Chapter 158

Chapter 158

"Just a bit."

Lou Sheng's lips turned up in a smile.

017: "But things are much better now."

"If you're feeling down, let me know," Lou Sheng said with a hint of a smile in his eyes. "I can't see you, so if you don't speak up, I won't know what's going on."

017 noticed the slight smile on his lips and paused for a moment before responding:

"Okay."

As they talked, the small bowl of cat food was quickly emptied.

017 said, "I also brought back some fish jerky."

Lou Sheng portioned out two pieces and tossed them in. The white cat gobbled them up happily.

017 laughed, "Looks like it's a hit."

Lou Sheng suddenly felt as if 017 was right there with him, alive and well, crouching beside him, watching the ungrateful cat.

What does he look like? Lou Sheng couldn't help but wonder.

Once this thought popped into his head, he couldn't shake it.

For the next thirty minutes, Lou Sheng tried everything but couldn't coax the white cat out from under the bed to sleep in the cat bed.

His room was chilly, and he worried the cat might get cold at night.

The cat bed 017 brought back was too bulky to fit under the bed, so Lou Sheng reluctantly stuffed one of his own shirts in there.

"Don't wreck it, you silly cat."

He still wanted to wear it.

Lou Sheng switched off the lights and climbed into bed.

As he lay in bed, he could hear the cat moving cautiously under the bed, the sounds soft and careful.

Having a living creature in the room made it feel completely different.

No, ever since 017 showed up, everything had changed.

*

Lou Sheng slept in until nine the next morning.

017 thought his host had finally decided to take it easy during the holiday, until Lou Sheng let out a couple of heavy coughs.

017: "...Hey, little host?"

"What's up?"

"You've got a cold."

"..."

Lou Sheng hadn't dressed warmly enough for school yesterday, and then he spent an hour out in the cold wind catching the cat at night. Add to that the fact that he hadn't been exercising much for the past six months, and he ended up with a full-blown cold.

Lou Sheng thought about arguing, but his head felt as heavy as if weighed down by two large stones, and his body was burning up.

He wasn’t used to being sick but could roughly tell that he wasn’t running a very high fever.

Suddenly, two boxes of cold medicine and a thermometer were placed by his pillow.

"017, you’re like Doraemon, the magical cat from the cartoons," Lou Sheng said. He hadn’t watched many cartoons as a kid and still hadn’t been exposed much to the online world. The few cartoons from his childhood were stuck in his memory.

017 just chuckled.

Lou Sheng took his temperature.

It wasn’t even 38 degrees, so no high fever.

He took the medicine and also fed the kitten still hiding under the bed. Today, the kitten was a bit braver. Lou Sheng placed the bowl less than a meter away from himself, and it cautiously approached before dragging the bowl to the corner with its paw.

Looking out the window, he saw that the world outside was covered in a blanket of snow overnight, eerily quiet.

It wasn’t a good day to work outside, and since Lou Sheng was also sick, he could take it easy at home for the day.

When you’re sick, you can never get enough sleep.

Lou Sheng coughed twice and lay back down, staring at the gray ceiling, thinking: He must be crazy to think being sick was nice.

017 said, "If you’re bored, I can play a movie for you." Being in Lou Sheng’s head had its perks—it saved him from buying a TV.

Lou Sheng blinked.

He’d rather talk to 017 than watch a movie...

But he didn’t know what to say.

"Okay."

"What do you want to watch?"

"Anything."

017 picked a light-hearted foreign film for Lou Sheng, also helping him practice his English listening skills. Although improvement wouldn’t happen overnight, with more exposure, his language and listening skills would get better over time.

Lou Sheng’s physical condition was indeed very good; the virus didn’t even last until the next day in his body. He only took the medicine 017 brought him twice.

Actually, he felt much better after just one dose, but Lou Sheng, thinking that 017 had specially brought it for him, didn’t want to waste it and took another dose at night anyway. Only afterward did he feel that his actions were quite abnormal.

Lou Sheng attributed the reason to his mind being muddled and his consciousness unclear after falling ill, leading him to do something foolish.

After recovering, Lou Sheng started looking for a job to earn his living expenses for the next semester and the cat food. He had already turned sixteen, making it a bit easier to find work.

Lou Sheng still chose manual labor, for a simple reason—it paid quickly and took less time. The winter break was too short, with only about twenty days left after the Spring Festival.

Lou Sheng had his own plans; he didn’t want to be distracted by part-time work during his senior year of high school, so by this summer at the latest, he needed to earn enough to cover his living expenses for the entire year.

Lou Sheng didn’t think he was suffering much, but 017 still felt sorry for him.

"The winter break is long. Your grades are good; you could earn money by tutoring."

