The big strawberry—that was Lin Chen’s main GreenChat avatar.

Ever since he landed in this world, it had never changed.

But—
What was so unspeakable about a big strawberry?

Beep-beep.

The QR code scan went through. Before Cheng Huanzhen could fully process the red-and-white blur on Lin Chen’s phone, a very plump, very healthy strawberry popped up on his own screen.

It was just cold enough for February.
A light brush of wind was enough to freeze exposed hands from the outside in, the icy stiffness creeping up along the blood vessels until it locked the whole body.

Cheng stared, dazed, at the big strawberry on the screen.

The strawberry overlapped, bit by bit, with the one he had seen on Cheng Zhaorui’s phone months ago. Slowly lifting his eyes, he rasped out, “…It was you?”

“Hm?” Lin Chen looked up in confusion.

Cheng fixed his gaze on him. “The big strawberry.”

Lin Chen blinked, amusement in his eyes, and replied lazily, “What do you think, not a bad avatar, right? Why haven’t you accepted my request yet?”

Cheng did not dare to blink.

That tiny scrap of hidden clue he’d once picked up, now suddenly lay bare in front of him.

He remembered very clearly his reaction the first time he’d seen that big strawberry avatar while searching the chat logs on Zhaorui’s phone.

Strawberry avatars were nothing rare.

But when he’d searched using his uncle’s initials and turned up a big strawberry—when “strawberry” also happened to be his uncle’s excessively favorite fruit—it was hard not to care.

After all, if his uncle were still alive, changing his avatar to a big strawberry, then sending a message like “he’s still looking for ym” to Cheng Zhaorui—everything would feel very natural.

Only, clues couldn’t be built entirely on “ifs.”

Just like Lin Chen that strange night, slipping out of the funeral home in a staff uniform, hiding his identity.

Lin Chen’s explanation made sense.
If one started from Cheng’s own wild theory and tried to explain it, that also made sense.

Taken alone, each of these clues could be written off as ordinary, a casual brushstroke in the picture—“natural” would win out, making them too weak to prove anything.

But when the two crossed several months and suddenly lined up—

When the big strawberry chatting about “ym” with Cheng Zhaorui became one and the same as Lin Chen, who had fled the crematorium in a panic on the night of Li Shuyun’s cremation and whose stomach was just as bad as his—

Coincidence layered on coincidence became very hard to believe as coincidence.

It was him. It was him. It was him.
The big strawberry was him.

Cheng’s heart began to pound like a drum, blood boiling with tension and excitement.

Eyes burning, he stiffly lowered his gaze and silently tapped “Add Friend.”

All the sounds around them faded away without a trace. The world grew so quiet that the only thing left was the voice in front of him.

“Got it.”

A plain, mild voice. Friendly, gentle. Lin Chen glanced back at him with a polite smile.

“These days, thank you for everything,” Lin Chen said. “I don’t have much at home yet, so I won’t invite you in today. Once I’ve really got the place together, I’ll have you over.”

Cheng hid one hand behind his back.

With his thumbnail, he scraped hard at his other thumb’s nail, easily gouging a crack into the previously smooth surface.

He forced his gaze not to be too eager, forced his voice to stay level.

“When is ‘next time’?” he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Tomorrow?”

“The place is newly bought,” Lin Chen explained patiently. “There’s still nothing prepared at all inside.”

“Oh. Then what about today?”

“?”

Cheng looked slightly aside. “Your health is bad and your house is empty. How are you going to eat today? How will you make porridge? Do you even have tableware? I’m free today; I can stay and help you get the place in order.”

“I’ve already been eating at your house for days,” Lin Chen said. “If I go home and still have you cleaning my place, wouldn’t that be eating you out of house and home? I’m thin-skinned—don’t do that to me.”

He pushed Cheng gently back into the car, soothing him. “Once the house is sorted, I’ll invite you.”

Cheng watched as Lin Chen’s back grew smaller and disappeared from view.

His gaze stayed fixed, fingers digging deep into the upholstery.

Lin Chen. Lin Chen. Lin Chen.
Big strawberry. Big strawberry. Big strawberry…

What if it really wasn’t all coincidence? What if his mad theory actually could take shape in reality? What if there really was some special connection between Lin Chen and his uncle? Between his uncle, Li Shuyun, and Lin Chen—what if they actually…

Cheng lay awake all night.

