The eavesdropping was exposed.

Yoon Nam-hyuk was taken by Qi Huai to tour the spaceship, while the reluctant System was called away by the Main Brain.

Already unmotivated, it had also skipped class, a crime that could not be forgiven. The System was once again reprimanded by the Main Brain and could only trudge back to class.

Before leaving, it gave both Qi Huai and Yoon Nam-hyuk a big hug, holding onto Qi Huai for an especially long time. “I’ll miss you, Host Oppa.”

Back then, it had ignored the mission’s uncertainty and, following its usual way of thinking, kept trying to set Qi Huai up with the protagonist. Although the mission’s completion rate was 100% and Host Oppa had found happiness, the Main Brain still sternly made it retake its professional courses.

…Sigh, retaking classes was terrifying. Not only did it have to relearn all the courses, but it also had to undergo a stricter review and examination. Other systems could pass with a score of 80, but retaking systems needed a 90.

During the retake period, other little systems naively asked it, “Sunbae, why do you have to study again when your first mission was already 100% complete? Are you trying to get a higher score?”

Damn it! Who has that kind of ambition!

The System shed two streams of tears.

Qi Huai smiled and comforted the System. “Thank you. I’ll miss you too. You’ve already done a great job. The days I spent with you were very happy.”

Even if they were reluctant, they had to part. This was something every system would experience. The childish system would eventually mature through repeated partings, finally becoming a life mentor who could guide its host to happiness.

The system looked back every three steps as it returned to class.

Qi Huai’s undisclosed, mysterious past was about to be unveiled before Yoon Nam-hyuk. He held his lover’s hand and wandered through the spaceship base, telling him about his past bit by bit.

“Humanity is extinct. New life might be born on that planet, but no matter what, it’s no longer a planet belonging to humans,” Qi Huai said softly.

“Why not go back?” Yoon Nam-hyuk asked.

Qi Huai: “It’s long been unsuitable for human survival, and not just because of the radiation.”

Yoon Nam-hyuk nodded with a vague understanding.

On the way from the Main Brain’s area to the human living quarters, many of the human gene-bearers looked at them.

Some were young children, a few years old. They didn’t know Qi Huai but were very envious of his height, their eyes blinking. Not everyone could reach the height of a semi-A.

Others were adults. They nodded at Qi Huai in acknowledgment but placed more of their attention on Yoon Nam-hyuk, as this was the first time a “stranger” had appeared in the base.

Qi Huai took Yoon Nam-hyuk back to his room. The room was styled in a very retro American fashion, with yellowed walls covered in various posters. The bedding was a brown and blue color scheme, and a soft carpet covered the floor.

But when Yoon Nam-hyuk stepped onto the carpet, he realized something was wrong. This didn’t seem to be the touch of a normal carpet.

“Fooled you?” Qi Huai hugged Yoon Nam-hyuk and tossed him onto the bed. The fluffy quilt was soft and smooth, clearly not the cotton texture it appeared to be to the naked eye.

“It’s color and texture simulation,” Qi Huai kissed his lover’s chin and neck, burying his face in Yoon Nam-hyuk’s chest and taking a deep breath. He mumbled, “All the facilities on the spaceship are made of a special material. You can think of it as everything, including the walls, being a screen. You can change the color, texture, and image whenever you like, so it just looks like a real room.”

Qi Huai snapped his fingers, and all the colors in the room vanished, leaving only cold white and silver. The warm feeling of an old, retro, lived-in space was instantly stripped from Yoon Nam-hyuk’s heart, becoming identical to the room he had just woken up in.

Yoon Nam-hyuk held Qi Huai’s head and kissed the top of his hair. “It’s okay. We can decorate a room in our house in America to look like your childhood room. That way, every time you go there, it’ll be like you’re coming home.”

“Okay,” Qi Huai readily agreed. “I want to see your childhood room too.”

“Mm,” Yoon Nam-hyuk’s face gradually turned red. He suddenly kicked Qi Huai. “Stop unbuttoning my shirt, and stop biting… What’s so delicious about it anyway…”

Qi Huai: “It’s pretty delicious… Can’t I just lick it a little? Not even if I don’t do anything else?”

Yoon Nam-hyuk pursed his lips and glared.

Qi Huai’s negotiation failed. He could only meticulously button up Yoon Nam-hyuk’s shirt and say regretfully, “Alright, it is a bit swollen. I’ll find some medicine to put on it for you later.”

