The light-colored shirt tore in two in the android's hands.
The tall android stood there, expressionless and at a loss, betraying a hint of awkwardness and unease.
Poor android. Was even the clothing he came with from the factory such poor quality?
Seen that way, the android manufacturer really was an unscrupulous business.
Xin Hexue frowned and cursed Xi Zhengqing in his head.
Xin Hexue lifted his eyes and asked coolly, "Can you take a shower?"
He was worried the android couldn't get wet.
The android looked at him. For some reason, he stared at him for quite a while before belatedly nodding.
Xin Hexue said, "Go to the second room down the left corridor on the second floor. You can pick whatever clothes you like in there. There's a shower attached, so wash yourself and get changed."
That was Pei Guangji's dressing room. With so many clothes, and Pei Guangji unable to wear them in the ICU anyway, this was a good way to make use of them while they sat idle.
Worried that the android might rush through and fail to get clean enough, Xin Hexue also set a time limit. "Come back down and find me in half an hour."
The android nodded.
When he returned after completing the third task he had been given since activation, Xin Hexue was curled up on the sofa knitting a sweater. He blinked sleepily, a faint sheen of moisture already in his eyes.
Seeing him come down, Xin Hexue beckoned. "Come here."
The android was about the same size as Pei Guangji, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. The shirt
and
vest both fit him well.
Xin Hexue asked, "What's your name?"
The android shook his head.
It seemed no name had been set at the factory. Presumably, that had been left for the owner to decide.
While Xin Hexue was thinking, the mechanical cat pounced on his cuff and bit it again. The cardigan was made of pure wool, and its natural elasticity let the mechanical cat pull it into an arc, exposing a slender stretch of pale wrist.
"Don't fuss." Xin Hexue patted the mechanical cat on the head to stop its mischief, then said casually, "I'll call you Number One, then."
Xin Hexue wasn't much good at naming things. That much was clear from the mechanical cat being called Puppy, the gardener robot in the garden being called Number Two, the robot vacuum being called Number Three, and so on.
"Can you knit a sweater?"
He asked Number One.
Number One slowly shook his head.
Wasn't he supposed to have a full range of functions and know how to do everything?
Xin Hexue pursed his lips in mild dissatisfaction.
Still, he had recently read some reference books on android manufacturing.
At present, there were two ways for artificial intelligence to imitate human thought. One used symbolic operations and logical expressions to reproduce human thought processes from the top down; the other reproduced and imitated the activity of the human nervous system in a bottom-up model.
The former required a database and relied on extensive queries and searches to determine a response. Most ordinary robots on the market fell into this category.
The latter was closer to the human way of learning, improving future behavior through accumulated experience.
Perhaps Number One's behavioral model was the latter kind, requiring him to learn and improve after activation.
Xin Hexue showed him an online sweater-knitting tutorial. Although Number One was clumsy at first, he took his learning seriously, so Xin Hexue felt comfortable leaving the half-finished pet sweater with him.
He stretched and went upstairs to rest.
Once he had turned away and couldn't see him, Number One belatedly raised his head, his inorganic eyes following Xin Hexue's retreating figure.
Until his figure disappeared around the turn in the stairs.
Number One lowered his head and continued his awkward attempts to learn knitting, even as the mechanical cat kept biting at his trouser leg in disdain.
It had no name before.
It had only a codename acquired after joining the Spark Organization. Because of its pair of scorpion pincers that could cut through any material, it was called the Cutter.
Now, he had a name.
As Number One thought this, he couldn't help revealing his enormous shadow. A long tail lined with upright bony spines swished rapidly back and forth.
The mechanical cat jumped away in fright on reflex.
"Was there something you wanted to see me about?"
Xin Hexue was cool and distant, his lowered lashes reflecting an attitude that was far from warm and even faintly resistant.
Behind the lenses of the Alpha across the table was a pair of gray eyes.
His technically flawless prosthetic eyes made him look as though he had eyes no different from those of an ordinary human, even if ordinary human eyes couldn't record images.
After Xi Zhengqing had hurried away from the villa a few days ago, he hadn't seen Xin Hexue again, needing time to sort out his muddled thoughts.
Instead, every evening after work, he returned to his darkroom, filled with his collection.
None of the gems and porcelain he had collected from all over could hold his interest anymore, no matter how brightly they gleamed.
Xi Zhengqing spent the entire night standing before his new photo wall.
He found that merely seeing a photo of the young man made his heart race for no apparent reason. He arranged for examinations, and the results from three different institutions all showed that there was nothing wrong with his pacemaker or artificial heart.
Xi Zhengqing was certain he had no masochistic tendencies or any other special predilections. So why did he indulge in games of desire with Xin Hexue, even willingly placing himself in the position of being tamed?
His heart began racing again.