017 had suggested this to him more than once. Lou Sheng had initially ignored him, but now he couldn’t turn a deaf ear.

"I’m afraid of being scammed."

Hearing this reason, 017 was momentarily stunned. Lou Sheng had never mentioned this to him before.

"How did you get scammed?"

Lou Sheng gave a rough explanation.

He had been tutoring a middle schooler since December of the previous year, and the pay was actually pretty low. But back then, Lou Sheng was still two months shy of sixteen, so it was hard to find other work. The kid's parents kept promising that if the grades improved, they'd raise the pay...

He kept at it for six months. The kid's grades got a lot better, but they never brought up the raise they’d promised, and Lou Sheng just put up with it.

At first, they paid him on time, but when summer rolled around, they suddenly said they’d pay him after the break.

After that, nothing. Lou Sheng ended up working the whole summer for free. For over forty days, he spent most of his time tutoring the kid and only got to his own studies at night, only to end up with nothing.

Lou Sheng wasn’t scared of getting scammed, but he hated feeling helpless when he got cheated and couldn’t do anything about it.

After hearing this, 017 stayed quiet for a while.

Lou Sheng laughed at 017’s silence, knowing 017 felt bad for him. Someone out there actually cared enough to feel bad for him...

"I’ll look tomorrow to see if there are any tutoring gigs."

He switched gears too fast, and 017 was surprised, "You’re not worried about getting scammed?"

"One bad experience doesn’t mean everyone’s like that."

Lou Sheng knew he’d been avoiding tutoring gigs out of spite. He had a tendency to be hard on himself. But with 017 around, this habit seemed to have improved slightly.

017 also had a habit; he couldn’t stand seeing Lou Sheng unhappy. Once he saw it, he would run to the service point to see what he could exchange to make his host happy.

He wanted to help Lou Sheng get the money back, not for anything else, but just because he didn’t want Lou Sheng to suffer.

017 softly responded to Lou Sheng and once again entered the transfer center.

In the transfer center, there was another luminous cluster waiting.

This kind of thing often happened, and 017 was used to it.

"Hey, buddy," the other luminous cluster greeted warmly.

Upon hearing this opening line, 017 paused. It seemed somewhat familiar...

The next sentence from the other party confirmed his guess: "Are you back from the virtual world?"

Meeting twice in such a short time, 017's mood brightened a bit, "It's you..."

The luminous cluster was confused, "What, have we met before?"

"Yeah, a few months ago," 017 said, "I'm from the GV Department."

"Oh!" Upon mentioning GV, the luminous cluster remembered, "I remember now. You're the one who saved up 90,000 points..."

Seeing that the other party remembered his points so clearly, 017 found it interesting.

"How many points have you saved up recently? You should be faster than me since you're doing tasks in the real world."

017 was a bit embarrassed. "Eighty, eighty thousand..."

The other party was quite surprised, "Huh? How did it drop?"

"Yeah. I picked up some stuff at the service point."

"But you shouldn’t be using your points for that. It’s not easy for us systems to earn points," the luminous cluster said disapprovingly, as if 017 was spending *his* money.

"..." 017 thought of when he’d exchanged the parasitic card the day before, feeling oddly guilty in front of the luminous cluster.

"Did your host get into trouble?"

"It’s not really trouble..." 017 didn’t want to explain much, as it seemed impolite to reveal his host’s situation.

The luminous cluster said in a helpful tone, "Anyway, we’re just sitting around here. If there’s any problem, I can help you come up with ideas. The stuff at the service point costs way too much."

He’d been through so many hosts and had never exchanged anything at the service point. On one hand, it wasn’t necessary in the virtual world, and on the other, he couldn’t bring himself to spend the points...

For us systems, the work is easier than the hosts’, but the points we earn are far less than those of Taskers. Often, after decades in a world, we only get one or two thousand points, and a crappy little card at the service point costs a thousand points.

017 hesitated for a moment, then told the story of Lou Sheng getting stiffed on his tutoring fees.

"He’s still in high school, and he’s pretty meek, so he’s easily bullied."

"Hmm... without evidence, it is indeed tricky."

The luminous cluster pondered for a while, then suddenly thought of something and asked, "Do you have the address of that family?"

017 was confused, "My host should have it."

"Alright, you go over the internet tonight and scare them with horror movies in the middle of the night."

017: ...

"Drop a hint in the movie to remind them to pay back the money. In my experience, the problem will be solved within half a month."

"..."

At first, 017 thought it seemed a bit unethical, but upon careful consideration, he actually saw some feasibility in it.

017 hesitantly asked, "Would that... work?"

The luminous cluster confidently replied, "Works every time."