"Powdered sugar?!"
Even Danzhu, who had worked in Mobius's lab for two or three years, had no idea the bottle contained powdered sugar.
"Hmph." Mobius turned away.
Griseo's Family Returns
After forcibly giving Klein a vacation, Mobius personally supervised Yaqing as he drove Klein back to the company's residential area.
Mobius truly was the kind of capitalist who deserved to be hanged from a streetlamp, but it could not be denied that the benefits she gave Klein, Cangxuan, and Danzhu were the best in World Serpent. Their salaries were nearly three times Kevin's, that corporate slave's.
It was already past nine in the evening when they returned to the courtyard. Yaqing and Mobius carefully pushed open the courtyard gate as if they were thieves, tiptoeing inside. Seeing the living room shrouded in darkness, they both seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Bang.
With a bang, the lights in the living room instantly came on. Everyone in the courtyard popped out from behind the sofa, firing streamers at the two of them with party poppers. Even Kevin and Mei were among them.
"Welcome back!" Elysia's sweet voice carried a hint of delight.
Yaqing and Mobius were completely dumbfounded. Looking at the scene before them, their CPUs began spinning wildly. Even with their IQs of 160, they could not figure out what the hell Elysia and the others were doing.
"Huh?"
When Elysia saw that Yaqing and Mobius had entered, she instantly froze, her eyes turning into tiny dots.
Yaqing silently removed the red streamer from his face. After staring at everyone in silence for a long while, he finally said, "We were only gone for a few hours. Was there really any need to get this excited?"
"Uh..." Kevin and Mei exchanged a glance. It was over—they had forgotten about Yaqing and Mobius. Neither of the couple had remembered them, assuming they would not be back tonight.
"So, who exactly were you planning to welcome?" Mobius removed the streamers tangled in her hair.
"Uh..." Sakura awkwardly pointed behind the two of them.
Mobius turned around.
At the courtyard entrance, a woman with smiling eyes looked at Mobius. Dressed in a long white gown, she had a gentle temperament and shoulder-length light blue hair. She stepped forward and hugged Mobius.
"Doctor, we're back from our trip to North America."
"Blanca!" A trace of surprise flashed through Mobius's beautiful eyes, only to vanish almost immediately.
"Big Brother Yaqing." Little Griseo ran out from behind Blanca and opened her arms toward Yaqing.
No one could refuse Little Griseo when she wanted to be held. At least, Yaqing could not. Picking her up, he smiled and said, "Little Griseo, have you missed me after all this time?"
"I did~" Little Griseo rubbed her face against Yaqing's.
"Little Griseo, did you miss Sister Mobius too?" Hearing Griseo call Yaqing big brother, Mobius also came over, automatically changing "auntie" into "sister."
"I missed you too, Granny Mobius." Little Griseo's voice was sweet, and her smile was incredibly healing.
However, Mobius's smile gradually disappeared as her beautiful eyes turned murderous toward a certain Miss Pink Elf.
The culprit did not dare meet the victim's eyes. Whistling as if she knew nothing, she shuffled closer and pinched Little Griseo's chubby baby cheeks.
"Mm, Sister Elysia..."
"That isn't right. You should call me Little Sister Elysia~?" Elysia was exceptionally serious, apparently not finding her own words shocking in the slightest.
"Little Sister Elysia..."
Mobius slapped Elysia's hand away. "Don't lead Little Griseo astray."
Elysia withdrew her hand, looked at the faint redness already appearing on the back of her fair hand, and pouted.
Kevin and Kalpas helped Marks carry the luggage into the courtyard. Marks collapsed onto the sofa, tilted his head, and said, "I'm exhausted. Please, anyone, bring me a bottle of cola."
Sakura opened the refrigerator, took out a can of cola, and set it on the coffee table.
Marks grabbed the cola, pulled open the tab, and gulped down a mouthful before sighing, "I'm alive again."
Yaqing held Little Griseo. For some reason, he had a natural affinity with children. Whether it was the children in Aponia's orphanage, Griseo and Ling, or even Little Knowledge, who was already twenty, they were all very close to him.
Unlike Marks, who was tired as a dog, Blanca was still full of energy. She took out the souvenirs she had bought for everyone from a large suitcase one by one and placed them on the coffee table.