The first time had been when he first met the young man in the villa's garden.
And the most recent time his heart rate had reached 180 was when Xin Hexue leaned in and gave him a fleeting kiss, a light touch that threw Xi Zhengqing off balance.
He realized that nothing else, not even their earlier games of desire, had thrown him into such disarray.
It had been a mere touch of the lips, not even enough to count as a kiss.
Xi Zhengqing suddenly realized that romantic desire was a more tormenting emotion than lust.
Like his elder sister, he had fallen hopelessly into the Beta's trap. More pathetically still, he was doing so under another Alpha's identity.
This time, Xi Zhengqing had asked Xin Hexue out as himself.
The venue was the immersive restaurant where he had previously met up with Zuo Yongyan and the others. He had checked the online reviews: besides groups of friends, many couples also liked coming here.
This time, the theme was a fantasy Garden of Eden. The vintage atmosphere created by holographic projections made it feel as though they were inside an oil painting.
Red roses could be seen everywhere, and the classical Doric columns bore exquisite reliefs.
Based on what he had found in the study drawer, Xi Zhengqing had originally thought that perhaps Xin Hexue's feelings for Pei Guangji weren't so deep. After all, the document he had found was a thoroughly unequal lover's contract.
Before asking Xin Hexue out, he could still fool himself into thinking that Xin Hexue's relationship with Pei Guangji was merely a transaction.
Now, however, he realized that Xin Hexue might have some feelings for Pei Guangji after all.
Because Xin Hexue's attitude toward "Pei Guangji" was entirely different from his attitude toward "Xi Zhengqing."
That indifferent expression instantly put a great distance between them.
Xi Zhengqing had gone to great lengths to have the restaurant staff arrange several romantic gestures. Then, because Xin Hexue didn't eat scallions, he had bent his head and spent more than ten minutes picking the chopped scallions out of the food. After that, Xin Hexue stood up, his voice cool and clear. "Mr. Xi, if there's nothing important, I'll head back first. You're Guangji's friend, and what you did today was very inappropriate. I think it would be better if we kept a suitable distance."
The light fell on the now-empty seat across from him.
Xi Zhengqing took a deep breath.
He simply couldn't accept being intimate with the young man while posing as "Pei Guangji" anymore. For a time, the difference between Xin Hexue's attitudes toward Xi Zhengqing and Pei Guangji had left him reeling, unable to adjust. He had truly lost his composure and acted rashly today as a result.
After all, to Xin Hexue, Xi Zhengqing was still the unfamiliar "boyfriend's childhood friend."
There would be another way...
In any case, Pei Guangji was practically a living corpse now. Even his own younger brother was eyeing the heir's position covetously. What did Pei Guangji have to compete with him?
That was what Xi Zhengqing thought, but he couldn't help feeling jealous of him.
[Xi Zhengqing's Heartbreak Value +3]
Xin Hexue left Xi Zhengqing hanging for a while. During that time, his Affection Points slowly rose to fifty on their own.
He knew all too well what Xi Zhengqing was struggling with right now, struggling so much that even "Pei Guangji" hadn't returned to South City to see him lately.
This was exactly how Xin Hexue had planned things to go.
He looked at the movie playing on the screen.
It was one he had found online, a movie "Xin Hexue" had made when he was fourteen.
Xin Hexue's knowledge of the movie had previously been limited to its plot summary. But considering that another target carried the title of "genius director," he had dug it up.
Before a host employee entered a world, the character was a blank puppet whose background was automatically filled in. Once the employee entered the world, he became the character himself. The memories of everyone who had interacted with the blank puppet, as well as the traces of the life the puppet had left behind, would automatically be replaced with the employee's likeness.
Xin Hexue watched the images in the movie. It was indeed what he had looked like as a teenager, but perhaps because the blank puppet's acting was poor, it seemed to lack a certain spark and was more wooden than anything else.
His communicator received a message from Pei Ying.
[Pei Ying: At the beginning of next month, the Pei family is planning to hold a belated coming-of-age banquet for me. The invitation should reach the villa tonight. Can you come?]
Xin Hexue was mildly surprised. For him, this message was like being handed a pillow just as he was getting sleepy.
He had already been stringing Xi Zhengqing along with the cold shoulder for some time.
He sent a screenshot of the message to "Pei Guangji."
[Xin Hexue: Guangji, I want to attend Pei Ying's coming-of-age banquet. Can you pick me up and take me there that day? But I don't seem to have a suitable outfit...]
After sending it, Xin Hexue turned his communicator face down.
While waiting for Xi Zhengqing's response, Xin Hexue propped up his head and continued watching the movie.
But soon, he couldn't resist the sleepiness brought on by boredom. His head nodded, his thin eyelids closed, and he fell asleep on the sofa.