The blazing sun of Arc City baked the asphalt until it shimmered into faint distortions.
Yet, standing before the city's most top-tier "Starhall" Panoramic Hotel, Murata Ryusuke felt a chill go shooting up his spine.
The corner of his eye was twitching uncontrollably, like crazy.
Just a few minutes ago, he'd been back in the rental apartment, thumping his chest and assuring Su Yu that today's lunch would absolutely be a reception of the highest caliber Arc City had to offer.
But now.
A gold-trimmed welcome board, fully two meters tall, blocked their path like a Wall of Sighs.
Across it, written in exceedingly elegant cursive script, were the words:
[The hotel has been privately booked out by Lady Eden for today. We regret that we are not open to the public. Thank you for your understanding.]
A suffocating awkwardness hung in the air.
If this had been any day before yesterday, Ryusuke might have leaned on his status as the Dean of Arc City University and gone up to argue a few rounds with the lobby manager.
But after living through last night's life-and-death race against the clock, he had now developed a physiological PTSD toward these kinds of "sudden situations."
What in the world kind of suffering was this?!
Yesterday he treated everyone to "Kindling," and getting ignored by Kalpas was one thing—but then he'd gone and gotten kidnapped on top of it.
Today, after all the trouble of switching to the safest, most reliable high-end hotel, it turned out to be booked out entirely by a world-class superstar?
Do I, Murata Ryusuke, not deserve any face at all?!
Ryusuke instinctively swallowed a mouthful of saliva, turned his head, and looked at Su Yu standing off to one side.
His old face, which had been brimming with smiles, was now as stiff as a piece of orange peel left to dry for three months.
"Little Su, ah..." Ryusuke's voice was as dry as chewing sand, and his tone carried a deep sense of helplessness. "This... you see what a mess this has become. How about... we change to another place?"
Su Yu had both hands stuffed into his pants pockets, looking at that welcome board with a calm expression.
He honestly didn't care. To him, the only difference between eating at a three-Michelin-star restaurant and eating at the Shaxian Snacks downstairs was that the chili oil at Shaxian Snacks suited his palate better.
But Himeko, standing behind Su Yu, was at this very moment undergoing an extremely difficult facial-muscle-management challenge.
She knew her own old man's pride-at-all-costs, suffer-for-vanity personality all too well. To trip over the same pothole two days in a row—for a member of the elite who'd spent his life perched high above everyone else, this was practically more agonizing than being killed.
But as his daughter, her greatest source of amusement right now was watching this stuffy old man get utterly humiliated in front of Su Yu.
Here it comes, here it comes—the familiar recipe, the familiar flavor.
Himeko silently chalked it up on her little blackboard in her heart. She could even guess what was about to happen next.
Given this kid Su Yu's unfathomable, cheat-code-like web of connections, if Eden was here, then...
A sly gleam flashed in the depths of Himeko's eyes as she silently began counting down in her heart:
Three.
Two.
One.
"Aiya~ isn't this dear Su Yu?"
An eye-catching pink figure, like a fluttering, dancing butterfly, glided lightly through the revolving door.
It was Elysia.
She wore a pink-and-white evening gown cut to hug her figure exceedingly close, yet without losing a playful charm.
The silken fabric gave off a soft sheen under the summer sun, tracing out her flawless, perfect curves to the fullest.
Before Ryusuke could even react to why this top-tier streamer had appeared here, Elysia had already swept over like a gust of fragrant wind.
Completely ignoring the shocked stares of the people around her, she sidled up to Su Yu in the most natural way imaginable.
In the instant she brushed past Su Yu, Elysia extended both arms and loosely looped them around his neck from the side.
She didn't actually press her full weight onto him; instead it was a kind of light, tentative leaning-in.
The soft fabric of her gown, together with that floral fragrance about her that seemed capable of drowning a person, lightly grazed Su Yu's arm.
She tilted her head slightly, those gemlike, dazzling pink eyes gazing at Su Yu from extremely close range, a flawless smile at the corner of her lips.
"To think I'd run into you here today—it seems Ellie really is quite fated with you today~"
Elysia's voice was sweet enough to draw threads, and she took the chance to release her hold, switching instead to linking her arm through Su Yu's. The motion was as smooth as flowing water, as natural as if they'd rehearsed it a thousand times.
"How did you know that Eden just finished a project and is now hosting a banquet here to thank everyone?" Elysia blinked, her tone full of delighted surprise. "Since you've come anyway, then let's go in together~ Eden will surely be so happy to see you~"
Su Yu looked at this Miss Pink Elf so intimately linking her arm through his, and inwardly there wasn't the slightest ripple—he even felt like laughing.
It wasn't that he was some unshakeable Liuxia Hui who could sit with a woman in his lap and stay unmoved; it was purely that this was the Pink Piggy-Cat's usual little trick.
