”

“Could it be… someone’s about to rob me?”

Luo Yan clutched a cardboard box labeled “Mid-Autumn Gift” as he hurried along the pothole-riddled road, asking the System in a nervous whisper.

This old residential district had hardly any residents left; only a scattering of lights glimmered in the surrounding buildings. More than half the streetlamps along the road were broken, and the rest flickered on and off, which made the whole place all the more unnerving.

In that dimness, Luo Yan heard two sets of somewhat heavy footsteps behind him, trailing him the entire way.

The System ran a scan and reported back:

[No need to worry.]

[The people behind you don’t look like they’re here to rob you.]

Luo Yan relaxed a little.

[Judging from their conversation… they’re planning to rob you of something else entirely.]

Luo Yan sucked in a sharp breath. “How is that ‘no need to worry’?! That’s even scarier, okay?!”

His strides lengthened until he was practically running.

Thankfully, his destination, the Quest Target’s apartment, was just ahead.

Luo Yan was a new employee of the Redemption Division of the Transmigration Bureau.

According to Bureau regulations, all employees had to draw an Identity Card before entering a Small World quest, then play out the corresponding storyline according to that card.

Rumor had it that the Identity Card was generated by the Main System based on an employee’s strengths, experience, and so forth, through a series of complex algorithms, so as to maximize the employee’s potential.

When Luo Yan drew his card, he was a little worried he might pull the “Protagonist Card” or a “Supporting Role Card”. After all, playing the lead or a major supporting part in a Redemption Division quest required enormous dedication and total immersion to pull off.

But the coworkers drawing cards alongside him reassured him: first of all, new hires could never draw such an important role. And for experienced veterans, a high-difficulty Identity Card like that meant sky-high Reward Points, the kind everyone fought tooth and nail for.

In other words, Luo Yan’s worry was like a first-grader agonizing over whether to attend Tsinghua or Peking University someday. Completely unnecessary.

So Luo Yan relaxed.

Sure enough, the card he drew in the end was “Nameless Pawn Little Steward”, a character whose name would never even appear in the storyline.

Clutching an Identity Card that didn’t even qualify as cannon fodder, Luo Yan set off in high spirits.

When Luo Yan transmigrated over, his identity was “a new intern Little Steward who had just started working for the Yan Family”.

It took Luo Yan a few minutes to absorb the original Worldline:

The Yan Family was one of the newly risen wealthy clans making a name for itself in City A in recent years.

Yan Shi, the head of the Yan Family, had been penniless in his youth. After failing the college entrance exams following high school, he took a job near a university campus and fell in love with a professor’s daughter. Defying her family’s objections, she married him, emptied her savings to provide Yan Shi with startup capital, stood by him through his first bankruptcy, and even set up a fish stall at the wet market herself, until the debts were paid off bit by bit.

Later, the Yan Family’s business grew smoother and smoother, and riding the wave of the real estate boom, they shot up into City A’s nouveau riche.

Unfortunately, Madam Yan soon passed away from years of overwork in her youth, leaving behind her only son, the twelve-year-old Yan Qinghan. As Madam Yan lay dying, Yan Shi wept and sobbed at her bedside, gripping his wife’s hand as he swore to the heavens that he would take good care of Yan Qinghan.

Yet barely two months after Madam Yan’s death, Yan Shi married a young, beautiful new wife. And this new wife brought along a son of her own.

The boy was only half a year younger than Yan Qinghan, and he looked exactly like Yan Shi had in his youth; no DNA test was needed to tell he was Yan Shi’s own flesh and blood.

So everyone knew perfectly well what Yan Shi must have gotten up to back when his wife was pregnant.

After the new wife moved in, she initially tried to win Yan Qinghan over. But once she realized he couldn’t be won over, she began crushing him without mercy.

The year Yan Qinghan turned fourteen, his younger half-brother fell seriously ill. Instead of finding a doctor or going to a hospital, the new wife invited a “great master” from a temple.

After reading the boy’s fortune, the master told Yan Shi that Yan Qinghan’s birth characters clashed with his parents and siblings and drained the family’s wealth. If Yan Qinghan were allowed to remain in the Yan household, the family business would likely collapse, and Yan Shi himself would die an early death.

The new wife promptly fanned the flames with a good wail, and finally succeeded in driving Yan Qinghan out of the house.

The irony was that the pretext Yan Shi used for throwing Yan Qinghan out was to let this still-underage son “develop self-reliance and learn to get along with people”, and the place he sent Yan Qinghan to was the very little apartment where Yan Shi and Yan Qinghan’s mother had lived in their most destitute days.

That little apartment had been Yan Qinghan’s mother’s premarital property.

By the time Luo Yan read this, he was practically grinding his teeth. “What kind of trash father is this?! How does he face Yan Qinghan’s mother?! He swore he’d take good care of Yan Qinghan!”

System: [Heh. A man’s promises are just pretty lies.]

Luo Yan thought for a moment, then said, “So growing up in an environment like that, Yan Qinghan will probably turn dark, right…?”

System: [Unfortunately, yes.]

[According to the rough preset plot, Yan Qinghan will turn into a paranoid, sinister male lead, and one day take revenge on the villains in a way that leaves no way out.]

Luo Yan said, “Oh, good that he goes dark. Looking forward to him slapping his trash father’s face hard.”

