“I’m done. Let’s hurry up and start assembling,” the Assassin Maiden shouted to the two Heads-down Tribe members in the living room the moment she stepped out of the bathroom.
She carried out the Family of Three building block set and placed it directly on the floor.
Xu Yinsheng picked up the gun and sneered, pointing the muzzle directly at the man on the other side. “Stay away from me later. If you dare touch me, I’ll blow you away!”
“Alright, alright, stop messing around. It’s not good to ruin the harmony so early in the morning,” the Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng quickly intervened, acting as the peacemaker. She snatched the shotgun away and tossed it into the trash can.
At the same time, she sat between the two of them to act as a buffer and gave Zhao Yicheng a subtle, apologetic look. ‘It’s her period. Don’t take it personally.’
“Pay attention to cleanliness and drink more hot water,” Zhao Yicheng nodded, returning a look of his own.
As a bystander, Xu Yinsheng naturally saw their “flirting,” and she felt like her teeth were about to shatter from clenching them.
‘Right in front of me, he’s seducing my future self!!’
‘A time-traveling double-play, is it!!’
Ultimately, the atmosphere only eased after the intervention of the Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng.
The three of them sat on the brown wooden floor covered by the Flight Chess carpet.
Xu Yinsheng used a small knife to cut open the packaging, taking out boxes of assembly parts labeled with different numbers and arranging them in order one by one.
As everyone knows, there are three steps to assembling any difficult building block set in the world.
Step one: pour out all the parts. Step two: assemble the parts into the corresponding characters and houses. Step three: combine the characters and houses into a single entity.
At the very beginning, when Xu Yinsheng opened the boxes and saw the countless parts, she was completely stunned.
She scratched her head and frowned. Even while looking at the Explanation Manual, she found it utterly baffling.
She took things apart and reassembled them, then took them apart again. After spending thirty minutes, she hadn’t even finished the prototype of a single palm. But slowly, she began to find the right answers through her failures.
The Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng and Zhao Yicheng glanced at each other and began to study the manual together.
At that moment, Xu Yinsheng caught a spark of something called “inspiration.” It was as if she had returned to her childhood; her brow relaxed unconsciously, and the corners of her mouth curled up slightly.
Her face didn’t show the furrowed brow of someone struggling with how to assemble the pieces, but rather the joy of discovery. She wasn’t assembling for the sake of finishing, but for the sake of playing.
*Click!*
The palm prototype Xu Yinsheng was holding fell to the floor and shattered into pieces. She wasn’t discouraged, however. She leaned over to pick up the fragments, a sense of “achievement” flashing in her eyes.
However, happy times are always short-lived, and the morning passed quickly.
But since childhood, Xu Yinsheng’s character had contained a very strange quality — she was prone to addiction.
She could be addicted to smoking! She could be addicted to the internet! She could be addicted to playing!!
For anything that could provide a “sense of novelty,” she would become addicted! (Within legal limits, of course.) She could spend several days and nights grinding in a game she liked until she developed dark circles like a panda. She could drink herself into a stupor at a nightclub because of an addiction to alcohol, waiting for her good brothers to pick her up. She could even ignore minor-protection warnings and click “enter.”
When Zhao Yicheng glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was already 11:30 AM, he stood up to prepare lunch, but Xu Yinsheng stopped him.
Three people, two loaves of bread, and a bottle of milk.
That was their lunch.
Xu Yinsheng finished her lunch with lightning speed. She didn’t care if this small amount of food would fill her stomach and immediately threw herself back into the assembly work. This left only the still-hungry Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng and Zhao Yicheng staring at each other.
Once again handing the part the other person needed into their hand, the Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng stood up and stretched. She looked toward Zhao Yicheng.
“Zhao, help me keep an eye on her. I’m going to the bathroom.” After saying that, she clutched her stomach and hurried off toward the bathroom.
Zhao Yicheng looked at her rushing figure and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, she had completely disappeared into the bathroom.
At that moment, a fair little hand reached out in front of him. Xu Yinsheng didn’t even turn her head.
