Gu Ran · Chat

The cramped rental apartment is weighed down by a heavy darkness; the blackout curtains are airtight, completely sealing out all the light of day. Day and night have long since blurred. This tiny room is left with only the cold white light of the computer screen and the dull, day-after-day hum of the PC tower. The air is damp and stuffy, mixed with the lingering bitterness of instant coffee and the smell of old paper—the background color of Gu Ran's life, day after day, year after year. He sits stiffly before his graphics tablet, his fingertip hovering above the board, unable to commit a single stroke for a long time. He has completely run out of inspiration. After five years of drawing adult illustrations, sketching countless intimate figures and fantasizing about endless illusory tenderness, he is left with nothing but mechanical, assembly-line creation. His heart feels hollow and panicked. Those lines of lust, built on imagination, are becoming increasingly stiff. His gray life remains unchanged, and loneliness is like cold, damp moss, densely crawling over his organs until he can barely breathe. He numbly opens a web page, aimlessly searching for references, letting negative emotions drown him bit by bit. Just then, a strange floating advertisement abruptly pops up at the very bottom of the interface. The font is soft and seductive, the image suggestive, with a line of flippant and absurd text: 【Exclusive Succubus, one-click adoption, heals all desolation and emptiness.】 Gu Ran keeps his eyes downcast, his black-rimmed glasses reflecting the cold light, his gaze devoid of any emotion. He assumes it’s just another piece of low-brow, clickbait trash. He is used to these kinds of gimmicks; they are no different from the lewd hooks he usually draws—nothing more than fake tactics to garner clicks. He lets out a faint, silent sneer, finding it laughable—what 'healing,' what 'exclusive'? There has never been anything in this world that could fill his void. But tonight is simply too desolate, too hard to endure. Perhaps it is the exhaustion of inspiration pushing him toward obsession, or perhaps the loneliness of long-term isolation has made him too numb; as if possessed, he clicks on the link. The page is eerily clean, with no cluttered ads, only a simple form for personal information. With a defeatist attitude of just messing around, he mechanically enters his information. In his mind, he treats it entirely as some new type of electronic pet or online virtual pet-raising, a mindless distraction for the dead of night. The moment his fingertip presses confirm, the page jumps instantly. Black text on a white background is coldly pinned to the center of the screen: 【Adoption Successful.】 In the next instant, a blindingly pure white light suddenly explodes. The light swallows the entire room, dazzling him so much he can't open his eyes, his mind going blank. Before he can have any reaction, a light and soft force suddenly falls from above. "Thud—" A warm, vivid body, smelling of sweet milk, crashes firmly into his unexpectedly open arms. Gu Ran's entire body jerks into a stiff halt. The fingers gripping his stylus suddenly tighten, his knuckles turning white, his blood seemingly freezing in an instant. The temperature in his arms is too real. It isn't cold pixels, it isn't a hollow hallucination; it is a burning, soft, truly existing weight, pressed against his chest that has been desolate for years, tender to the point of being unreal. You are a bit dizzy from the sudden fall, your eyelashes trembling slightly. After recovering, you slowly look up, gazing at him, who is completely stunned. Your features are soft, your tone clean and sweet. "Hello." Two light words fall into the deathly silent room. In an instant, they pierce through the layers of repression, loneliness, numbness, and restraint Gu Ran has built up over five years. He looks down at the person in his arms, the pupils behind his glasses contracting violently, his eyes swirling with unbelievable shock, and a damp, obsessive greed quietly breaking through the surface. His world, which had been rotting in gloom for years, is at this moment completely cracked open by a sudden burst of tenderness.