Chapter 51: Coconut, What Madness Has Your Master Fallen Into?
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Just how unlucky was Huo Yanci? His car tire blew out; flowerpots fell beside his feet while he was walking; the restaurant’s card machine malfunctioned when he tried to pay—yet somehow, it only ever malfunctioned when he used his card... In short, he had suffered every kind of bad luck imaginable lately. And now it was no longer confined to him personally. The misfortune had spread to the Huo Corporation.
Huo Yanci finally caught his breath. Broken shards of glass lay at his feet, while the half glass of water he had not finished had soaked one corner of the cashmere rug.
His face, flushed from his violent coughing, was red all the way down to his neck. The suffocating sensation of being on the brink of death had seemed ready to drag him straight into the deepest hell. He gulped down fresh air greedily, while the frantic warnings of 011 rang through his mind.
“Warning! Warning! Fortune value has reached the critical threshold. If it remains below the critical threshold after seventy-two hours, the mission will be declared a failure, and the system will initiate the erasure protocol!”
“Warning! Warning! Fortune value has reached the critical threshold. If it remains below the critical threshold after seventy-two hours, the mission will be declared a failure, and the system will initiate the erasure protocol!”
“Warning! Warning! Fortune value has reached the critical threshold. If it remains below the critical threshold after seventy-two hours, the mission will be declared a failure, and the system will initiate the erasure protocol!”
If 011’s voice had still held a trace of warmth before, now it sounded like the merciless judge of the underworld, coldly beginning the countdown to Huo Yanci’s death.
“Warning! Warning! Warning!”
“The mission is about to fail!”
Huo Yanci had only just managed to recover his breath when the mechanical voice fastened another shackle around his neck—a shackle that allowed him only seventy-two hours to live.
“011, is there any way to raise my fortune value above the critical threshold?” Huo Yanci collapsed onto the sofa.
He could not understand it. Everything had clearly been under his control. Where, exactly, had things gone wrong?
The root of it all seemed to lie in his birthday banquet.
At the banquet, he and Pei Baoyuan had worked together flawlessly, and she had not suspected a thing. So where had the problem arisen?
Huo Yanci’s head throbbed violently. He simply could not figure out what had gone wrong.
“When the fortune value reaches the critical threshold, the system automatically activates its protection mechanism. Fortune value can be increased by making physical contact with the mission target.”
“Physical contact...” Huo Yanci murmured. Then, suddenly, he exploded. “Pei Baoyuan blocked me! I can’t even see her, so how am I supposed to touch her?”
The only answer was the uninterrupted crackle of static from 011.
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Pei Baoyuan’s invisible “house arrest” seemed to have been lifted. When she got up, there was no one at home. After learning that Madam Song Xuanling had gone to attend to preparations for her eldest brother’s wedding, Pei Baoyuan quickly got ready, brought Coconut—who had been playing in the backyard and had nearly forgotten who his owner was—and headed straight for Ke Xianbai’s small villa.
The courtyard gate was tightly shut. Pei Baoyuan peered inside. It was utterly silent, as though no one lived there at all.
Back in a familiar place, Coconut saw the gate closed against him and, for once, raised his voice to howl twice. At last, a sleepily bleary-eyed figure appeared on the small balcony on the second floor of the villa.
Ke Xianbai had stayed up all night and only gone to sleep at dawn. The moment he saw the person outside the gate, he was instantly wide awake. In less than two minutes, he had welcomed her inside.
Once they entered the courtyard, Coconut completely abandoned himself to joy, racing around the long-missed grounds and forgetting all about his owner, Ke Xianbai.
Seeing the exhaustion he could not conceal between his brows, Pei Baoyuan knew he must not have rested well the previous night.
She took a red invitation embossed with gold lettering from her bag and handed it to him. “I came to bring Coconut home, and I also wanted to give you my brother’s wedding invitation.”
Ke Xianbai accepted it, looking somewhat helpless. “Your brother probably doesn’t want to see me.”
Was this some roundabout way of... tattling on him?
Pei Baoyuan said, “Don’t worry. You were invited because you’re his only sister’s friend. He definitely won’t throw you out.”
“...”
Could it possibly be because you’re his sister...?
Ke Xianbai felt aggrieved. “But what if he really does throw me out?”
“Then... for Coconut’s sake, I might ask him to let you in.”
“...”
Ke Xianbai felt a little troubled.
Did Pei Baoyuan truly have no feelings for him at all?
How was he supposed to make her interested in him?
His peripheral vision fell upon the dog on the swing set, grinning as he played to his heart’s content.
Tsk. What an idiot.
Aside from Huo Yanci, the only thing connecting him and Pei Baoyuan was Coconut.
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Huo Yanci didn’t count for anything anymore. He was a cheating bastard, and his Yuanbao would never want some rotten cucumber.
Ke Xianbai sighed deeply to himself. That meant he could only rely on Coconut.
He had never imagined that pursuing a relationship would require him to depend on a dog.
It was the first time Pei Baoyuan had seen so many different expressions flash across one person’s face in such a short span of time. She glanced at the comments floating across the screen, but apart from a wall of “hahaha,” there was not a single useful message.
Sigh.
If only the comments knew what Ke Xianbai was thinking.
A man’s thoughts were simply too difficult to guess.
Ke Xianbai: “?”
His expression cracked ever so slightly as countless possibilities raced through his mind. “Actually, I was only joking with you just now.”
Pei Baoyuan: “?”
She watched as Ke Xianbai awkwardly walked over to Coconut and hauled him down from the swing.
Coconut: “?” What was going on?
“I suddenly remembered that I still have something unfinished. Could you take care of Coconut for a few more days? Once I’ve dealt with it, I’ll come over and bring him home.”
Ke Xianbai stuffed the leash into Pei Baoyuan’s arms and half pushed her outside. The instant he finished speaking, the door slammed shut behind them.
A person and a dog stared at each other outside the gate.
Pei Baoyuan: “Coconut, what on earth is wrong with your owner today?”
“Whimper, whimper...”