“The finger parts for F3, hurry up.”
Zhao Yicheng quickly found the corresponding part area and located the finger fragments. He was about to hand them to Xu Yinsheng, but then he remembered what she had said earlier and noticed the loaded shotgun lying by her leg.
He hesitated for a moment and pulled his hand back.
Xu Yinsheng heard no movement. Deeply immersed in her work, she assumed the person behind her was still the Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng. Seeing that the part wasn’t being handed over, she shouted impatiently.
“Don’t dawdle. Give me the part already.”
Zhao Yicheng gritted his teeth, steeled his heart, and handed the part over.
In the brief moment their fingertips touched, he felt the warmth and softness of her skin. A sense of longing and uncertainty suddenly welled up in his heart, making him want to grab that small hand tightly, even if just for a moment.
But reason told him that he absolutely could not do such a thing, or he would be beaten to death!
Xu Yinsheng took the part and continued her assembly, unaware that her “assistant” had changed.
Time passed slowly. After an unknown amount of time, Xu Yinsheng set down the first finished character of the Family of Three.
The first character was a little boy wearing blue and white overalls with a backpack on his back. He was very cute, with large eyes, a high nose bridge, and thin, pursed lips. He looked like a cute little boy who had stepped out of an anime, giving off a very well-behaved vibe.
This was the child role in the Family of Three. The mother and father had yet to be assembled.
Back then, the Family of Three used family bonds as its selling point, intended for a family of three to assemble their respective roles together.
At the time, Xu Yinsheng, a “left-behind child,” had been incredibly envious. Of course, her hands had also been quite clumsy during the actual assembly back then.
Placing the figure on the coffee table, Xu Yinsheng stretched. She was very satisfied with completing one-third of the progress in a single day.
Immediately, she turned around and hugged the person who had been acting as her assistant.
“Thank you.” She held the person, nuzzling her head against their shoulder twice, and then couldn’t resist giving their cheek a quick kiss.
She was no longer playing with toys alone. Instead, a partner was quietly accompanying her, just like that person from the past.
Companionship is the best form of love.
But as she nuzzled, Xu Yinsheng noticed something was wrong. Instead of the soft, fragrant body she expected, the person was hard and firm, carrying a faint scent of tobacco.
As if to confirm the woman’s Sixth Sense, a deep male voice sounded in her ear.
“You’re welcome.”
A high nose bridge, a handsome face, and a pair of pitch-black pupils — it was Zhao Yicheng!!
“Why is it you!”
Xu Yinsheng screamed and instinctively reached for the shotgun by her feet. She performed a combat roll to create distance and pulled the trigger, pointing the muzzle straight at the man.
“You were the one who hugged me.”
Zhao Yicheng raised his hands innocently to signal surrender, but in Xu Yinsheng’s eyes, his expression clearly said: ‘You can’t blame me for this.’
Xu Yinsheng was speechless.
Xu Yinsheng’s chest tightened as she exhaled sharply. She wanted to fire the shotgun into the air to show him what happens when someone seeks death.
But when she pulled the trigger, no sound came out.
Checking the weapon, she found that the bullet she had previously chambered had somehow vanished.
Regarding this, the late-arriving Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng simply expressed that she knew nothing about it.
***
Night.
The three of them cooked together again. After they were full, Zhao Yicheng acted as the mood-maker, telling the two women gossip and discussing social news… Xu Yinsheng glanced at the night sky outside the window, a smile playing on her lips.
It had been a beautiful day.
Zhao Yicheng cleared the dishes and cleaned the table and chairs. Xu Yinsheng, seeing it was still early, was about to pull the Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng over to play a few rounds of games.
However, the other woman pulled her back into the bedroom with a mysterious look. She closed the door and checked carefully to ensure that not a single sound would leak out.
The Assassin Girl Xu Yinsheng looked at Xu Yinsheng, who was sitting on the edge of the bed playing on her mobile phone. Her first sentence was:
“Little Xuxu, I have to go back.”