“Actually, I think… you could do some more bad things to me.”

Yu Chen stroked his signet ring, suppressing the dark undercurrents in his eyes: “Why didn’t you run? The door was wide open.”

Bai Ling turned his face warily, giving a sidelong glance as he said, “That ‘playing hard to get’ tactic of yours doesn’t work on me.”

In truth, it wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about slamming the door and leaving, but they were on a warship. Where could he possibly run to? At most, he would be fooling himself, separating himself from this old man by a few dozen meters while stewing in his own anger. Instead of catching a cold breeze alone, he might as well hijack the old guy’s nest and lie down comfortably for a while.

Yu Chen said smoothly, “Then I have no choice but to assume you voluntarily stayed.”

Seeing that the man intended to sit next to him, Bai Ling immediately sat up, clutching his blanket as he shrank toward the window, watching him warily: “Don’t come near me.”

Yu Chen raised an eyebrow slightly, a trace of amusement surfacing: “This is my seat. What you’re sitting on is my overcoat.”

“…..”

With a stiff face, Bai Ling pointed toward the middle of the sofa, forcefully drawing a dividing line: “This side is mine, that side is yours.”

“Mutual non-aggression, to each their own peace!”

Having put it that way, the other party should temporarily be out of moves, right?

The merman pondered on the spot for a moment, then suddenly took a deliberate detour, coming around to stand directly opposite the position where Bai Ling was nestled. With one hand loosely tucked into his trousers pocket, he raised his other hand. Bearing a lazy, elegant expression on his face, he performed the motion of a gentleman knocking on a door:

“Knock, knock.”

He even provided his own sound effects.

“May I come in?” The merman stood before Bai Ling, the corners of his lips curving into a subtle smile, acting as if an invisible magic door truly blocked his way.

Bai Ling felt his heart thrumming, thump, thump, against his ribs.

Damn it…! This old man really knows how to play.

At this moment, the absence of a door was more potent than any actual barrier. Bai Ling answered listlessly, “…Come in.”

With his eyes crinkling with amusement, Yu Chen sat beside the bird, sliding his fingers into the white hair and gently smoothing it from the roots. The bird opened his grey eyes, glanced at him upside down, and then closed them again with an indifferent expression, an unspoken sign of permission.

Yu Chen truly adored this temperament of his.

The bird’s character was incredibly resilient, so tough that it even caught someone like Yu Chen, who was long accustomed to being a ruler, by surprise. Yu Chen couldn’t control himself from bullying him like this; if it were any other omega, they would either be on the verge of tears or entirely passive.

Yet, he was like an unbreakable Little Bird, forever possessing an abundance of backbone, confronting Yu Chen with an unyielding stance, never once thinking of running away.

Transparent, with a terrifying adaptability akin to a wild, stray animal.

It truly made one… utterly infatuated.

But this also meant that the Little Bird had seen things far more terrifying than him in his lifetime.

For a moment, Yu Chen fell into an extremely contradictory state of mind. He loved the fact that the young man was weathered by trials, yet he wished the other’s yesterday had been tranquil. And all he could do now was give Bai Ling a lifetime of smooth sailing.

Upon returning to the sleeping quarters, Bai Ling dragged his heavy steps to take a bath.

He asked the small robot for a walking stick that Yu Chen used to use, employing it as a temporary support. Leaning on it, he hopped and skipped, quickly making his way toward the bathroom.

Closing the door, he swiftly locked it.

Bai Ling exhaled slowly; good thing that the merman didn’t notice.

Perhaps it was due to catching a chill, but when he had just come up from the waterway earlier, a deep, gloomy ache had begun seeping into his right leg again. Sitting by the bathtub, he couldn’t help but touch his leg. First, he felt the steel tube at the connection point of the prosthesis, and further up was his residual thigh.

Suddenly, his hand accidentally brushed against his own bone. A chill shot up his spine, and he was seized by a bizarre sensation of being defective.

So strange.

Pulling his hand back as if shocked by an electric current, Bai Ling lowered his eyelids. In a slight panic, he fished out a screwdriver and continued to dismantle the ruined leg.

After sustaining a forceful crushing, some of the components had suffered severe deformation, which created a problem: several screws were jammed inside, requiring a hard pry to completely loosen them.