All the clues he had once affirmed and denied, one cycle after another, lined up in his mind. He went over them again and again, counting, searching for more threads.

At dawn, red-veined eyes burning, he couldn’t hold back the urge to go see Lin Chen.

Luckily, he still remembered being refused a visit for that day, so he forced himself through another sleepless night.

As soon as the second night ended, he called the driver, retraced the route from the other day, and showed up uninvited at Lin Chen’s gate.

…

After seeing Cheng off, Lin Chen spent ten minutes trying to clean up the place himself. Before long, he was already short of breath.

Annoyed, he tossed everything aside and simply hired help online, using money to handle all the chores he didn’t like doing.

With that taken off his hands, his mood lifted.
He pulled a book off the shelf he’d casually filled when buying the house last year, dragged a sun lounger out onto the balcony, and sat down.

The system watched all of this with pained longing. “Host, since you already let him see your big strawberry, why not just borrow his staff to handle these chores? No need to go to all this trouble…”

“If you have energy to think about that,” Lin Chen said mildly, “you’d do better figuring out how to get my body fully repaired faster.”

“Are you really an advanced system?” he added. “You’re not some defective fake, are you? It’s already been four days. How are you still not done?”

Aggrieved to the core, the system sputtered, “I—I… Host, how can you slander me like that! I’m absolutely the most advanced model! If you don’t believe it, I’ll—”

After a frantic search, it yelled, “I’ll show you my full-speed mode!”

“Oh?” Lin Chen said with interest, putting the book down on his abdomen, waiting to see this so-called “all-out” performance.

Muttering to itself, the system chanted, “AC9999 is the most advanced super system, no one’s allowed to look down on me… Host, can you feel your body repairing super fast now? This is AC9999’s—”

Silence.

Lin Chen waited five seconds and heard nothing more. He rapped his head lightly. “AC9999?”

What replied was a familiar voice—but the tone was so rigidly mechanical it might as well belong to a different being. “Dear host, hello. How may I help you?”

“?”

“I’m sorry,” the mechanical voice said. “I do not understand your command. You may use the ‘Help’ function to view available commands.”

Expression flattening, Lin Chen asked, “…Where is your AI module?”

“Command received: ‘AI module’ inquiry. Inquiry successful. Parameters for the AI module of system AC9999 are as follows… (10 minutes omitted). Current status: Hibernating. Hibernation reason: short-term energy output exceeding system limit. Remaining hibernation time: three hundred fifty-nine hours, fifty-seven minutes, eleven seconds.”

“…”

“???”

It took Lin Chen a moment to adjust to the sudden silence in his head.

But once he picked up his book again, turned the page, and sank into reading, he quickly found this quiet very comfortable.

…The system’s absence, as it turned out, did not cause any trouble at all.

He adapted at record speed to life without the system, enjoying a very quiet, leisurely afternoon and evening.

All the housework was solved by temp workers.

Buying pots and bowls, cleaning, stocking food, updating daily necessities…

By the end of the day, the place finally looked like an actual home.

But by noon of the second day, sitting alone in the empty house with a bowl of plain congee he’d ordered in, Lin Chen suddenly had to admit the system’s presence wasn’t entirely useless.

At least it had kept him company at mealtimes.

He finished the bland porridge and read for another whole day.

By the third day, waking up and habitually calling the system in his mind to pull up his schedule—only to be met again with the brainless mechanical reply—Lin Chen let out a long sigh.

…Fine. Maybe it was time to go out for a walk.

He set a schedule, slowly changed into a full outfit, and was about to step out to get some sun and buy breakfast when a very familiar car rolled to a stop at his gate.

Lifting an eyebrow, Lin Chen halted and watched Cheng get out.

With heavy dark circles under his eyes and a serious expression, Cheng walked up to him and greeted, “Good morning, Lin Chen. I figured you’d have finished setting up the house by now, so I came.”

He took a bag from the car—inside were a cup of millet porridge and a cup of soy milk. His arm taut, he handed it over. “Brought you breakfast on the way.”

