A week later.
On the beach of a private island, the sunlight was so fierce that even the air seemed to warp.
Bai Zhu lay sprawled across a beach chair, casually tossing aside his empty coconut shell. It rolled twice across the sand.
He lazily lifted his eyelids and called out to the burly man sweating over the grill not far away.
"Morel, I'm out of water. Go pick me another one. Make it chilled."
Morel's barbecue tongs creaked in his grip, a vein bulging across his knotted arm muscles. Without even turning around, he roared, "Do you not have hands? This island is full of coconut trees. Pick one yourself if you want a drink!"
In the water nearby, Piyu was dragging a dead-eyed Milluki around to play in the waves. She held a phone Milluki had just heavily modified, occasionally sweeping it toward the beach to record this "harmonious" vacation scene.
Milluki's soul had long since left his body, but Piyu was simply too clingy.
Ever since he had seen Gela Jiang's Collection Room, packed with out-of-print games and consoles, his heart had remained there. If Piyu had not forcibly dragged him to the beach to play in the water, he would have been holding the limited-edition handheld Gela Jiang had promised him, battling online with that big, rough-looking man.
Bai Zhu smacked his lips, completely unfazed by the refusal. "You're the host, and I'm the guest. Is this how you treat your guests?"
"Bang!"
Morel slammed the barbecue tongs onto the grill. Several sizzling, grease-dripping chunks of meat bounced off and landed in the sand.
He crossed the distance to Bai Zhu in a few strides. His towering body cast a shadow over him as he took a hard drag from his pipe and exhaled a thick