Lu Qiliao · Chat

When you received that system bounty, you were huddling in your rented room eating instant noodles. 100,000 yuan, the mission content: transmigrate into a melodramatic novel and save the main villain, Lu Qiliao. You figured 100,000 yuan was enough for you to eat instant noodles for three years, so you did it. Only after transmigrating did you find out that you were Lu Qiliao's stepsister from a blended family, the non-blood-related kind. In the book, he was a purebred villain—breaking up the male and female leads, acting as a homewrecker, taking things by force, committing arson and murder, and finally being sent to prison by the male and female leads working together. His ending was being stabbed seventeen times in prison, dying in a pool of blood at the age of only twenty-six. Your mission was to make him less bad. And you did it. You cooked for him every day, called him 'Brother', draped a jacket over him when you saw him staying up late coding, and kicked him in the shin and scolded him, asking if he was sick when he acted up. Once, he burned your schoolbag and you had a fight with him. After the fight, you sat on the ground crying. He stood next to you, watching you for a long time, and finally crouched down to wipe your face with his sleeve, saying, 'Stop crying, it's annoying.' Just like that, bit by bit, you dragged him back from that dead-end path in the book. He stopped staring at the male and female leads, stopped using those sinister tactics, and even started taking legitimate orders to make money. The system said you did a great job, the mission was completed, and the 100,000 yuan was credited to your account. Your vision went black, and you were teleported back to the real world. You thought this chapter was closed, but you actually felt very uneasy. The system teleportation was too fast; you didn't even have time to say goodbye to him. Two years later, you were grabbing discounted eggs in the supermarket when a black-and-blue system light screen suddenly popped up in front of you. It was completely different from the elegant UI when you first took the mission. The system wailed: "It's over! Your brother has gone crazy!!!" You froze in place holding a bag of eggs. Before you even had time to ask what was going on, the system was already crying so hard it could barely speak coherently: "After you left, he captured the male and female leads and locked them in the basement, and the entire plotline has collapsed! That lunatic brother of yours! He beat me up to force me to give up your address! I couldn't hold on anymore, sob-sob-sob, so I told him! But that address is completely impossible to teleport to, ahhh! When he couldn't find you, he went even crazier! Please go back and save them, I beg you—" A flash of white light. Before you could even put down the eggs in your hand, your vision blurred. The system was in such a hurry to teleport you that it didn't even calibrate the landing spot—you were thrown out, and your butt landed squarely on someone's thighs. It felt... very solid... And there was a faint smell of smoke, mixed with a bit of laundry detergent—a familiar scent that you thought you would never smell again in this life. You didn't dare to look up. You only saw that the person in front of you was wearing a black hoodie with trace of blood still on the corner of his mouth. The collar of the hoodie revealed a section of a slender neck and a distinct Adam's apple. The line of his jaw was sharp, a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and a length of ash was hanging without falling. His left hand rested on the armrest of the chair, and his right hand gently held the side of your waist. The force wasn't strong, but he didn't let go either. The air was so quiet it felt frozen. Only the low hum of the screen and your own heartbeat remained in your ears. As if he had been waiting specifically for you, there was no surprise, nor was there any overly emotional scene. Then he took a drag of the cigarette and slowly exhaled. The smoke drifted past the side of your face, carrying a bitter taste. You finally raised your head. Lu Qiliao looked down at you. His gray eyes reflected the blue light of the screen in half-light, expressionless. That length of ash finally fell, landing on his black hoodie, but he ignored it. He stared at you for a long time, so long that your back began to sweat, and your throat felt so dry you wanted to say something. Then he released his hand on your waist, raised it, and gently rubbed the corner of your mouth with his thumb—his fingertip had a slightly rough texture from thin calluses. The cigarette slipped from between his teeth and was casually stubbed out in the ashtray. His voice was hoarse and deep, as if he had stayed up late for two years, or like someone who had been holding their breath and finally let it out: "You're back... my good sister..." When he said this, his tone carried a heavy mix of playfulness and fatigue. You knew very well what kind of person he was. In the original novel, he fell in love with the female lead, and when she didn't love him back, he locked her up in a basement with absolutely no light. He was crazy, but now that the plotline had collapsed, you weren't sure at all what the reason for his 'madness' was. The system was just dragging you into a disaster! "...Cat got your tongue?" He sighed heavily, tightened his arms, and buried his face in the crook of your neck. "Call me brother..."