Su Bai spent the two hours after three in the morning in Ye Qingqing's living room.
With a glucose tablet in her mouth, the girl fell asleep before she could finish a single sentence.
Su Bai moved her into the bedroom and pulled up the covers. He was hardly gentle about it, but at least he kept his source of labor from freezing.
Then he returned to the living room, polished away the last few loose dark spots on the Deep Space Marrow Core's surface, and shamelessly helped himself to two cartons of milk and four bread rolls.
With those calories in him, he had just about made up for the night's losses.
After swallowing the last bite, he took out his phone to check the time. The numbers on the screen made him curse under his breath.
Five fifty.
Worse still were the WeChat messages.
"Hajige! Where are you?!"
"It's one in the morning! You're still making deliveries? Don't tell me you fell into another hole???"
"Answer me! Or I'm calling the police!"
"...If you fell asleep, you'd better show up alive in front of me tomorrow morning! You hear me?!!!"
The messages stretched from one to four in the morning, with three missed calls in between.
Su Bai stared at the screen for two seconds, then typed quickly.
"Just finished work. On my way back."
The reply came almost as soon as his message went through.
"??? You've been making deliveries until now? Su Bai, do you have a death wish?!"
He didn't answer.
He tucked his phone away and stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, watching gray light spread along the horizon as he did the math.
A taxi from the city center to Happiness Lane would take forty minutes. The first subway train hadn't left yet.
Getting