Lin He

The alloy door to the consultation room was gently pushed open, and the scent of orange blossom perfume wafted out, mingled with the faint fragrance of mental restorative.

Ers stood in the doorway with his hand on the doorknob, stopping at just the right distance. "Miss Guide, this is your consultation room. I'll be right outside. If you need anything, just call me."

Seeing how restrained he was, Yuqing suddenly felt playful. She walked toward him until only a fist's width separated them and she could clearly smell the rum and faint gunpowder on him. Only then did she look up, a teasing smile at the corners of her eyes. "Ers, we're friends now, aren't we?"

The faint scent of jasmine began to spread...

Ers's breath caught, and his Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily.

"Of course..."

He wanted far more than friendship.

He kept the rest of the words firmly trapped in his throat. Emotions churned in his dark eyes, but his face remained calm and restrained.

Yuqing looked at his tense jawline and laughed to herself, leaning half an inch closer.

She tilted her head up slightly, her breath brushing his Adam's apple with a scorching warmth. Her voice, however, was soft and slow, with a teasing drawl. "Since we're friends, stop calling me Miss Guide all the time."

"Call me A-Qing. All my friends call me that."

Yuqing studied the man before her. He was the first person she had met in this unfamiliar world, and the first she had felt comfortable relying on.

Ers's hand silently tightened at his side, his knuckles pressing into his palm until a faint numbness spread through it. He gazed at her for two seconds before speaking slowly, his voice almost imperceptibly hoarse. "A-Qing."

"Mm." Yuqing answered with a smile in her eyes. Her fingertips brushed his forearm like a feather, then immediately withdrew. "Go on and do your work. You don't have to stand guard here the whole time."

She paused, her smile deepening, an easy intimacy in her voice. "Remember to pick me up after work."

"Okay." Ers answered almost immediately, his voice very low.

Yuqing turned and walked into the consultation room. The alloy door closed again, blocking the light inside.

But Ers didn't leave. Still standing where he was, he murmured the name again. His voice was soft, fading into the empty corridor, yet it left the tips of his ears burning slightly.

"Aaaaah!" The moment the door closed, Yuqing slid down against it, cupping her burning cheeks in both hands as she let out a groundhog scream.

What do I do? I want to strip him naked!!

Sure enough, the older sisters at the base had been right. If she had money and power, she wouldn't be any better.

01010: ...

[Host, if you like him, just marry him. I checked the laws in this world. You have to marry five for it to be legal.]

Yuqing froze. "What do you mean, I have to marry five for it to be legal?"

[Oh, Federation law requires guides to match with at least five sentinels before they turn thirty. Otherwise, they face a hefty fine and labor reform. The Empire is even more forceful: it directly imposes matches and arranges blind dates.]

"Five?! And that's the minimum?" Yuqing even wondered if she'd heard wrong. "Is that right?"

[Hardly any guides object to these regulations. After all, the sentinel is the only one who bears any risk in a marriage. For guides, it's a guaranteed win.]

[Hehe, besides, sentinels are all products of genetic enhancement. Every one of them is tall and long-legged, with good looks to match. Most importantly, they have great bodies, and in that department they're also...]

Afraid she wouldn't believe it, the system projected the information it had just found right in front of her.

Yuqing glanced up to see a screen full of close-ups of broad shoulders, narrow waists, and chiseled abs, along with all kinds of displays of sentinels' physiques during courtship. The images were so explicit that her eyes nearly popped out.

"Stop! Stop!"

Yuqing felt her nose grow hot. She quickly covered it and called a halt. She couldn't keep looking. She'd known people in the interstellar era were open-minded, but she hadn't expected them to be this open:

"That kind of thing can wait. The most important thing for me right now is work!!"

[Oh.] 01010 glumly dismissed the projection, still a little regretful:

[I even saved several gigabytes of high-definition photo collections. I heard girls your age love looking at them.]

Yuqing ignored it and went over to the water dispenser. Only after gulping down two large glasses of cold water did she manage to quell the heat in her face and the restlessness in her heart.

She patted her cheeks, forced herself into work mode, and turned to examine her personal consultation room.

Completely unlike the cold, sterile infirmary downstairs, the entire room was decorated in warm off-white tones. Just inside the door was a soft, fluffy cloud sofa paired with a clear glass coffee table. Two pots of white flowers in full bloom stood beside it.

Farther in were a large desk, a desktop smart computer, and a medicine cabinet neatly stocked with mental restorative potions. A semi-private treatment area had been partitioned off to the right, with a soft treatment bed and a large cabinet beside it. Clearly, care had gone into arranging the room.

"Let's see today's appointment list." Yuqing sat down at the desk and logged into the military district's internal treatment system on the smart computer.

The moment she logged in, a string of appointment notifications popped up with a series of chimes, densely filling an entire page.

She opened them one by one to check. "Li Minglang, A-rank sentinel, Spirit Entity: falcon... Aiden, S-rank, Spirit Entity: polar bear... Lucas, Spirit Entity: green python, contamination level on the high side."

As she scrolled through them, she suddenly stopped.

"Jonah, S+ rank, Spirit Entity: a... lop-eared rabbit!"

Among all those birds of prey, there was actually a super-duper cute bunny!

Her smile still lingering, she opened the last file, marked with the highest priority. One glance at the red figures across the board made her narrow her eyes.

"Lin He encountered a level-two mutation wave while carrying out a border-clearing mission last month. He forcibly detonated his mech's core, and his mental power unexpectedly broke through to SSS rank. Medical diagnosis: severe damage to the mental domain, contamination level continuing to soar, on the verge of going berserk."

The smile froze on Yuqing's face.

"Good heavens, does the marshal trust me that much? Assigning me someone this dangerous on my first day?"

[Host, Lin He's pretty lucky to be alive. If he hadn't unexpectedly broken through to SSS rank, the backlash from forcibly detonating his mech would have been enough to kill him eight hundred times over.]

[You can't blame the marshal for giving him the spot. After all, Lin He is a bomb that could go off at any moment.]

Knock, knock...

As soon as the words fell, a soft knock sounded at the door.

Yuqing looked up to see a gray-haired youth standing in the doorway. He was rather thin and looked young. Clutching the hem of his clothes, he was so awkward he didn't even dare raise his head. "H-hello, Miss Guide. I'm Jonah, the sentinel with an appointment today."

"Hello! Come on in." Yuqing immediately stood up. Seeing that he was so nervous even his ears had turned red, she didn't rush to bring up mental guidance. She smiled and gestured to the sofa. "Don't just stand there. Have a seat, and I'll get you a glass of water."

As she took a cup from the coffee table, she suddenly felt something soft rubbing gently against her waist.

Yuqing looked down to see a round, gray-furred lop-eared rabbit crouching by her feet. Its drooping ears covered half its face, and its pink nose twitched as it cautiously rubbed its little head against her pant leg. It was timid, yet terribly curious.

S-so cute!!

Yuqing's heart melted instantly. Her fingertips itched, and she nearly scooped the rabbit up for a cuddle right then and there.