EM CH36

Chapter 36: The Ultimate Death Mission for a Social Phobe

Yu An genuinely enjoyed playing video games. However, that enjoyment was strictly limited to locking himself inside a room and pulling silent all-nighters completely alone. Asking him to livestream a game in front of a massive audience was a bit much.

“Huo Yangui… looks too bizarre and erratic; his account would easily get banned. Ni Lan is great in a fight, though she probably doesn’t spend much time around computers.” The big boss flipped through the resumes one by one. “Yu An is a solid fit. He’s clean-cut, innocent-looking, has a youthful face, and grows on you—young girls these days are fond of that look. Furthermore, he has never shown his face publicly as an Underground Railway intern, making him ideal to package under a second identity.”

“Tsk, it’s just for an assignment. Why bother appealing to young girls?”

“Promotion—killing two birds with one stone. That way, I can also recoup the money I invested. Do you think launching a gaming streamer from scratch doesn’t cost money?” Waving his hand, the big boss stamped his seal onto the commission order. “The intern assessment meeting isn’t over yet. Treat this mission as their third exam, the ‘Rescue Simulation.’ Have all interns start familiarizing themselves with Grey Crow: Dollhouse, and once the Security Technology and Mechanical Logistics teams finish calibrating the equipment, we’ll finalize the concrete action plan. I’m handing this assignment over to you; take the interns out to see the world.”

Zhao Ran said nothing further. Having Yu An finish off Zeng Rang earlier that morning had never been the big boss’s ultimate objective; he wanted Yu An to be a lethal assassin’s blade when his hood was up, and transform into a little cash cow for the company the moment the hood came down.

The big boss had calculated precisely that since Zhao Ran had already turned him down once regarding grooming Yu An into an assassin, he couldn’t possibly refuse him a second time in a row.

“I have no objections,” Zhao Ran shrugged. “Except when Yu An submitted his resume, he explicitly stated he only wanted a job where he could keep his head down and work without talking. Looking at how indifferent he is toward worldly desires, quitting on the spot out of dissatisfaction with an assignment is completely within his character.”

“He won’t. We aren’t asking him to work for free—who would turn down money?” Pouring tea leisurely, the big boss was entirely assured. “Besides, with you here, why would he leave?”

“Spending too long inside an ivory tower always leaves one harboring unrealistic fantasies. Nobody actually believes the job description promised by their interviewer.” Raising his teacup, the big boss leaned back into his chair and laughed heartily.

“Speaking of which, the kid is quite handsome. Properly promoted, he should be able to gather a sizable following. Prepare a school uniform for him and style him along the lines of a high school student; his face suits it well.”

“A school uniform… isn’t that going a bit too far?”

“Don’t you think it pairs with his face without any sense of incongruity? Come to think of it, among these interns, Ji Nian holds a master’s degree and is probably only a tiny bit older than Yu An, yet Yu An looks somewhat juvenile.”

“I’ll arrange the specifics as I see fit.” Zhao Ran promptly cut off the big boss’s daydreams about his future cash cow.

Yu An had no idea he had already been thoroughly arranged by the big boss.

He hadn’t waited obediently outside the door for Zhao Ran to emerge. Seizing a moment when the assistant Xiao An wasn’t around either, he finally found a golden opportunity to slip away.

During the ten boring minutes spent leaning outside the big boss’s office door, he had already studied every major road and back alley surrounding Underground Railway headquarters on a digital map.

So long as he flashed his ID card, someone would naturally guide him to the exit. Finding a secluded, deserted alley, Yu An picked the lock on a bicycle and pedaled all the way home. Underground Railway operatives were permitted to requisition civilian transport while on duty, with any loss or damage compensated uniformly by the company.

Years of experience skipping classes had honed Yu An’s keen counter-surveillance instincts. In truth, he could have taken the subway home openly, yet worrying slightly about getting a beating, he had opted for the most cautious route.

Returning home in silence, Yu An dashed straight into the living room without even pausing to change his shoes.

He had gone through all this trouble to sneak home solely to trade spent cores for two more pages of diary entries.

