However, District One lay in the middle to lower latitudes. Once the sun rose and hung in the sky, places with mountains and water were filled with warm sunshine, blooming flowers, and the gentle beauty of spring.
The villa nestled between mountains and water. The wind had risen sharply the previous evening, and spring rain had fallen for half the night. By daybreak, the traces of rain had evaporated, leaving only early dew on the leaves and the sound of springs trickling through the mountain woods.
The weather forecast showed no rain today.
It was a good day to replace the spent flowers in the villa garden with new varieties.
A competent butler robot ought to take such things into account.
Before this, he had merely been a variant with no appreciation for the pleasures of life, immersed in mechanical slaughter.
Number One knew nothing about flowers. He had simply followed the previous smart butler's programming and ordered new seedlings from a flower farm to transplant into the garden.
When the person on the other end of the phone asked what flowers he needed this time, Number One answered without thinking, "Cosmos."
It was the only flower whose name he knew.
At the time, Number One's shadow had been hidden inside a child. Xin Hexue had told him that cosmos flowers always had an even number of petals: eight.
Although it wasn't the kind of order from the organization that he needed to commit to memory, Number One had remembered it anyway.
That had been the first time Number One met Xin Hexue, at a hospital in West City in the Sixth District.
He had merely followed the organization's orders and started a fire at the Pei Corporation's pharmaceutical plant in West City. The organization had made no demands about whether he succeeded in injuring the Pei Corporation's heir. His job was to infiltrate the Sixth District afterward and await orders.
He had waited until Qiu Yuan told him to sabotage the Pei Corporation heir's aircraft.
Although Qiu Yuan was not the leader of the Spark Organization, he was effectively an ally, so Number One had to carry out his orders.
He had destroyed the aircraft's braking mechanism.
Number One set a plant into a small hole in the soil.
Cosmos had a long flowering season. The farm had told him that these were an early-blooming variety that would flower in May or June.
"Planting flowers?"
It was the young man's gentle voice.
Number One turned around.
Xin Hexue was in poor health. Even when the sun was bright enough for ordinary people to wear light jackets, he still had to wear a padded windbreaker over a thin, apricot-colored turtleneck sweater.
Even so, his slender, exposed knuckles were pale.
Number One stared at him and answered sluggishly, "Mm."
Xin Hexue stepped closer. The plants had yet to flower. "Cosmos?"
Number One nodded again.
Cosmos were also known as the flowers of the universe because of their strong reproductive and adaptive abilities. Xin Hexue knew them well.
They were the planetary flower of his home world, the B3081 Asteroid in the Alpha System.
Outside his palace, there had once been a vast expanse of flowers like these.
A faint trace of nostalgia brought the slightest hint of tenderness to Xin Hexue's face. "Do you know the legend of the cosmos?"
Number One could have used the android's programming to look it up. Even so, he didn't, shaking his head instead.
Xin Hexue spoke evenly. "According to the legend, the youngest daughter of the cosmos king was cursed to be lonely for all eternity. The curse was so powerful that no one in the kingdom could break it. So the cosmos princess spent a long time alone in her castle. She was always by herself and often sat on a swing late at night, crying."
Xin Hexue remembered the beginning of the story, as well as the legend's clichéd ending. "A knight from a distant land passed by the cosmos princess's castle. The knight and the princess fell in love at first sight, and when love came, the curse was finally broken."
It was a very old legend. By the time his home world entered the interstellar age, it had been so old that calling it timeworn hardly did it justice.
Even so, thanks to a tradition that had endured, cosmos were still regarded as lovers' flowers and appeared as a distinctive image in all kinds of love poems.
Xin Hexue stepped forward, coming very close to Number One. "Could you hold still for a moment?"
Number One obediently remained motionless.
The young man leaned closer, carrying a faint, cool fragrance, and gently put his arms around Number One.
While Number One was dazed, fair fingers pressed against a joint at the back of the android's neck, and the chip popped out.
The android's eyes dimmed as though their light had gone out, and he entered a semi-shutdown state.
Xin Hexue deleted the records of that night from the chip's memory.
Fainting had been too embarrassing. The memory footage couldn't be allowed to remain.
He pressed his lips together and, once he was done, put the chip back in place.
K watched the kitten delete his embarrassing past in shame.
He liked to document his host's work. To that end, K had an encrypted folder full of photos and videos of Xin Hexue. But this was the one time K hadn't recorded anything at all, and when he saw Xin Hexue delete the contents of the android's memory chip, he even breathed a sigh of relief.
The android stuttered for a moment after the memory chip was reinstalled.
Xin Hexue said, "You can get back to your work now."
Number One said, "Yes."
Number One couldn't say that Xin Hexue's deletion of a section of the android chip's memory had no effect.
