24-hour adult toy shop (Add it to your library and follow along-it's so worth it!)

"Seriously, classes are about to start..." Wen Ce sat in the car, his fingers clattering across his laptop keyboard, his voice tinged with exasperation. "And you still dragged me out here? Does that seem reasonable?"

He was wearing pajamas, his eyes fixed on the laptop as his fingers kept working the keys.

It was a spacious minivan, with one person in the driver's seat and two people sitting beside him.

Their expressions were all very serious.

The younger man on his left smiled. "Sorry. Uncle Chou got called away on short notice, so he told us to come get you. And you just happened to live nearby."

Wen Ce blinked and finally looked away from his laptop. He was a very youthful-looking young man, with a face that didn't look remotely intimidating, but was very good-looking.

His delicate features leaned somewhat toward the feminine, hence the description of good-looking.

He reached over, picked up his glasses, and put them on, concealing that hint of delicacy very well.

He became refined and gentlemanly, with not a trace of femininity to be seen.

One might even inadvertently find him a little dangerous.

Beside him, Zhao Li sighed. "This is the first time I've seen a pair of glasses completely change a person."

Yet this young man, who didn't look particularly old, was one of the important figures in the nation's security apparatus.

Their department was a special department independent of State Security.

It was relatively secret, and few people knew about it, but whenever something that couldn't see the light of day came up, they were usually responsible for it.

There were actually many things in this world that couldn't be made public, such as the department Wen Ce belonged to.

Their work was dangerous, and most of it couldn't see the light of day.

Ordinary people might not even understand the existence of their department.

Yet theirs was a department the country couldn't do without.

Where there was sunlight, there was darkness. Wen Ce and the others were the "cleaners" who dealt with that patch of darkness...

Wen Ce was their youngest member.

He had only just turned twenty-one that year and was a third-year university student.

But he was a computer genius, though genius was actually a difficult thing to define.

It was a label other people had pinned on Wen Ce. He preferred to think of himself as an utterly unremarkable male university student.

Even his initial decision to join this department had been entirely the result of a setup.

His superior, Wang Qiang-the "Uncle Chou" they kept mentioning-had gone "fishing" on major forums and websites back then, claiming that he had developed a piece of software that absolutely no one could crack.

Wen Ce had just finished his college entrance exams and was bored at the time, so he downloaded this supposedly uncrackable software. It really was difficult.

That was the first time Wen Ce had needed twelve hours to crack something.

But Wang Qiang and several key team members had spent three days creating that software.

The day after Wen Ce cracked it, Wang Qiang brought people over and knocked on his family's door.

Thinking of this, Wen Ce could only sigh. You really couldn't open the door to strangers carelessly.

Often, the door you opened changed your entire life.

For example, right now, he had to stay up in the middle of the night helping them monitor the movements of this tube of an important chemical.

"Did you follow procedure for this?" Wen Ce asked as he watched the surveillance feed on his laptop.

The surveillance location was the 24-hour adult toy shop across the street.

Their objective this time was to let this person successfully transport the chemical he had stolen from the laboratory out, then arrest him afterward.

As for why they were letting him deliver it?

Simple. What he had taken was fake to begin with, and they had put their newly developed surveillance tracker inside it. Once the item was transported out, they could locate the other party's base and catch the whole lot in one net.

"Nope. Uncle Chou said that if we followed procedure, by the time the higher-ups finished yapping, everyone would have run off. Who the hell would we arrest then?" Zhao Li said with complete confidence.

Wen Ce: ...I knew it.

"I'm not writing a self-criticism. This has nothing to do with me. You dragged me in at the last minute." In the three years since joining, he had written more self-criticisms than he'd done homework in high school. He really couldn't take it anymore.

At that point, Luo Cheng, the middle-aged man sitting on his other side who hadn't spoken all this time, sighed. "Wen, it's no use. I joined the department in my twenties, and now I'm forty and still writing self-criticisms. You can escape once, but not a second time..."

As they spoke, someone appeared on the surveillance feed.

The person seemed to be wearing pajamas, with a pair of rabbit ears perched on their head, swaying as they moved. Their whole body was bundled up, and they wore a mask over their face. They walked stiffly inside, then stopped in front of the rows of display cabinets.

"Huh? Is that a woman?" Zhao Li sounded hesitant.

"Are you an idiot?" Luo Cheng rolled his eyes. "Our people are still tailing him. He probably hasn't arrived yet."

"It's not her." Wen Ce shook his head too, pointing at another image. "Our target is still a street away."

A red dot was moving cautiously across the screen.

"Oh, then she's here to buy something. Making a girl come buy this stuff at this hour? Isn't that a scumbag?" Zhao Li muttered.

Wen Ce leaned back in his seat and watched the girl on the surveillance feed stand motionless in front of the display cabinets, with no idea what she was doing.

