"You don't believe me?" You tilted your head and smiled mischievously. "Want me to do a demonstration?"
"No, you're just going to take advantage of me. I can feel it," he huffed. "Please leave. It's already passed midnight."
Looking at his cute face, you were tempted to give his cheek a kiss, but you felt that you have done enough teasing and sexual harrassment to him for today, so you relented for once, opting to obey his words and leave to the master's bedroom.
But before you walked out of the room, you took this chance to glance back at him. "If anything happened, just yell, I'm a light sleeper so I will definitely come to you right away."
Chen Miao didn't say anything, merely staring at you as you eventually left.
The next day, you were cooking breakfast for your dearest protagonist. At this point, you felt like you were the real owner of this house with how familiar you were with his home. Though if there was a place in here you haven't check yet, then it would be that room behind the white door you assumed to be a storage. For several lifetimes, that door has always been locked and you were never interested enough to pick its lock.
ーand you still weren't interested.
"Ah, you're done showering?" You noticed your classmate peeking at you while wearing a proper school uniform. "Take a seat. I made a few baozi for our breakfast."
"You really don't need to," despite his hesitation, he still took a seat.
"If you feel indebted to me, then you can still repay me with your body, you know?"
He glared at you. "Then I would rather starve."
You feigned hurt for a moment before telling him that you were just joking, lest he would really starve and goes ahead to school by himself. The two of you sat in a position that face each other and you finally remembered what you had promised the player last night.
"So Chen Miao, where's you parents?"
"My mom went on a vacation," he bit on the baozi you made. "And I don't have a dad."
"Did your mom tell you where did she go?" You asked.
He frowned at you. "Why did you want to know?"
"Isn't it normal for a daughter-in-law to be concerned of her mother-in-law?" You smiled teasingly. "I mean look, I even made breakfast for you. Which mothers wouldn't be proud to see their sons eat so well like you? I bet if she were here now she would be willing to marry you off to me."
He glanced at the four baozi he had eaten in a span of two minutes and blushed. The man seemed like he wanted to retort but in front of the evidence of how well he ate, he really can't say anything.
In the end, he avoided looking at you.
"Come on, you still haven't told me where your mother is." You pouted.
"She's somewhere with her friends," he finally relented and told you. "Enjoying the heat in a hot country with them."
Is it really possible that the player's mother also just went off on a vacation somewhere too? "She didn't tell you where that place is?"
"She did," he eat the last baozi on the table. "It was ○○."
You: "..." I understand now how he felt whenever my words were censored after I spoke the truth.
You didn't ask anymore, knowing that it would be of no use even if you were to pry further. You just hoped that whatever Chen Miao said, the player could understand so he can search for his mother quickly.
Somewhere in the other world, a boy was sitting down on the table while tremblingly looking at his phone. Earlier, after checking in on the protagonist, seeing him happily eating breakfast with that "perverted classmate," there was a sense of envy in his heart until a delivery knocked on his door, telling him that a mysterious person had ordered a box of baozi for him. The boy knew this was the strange effect of the game, yet he couldn't help but pester the delivery to inform him who that person that bought this for him.
"Iー I don't know too. I'm just doing my job."
In the end, he gained nothing except a free breakfast, and while observing the game, the "perverted classmate," finally asked the question he has been yearning for.
「Did your mom tell you where did she go?」
「Why did you want to know?」
The boy laughed at the perverted classmate's respond to that question, silently wondering if she's some kind of a hidden love interest of the protagonist. Then again, why does someone like her never appear in front of me? Even though it was written that both the player and the protagonist shared the same life when I first played this game.
「Come on, you still haven't told me where your mother is.」
「She's somewhere with her friends, enjoying the heat in a hot country with them.」
Where's that? Mali? He speculated. But mom doesn't even have that much money to travel around. She also doesn't have any closed friends.
「She didn't tell you where that place is?」
「She did.」
His heart skipped a beat, anxiously waiting for his answer.
「It was hell.」
The boy can feel something break inside him.
"Chen Miao, you're not going to school?" You tilted your head curiously, wondering why he was just standing there at the inside of his house despite the fact that the two of you are late to school already.
"Iー For some reason, I don't feel like going today," he smiled apologetically. "I guess yesterday's fever really wear me down."
"Oh," you then closed the door after stepping back into his house. "Then I'm not going too."
Chen Miao didn't say anything, as if expecting that you would say that.
In that house of his that barely had any source of light after the two of you had turned off all the lamps, the sight of you stepping away from the sunlight to enter the darkness with him somehow gave him this strange sense of satisfaction, yet he couldn't quite put a finger to what exactly is this feeling.
He just knew that he liked it very much.