His fiancé stolen by his (supposedly) kind-hearted and merciful younger brother, Sun Fang decides to take the high road. (To the surprise of everyone who's ever known him.) Instead of fighting to get his cheating fiancé back, Sun Fang sets out to fu...
Sun Fang went to the pool. There was something about swimming through warm water below a sun doing its utmost to melt your skin off your bones that was relaxing and put his mind at ease. And the pool in the apartment complex was not only big, it was beautiful. The beach chairs surrounding it were wide things, comfortable for sleeping in. Not that that was recommended since you'd likely end up with some serious burns without supervision, but you could. If you wanted to.
Today, Sun Fang wanted to. It had been four days since his conversation with Mianmian and they'd been texting pretty much constantly. Mostly it was about Casey's adventures in learning how to be a person and not just a lump of moving flesh, but it was also fun stories, old jokes, commiserating about old adventures from their youth.
They discussed media they liked (or didn't); movies and video games and music and so on. Mianmian shared about a thousand pictures of Casey (and video too, of course) and Sun Fang shared walkthrough tour video of his apartment and the attached pool Ivy had made for him.
It was nice.
It'd been a long time since they'd been talking like this—so often and uncensored. Mianmian had been busy with his pregnancy and Sun Fang with his plan to very firmly detach himself from the Sun family. And in-between that there had been the lingering knowledge of Sun Fang's feelings, and that seeing Mianmian so happy with Deng Xi hurt in a way nothing else had for decades.
Sun Fang climbed out of the pool and walked over to his beach chair, sitting elegantly down on it. He fluffed a large pillow and placed it on the backrest so he could lean against it, letting his eyes fall shut as he sighed into the shadows.
"Thirsty, Young Master?" Ivy asked from beside him, standing under the parasol's shadow.
Sun Fang licked his dry lips. "Something cold and fizzy," he said and placed his gold sunglasses on his nose. He heard Ivy leaving, the footsteps far heavier than a human's. After a bit, when he was sure that Ivy was gone, he opened his eyes.
He turned over on his stomach to reach for his swim bag, patting it down until he found the exterior pocket for his phone. Once he had it in his grip, he pulled it up to his face and sat up on the chair, pushing the sunglasses up on his head. It had the added benefit of catching most of his bangs so the hair wouldn't fall into his eyes.
Once he unlocked it, the phone instantly opened to the page on Stargazer he'd left it on. It was about Sun Yi and his entertainment company's success in a large-scale historical movie. Something about an emperor and his greatest general falling in love, and then they had to resist schemes and reveal a conspiracy that could've overturned the whole country.
Sun Fang hadn't seen the movie, but the trailer had actually been pretty good. Whoever put it together had done a great work and the marketing had been unexpectedly aggressive for Sun Yi. So naturally, with it only having just premiered, plenty of people were talking about it.
Sun Fang put down his phone when Ivy approached again. He smiled at his butler, turning to face it, and said, "Thank you."
"You're welcome, Young Master," Ivy said, a dry note to its voice. That was deliberate—any deviation in the voice controls were deliberate choices Ivy made to better communicate. Some AIs couldn't do that; their voice modules simply didn't allow for it. But Ivy had been built for the purpose of raising children of really wealthy people, and wealthy people liked special abilities like that; it made them feel special, like they had a superior product.
Well, Ivy was superior. But it wasn't exactly because of the voice module.
Ivy handed over the drink and Sun Fang plopped the plastic straw into his mouth and sucked. The cold flowed down through his throat and spread throughout his chest, easing back the warmth that had been torturing him. Today was an excessively sunny day and he was one of only three people by the pool. Which probably showed that it was a bad idea and he should really go inside before he was burnt to a crisp.
He swallowed all the liquid in only a handful of seconds, sighing deeply once it was all gone. "Better?" Ivy asked, standing still by his side with its hands behind its back.
Sun Fang gave it the glass and said, "Yeah." He put the sunglasses back on his nose and smiled up at Ivy, a different warmth spreading through his stomach.
"I'm glad," Ivy said, looking right at Sun Fang's eyes.
Sun Fang laughed. He snorted into thin air and said, "So am I. I don't particularly fancy self-combusting. It seems like a pain to clean up."
Ivy smiled, stiltedly, at him. "The materials needed to clean up would put our household on fourteen different watch lists."
"Oh, we couldn't have that," Sun Fang drawled and snickered quietly. He laid back on the chair and scooted to the side, patting the empty space. "Wanna join me?"
"My thermal controls are running full force, Young Master."
"I know," Sun Fang gave Ivy a sultry look. He laughed at the way Ivy turned its head away at that. Closing his eyes, Sun Fang said, "You can join me any time you like," and waited with bated breath. He heard the rustle of clothes, the sound of footsteps, and then—Ivy sat down next to him.
"I will sit next to you while you sleep and make sure you don't get sunburnt," Ivy told him. Then it did as it said and Sun Fang stayed still, not wanting to push Ivy into anything. It was important, more important than anything else, that Ivy made these choices itself. Without Sun Fang interfering or influencing them.
So he waited and stayed still and slowly fell asleep.
*
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