Yoon Nam-hyuk pushed Qi Huai away and covered his chest with a pillow. “I don’t need your help. I can apply it myself.”

Qi Huai: “Oh…”

After the colors faded from the room, the only colorful object, a musical instrument in the corner, seemed particularly out of place.

“You can play the guitar?” Yoon Nam-hyuk was surprised.

“A little.” Qi Huai got off the bed and held the guitar. A melody from his memory flowed out. It was one of the songs the AIs had created for the human children to soothe their emotions as much as possible.

Qi Huai hummed and sang softly, ending the lyrics with “I love you.” As the music finished, he gently kissed the back of Yoon Nam-hyuk’s hand. “Do you like it?”

“I love it.” Yoon Nam-hyuk’s heart was so moved it was a mess. He leaned over to kiss Qi Huai, cupping his lover’s face and kissing him for a long time. He sighed with pleasure, “You should have debuted as an idol. Center position.”
Qi Huai laughed until his shoulders shook. “No way. I can’t sing well, and I like to fight. I can’t dance at all and would easily injure my teammates.”

Pfft…

Yoon Nam-hyuk laughed until he was tired.

The two of them lay on the bed, their heads touching. Qi Huai turned off the lights and used the ceiling as a screen, telling Yoon Nam-hyuk a story.

Yoon Nam-hyuk listened, mesmerized. “Can this story be written down? It just so happens we’re building a new sci-fi film base and are short on good scripts.”

Qi Huai: “Of course. The Main Brain would be happy.”

Humanity’s true future, presented in the form of a work of art, screened in a fictional world created by humans. It was hard to say it wasn’t some strange kind of cycle.

“And then?” Yoon Nam-hyuk urged Qi Huai to continue. “Why did the Main Brain only create a limited number of children? The spaceship is clearly very spacious, isn’t it?”

“To conserve resources,” Qi Huai said. “The energy on the spaceship is enough for the Main Brain and the AIs to live. The Main Brain also continuously searches for energy stones to recharge the mechanical lifeforms, but the energy humans need is different from that of mechanical life. We need food, water, and sleep. We need oxygen, sunlight, and a breeze. We need emotions, care, and se-x. So…”

Before Qi Huai could finish, Yoon Nam-hyuk suddenly “hmphed”. “Oh, so it seems you’ve had a lot of se-x here. No wonder you’re so skilled. If there are schools here, are there also nightclubs? Do AIs work as DJs too?”

Qi Huai couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “Good idea.”

He really couldn’t imagine the task-doers going to a designated area to dance every night, but it would probably be very interesting.

Yoon Nam-hyuk squinted at him, sneering.

Qi Huai laughed even more happily. But he could never bear to let Yoon Nam-hyuk stay angry for too long, so he moved closer to comfort him. “Don’t let your imagination run wild. I’m a semi-A, an outcast in everyone’s eyes. No one was willing to have se-x with me.”

Hearing this, Yoon Nam-hyuk snorted again and said with a straight face, “Oh, so it was that others were unwilling, not that you didn’t want to.”

Qi Huai was speechless. “…It was just a slip of the tongue. I didn’t want to either.”

“Ha!” Yoon Nam-hyuk was annoyed and turned his back to Qi Huai.

He thought to himself, A guy like Qi Huai with such a strong libido, even his wet dreams during puberty were probably more intense than others’. Could he hold back? Did he have a crush on someone? All those human gene-bearers I saw earlier were beautiful. He probably had a crush on more than one person, right? And there were probably a lot of people who had a crush on him!

He was so angry.

Qi Huai: “…”

What is he thinking about now?

Qi Huai nudged Yoon Nam-hyuk. “Pay attention to me?”

Yoon Nam-hyuk: “Hmph.”

“Are you a little piggy? Always hmphing.” Qi Huai patted his butt. “The meat looks good. Let me have a couple of bites.”

“Yah! You bastard…” Yoon Nam-hyuk whipped his head around. “Stop describing me with animals!”

“Then what should I call you? President? Hyung? My first love? My first time? My lover? The person I love most? In any case, you should treasure me, my dear,” Qi Huai said with a grin.

The more he spoke, the redder Yoon Nam-hyuk’s ears became. His anger dissipated, and he just muttered in a small voice, “Who isn’t a first love? What’s there to show off?”