Three minutes passed like that.

"Has the surveillance feed frozen?" Zhao Li asked.

Luo Cheng was getting a little worried too. "The target will be here soon. If someone's there, it'll probably..."

"So why didn't you clear the place?" Wen Ce asked.

"We've been staking it out for days. Hardly anyone comes here," Zhao Li said. "Besides, clearing the place at this hour would be too obvious. The other party is too crafty."

"Oh," Wen Ce said. "Then what do we do now? She's not moving."

Zhao Li and Luo Cheng suddenly both turned their eyes to him.

Wen Ce: ...

He smiled and pushed up his glasses. "You know I just watch surveillance feeds, right? I have no combat power."

"We know. We're not asking you to fight. Wen, you're seriously the second-most handsome person in our department, so why don't you go down and take a look?" Zhao Li said with a smile, then pointed at the red dot. "This bastard will be here in a few minutes."

"Why aren't you going?" Wen Ce was speechless. "And who's the most handsome?"

"The most handsome? Rabbit Head's readers, of course!" Zhao Li looked utterly justified. "Besides, he's seen me, and he's seen Cheng."

The mole this time was one of their own, a longtime employee.

They had always kept Wen Ce very well protected. Apart from a few core team members, almost no one else had seen him. They only knew that the information department had a formidable tech specialist called "Black Shadow."

Wen Ce fell silent and glanced at the figure's back on the surveillance feed again.

This time, she moved a little, shifting to the side.

But she still showed no intention of leaving.

"I'll call you Brother Wen, okay?! Come on, people like this usually leave on their own when someone else comes in!" Zhao Li was getting anxious, his voice full of conflict. "He really does know us..."

Wen Ce sighed. "Fine, I'll go. Remember to protect me."

With that, he pushed open the car door and got out.

A gust of wind blew past as soon as he stepped out. Still in his pajamas, Wen Ce quickened his pace a little. It was somewhat cold.

At that moment, the two men in the car saw the girl, who had been standing in front of the display cabinet for a long time, finally reach out and tap the screen in front of her.

Something quickly dropped out. She crouched down to pick it up, then waited a little longer.

That was when Wen Ce pushed open the glass door and walked inside.

Content warnings and rambling:

Hello, it's your familiar Rabbit Head again!

Surprised? Wasn't expecting that, were you?

Here comes another new book~ Everyone's welcome to leave comments~

As always, I accept opinions, but not unreasonable tantrums~

Time for the usual content warnings. You'd better read them all, or if you complain that I've hit your landmines later, I'm going to battle you!

1. This is not a face-slapping wish-fulfillment novel! Not a face-slapping wish-fulfillment novel! Not a face-slapping wish-fulfillment novel! If our values don't align, you can leave! Everyone in here is a normal person (meaning neither the male lead nor the female lead is perfect! They have normal human emotions! No judging them from an omniscient reader's perspective!). This is entirely fictional. The male lead's department is fictional, fictional, fictional-I made it up. Besides, this book is mainly about romance, so his department actually isn't important! (The beginning will probably be a slow burn. Same old rule: stick with it for fifty chapters and we'll basically be riding a rocket! Having my last book blocked scared me, so I'm behaving myself with this one, but it really takes off super fast!)

2. Both leads are clean!!! Don't assume the female lead is improper! She's an innocent little sweetheart! (It's for work! Who doesn't love a two-sided sweetheart?) The male lead is a genius with a few little issues. He's actually a little socially anxious and has psychological trauma (and he's never dated, with a slightly low EQ), but it doesn't affect his everyday communication or social interactions!

3. Mutual secret crushes, mutual salvation. As always, the romance is all sweetness and no knives. Anyone who's read my older books knows I don't write dog-blood drama. Basically, it's all sweetness for the leads!

4. The plot is a slow burn, just a normal process of falling in love. Nobody throws themselves at someone or chases them desperately right from the start! They go from meeting, to developing a favorable impression, to liking each other. That's the process! Sometimes the driving might get a bit wild, so just buckle up!

5. Most importantly, don't leave the book to fatten up for too long. It's easy to lose the best bits. Just look at my last book-so much of the good stuff was lost after it got locked twice! (I'm exhausted! Seriously, don't leave the book to fatten up!)

6. During the new-book period, follow-read numbers and the stats at the hundred-thousand-word mark are very important. Please try to keep reading through chapter fifty. There might be a surprise, right? Rabbit Head's surprises have always delivered, as longtime fans know, and once they're gone, they're gone~ If the stats are too bad, the author will have to scavenge trash to eat!

7. This book basically has nothing to do with the previous ones. Longtime fans, please don't keep spamming characters and plots from those books, since it can confuse new fans. Thank you for understanding!

Finally, as always, trolls, bounce back, bounce back!!! Hmph ([○･｀Д´･ ○])