Inside the bathroom.

Lin Zhu stood beneath the showerhead, warm water pouring over him and relaxing every pore in his body, easing the congestion in his nose.

The next moment, a needle-like sting came from two different places—

one from the gland at the back of his neck, the other from the crescent-shaped nail marks on his left forearm.

When they first met, Lin Zhu had noticed that Yan Ruojun’s nails were neatly trimmed, smooth and rounded, neither too long nor too short, with little half-moons on the nail beds.

And now, those same little half-moon shapes were stamped into Lin Zhu’s forearm. The surrounding skin had already reddened and swollen, faintly bruised.

It was enough to show how hard Yan Ruojun had gripped him at the time.

And how awful he must have felt in that moment.

Suddenly remembering something, Lin Zhu paused even in the middle of squeezing out shampoo, his already drooping eyes sinking lower still.

Lin Zhu: “…”

Was it… really that uncomfortable?

During the second marking, he had genuinely done his best to soothe him…

Bound directly to Lin Zhu’s consciousness, the system could faintly sense his emotions. It let out a small sigh of feeling—but before it could say anything, it heard the host say in his mind,

“Even though I don’t know what you’re about to say, please shut up.”

System: “…”

Ah.

So just as the host himself had said, he really was an adolescent boy who had never even been in love before… Was he really this bothered just because the protagonist casually complained once?

You had to know, tonight’s temporary mark was only the opening appetizer in the original novel. The later plot points were far more extreme.

During this very first mission, the system had already thoroughly felt how much the host’s personal morality and painfully pure-hearted nature were obstructing the roleplaying task, and it couldn’t help growing worried.

As a qualified system, it ultimately chose to quietly bear the burden alone and offer the host some advice.

“Well, actually, Host, you don’t need to take it so much to heart. After all, you used to be an ordinary male, so it’s natural to need some time to adapt…”

“I do have one immature little suggestion,” the system intoned. “Would you like to hear it?”

Even though within just half a day Lin Zhu had repeatedly thought the system was better suited to playing the scumbag ex-husband, and had mocked it quite a few times, he still did feel a measure of gratitude toward the thing that had, in a sense, extended his life.

So Lin Zhu paused in rubbing his hair and answered along with it:

“Let’s hear it.”

System: “I suggest desensitization therapy. Face your shortcomings head-on. For example, go rushing out right now and bravely say the second half of the key line to the protagonist. How about it?”

Lin Zhu, deadpan: “…That map of Yan is way too short.”

The system asked back, “Then when exactly does the host intend to finish this last 2%? What if the protagonist just leaves while you’re showering?”

The more it spoke, the more miserable it sounded. The earlier delight had fully reversed into dejection, and even its electronic voice carried the bitterness of someone getting repeatedly beaten up by life.

“If the protagonist leaves, then the prerequisite conditions of character and environment won’t be satisfied anymore…”

Seeing that the system really was panicking now, Lin Zhu wiped the water off his face and said frankly:

“I’ll do my best to complete the mission. But didn’t you promise me before… that if things involved extreme scenes I couldn’t accept, you’d leave me some room to maneuver?”

He had already rehearsed tonight’s script with the system earlier. At the time, he had still possessed a paper-thin sort of confidence.

But after personally stepping into it, Lin Zhu realized just how difficult it was to perform intimate, coercive actions on someone he had never even met before.

Even if it was just biting someone’s neck.

And besides, in an ABO world, biting someone’s neck didn’t mean what it would have meant in his original world. Here, it carried a far more intimate implication.

When he was little, Teacher Chen had taught him the same thing—

“Don’t grow up to be like your father.”

So Lin Zhu had endured it.

An Alpha’s acute rut felt like some kind of violent mental illness. The patient was driven into frenzy by it, and only by seizing and occupying an Omega’s pheromones could he regain reason, as if that were the sole antidote that could save him.

But Lin Zhu still endured it.

What Lin Zhu had not told the system was that, in truth, he didn’t actually despise the original novel that much.

Even though the entire screen had been packed with shamelessly explicit scenes, he had still seen within it something bright, dazzling, burning—

that was Yan Ruojun’s pride, broken inch by inch by fate, and then pieced back together by his own hands.

Its name was courage.

The courage to break free, the courage to leave, the courage to smile and walk toward the future…

It was the kind of courage he had never seen in his own mother, and the kind he desperately wanted to see.

Lin Zhu had never liked any particular person before, but he was naturally inclined to feel a little more goodwill toward people who possessed courage.

And toward Yan Ruojun, it was exactly like that.

That was why, after learning the plot of the original novel, Lin Zhu had actually wanted at one point to give up on the task altogether and simply terminate the binding…

only to be lured back into hesitation by the fantasy the system had painted for him.

And after trying, Lin Zhu discovered that he really could not do it.

But he also truly did not want his short life to end just like that.

So after thinking it over, he finally told the system honestly the truest thought in his heart—

he would do the mission, but in his own way, so that the whole thing wouldn’t look so much like a crime scene.

After hearing that, the system went silent for a long time before finally squeezing out a difficult reply in its electronic voice.

“…Fine. I know the host is a good kid. Otherwise, when the host wanted to give up, I wouldn’t have already given up part of the mission reward and let the host perform the NPC role at the lowest acceptable standard.”

Lin Zhu: “…”

Lin Zhu: “Huh?”

The bathroom truly deserved to be called the greatest place for the soul in the world. One human and one system had bared their hearts to each other and spoken honestly at last.

With a drooping tone, the system said,

“Actually, the host I originally wanted to bind to wasn’t you. It was some playboy whose personality overlap with the NPC role was as high as 85%. According to the analysis, that person definitely would have completed the roleplaying mission easily…”

“At the time, hadn’t you just finished the college entrance exam and gone straight to get your hair dyed right after leaving the exam hall?”

Lin Zhu answered, “Yeah.”

The system continued, “The host I originally had my eye on was actually the hairstylist who dyed your hair…”

Remembering the car accident from half a day ago now, Lin Zhu strangely felt as though a lifetime had passed. He muttered,

“Ah, right. He really was good at sales. I almost bought a membership card.”

The system’s tone became even more tragic.

“I never expected a drunk truck driver to suddenly appear, causing me to bind the wrong person and send you, an innocent pure-hearted high school boy, here instead!”

The personality overlap had been terrifyingly low!

The system had originally expected a seasoned flirt host to effortlessly carry a beginner intern system to victory. It had never imagined that in the end, it would turn into two complete rookies desperately trying to drag each other along.

The system felt miserable.

Lin Zhu had never expected the truth of the matter to be this. After a long silence, he still ended up thanking it in a complicated mood.

If the system hadn’t bound to the wrong host, he’d already be dead.

The system cried pitifully, “Then Host, repay me with a 100% mission progress bar, okay? I strongly suggest rushing out right now and saying the key line to the protagonist.”

Lin Zhu: “…”

Lin Zhu: “At least let me put on the bathrobe first.”

But just as Lin Zhu turned off the shower and turned around to reach for the bathrobe hanging nearby, his gaze unexpectedly met Yan Ruojun’s—

with only a pane of glass between them, now so transparent it was almost like air.

The system, which had been dejected only a moment ago, instantly perked up again and chirped happily:

“Yay yay, great! The protagonist still hasn’t left. This wave is stable!”