Flipping the heavy TV cabinet upside down every time was far too troublesome and easily created noise and telltale marks. Digging out his toolbox, Yu An fashioned a simple catapult mechanism out of four springs and a curved piece of wood. The center of the curved wood held a spent core snugly; aligning it beneath the coin slot at the base of the TV cabinet and depressing the springs launched the core straight up.

He loaded the depleted Tier 2 Blue Monstrosity Core: Goat Horns into the circular slot. The mechanism clicked with a dull clunk as it unlocked.

A slip of paper rolled into a tight cylinder popped out onto the floorboards.

Smoothing the page out carefully, Yu An realized it wasn’t a diary entry, but a messy manuscript sketch covered in crisscrossing, curved arrows resembling a map.

In the dead center of the sketch, a small village was drawn in simple stick lines. Following a winding, twisting path deep into the village passed an area filled with plus signs and neat little rectangles, eventually leading to a lake.

Above the lake, an intricate motif was meticulously rendered using fine-brush technique—a sun.

Sun motifs typically symbolized light and faith, yet the central lines of the totem on the paper twisted together, giving off an eerie sensation.

Written in bold characters on the back of the scrawled map were three words: “Riyu Town.” Tucked into the bottom right corner were two lines of small script: “False light hangs atop the banner of the War God; hollow faith ends with me.”

“Riyu Town—that name sounds familiar.” The big boss seemed to have mentioned this place when recounting past events, saying he had found Zhao Ran in Riyu Town.

Was it the interviewer’s hometown? Linking the inscription on the page with the totem, this small town was riddled with suspicious mysteries.

“I drew this map. Could I have been to Riyu Town?” Closing his eyes to reminisce, Yu An searched his hazy past for that memory, but came up empty.

If he had truly visited Riyu Town, he had very likely crossed paths with the interviewer before—which would explain the interviewer’s partiality and indulgence toward him.

Hoping to uncover more clues, Yu An took out the spent Tier 1 Blue Functional Core: Wolf King’s Command, placed it on his makeshift launcher, and fired it into the coin slot.

A rolled diary page popped out onto the floor, rolling right up to Yu An’s hand.

Weather: Clear.

He normally works night shifts and comes home to sleep during the day. Busy as his job is, he still satisfies every single one of my requests.

On a whim, I wanted to go watch the sunrise with him. He blurted out “No,” and when I pressed him why, his answers were vague and evasive.

Yet today he was extraordinarily accommodating, acting as though he had a guilty conscience and wanted to coax and indulge me.

We didn’t go far—just up the low hill in the park near our residential complex. Further east lay the cemetery. I took a fancy to a particularly tall tombstone erected by some wealthy family and wanted to sit up there to watch, but he stubbornly refused to let me go.

We snuck up the hill in the middle of the night. In the dead of winter, the freezing cold before dawn far exceeded my imagination, leaving my teeth chattering uncontrollably. He asked with a laugh if I wanted to turn back. Truthfully, I wanted to go back immediately, but I was too stubborn to admit it, saying I wouldn’t. Deep down, I hoped he would domineeringly haul me home over his shoulder—that way I’d save face and have an excuse to make several unreasonable demands because he backed out first.

Yet he didn’t. He simply opened his overcoat and wrapped me into his embrace, doing to me what a penguin does to its egg.

Just then, the distant horizon turned pale belly-white, a bright edge the color of a soft-boiled yolk peeling back a corner of the clouds. Sunlight fell upon my face, utterly devoid of warmth.

I looked back at his snow-white eyelashes and irises. His pupils reflected half the rising sun while his warm chest baked me—he was the true sunrise.

Yet today he looked unnaturally pale. As the sun rose, he withered along with it. I could even discern a trace of fragility upon his exhausted face. Unable to wait for the sunrise to finish, I dragged him home. Groggy and dazed, he rested his forehead against my shoulder, his eyelashes trembling like a shivering moth.

“If only I could live a little longer, I’d gladly watch the sunrise with you every single day,” he murmured under his breath.

I didn’t understand, yet I kissed him for a very long time.