"This is an outfit I bought especially for the Doctor. Green dinosaur pajamas—they're cute, right?" Blanca took out the unopened clothes and handed them to Mobius.
The air suddenly fell silent.
Since Yaqing owned the exact same dinosaur pajamas and wore them around the courtyard all day, everyone knew he had a pair. Now Blanca had specifically given Mobius the same pajamas, which meant...
"What is it?" Blanca looked at everyone, completely confused as they tried to hold back their laughter.
"Nothing. I. Like. It. Very. Much." Mobius accepted the gift with a fake smile, then viciously stomped on Yaqing's foot where no one could see.
Little Griseo looked puzzled, unable to understand why Granny Mobius had suddenly stepped on Big Brother Yaqing.
"This is a gift for Mei, a necklace I bought in Paris." Blanca took out a small red box.
"I love it, Sister Blanca." Mei accepted the gift.
"This is for Kevin..."
Blanca distributed the gifts to everyone one by one. Since Eden was currently on a global concert tour, she could only make a video call and have Elysia accept hers on her behalf. Aponia had not returned to the courtyard yet.
"The last gift is for Yaqing." Blanca smiled.
"So there is one for me too. I thought Sister Blanca had been away for so long that she'd forgotten all about me." Yaqing joked.
"How could I?" Blanca chided him. She took out a tightly wrapped gift and said with a smile, "This is a picture frame I bought in Paris. I heard it's an artwork. Little Griseo painted this picture herself."
When the canvas was unfolded, the bronze-gold wooden frame immediately gave off an ancient aura. Yet what drew the eye even more was the oil painting within it. It depicted a man sitting and reading. Warm sunlight streamed through the window onto him, and paired with the fruit on the table, neither its colors nor composition had any flaws to be found.
"It looks so good." Sakura could not help letting out a gasp of admiration.
"Little Griseo painted this all by herself?" Ling could hardly believe it was Griseo's work. Little Griseo would be entering middle school next year, and Ling could already imagine her older sister using Griseo to lecture her.
"It's Yaqing in the painting... right?" Kevin asked uncertainly.
"Big Brother Yaqing, does it look like you?" Little Griseo, who had already left Yaqing's arms, looked up and asked innocently.
Yaqing's fingers gently traced the texture of the oil painting, and his thoughts were instantly pulled back more than a decade. Back then, his sister would often take out photos of their father and mother, and one of them was extremely similar to this painting.
His sister had said that their father did not like having his picture taken, so this single photo she had secretly taken became the only photo of him left in the world. Yaqing could only look at it, yet he had no memories of him at all.
His sister told him that this was their father, but why could he not remember anything about him?
It turned out he had never met his father.
So when he and his sister had depended on each other as children, she had tightly held that family portrait without him in it.
"Dad said that when little brother or little sister was born, we'd take another family portrait. But why... why couldn't Dad do it..."
He did not understand why his sister cried, but he knew the person in the photo was his family—his father.
"Big Brother Yaqing..."
Griseo's voice pulled him back from his thoughts. Seeing the worried looks in everyone's eyes, he realized that tears had already streamed down his face.
"Yaqing, are you all right?" Su asked worriedly.
"I'm fine." Yaqing smiled and brushed away his tears, rubbing Little Griseo's soft hair. "Little Griseo, these are tears of joy. I really love this gift. I'll definitely hang it above my bed and admire it day and night."
Yaqing carefully picked up the frame, as if afraid of damaging it even slightly.
Watching Yaqing's retreating back, Little Griseo's mood sank. Naturally, she could sense the change in his emotions.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"Little Griseo, you did nothing wrong. Yaqing... he probably remembered someone when he saw that painting." Mobius crouched down and softly comforted Griseo.
"Something was off about Yaqing." Kevin no longer sounded teasing, but spoke very seriously. "He cried. I've never seen him shed a tear, not even when he broke his arm falling during the school sports meet."
"Kevin, this isn't like that time." As a doctor, Su had seen too many partings of life and death. He saw Yaqing's sorrow and patted Kevin on the shoulder. "That time was physical pain. This time, it's emotional."
"Who wants to go comfort him?" Mei said.
"I don't know how to comfort people." Kalpas was the first to refuse. He turned around to leave, but then stopped and said without looking back, "Hmph. I suddenly feel like making dessert. If you want, bring some to him."