Ten minutes later, Bai Ling raised his arm to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead, throwing the final steel plate down at his feet with a heavy clang.

He stole a glance; the cross-section of his thigh was uneven with jagged flesh, covered in scratches from the screwdriver. Right in the center, a short piece of white bone jutted out, looking as abrupt as a burial mound rising from a plain.

This was the very thing causing the pain.

Bai Ling cursed it in his mind: Rotten bone. In his past life, this bone had caused him plenty of torment, aching bizarrely every few days. At its worst, the pain would make him roll on the floor; during gloomy, rainy days, a single movement felt like stepping on a pincushion.

However, things were much better in this lifetime.

Perhaps it was because the heating in Yu Chen’s palace was always set high; even with the continuous freezing rain and blizzards this winter, he didn’t feel the damp chill when walking around the room in shorts.

The sudden pain now likely contained an element of PTSD.

Having coexisted with it for over twenty years, Bai Ling knew exactly how to deal with it. Stripping off his clothes, he turned the shower to hot water, intending to blast it for about ten minutes. He called this clumsy trick the “physical heating method”: as long as the flesh was scalded hot, the phantom pain within the seams of the bone became difficult to detect.

As for why he didn’t take painkillers, that was naturally because…

Knock, knock— Someone tapped twice on the door.

The merman’s deep, mellow voice echoed: “Is it convenient for me to come in?”

The question was asked with immense consideration, yet the manner in which he pushed the door open and stepped right inside was completely natural. Bai Ling instinctively yanked up his clothes to cover his body, a thought flashing through his mind: He clearly locked the door!

In the next second, he realized that the highest access authority of this palace was held by the merman. As long as the man wished it, all door locks were mere decorations.

Bai Ling directed a cold stare over, locking eyes with those deep green pools that could drown a person, and asked, “Do you need something?”

Don’t let this be another excuse to cause trouble.

Yu Chen lifted his eyes to observe him. The young man’s hair was dripping wet, and the thin clothing could by no means conceal the contours of his physique; instead, it carried a touch of flustered, guilty self-consciousness.

Yet Yu Chen retracted his probing gaze, saying softly, “I cannot take my medicine recently, so I might offend you.”

Bai Ling’s breath hitched slightly. “And so?”

“I prepared some things in advance to express my apologies.” The old-school alpha’s phrasing was exquisite, embodying politeness at every turn.

Seeing Bai Ling narrow his eyes and lean forward to get a clear look, the merman seized the opportunity to smoothly advance deeper into the bathroom, stepping into the omega’s safe zone inch by inch.

The youngster still lacked a sense of defense against him.

Yu Chen stopped before him, a distance of half a meter separating them. It was a reasonable distance where an extended arm could touch the other, while half a step back could evade a primary strike.

The vigilance in Bai Ling’s eyes did not slacken, staring intently at the hand the man deliberately kept behind his back, until he produced… a small towel and a bar of soap?!

“You mentioned that you didn’t receive them when you were discharged from the military. After much thought, I felt it was my responsibility to reissue them to you.”

Bai Ling stood dazed in the bathtub, ah…

“I referenced the military’s past regulations to create the stamp, but I added a few minor modifications, such as changing the national emblem to mine: the old national emblem.” Yu Chen offered the soap and towel tied with a ribbon, his palm warm and covered in a thin layer of calluses. He proposed a compromise: “If you feel it is inappropriate, I can also…”

“The old one! I want the old one!” His clothes slid to the floor as Bai Ling threw himself forward regardless of anything else, wrapping his arms around that powerful limb, pressing his scalding chest and violently thumping heart entirely against the man’s palm.

Who else would take a minor complaint he made on a regular day to heart, and go so far as to meticulously handcraft a gift to give him?

Only Izu Paraiso.

Yu Chen felt a wave of heat against his chest as his little disabled bird crashed into him on his own accord. Veering his gaze to the side, the young man stammered out a suggestion:

“Actually, I think… you could do some more bad things to me.”

Author’s Note:

Little Bird: (Lifts binoculars) (Vigilant) When the merman is quiet, he must be up to no good.

Old merman: (Tying a ribbon) (Tying the bow into a bird-loving shape)

Little Bird: …Hey, I’m done with my bath!

You never know how many tricks an old man has to coax his wife.