Eternal Morning Star

The long, enthralling good-morning kiss finally ended with both of them gasping for breath.

After crawling out of bed, they made a simple, cozy breakfast together in the kitchen.

Steam curled up from the warm milk, and the toasted bread gave off a wheaty aroma.

Even at the dining table, Aemeath insisted on pulling her chair right up against Lu Yan's.

After breakfast, no matter how reluctant Lu Yan was to leave that tenderness behind, he still had to face his work. As a freelance artist, he had commissions to finish.

Especially the one from the mysterious client Venus, who was extremely generous and could even be called something of a sucker.

"I'm going to start drawing. I might need to concentrate for a few hours." Lu Yan tousled Aemeath's hair. "Can you play on your phone beside me for a while?"

"Okay~" Aemeath nodded obediently.

Hugging her little pink cat cushion, Aemeath curled up in the armchair beside the computer desk.

She held her phone, whose software she had modified with a few little features that didn't exist in this world, and occasionally looked up to sneak a glance at Lu Yan's focused profile.

Lu Yan sat down at the computer, woke the screen and opened the commission platform.

Sure enough, the client who went by Venus had sent new messages.

Venus: [Good morning, great artist Lu. I have some new details I'd like to add regarding yesterday's sketch.]

Venus: [First, the character's gaze doesn't need to have that aloof, looking-down-on-everyone quality. I want her eyes to show the absolute focus and longing of someone who "only has eyes for the person in front of her."]

Venus: [Second, although she isn't holding a weapon, her expression and body language should convey a powerful desire to protect and possess. As if she's fiercely guarding her one and only.]

Venus: [If you do a good job, I can double the final payment.]

Lu Yan's hand paused slightly on the mouse.

Boss Venus's tastes, or rather her kinks, always hit precisely on things that made his scalp tingle.

And why did the heavy-girl or yandere vibe coming through in those requests seem oddly familiar?

Lu Yan instinctively turned and glanced at Aemeath, who was curled up on the sofa scrolling through her phone.

Noticing his gaze, Aemeath immediately looked away from her screen and flashed him a sweet grin. "What is it, A-Yan? Do you need me to give you a little more lovey-dovey energy~?"

"N-no, it's nothing." Lu Yan cleared his throat and turned back to the screen.

It must be my imagination. He shook his head, casting the absurd thought out of his mind.

Lu Yan took a deep breath, put on his headphones and picked up his stylus, immersing himself completely in the world of drawing.

Time slipped quietly by to the sound of the stylus rubbing against the tablet.

Following Venus's instructions, Lu Yan refined the gaze of the girl on the canvas bit by bit.

He removed the original cool detachment and infused it with feelings so heavy they almost spilled out of the screen.

When he made the final stroke and added highlights to the character's eyes, he looked at the picture on the screen, and his heart involuntarily skipped a beat.

She looks too much like her. He wasn't drawing some virtual character at all. This was unmistakably Aemeath, staring intently at him when he woke up that morning.

"Finally finished." Lu Yan took off his headphones and stretched at length.

He exported the picture and deftly dragged it into his chat window with Venus.

He clicked send.

A small green check mark popped up on the screen, indicating that the file had been sent. In the very same tenth of a second that the check appeared, ding-dong!

A crisp notification tone suddenly rang out in the quiet studio, and it had clearly been specially set.

It wasn't loud, but because it was so close, it sounded unusually clear.

The sound had come from the armchair not far beside him. Lu Yan's fingers stopped in midair above the keyboard.

He froze for a moment, then slowly turned his head.

On the sofa, Aemeath's legs, which had been swinging leisurely, went rigid.

She looked at her phone as the notification sounded, and a rare flash of panic crossed her usually unruffled eyes.

"Ah... that's... a spam text!" Aemeath switched off her phone screen with lightning speed and shoved it under the cushion, then looked at Lu Yan with an awkward laugh.

"Th-these marketing texts are so annoying nowadays. They even come with weird notification sounds..."

Lu Yan said nothing.

His gaze lingered for a moment on Aemeath's face, which had flushed slightly with nervousness, before he slowly looked away and back at the computer screen.

What a coincidence.

It was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

The notification had sounded on Aemeath's phone just after he clicked send, with almost no network delay.

Lu Yan frowned slightly as an extremely bold guess gradually took shape in his mind.

He looked again at the ID named Venus in the chat window.

Come to think of it, there had been something odd about this client from the very beginning.

Although Lu Yan wasn't a particularly big-name artist, he had built up a bit of a reputation in the commission community.

Miss Lin had kept him steadily supplied with commissions, and he occasionally received individual jobs referred by a few old clients.

But Venus was different.

Most other clients commissioned game character art or commercial illustrations. But every single piece Venus commissioned, without exception, came with no particularly demanding requirements.

Lu Yan stared at the name Venus and the little pink cat avatar.

Why the name Venus?

His fingers flew across the keyboard as he opened the browser's search bar and typed in one word: Venus.

He pressed enter.

The page instantly loaded a long list of encyclopedia entries and popular science information.

Venus: One of the eight planets in the solar system. In ancient China, Venus had many alternative names.

Lu Yan's gaze swept quickly down the page and stopped at a particular paragraph.

Because Venus was the brightest celestial body in the sky apart from the sun and moon, it was called the "Morning Star" when it appeared in the eastern sky at dawn.

Morning Star!

The words were like a bolt of lightning tearing across the night sky, instantly illuminating every blind spot in Lu Yan's mind.

Lu Yan's pupils contracted sharply.

He stared fixedly at the words on the screen, his breathing coming to a complete stop.

Morning Star...

Venus.

Morning Star.

Aemeath's weapon was the Eternal Morning Star.

Lu Yan felt a faint electric current shoot from his tailbone straight to the top of his head, making every hair on his body stand on end.

All the clues, all the things that had felt off, and all the unreasonable coincidences formed a perfect closed loop at that moment.

So there had never been a client with more money than sense.

The air in the room seemed to freeze in an instant.

Lu Yan remained with his head turned, staring fixedly at the spot where Aemeath had hidden her phone beneath the cushion.

Because she had moved too quickly, half the edge of the phone was still visible beneath one corner of the cushion.

"Morning Star..." Lu Yan murmured.

Seeing that she couldn't dodge it, Aemeath simply tossed the cushion aside and slumped against the back of the sofa.

Her little face, always so proud and confident, was now full of the awkwardness of having been exposed on the spot.

She bit her lower lip, nervously twisting her fingers together. Her eyes wandered, but she didn't dare meet Lu Yan's.

"So there was no client." Lu Yan closed the browser and turned to look at her with a mischievous grin. "No rich second-generation heir throwing money around. The person who got me to move in here, the one who made me think I'd gotten lucky—it was you all along?"