You Have No Future Together

"Uncle Martin isn't coming back again?"

Alice set the steaming dishes on the dining table and asked Kraft, who had just finished a phone call.

"Yeah... Maybe he thinks you can take good care of me."

Kraft sat down at the table irritably and muttered, "He must have found this burden too troublesome long ago. For all I know, he's living it up at some nightclub right now!"

"Huh? A-a nightclub?"

At the mention of such a provocative word, Alice's face quickly turned bright red, and even the hand holding the dish began to tremble.

You're a robot. What are you embarrassed about?

Kraft shot Alice a speechless glance, then noticed the soup bowl in her hands wobbling precariously.

"The soup's going to spill!"

He quickly reached out to steady the bowl in Alice's hands, then grimaced as he carefully set it on the table.

"Hot, hot, hot!!!"

After putting down the soup bowl, Kraft yelped and flung his hands around. Unlike Alice, he hadn't used a rag as insulation.

You're a robot. Why are you afraid of getting burned?

Even though Alice had been made by him, Kraft still couldn't understand how she worked.

"I-I'm sorry!"

Alice threw down the rag and hurried off to get the first-aid kit.

"Sigh..."

Kraft pressed the rag Alice had dropped against his hands to cool them while sighing helplessly.

He was almost getting used to Alice's clumsiness. It was a bit of a headache, but it really did make him feel as if he had a little sister.

It was actually kind of heartwarming.

"Big brother! The first-aid kit is here!... Eek!"

Kraft watched helplessly as Alice tripped over nothing and splatted onto the floor in front of him with a smack. The first-aid kit she had been carrying scattered everywhere, and Kraft sighed again.

I must have been out of my mind to think that was heartwarming.

"Waaah..."

Alice rubbed her nose, lifted her head, and looked at Kraft with teary eyes.

"Martin actually thought you could take care of me..."

Sighing for the third time, Kraft yanked Alice to her feet and began picking up the spilled first-aid kit with her.

"Ahh..."

Feeling guilty, Alice let out a pitiful whimper and protested unwillingly.

"But without me, no one would cook for you."

"That's right, that's right." Kraft smiled and reached out to pat Alice's head, only to touch his burned hand and grimace again. "Our Alice is the most important."

"Don't treat me like a child!"

Alice waved her fists in an adorably fierce protest.

Although Martin Lee, that irresponsible guardian, was never home, Kraft's life was still full of fun.

That made him completely forget Martin's previous warning.

At first, Kraft had kept a slight watch on his surroundings for unfamiliar people. But more than ten days had passed without a single incident, so he had put the matter out of his mind.

Bang!

The sudden impact interrupted the "siblings" at play. Window fragments and shattered glass rained down, turning the untouched meal on the dining table into a complete mess.

Kraft stiffly turned his neck and looked toward the wrecked window of his home.

Several shady-looking punks were climbing in through it.

"Yo, there's even a little girl here?"

One of them, a guy with a row of lip rings, looked around the room before giving Alice a lecherous grin.

"Don't start anything!"

The burliest intruder slapped the back of the lip-ringed man's head and barked in a low voice.

"Finish the boss's job quickly. It'll be trouble if the police get here!"

"What the hell did you do to my dinner, you bastards?!"

In a rage, Kraft turned the dial on his wrist to maximum, grabbed a medicine bottle beside him, and hurled it at the punks.

Hammerhead's men had only just begun to sneer when they heard a piercing whistle. The medicine bottle thrown by their target reached them in the blink of an eye and smashed into the lip-ringed man's nose with tremendous force.

The lip-ringed man did not even have time to scream before the blow knocked him unconscious. The tiny medicine bottle sent his body flying back out through the hole in the window.

"Damn it! The target isn't ordinary!"

The leading brute pulled a handgun from behind his back. The other intruders also drew their weapons—switchblades, steel pipes, iron chains, and the like. It suited their identities as street thugs perfectly.

"If you don't want to get hurt, then behave yoursel—hm?"

The leading brute raised his gun at Kraft and was about to spit out a few threats when he saw Kraft holding out his left hand flat, his watch aimed directly at him. Before the brute could wonder what he was doing, something pricked his forehead, and a fierce wave of drowsiness rushed over him.

"Huh? Ugh..."

As his eyelids rapidly drooped, the brute could no longer grip his gun, and it fell to the floor. Then he collapsed limply as though all strength had been drained from his body.

"Alice! Take them out!"

Kraft snapped his watch cover shut and shouted at Alice.

"Huh? Huh?"

Alice, who had been completely dumbfounded from start to finish, finally came back to her senses at Kraft's reminder and raised both hands toward the panicked intruders.

"R-Rocket Punch! Hah!"

With Alice's cute shout, white smoke burst from her wrists, launching both fists forward. As they smashed into two punks' noses, the concealed gun barrels in her wrists were exposed.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—

After Kraft's modifications, Alice's wrist cannons naturally no longer fired beans. Instead, they fired tranquilizer darts loaded with Professor Agasa's special anesthetic.

Very soon, the punks lay scattered across the floor, covered in tranquilizer darts.