"Kalpas really is gentle, isn't he~?" Elysia said.
"Hmph." Kalpas did not refute her. Or rather, he could not be bothered to.
"Then let's send in the expert."
"Let Miss Pink Elf go comfort him."
Vill-V and Elysia spoke at the same time.
Yet no one noticed that Mobius had already disappeared from the living room.
Snakey Gets Drunk
Mobius came to Yaqing's bedroom door, knocked, and pushed it open. She found Yaqing standing on the bed, preparing to hang the oil painting on the wall above his bed.
Leaning against the doorframe, Mobius said, "You really are going to hang it up. I thought you were just trying to make Little Griseo happy. Looks like you genuinely like the painting."
After securing the frame a little, Yaqing jumped off the bed and patted away nonexistent dust from his hands. "Sister Blanca is back. Why aren't you catching up with her in the living room? What are you doing here?"
Mobius walked into the room, sat in Yaqing's favorite gaming chair as if she owned it, and said leisurely, "I don't like crowds."
"Senior, in that regard, we're the same kind of person." Yaqing took a bottle of wine from the glass cabinet. Before even opening it, he somehow produced a wineglass from nowhere.
The purplish-red wine swirled continuously in the wineglass.
"Since when did you become so refined? You're even having a glass of wine before bed." Mobius looked at Yaqing strangely. She remembered that cabinet was a refrigerated one, but it had always seemed to store snacks and cola.
"It became a habit in Northern Europe. President Otto was always overseeing my etiquette lessons. I didn't want those old fossils to find anything they could use against me either." Yaqing had never feared the board of directors, but even a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing around could become irritating.
"Sounds like the competition within Schicksal is intense?"
"How should I explain it to you?" Yaqing placed the wine on the table, then took out two wineglasses and several small cups.
"Let's say this bottle of wine is President Otto. He holds absolute leadership within the Schicksal Consortium and can freely pour the wine representing power into whichever glasses he wants." Yaqing poured wine into the wineglasses.
"These three wineglasses represent the Kaslana family, the Schariac family, and Theresa Apocalypse. They hold considerable weight within Schicksal, so they receive more wine than these small cups."
"These little cups represent the board of directors. A single cup may not hold much wine, but when they unite, they might take away some of the wine from the larger glasses."
"Get it?"
Yaqing gave a very vivid explanation of Schicksal's internal struggles.
"So the board of directors has set its sights on you? Doesn't anyone from Schariac help you?" Mobius curiously picked up the wine and poured herself a glass. She inhaled the fragrance of grapes, took a sip, and immediately choked.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
Yaqing handed her a tissue. "Those old Schariac geezers already hate me enough. They think I stole my parents' assets. Why would they help me?"
Wine was basically a soft drink to Yaqing, but after just one sip, Mobius's cheeks had already turned bright red.
"Ha, you're drunk already?" Yaqing could not help laughing. Looking at Mobius, who already had a snot bubble forming, he silently took out his phone and snapped a picture.
"Senior Mobius? Senior?" Yaqing shook Mobius's body, but the already asleep Mobius merely curled up in the gaming chair and turned over.
"Don't disturb me..." Drunk and asleep, Mobius had a completely different aura from her sober self. Her muttering made her look as cute as the girl next door.
"You'll catch a cold sleeping here." Yaqing spoke softly, as if coaxing a child.
"I don't want to..." Mobius turned her head, her cheeks flushed red and her smile innocent as she opened her arms. "Hold me."
"Senior, men and women shouldn't be so intimate." Yaqing refused.
The moment Yaqing refused, the drunk Mobius looked at him with pitiful eyes, as if she would cry if he did not hold her.
"I must have been out of my mind to take out the wine. If I ever let you touch another drop, I'll... forget it." Yaqing slipped an arm beneath Mobius's knees and lifted her into a princess carry.
Drunk Mobius no longer had her usual stubborn mouth. She practically wished she could curl up inside Yaqing's arms.
Yaqing did not notice that the bedroom door had somehow opened a crack.
"Don't push, don't push."
"Hey, let me see."
"I never expected the drunk Doctor Mobius to be this cute~ If she put on the little dress I gave her, she'd be even cuter~"
"Big Sister, stop pushing me!"
Before you continue