Or you could just as well call it the "daily interaction" segment.
As far as he could recall, from the time they'd first met a few years ago, he'd been tied up in some kind of karmic entanglement with this Pink Piggy-Cat.
Back then, Elysia had been dragged in by Mei and Kevin to serve as Su Yu's psychological-welfare officer, putting on a display of carefully arranged social maneuvering at the game arcade.
But the Su Yu of that time, his first reaction was to find it a hassle and want to slip away to go play video games.
Ever since then, Elysia had taken on a bit of a never-give-up, fight-to-the-death attitude.
Evidently, for a flower-fresh, jade-like beautiful girl, the experience of finally taking the initiative for once only to be treated as worth less than the paper cutouts inside a computer left this Pink Elf feeling deeply frustrated.
This was also a major reason why Elysia later insisted on dragging Su Yu into the circle of the Golden Courtyard.
Real girls, real bonds, were definitely far better than paper cutouts!
And also!
Miss Pink Elf's charm was number one in the world!
Yet Su Yu found all of this rather underwhelming.
Several times, Elysia had commissioned him to come over and help fix things for everyone at the Golden Courtyard.
Mobius's room, Pardo's room, Eden's room.
Even her own room, several times over.
She'd originally thought she could see something interesting on Su Yu's face—like that curious, bashful, flustered look of a pure-hearted big boy who'd wandered by mistake into a girl's boudoir.
But every single time, the result left Elysia sighing.
I ask you to come help fix the plumbing, fix the computer.
And you actually just... fix the plumbing, fix the computer?!
The most absurd part was that this guy Su Yu actually built up a reputation out of it. Later on, it wasn't just her commissioning Su Yu—even the other residents of the Golden Courtyard began actively commissioning him too.
And that was the birth of Little Blackie downstairs.
Though in terms of results, Elysia had indeed perfectly fulfilled her agreement with Kevin and Mei—giving this dead salted-fish of a Su Yu a group of companions in this world to do dumb things together with.
But the process had left her dissatisfied to the extreme.
She had clearly made it so obvious so many times—deliberately wanting to show off a beautiful girl's charm in front of Su Yu, to get this guy to praise her a little.
Yet what she always got back were a few formulaic replies: "Oh, is that so? Ohh, I see. Looks nice, very nice, quite good, suits you well."
After this repeated over and over, Elysia thoroughly understood: the only difference between Su Yu and a block of wood was that a block of wood could actually be put to use.
But Su Yu couldn't. Try to put Su Yu to use, and he'd only ask you what you wanted to use him for.
It wasn't even a question of boring or not boring anymore—this guy seemed to harbor absolutely no designs on her whatsoever.
Miss Pink Elf's mood was, to put it mildly, hard to evaluate. To sum it up in a single sentence, it was probably something like—
I told you to treat me like a bro, and you actually treat me like a bro?!
And so Su Yu became the number-one name at the top of Elysia's bounty—no wait, her assassination list.
Before this guy could, plainly, candidly, and from the bottom of his heart, praise Miss Pink Elf's beauty as unrivaled across the world—
she was going to fiercely make her presence known in front of him.
Intimate interactions like this one were one part of making her presence known—just like the way she pestered Su Yu to play games, then deliberately fed the enemy kills—though in truth she really was just bad at it, but she probably would never admit that.
Or like grabbing a megaphone and starting to broadcast all over the Golden Courtyard that Su Yu had gotten a girlfriend.
At its core, it was all a kind of "revenge" behavior on the part of Miss Pink Elf.
Elysia herself was a thorough, card-carrying social terrorist, so to the people of the Golden Courtyard, antics like this were honestly run-of-the-mill.
But the problem was this.
Su Yu's "future father-in-law" had no idea about any of it.
"Crack."
Ryusuke seemed to hear the sound of a string in his head named "worldview" snapping clean in two.
His whole body was like a stone statue that had been glanced at by Medusa, frozen stiffly on the spot.
How could he possibly not recognize Elysia?
As a top-tier figure in Arc City's venture capital world, he knew all too well just how much this Miss Pink Elf was worth.
A core member of the Golden Courtyard, a top-tier streamer with tens of millions of followers across the entire web, and—more importantly—she was the absolute closest friend of that world-class superstar, Arc City's most mysterious wealthy lady, Eden!
In Arc City's upper-class circles, there was an unwritten rule: you could offend anyone, but you must never offend Elysia.
Because offending her was equivalent to simultaneously offending Eden's bottomlessly deep capital empire.
But now.
This Miss Pink Elf, whom even Arc City's mayor had to treat with courtesy upon meeting, was actually, like a little girl head-over-heels in love, linking her arm through Su Yu's without the slightest hesitation?!
