"Thank you for the gift! I love it!"
Miaomiao smiled until her round eyes curved into crescents, then grew a little embarrassed. "But I didn't prepare a gift for you."
"That's all right. I'm the one who showed up uninvited. You didn't know I was coming today, did you?"
Clark looked at Miaomiao warmly. He was tall and broad, and thoughtfully bent halfway down when he spoke to her. Combined with his exceptionally handsome face and sunshine-warm smile, it gave him an effortless air of friendliness that made people want to draw close and trust him.
This was a rare occurrence indeed.
Every member of the Merfolk was born with a different gift. Miaomiao's was "Perception." She couldn't read people's thoughts directly, but she could sense the faint traces emanating from their hearts, something that came from deep within the soul and could not be concealed.
Everyone carried some measure of desire, resentment, anger, or pain. Yet to Miaomiao's senses, this big man named Clark radiated warmth from head to toe: sunshine, flowers, gentle breezes, open skies.
Miaomiao could sense almost no darkness in him at all.
Good heavens, was he a saint?
When Clark noticed Miaomiao watching him, he merely smiled, not feeling offended in the slightest.
"All right, Bruce, let's talk about you." Clark patiently waited for his partner to finish asking his questions before beginning his own. "What did Damian mean earlier? Are you in trouble?"
"It's nothing major... All right, it's actually connected to why I adopted Miaomiao." Under his partner's insistent gaze, Bruce silently shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch. "You know that before you left, I was following a lead on an illegal underground human experimentation lab attempting 'god-making.'"
At the mention of this, Clark's ever-smiling face turned cold. "Yes, I