The android body didn't remember, but the variant cutter still remembered everything clearly.
Someone came to the garden.
The Alpha greeted him warmly, his gray prosthetic eye turned toward him. "The weather's lovely today."
Xin Hexue lowered his gaze slightly and replied politely, "Yes. But Mr. Xi, you must be very busy with work. You really don't have to come and visit me every day..."
Xi Zhengqing walked around the flower bed and came in. "It's Saturday. The Xi Group may be busy, but even its heir has the right to enjoy his weekend, doesn't he?"
He went on to tease, "Or do you see me as a workaholic?"
Xin Hexue shook his head and said helplessly, "Mr. Xi, that's not what I meant."
Xi Zhengqing asked, "Do you find me annoying? Showing up uninvited every day—have I been bothering you?"
Xin Hexue answered, "No, you haven't."
Xi Zhengqing seemed greatly relieved by his answer. He looked at him with a hint of dependence. "I was worried I hadn't kept a proper distance and had bothered you. I have very few friends. I hope my excessive enthusiasm hasn't frightened you."
Xin Hexue looked away rather than meet Xi Zhengqing's eyes. After a long while, he said softly, "I don't have any friends. Because of some things that happened in high school, I find it hard to form close relationships like that with other people. I'm used to being alone, so I may come across as rather distant when I interact with people, but it isn't directed at you."
As the young man laid himself bare so frankly, his dark lashes trembled slightly, and his skin looked almost translucent in the sunlight.
There was more left unsaid.
Although Xin Hexue hadn't gone into detail about his high school experiences, Xi Zhengqing had investigated. Because of his face blindness, he had been bullied at school while attending high school in the Sixth District. As a result, he still had a mild social anxiety disorder and would instinctively have an excessive panic response when he became the center of a crowd's attention.
Xin Hexue raised his eyes. His irises were a light shade of black, exceptionally clear in the sunlight.
"I don't think you're bothering me. I'm just not quite used to it yet." Xin Hexue thought for a moment. "Perhaps I could call you Zhengqing? Would that bring us a little closer and make you feel better?"
[Xi Zhengqing's Affection Points +3]
Xi Zhengqing smiled. "Of course. No one besides my family has ever called me that. I'm very happy."
Xin Hexue was softhearted.
Xi Zhengqing knew that. With his unfailing daily visits and company, and his greetings over the communicator at a frequency that was neither too high nor too low, Xin Hexue's attitude had clearly softened.
He had ample patience for the young man.
Xi Zhengqing was waiting for him to trust him completely and expose his soft belly to him like a cat.
Whether it was the exceptionally gentle side he showed only to Pei Guangji, or the wicked side that lifted a foot to tread on an Alpha's member, Xi Zhengqing liked them both.
He wanted all of Xin Hexue.
[Xi Zhengqing's Affection Points +2]
Xin Hexue's eyes curved, their shape bearing a feline cunning and keenness.
Xi Zhengqing didn't realize that the more proactive he was, the farther he stepped into the lion cat's hunting trap.
He issued an enthusiastic invitation. "Would you like to go out for a walk? We can stay in South City. I drove today."
For longer journeys between districts, Xi Zhengqing tended to use an aircraft, though he also chose a traditional vehicle when he had plenty of time. Of course, a traditional car was more than enough if they were only traveling around South City in District One.
Xin Hexue hesitated. "I... I don't go out often. I don't know where to go."
Xi Zhengqing had, of course, already made plans. "I know a nice restaurant in South City. Shall we have lunch together? Afterward, we can wander around the city center without any particular destination. It's a pleasant way to pass the time, and we wouldn't waste the spring sunshine."
Unable to refuse such a warm invitation, Xin Hexue said, "All right."
Xi Zhengqing wasn't much of a cook, but he had a particularly good eye for restaurants.
He had paid special attention to Xin Hexue's tastes and noticed that the young man clearly preferred the Chinese cuisine of ancient civilization, so he had chosen a private Chinese restaurant today.
After lunch, Xi Zhengqing took a phone call.
It was his nephew, Xi Xiaode.
After the call, Xi Zhengqing said to Xin Hexue with a hint of apology, "I forgot I need to buy stationery for my nephew. Would you mind stopping by the stationery center while we're out?"
Xin Hexue readily agreed. "Sure. We're just looking around anyway, so it doesn't matter where we go."
There was a fairly large stationery center nearby, where many students came to shop for supplies.
The two of them stood out somewhat among the teenagers, and their striking looks drew frequent glances.
Xin Hexue paused in front of a shelf of oil pastels. Xi Zhengqing asked, "Do you like drawing?"
Xin Hexue shook his head and pointed to the oil pastels in their playful, childlike packaging. "Children would probably like these, wouldn't they? I'd like to give them to your nephew as a present, even though I haven't met him yet."