He occasionally turned deeply pessimistic, as if his world were already on the brink of ruin, as though he were about to die and I were his sole spiritual pillar. Perhaps work pressure was simply too heavy. I wanted to divert his attention, so the moment he opened his mouth, I kissed him to block his words, then mocked his poor kissing technique. His ears would turn scorching red, and afterwards, late at night when nobody was around, he would repeatedly practice tying knots in earphone cords with the tip of his tongue.

Back home, he felt much better. Taking off the white shirt dirtied during work, I immediately brought out a burgundy shirt I had prepared long ago for him to change into.

Crimson was far more vibrant, making him look less fragile—no longer looking as though he might easily vanish from my side.

Belatedly, it dawned on me: could it be that he was afraid of light?

February 23, Year M018

“Photophobia… burgundy shirt.” Carefully digesting the contents of the diary, Yu An had gained several crucial pieces of intel this time, practically confirming that the “he” in the diary was Zhao Ran.

Then what kind of place was Riyu Town?

Having run out of spent cores, Yu An fished out a few coins he had asked Zhao Ran for, loaded one onto the launcher, and snapped it upward.

Clunk-snap.

The sound was wrong… it seemed jammed.

“Hey, don’t.” Dropping flat onto the floor, Yu An patted the coin slot and lifted the TV cabinet to give it a shake. Only the coins tumbled back out; the diary remained completely unresponsive.

The coin lock inside was likely fitted with a scanner that required detecting residual radiation from spent cores to unlock.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Light knuckle-rapping echoed against the balcony glass. Lifting his head, Yu An looked out through the windowpane.

A left hand, knuckles curled in a knocking posture, hovered suspended outside the window, severed at mid-forearm and attached to no one.

At the same time, Yu An heard knocking on the ceiling. Looking up, the right hand with the tiny sunglasses dangling from its wrist was clinging to the ceiling, scuttling rapidly over to the window to flip open the latch and let the left hand inside.

Both hands hopped into the room, hovering before Yu An. Crossing their fingers to mimic folded arms in a scolding stance, Lipu raised a single finger and pointed accusingly at Yu An, looking just like the interviewer delivering a lecture, though without making a sound.

In his mind, Yu An actually simulated Zhao Ran’s exact tone: “Causing trouble for me from dawn till dusk—so wild I can’t keep you in check. The second I take my eyes off you, you run off. Get your ass back here right now.”

“Haha.” Yu An laughed aloud, his cold brows and eyes curving into crescents.

Both hands paused in a daze, their demeanor softening as they rested against Yu An’s cheeks and rubbed them gently.

The villa doorbell rang. Zhao Ran was waiting right by the shoe cabinet in the entryway. Pulling open the front door, Yu An was escorted back by the two hands, his clothes still half-damp and his messy hair sticking out wildly from beneath his hood.

Standing by the door with arms crossed, Zhao Ran spoke: “So wild—if I don’t send someone to catch you, you don’t even come back. I can’t keep you in check anymore, can I? Causing trouble for me all day long.”

Yu An felt an urge to laugh, though he strained to hold it back.

He wasn’t afraid of Zhao Ran punishing him at all; a couple of light smacks or scoldings didn’t hurt in the slightest, since the man would never actually lay a heavy hand on him anyway.

Even with the Pure Black Hood obscuring his face, Zhao Ran could still feel the brat’s smug arrogance from being spoiled rotten.

Since beatings wouldn’t make him behave, he could only let him taste a bit of hardship.

Pulling out the mission order accompanied by a stack of stamped contracts, Zhao Ran flashed them before Yu An’s eyes:

“‘Party B possesses superior gaming skills and meets physical appearance requirements… Party A agrees to sign Party B as an exclusive streamer under its banner… Party A Seal: Grey Crow Game Company… Party B Signature: Zhao Cai. Signed Streamer ID: Coal Blackie?'”

“Made you a brand-new identity. How’s that?”

Finished reading, Yu An uttered not a single word, spun on his heel, and bolted.

The very next second, Zhao Ran reached out, caught him by the back of his collar, and hauled him straight back into the house.