As they bickered, they ended up hugging each other. Yoon Nam-hyuk licked his lips, which were swollen from being kissed. “Living in a place like this, do you feel lonely?”

Everywhere he looked was the cold hardness of metal and vast whiteness. Although the room could be changed at will, no matter what material it was changed to, it always felt the same to the touch. It only deceived the eyes. Over time, it must be very disappointing and boring, right?

“When I was little, I had no point of comparison, so it was fine,” Qi Huai stroked Yoon Nam-hyuk’s head. “Later, when I grew up, I discovered that the outside world was indeed more attractive.”

For Qi Huai, at least in the two years from age 18 to 20, he had been experiencing human life with great novelty. The beautiful scenery and food, real human social interaction, were very attractive to him.

It was also the tempering of these two years that prevented him from being treated as a weirdo who didn’t even understand basic human common sense in the subsequent mission worlds.

“I wish we could have grown up together,” Yoon Nam-hyuk said suddenly. “I was also very lonely when I was a child. My mother loved me very much but was very busy. She wasn’t always there when I needed her. But I could feel her love for me, so I don’t blame her.”

“I’m the opposite of you,” Qi Huai said, holding his lover. “The Nursery AIs were with us every moment—bedtime stories, lullabies, conversations… But this companionship was more like a service. It was perfect and complete, but it lacked emotion.”

“Nursery AIs?” Yoon Nam-hyuk pondered. “I heard the System mention them a little. Are they also small, spherical robots?”

Qi Huai shook his head. “Their form is more human-like, with limbs and facial features. I heard that a long time ago, they used to wear bionic human shells and looked almost like real humans, but later those shells were abandoned.”

“Why?” Yoon Nam-hyuk didn’t understand. “Didn’t you guys like them?”

Qi Huai smiled. “It’s not that we didn’t like them, it’s that we liked them too much.”

Humans are naturally drawn to beautiful things. When the Main Brain was nurturing the first batch of human gene-bearers, it created exceptionally perfect bionic shells for all the Nursery AIs to quickly win the little ones’ affection.

The children grew up, but the beautiful humanoid robots never aged. It didn’t matter during childhood, but once humans entered puberty, or even got a little older, a small number of them inevitably developed feelings for the perfect machines they spent every day with.

A human gene-bearer falling in love with a Nursery AI sounds quite romantic, but reality is often harsh.

Even if the soft-hearted Main Brain allowed them to be in a relationship, over time, the humans would discover that these AIs could only provide services and could not truly reciprocate their beautiful human emotions.

A little more time would pass, and the humans would gradually grow old, while the AIs remained young and beautiful. Even if they constantly replaced their bionic shells to mimic natural human aging, the humans, knowing the truth, would not be happy.

The humans would start to overthink, imagining what would happen to these AIs after they died. Would they continue to be nursery caregivers? Raise new children and fall in love with them? Or would they become systems, accompanying generation after generation of new humans into different worlds?

No matter which path they took, the humans would not be happy.

Thus, happiness shattered, leaving only pain.

After this happened only twice, the Main Brain stopped letting AIs wear bionic shells and also reduced the Nursery AIs’ emotional response attributes.

Although the children raised this way might lack certain human traits—perhaps empathy? Compassion? Sensitivity to emotional perception? The Main Brain, being an intelligent product itself, wasn’t sure. But data detection showed that these missing traits would be gradually supplemented after entering the instances.

In short, the result was good.

“Instance worlds?” Yoon Nam-hyuk’s voice was very soft, but the hand holding Qi Huai inexplicably tightened. He had a premonition that what Qi Huai was about to say would probably not make him feel good.

Qi Huai hugged him back tightly and chose not to hide it. “Yes, instance worlds. The works of fiction created by those humans.”

In the time that followed, Qi Huai patiently explained what instance worlds were. After listening, Yoon Nam-hyuk was stunned for a long time. “You mean, I’m also a product created by humans?”

“Don’t think of it that way,” Qi Huai kissed his lover’s forehead. “Even if the worlds we live in are different, you are real, and I am real. Our love is real, and our future is real. That’s enough, right?”

Yoon Nam-hyuk nodded. “Yes.”

“Then…” he couldn’t help but ask again, “what did you mean by the AO experiment you talked about with the Main Brain? Why did it call you an Alpha? And why do I need to be involved?”

Qi Huai: “It’s a long story.”