System: […Your expectations are a little off there.]

[This is a Redemption-Themed Small World, after all. It’s just that employees aren’t required to personally carry out the redemption quest.]

[According to the preset plot, Yan Qinghan’s childhood sweetheart from his early years will automatically take on that redemption role, saving Yan Qinghan’s cold, dark heart, and ultimately delivering a heartwarming HE.]

[Also, Host, your scene has appeared. Please read carefully.]

So Luo Yan perked up and began receiving the information in earnest.

In fact, Luo Yan’s role in this Worldline amounted to just one short passage:

[That Mid-Autumn Festival, the Yan Family gathered for a grand reunion banquet, everyone except Yan Qinghan, who was alone on the outside.

As the toasts flowed around the table, the Yan Family’s Old Steward gazed up at the moon and thought of all the kindness the late Madam Yan had shown him, and his heart ached with grief. So the Old Steward set aside a portion of his own Mid-Autumn gifts and instructed the new intern Little Steward to deliver them to the Eldest Young Master who had been cast out of the Yan Family.

Eating what the Old Steward had sent, Yan Qinghan finally felt, on that bleak autumn night, a long-lost trace of warmth.]

Luo Yan was the “intern Little Steward” in this passage.

After reading the plot, the quest briefing surfaced in Luo Yan’s mind:

[Main Quest: Deliver the Mid-Autumn gifts to the Yan Family’s Eldest Young Master, Yan Qinghan, and get him to eat them]

[Bonus Quest: None at present]

The Main Quest was clear and simple enough, but what did “None at present” for the Bonus Quest mean?

The System explained: [Well, apparently, sometimes as a Worldline develops toward its later stages, even a nameless, faceless Living Tool like you, Host, might get a line or two of dialogue.]

[For example, in this Worldline, after Yan Qinghan returns to head the Yan Family and slaps the villains in the face, he might thank the people who helped him back then, such as this kind-hearted Old Steward.]

[At that point, you might be needed to show your face and deliver a line like “the Old Steward never stopped thinking of the Eldest Young Master”.]

[Of course, anyone could say a line like that, so it’s only a “Bonus Quest” that won’t affect your quest completion rate. Doing it earns extra points; not doing it costs you nothing.]

Luo Yan understood.

Soon, just as the plot described, the Old Steward sought Luo Yan out and handed him a cardboard box marked “Mid-Autumn Gift”, quietly instructing him:

“Take these to the Eldest Young Master for me. I’ll write down the address for you in a moment. And remember to tell the Eldest Young Master… tell him that the master thinks of him too. It’s just that there are many guests at the house right now, and we’re afraid the Eldest Young Master wouldn’t feel at ease, so we won’t invite him back for dinner.”

Looking at the sorrow in the Old Steward’s eyes, Luo Yan nodded firmly. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure it gets delivered.”

And so, box in hand, Luo Yan set out.

But he never imagined the apartment complex where Yan Qinghan lived would be so run-down; even less did he imagine that he, a grown man, would be tailed by two perverts.

In his original world, Luo Yan had a rather slight build and had never learned any basic fighting techniques.

After transmigrating, his figure and face were identical to those of his previous world: he looked fair, soft, and utterly harmless.

Of course, Transmigration Bureau employees could use all sorts of skills to protect themselves in Quest Worlds. The trouble was, Luo Yan, a fresh transmigrator, had zero starting Points, not enough to exchange for any skill. If it really came to a fight with two big, burly men, he would definitely come off worse.

So the only thing he could do was quicken his pace, find Yan Qinghan, duck inside, and wait for the two perverts to give up on their own.

Yan Qinghan lived on the sixth floor. From below, a faint orange glow could be seen through the window; someone was probably home.

The old building had no elevator either. Luo Yan scrambled up the dark stairwell two steps at a time.

What made his heart pound was that the two men behind him actually followed him inside, and their footsteps up the stairs only quickened.

Even the System, which had been coolly snarking from the start, had its voice pitch higher:

[Holy hell, these two are worked up! They caught a look at your face under the light and now they absolutely have to catch you!]

[What’s going on? A Living Tool isn’t supposed to run into danger the moment he shows up!]

[Host, run!]

Do you even need to tell me that?! Next quest, I’m definitely spending Points on a Fleet-Footed skill card and a Huaxia Kung Fu card!

Finally, Luo Yan reached Yan Qinghan’s door.

No time to look for the doorbell. He began pounding on it with all his might. “Young Master! Eldest Young Master!”

“I’m a new steward from the Yan Family. I’ve brought you something!”

Dead silence from within. Not the slightest sound of anyone coming to open the door.

Luo Yan recalled a scene from the Worldline: last Mid-Autumn Festival, the Yan Family had sent someone for Yan Qinghan too, and Yan Qinghan had had a huge fight with Yan Shi over the reunion dinner. From then on, Yan Qinghan had resolved never to attend such a “reunion dinner” again.

So, hearing that he was from the Yan Family, would the man refuse to open the door at all?

Meanwhile, the footsteps behind him drew closer and closer. Luo Yan could even hear their heavy breathing and their leering laughter.

Luo Yan’s voice grew more and more urgent. “Young Master! Someone’s following me—”

With a bang, the door opened.