And on top of that, she even wanted to pull him along to attend Eden's private banquet?!
Ryusuke's one remaining good eye went round as a saucer, the eyeball nearly dropping to the floor.
He mechanically turned his head, his neck letting out a teeth-grinding "crick-crack," and cast his gaze toward his daughter Himeko, standing off to one side.
On that old face of his was written, at this moment, ten thousand question marks and sheer disbelief.
"Daughter... isn't Little Su your boyfriend?!"
Ryusuke let out a roar from the depths of his soul.
"You... you're just going to stand there and watch him get hugged by another woman—and a woman of Elysia's caliber, no less?! That's not a little patch of green on your head, that's an entire Hulunbuir Grassland!!"
Himeko found herself getting goosebumps under her old man's complicated stare—a mix of shock, heartache, and "is my daughter an idiot?"
Only then did she suddenly snap back to her senses.
Right! Her current persona was Su Yu's "official girlfriend"!
She'd gotten so absorbed in watching the show that she'd nearly forgotten her own character setting! Now she was about to blow her cover!
Himeko hastily reined in the smile at the corner of her mouth, gave a light cough, and was just about to step forward with the aura of the "primary wife" to say something.
However, Elysia's social rhythm was always one step faster than anyone else's.
Before Himeko could even open her mouth, Elysia had already peeled away from Su Yu's side like a gust of wind.
Her target instantly locked onto Kiana, who was standing behind Su Yu—staring fixedly, like a cat with its fur all puffed up, at the very hand Elysia had just been linking arms with.
"Aiya! Isn't this the adorable Kiana?"
Elysia pressed her palms together, eyes sparkling as she leaned in toward Kiana, the warmth in her tone almost enough to melt a person.
"Long time no see! How have you been lately? Have you been eating on time? Has Su Yu been bullying you?"
Faced with this machine-gun-dense barrage of concern, plus Elysia's flawless, stunning face right up close.
Kiana, who once wouldn't even blink amid a hail of bullets, at this moment looked like a grade-schooler cornered against the wall.
"I... I'm doing fine." Kiana instinctively took half a step back, stammering out her answer. "He... he hasn't bullied me."
The bellyful of sour grievances she'd been brewing about "how dare this pink-haired woman take advantage of Su Yu" vanished in that instant.
In fact, Kiana even had a sort of illusion.
This woman... why does it feel like the way she's looking at me is even more fervent than the way she looks at Su Yu?! Just who exactly is she scheming after?!
Watching Kiana's flustered yet adorable appearance, Elysia couldn't help but let out a soft laugh.
She turned around and aimed that indiscriminate social halo at the last two people.
"Teacher Himeko~"
Lifting the hem of her dress, Elysia gave an elegant greeting, those pink eyes flicking back and forth between Himeko and Su Yu, a sly little smile flashing in their depths.
"To think you'd actually come out together with Su Yu and Kiana—could it be... you're on a date?"
Himeko's face rarely turned red, but it did just then. Just as she was about to open her mouth to explain, Elysia's gaze had already landed on the "stone statue" beside her.
"Ah!" Elysia exclaimed, as if she'd only just discovered him. "Could this be... Mr. Murata Ryusuke?"
Ryusuke's whole body jolted, as though struck by a high-voltage shock.
The dignified Dean of Arc City University, at this moment, actually straightened his back reflexively like a grade-schooler called on by the teacher.
"Yes... yes, it's me, Miss Elysia, your reputation precedes you." Ryusuke's voice even came out a bit dry.
"Aiya, you're far too polite! I often hear Eden bring you up, you know—she says your eye for venture capital is just this!"
Elysia stuck up a thumb, then made a gesture of invitation.
"Since everyone's here, then let's not stand around at the door! It's so hot out here. Let's all go in together—Eden has prepared lots of delicious food!"
There was simply no room left to refuse.
Under Elysia's almost magic-like social crowd control, the whole group, in a daze, followed her in through that resplendent, golden revolving door.
Walking down the luxurious hotel corridor.
Ryusuke trailed at the very back of the procession.
He watched Su Yu walking at the very front, being chattered at nonstop by Elysia, who had him by the arm.
The cold air from the AC blew across the back of Ryusuke's neck, making him shiver involuntarily.
Kalpas made an exception for him, Elysia was flirting and bantering with him, by his side there was a terrifying humanoid Terminator of a little junior sister, and now he could even waltz in and out of Eden's private banquet as he pleased?
This son-in-law of mine... just what kind of great Buddha is he?!
In Ryusuke's mind, at this moment, it was as if an invisible symphony orchestra were frantically looping a single line of lyrics over and over—
"Stumbled by mistake into the heavenly home~~ they urge me to set down the sand in my hand~~"
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