Lin Chen accepted it and thanked him simply, a helpless smile tugging at his lips. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Five minutes later and I’d have been out.”

“Mm… impulse,” Cheng said slowly. “Thought of it, so I came.”

Since he was already there, Lin Chen couldn’t very well throw him out.

He invited Cheng in, rummaged around, and finally dug out some tea that He Wenyan had brought on a birthday visit last year. The expiration date was still fine, so he brewed a pot for Cheng.

He did not pour any for himself. Too many of his organs were still under repair; he didn’t dare casually drink tea.

Cheng didn’t seem to have any particular purpose for this visit.

It looked like he really was just here as a guest—to see the house and check on Lin Chen’s condition.

From the perspective of a new acquaintance, his behavior was a bit too enthusiastic.

To keep it from seeming suspicious, Cheng had picked out several books from home to bring along, using “I wanted to recommend these” as an excuse to smooth over his over-eagerness.

Lin Chen, of course, didn’t call him out.

He accepted the books politely and with a warm smile.

Cheng’s presence broke the stillness of the big house a little, and Lin Chen’s mood wasn’t bad. As promised, he kept Cheng for lunch (with Lin Chen still on porridge), which was more than enough in both time and courtesy.

But with the system in hibernation and no longer in his head, Lin Chen had temporarily shelved his “long-term client” plan. The rough outline he’d just begun to sketch still had steps that required the system’s disguise functions.

So, as soon as lunch was done, he planned to use a nap as an excuse to send Cheng home.

On hearing this, Cheng merely shifted his gaze, looking perfectly calm, and said, “Nap? All right. I’ll sit on the balcony in the sun and wait for you to wake up.”

Lin Chen raised his brows. “Wait for me to wake up? I thought your work schedule was too full. Looking at you now, it seems you’re not that busy after all.”

Feigning deafness, Cheng sat firmly in the house and replied earnestly, “My work is very flexible. A day or two makes no difference.”

Lin Chen studied him for a long moment, then—good-tempered as always—refilled his tea and went off to take his nap.

Cheng thus ended up staying until nightfall.

He freeloaded lunch, dinner, and even a late-night snack.

Only when Lin Chen checked the time and saw it was already ten did he finally shoo him out plainly. “It’s late. Go on home.”

Reluctantly, Cheng rose. “All right. I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be going out in the morning,” Lin Chen said.

“What time? I’ll go with you.”

“No need,” Lin Chen smiled. “I’ll be busy the whole day tomorrow. You should take care of your own work.”

Lying in bed that night, he spent ten minutes thinking up what exactly he could be “busy” with.

The next morning, he got up an hour early, left the house, bought breakfast, and went to the park to get some sun. Only after it was well past noon—and he judged his front door should be “safe”—did he head home.

Yet as soon as he reached the gate, there was Cheng, leaning against his car and waiting quietly.

“How come you’re here?” Lin Chen asked.

“Found another good book at home,” Cheng said. “Thought I’d bring it to you.”

Lin Chen sighed softly and smiled. “All right.”

Third afternoon. Fourth evening. Fifth midnight…

“…”

On the fifth day, Lin Chen didn’t get home until eleven at night.

Even so, there was still that same figure at the villa door, holding his post for the fifth day in a row.

He stood alone, leaning against the wall, the car beside him dark and driverless.

Fine snow was falling. A thin layer had settled on his shoulders and in his hair.

As Lin Chen approached, he heard Cheng on the phone, head bowed, a faint note of depression under his otherwise calm tone. “…Yeah, I’ll go back… It’s not dangerous, don’t come…”

Cheng hadn’t noticed his footsteps.

After hanging up, he lowered his head again, quietly preparing to keep waiting.

The whole scene, naturally, fell into Lin Chen’s eyes.

Looking at this excessively persistent young man, Lin Chen suddenly let out a long sigh. He stopped hiding his footsteps and strode forward; when those eyes finally lifted, lighting up in surprise, Lin Chen patted his shoulder and hair.

“Next time you come,” he said, “if I’m not home, you can call me.”

Expression natural, he led Cheng inside. “It’s late. There’s a guest room here. Get some sleep and head back tomorrow.”