"You bunch of assholes! You're completely lawless! Do you think this is Hell's Kitchen?!"

With his dinner ruined, Kraft viciously kicked the drugged intruders before pulling out his phone to call the police.

"There's no need to call the police, Young Master Kraft!"

A voice suddenly rang out from outside the window, stopping him. Kraft looked over and saw that a Chinese man in a black suit had appeared there at some point. Behind him, others dressed the same way were dragging the lip-ringed man away.

He looks familiar...

Kraft frowned as he studied the Chinese man who had suddenly appeared.

"Hey! Aren't you the security guard at Martin's antique shop?"

Kraft had met him once while looking for a suitable cauldron to make witch potions.

"Young Master Kraft has a good memory."

The security guard gave a stiff smile, then said, "Leave the cleanup to us."

As he spoke, he tilted his head to the side. A group of Asians in black suits filed in, carried all the intruders out of the room, and even cleaned up the debris on their way out.

"Then we'll be taking our leave. Workers will come tomorrow to repair the window."

The security guard, who had never mentioned his name from beginning to end, nodded at Kraft before leading the black-suited group away without looking back.

Damn it! Martin set me up!

By now, how could Kraft not understand? The excuse about being short-handed was bullshit. Martin simply wanted to see what cards Kraft had up his sleeve.

Though he was a little annoyed, it was not enough to make him angry. He was just curious...

What exactly was Martin doing? Why did it not seem like he was running a legitimate business?

If it were merely ordinary business competition, was there any need to bring guns? The way those people had acted did not resemble company enforcers. They were more like the gangs in Hell's Kitchen.

"Big brother?"

Alice, having retrieved and reattached her hands, came up to Kraft and cautiously tugged at his sleeve.

"Huh?"

Kraft came back to his senses from his thoughts and smiled as he patted Alice on the shoulder.

"You did well!"

"Hehe~"

Praised by Kraft, Alice shyly scratched the back of her head and revealed a goofy smile.

The two of them briefly cleaned up the wrecked dining table, then cooked two bowls of instant noodles to make do for dinner.

"Come on!" Kraft patted his full stomach and waved at Alice. "We're going to the workshop!"

Although they had dealt with those people easily, their behavior showed this was far more than simple "business competition." And when Martin decided to be ruthless, he would not go easy on Kraft. Who knew whether there would be a second attack, or even a third or fourth? Kraft felt that he needed to make more preparations.

Compared to his home, Kraft considered his workshop safer.

"Until this is settled, we're living in the workshop!"

After packing a pile of food and daily necessities, Kraft told Alice this.

As for school, Kraft did not plan to attend for the time being. What if those people lost their minds and came to cause trouble there?

This was all to avoid dragging innocent people into it. It definitely was not because Kraft wanted to skip school!

After moving into the workshop, Kraft spent his time either installing defensive measures or sleeping nonstop. Unfortunately, although he dreamed of quite a few amazing gadgets, most of them were useless—either they required mysterious power or special materials.

Every now and then, a character similar to Da Vinci would appear in his dreams just to fool around, frustrating Kraft so much that he wanted to cough up blood.

"Kraft! Are you dead or not?!"

Just as Kraft was busy making self-defense tools for himself, Fatty Liao suddenly came over and kicked open the workshop door.

If Kraft had not already added Fatty Liao's profile to the surveillance system's whitelist and automatically shut down the defenses when he approached, Fatty Liao would have been a dead fat man by now.

Seeing that Kraft said nothing and merely looked at him with disgust, Fatty Liao immediately became unhappy.

"You bastard! I was so worried about you! What kind of expression is that?"

Fatty Liao rushed forward, grabbed Kraft by the collar, and shook him hard.

"Enough, enough..." Kraft broke free from Fatty Liao's grip, straightened his collar, and said helplessly, "Didn't I tell you? I have some things to deal with. Don't come over so casually if there's nothing important."

"I was worried you'd die in your workshop and no one would even know!"

Fatty Liao irritably gave Kraft a light kick. Normally, when Kraft holed up in his workshop, he would at least order takeout to his home. This time, though, there had been no sign of him at all. Fatty Liao had thought one of Kraft's experiments had gone wrong and gotten him killed in the lab.

"Don't worry, David. It's just that something happened on Martin's side. I was afraid it might drag you in, so I told you not to come over."

Kraft knew Fatty Liao meant well, so he could only give him a simple explanation.

"Uncle Lee's business is in trouble?" Fatty Liao could not help with that sort of thing, so he quickly changed the subject. "Then what do you usually eat? Don't tell me you've been living on instant noodles and stuff?"

Before Fatty Liao could get an answer from Kraft, he saw the door to the inner room of the workshop open. A cute girl who fit his tastes from head to toe walked out.

"Big brother, dinner is ready."

"Damn it! When did you get such an adorable little sister?!"

Fatty Liao grabbed Kraft by the collar again, then quickly let go and gave him a hug instead.

"Brother-in-law! From today onward, you're my real brother-in-law!"

Kraft sighed.

"Give it up. You two have no future together..."