Childhood Sweethearts

"Sure enough, it had to be those old-school galgames. I didn't come chasing hype for nothing."

"This selfless, gentle death for the sake of saving the world truly deserved to be an enduring classic trope."

After finishing Eustia of the Tarnished Wings, Ye Qing's emotions refused to settle for a long while.

The end of a work always left one feeling terribly empty. For emotions conveyed through fiction, he would at least have to be depressed for a while.

Ding-dong...

The crisp notification that the Qiandu Cloud Drive archive had finished downloading rang out. Ye Qing swept away his previous sorrow and immediately began working on conquering the next little sister.

Sadness was unavoidable, and it was hard to calm down, but there was no time to hesitate. There were still more little sisters waiting for him to save them!

The best way to wash away sorrow was to welcome the next sorrow.

Click, click.

With his headphones on, Ye Qing did not hear the faint sound of a key turning. A figure crept quietly into the room, carefully suppressing her footsteps.

"Good evening, Little Qing!"

"Ugh!?"

Startled, Ye Qing let out a strange cry and shuddered all over, looking resentfully at the uninvited guest.

"Ye Yuyan, could you let me know beforehand next time you come over? And don't pick such a cursed hour!" Ye Qing said helplessly.

"Nope, hehe." The woman named Ye Yuyan shook the key in her hand.

"You gave me this key yourself, and you were the one who said I could come whenever I wanted."

Ye Yuyan casually placed the key beside the desk, walked over to Ye Qing, and pressed down on his shoulder as she teased him.

"Why aren't you welcoming me? Such a huge reaction... Don't tell me you were playing that kind of game again?"

Her gaze shifted to the computer screen, which displayed a decompression window. Ye Qing calmly pressed a key to switch screens and answered as if it were nothing unusual.

"None of your business, okay? Don't be so curious."

He had just finished getting in the mood and was ready to move on to the physical part, only to be interrupted.

This was the most despairing kind of foreplay.

If he had been a little more efficient and Ye Yuyan had arrived a little later, he would have become Lao Da.

"I'm exhausted, I'm exhausted. Let me lie down for a bit." Ye Yuyan flopped onto the bed without any regard for her image.

"Hey, you've been working and you're all sweaty. Did you even shower before getting on my bed?" Ye Qing complained mildly.

"I'm not sweaty, I'm not sweaty! Even if I were, I'd smell nice. You should count yourself lucky," Ye Yuyan replied unhappily.

Ye Qing turned and glanced at the woman lying on the bed. His childhood sweetheart wore fitted jeans and a loose T-shirt, but her rumpled clothes revealed her slender, easily grasped waist.

With a helpless sigh, Ye Qing truly had no way to deal with her.

Ye Yuyan was the biological daughter of his adoptive parents, his adoptive younger sister, and also his childhood sweetheart. Their relationship had been close enough that they had bared everything to each other since childhood.

Young and beautiful, gifted in both virtue and talent, and decisive in her actions, she had found a high-paying job right after graduation and risen to upper management through her own abilities in a short time.

Back in school, because she wanted to be in the same grade as Ye Qing, she had effortlessly skipped ahead to his year. Even now, she was only twenty-two.

At school, she had been the unattainable dream girl of countless students. After entering society, plenty of people still wanted to pursue her. She was a mature woman one could truly rely on.

She was worlds apart from a hopeless shut-in like him who refused to grow up.

"So you came to my place this late because of that mysterious job you refuse to tell me about again?" Ye Qing turned back around and continued playing on his computer, treating his visiting childhood sweetheart as though she were invisible.

"Mm..." Ye Yuyan answered weakly.

"What a strange job. Aren't you planning to quit?" Ye Qing asked in confusion.

His childhood sweetheart truly had been upper management, but half a year ago, she had suddenly resigned from her high-paying job.

She found another job that no one knew anything about, earning only three thousand a month, while still having to pay rent, water, and electricity bills in such an expensive area.

Her quality of life had plummeted, and she was living entirely off the money she had saved before.

Low pay would have been one thing, but the job was also demanding.

A job that required her to work late into the night made it difficult for Ye Qing not to let his imagination run wild.

But even if it were a job catering to other people's nightlife, she should not have been earning that little.

It was a complete mystery, and his childhood sweetheart only stammered whenever he asked her about it.

"I don't want to quit." Ye Yuyan's voice lacked all confidence.

"Then at least tell me what you do," Ye Qing said.

"I can't say that either..." Ye Yuyan murmured so quietly that she was hard to hear.

"Suit yourself." Ye Qing did not press further.

He was not the type who liked to get to the bottom of everything. If she had difficulties she did not want to talk about, forcing her to explain herself would not be very kind.

After a moment of silence, Ye Qing casually said,

"If you really run out of money, you can come to me. It's not much, but supporting the two of us wouldn't be a problem."

He, too, had once chased unrealistic dreams, squandered all his savings, and only seen reality after his miserable failure.

At the time, he had likewise been unwilling to confide in anyone and could only vent to online friends he had known for years but never met.

For ordinary workers, money was a very precious thing.

When someone was willing to continuously spend money on another person, that person's importance in their heart spoke for itself.

Ye Yuyan stared silently at the ceiling in a daze, warmth filling her heart before a smile rose at the corner of her lips.

She got up from the bed, casually patted Ye Qing's shoulder, and said happily,

"You childish guy. You stay cooped up at home all day and refuse to move, and I even have to clean for you. You're not reliable at all.

Relying on you definitely isn't a long-term plan. You should rely on me instead. This young lady will just keep you!"

"You really aren't convincing right now. Bring back the Yuyan from half a year ago," Ye Qing replied without turning around.

"Just wait, just wait!" Ye Yuyan said indignantly, then changed the subject.

"I'm hungry. Want some of my late-night snack?"

"It's two in the morning. Late-night snacks are really unhealthy, and eating too much makes it harder to sleep."

"It's not exactly good, but what young person doesn't stay up late these days? Two in the morning is nothing. It's just a late-night snack. One question: are you eating or not?"

"Eating!"

Ye Qing had only eaten a Burger 1+1 that evening. After all that magical girl business, he truly was hungry.

"That's more like it, Little Qing." Ye Yuyan rubbed Ye Qing's blond head, leaned close beside his face, and let her soft breath brush against his cheek as she gently spoke terrifying words.

"When we go out tomorrow—no, when we wake up and go out later—if that tattoo sticker mark on your neck isn't washed off, I'll beat you to death."

"It should... probably... maybe disappear on its own tomorrow?" Ye Qing said guiltily.

"You figure it out! I'm going to make a late-night snack."

The dragon pattern coiled around Ye Qing's neck was nothing more than a tattoo sticker.

Before joining the organization, he had originally decided to grit his teeth and get a tattoo for the job, but Ye Yuyan had discovered it by accident and strongly opposed it.

Under her death threats, he had changed it to an easily washable sticker instead.

"Sigh."

Listening to Ye Yuyan's fading footsteps, Ye Qing let out a helpless sigh.

Being pestered by his childhood sweetheart really was not a good thing.

Originally, the two of them had lived their own separate lives.

Then one day, Ye Yuyan had come over uninvited and found his house, which had not been cleaned, in a complete mess.

He merely liked to gather his trash together and deal with it all in one day.

It just so happened that Ye Yuyan had come the day before he planned to clean.

Because of that, his childhood sweetheart suspected that he had fallen into depravity through games and anime, so she often came over to take care of him.

As a result, his flights were constantly forced to change. Truly, the weather was unpredictable.