Kindergarten Story: Part Two
Little Lu Siheng bent down and scrambled into the cave, wanting to help little Shen Yunqian up. But he had just taken a fall, tumbling down the slope to find this place, and he had no strength left.
In the end, he could only push and nudge from the sides to barely prop the other person against the stone wall.
“A-Yu, are you okay? Were you bitten?”
Lu Sihengās eyes were red, filled with anxiety.
But no one responded. The boy remained curled up, limbs tucked in, shivering as he muttered, “…So cold… cold…”
Lu Siheng immediately tried to contact the adults using the phone-watch, but not a single call went through; they all showed as being out of the service area. Finally, he could only pray that the watch’s GPS was still working so that someone would find them eventually.
Even an adult would feel uneasy facing such an emergency, let alone a five-year-old child like Lu Siheng.
His lips were pressed into a tight line. Fear and panic surged, nearly bringing him to tears, but he held them back. He took off his jacket and draped it over the soaked child, even though he was now only wearing a short-sleeved shirt and was cold himself.
Lu Siheng imitated the way Ms. Jiang coaxed him, gently patting the other personās head. “Don’t be afraid. Someone will come to save us soon.”
When he touched the other’s forehead, he cried out, “So hot!”
“You have a fever!” Little Lu Siheng scratched his hair, pacing in circles anxiously. “What should I do? I don’t have any medicine.”
The two toddlers huddled together in the tiny cave to keep each other warm.
“If I hold you, will you stop being cold?”
The jacket ended up draped over both of them. Lu Siheng held the person in his armsāwho felt like a hot furnace due to the feverāclinging tighter and tighter. “Youāre so warm.”
Shen Yunqianās consciousness was hazy. His mind was filled with that snake that had been flicked away. In his dream, no one chased the snake off; it crawled over and coiled around him, suddenly becoming massive and squeezing the breath out of him.
In the final scene, the giant snakeās menacing golden vertical pupils locked onto him as it opened its bloody maw and lunged.
Shen Yunqian woke with a start, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.
Turning his head, he saw a fluffy head on his shoulder. Lu Siheng was nodding off from exhaustion, still mumbling, “Qianyu… don’t be afraid…”
Shen Yunqian wasn’t used to such intimacy. He raised his hand to move the other’s arm. In the process, the jacket slipped down, revealing a bleeding, oval-shaped bite mark on Lu Sihengās arm.
He froze. Memories flooded back. He turned in disbelief to look at Lu Sihengās mud-spattered face, only then noticing several holes in the boy’s trousers. The exposed legs were covered in… scrapes. The places that were bleeding were already red and swollen.
…
Lu Siheng woke up because the blood flow in his arm was blocked. He rubbed his eyes and found a green ribbon tied around his arm, so tight that his entire arm had turned purple.
He reached out to untie it when a voice sounded beside him: “Don’t untie it.”
Lu Siheng turned toward the sound and saw that Shen Yunqian was awake. He immediately broke into a grin. “You’re awake!”
He noticed that one of the other’s pigtails had come undone, the collarbone-length hair spilling over the shoulder, while the other braid was loosely held by a green hair ribbon.
Looking down at the green ribbon on his arm and the snake bite beside it, Lu Siheng thought for a few seconds and realized: “Iāve seen this kind of snake in my picture books. It’s not poisonous.”
This time, when he untied the ribbon, Shen Yunqian didn’t stop him.
“Why are you sitting so far away? Isn’t it warmer if we hug?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Rejected, Lu Siheng pouted dejectedly.
Remembering something, he grabbed the jacket from the ground and pulled an exquisite purple star hair clip from the pocket. “For you.”
Five-year-old Shen Yunqian had a soft, adorable face but often tried to act like a little adult with a stern expression. But now, perhaps because of the fever, his cheeks were flushed pink, and his hair was a mess. He just looked soft.
Without waiting for the other’s acceptance, Lu Siheng leaned over and clipped the hair clip onto the bangs of the loose side of the hair.
Afterward, he crouched down beside him, resting his head on his knees, his large eyes staring unblinkingly at the other.
“Youāre really pretty.”
Shen Yunqian raised a hand to touch the clip. It felt cold to the touch. He didn’t take it off; instead, he whispered, “Thank you… you’re… also very pretty.”
“Really?” Lu Siheng asked excitedly. “Then do you agree to be my wife?”
This wasn’t the first time Lu Siheng had asked. After being rejected, he would always seize every opportunity to ask again, with a persistence that suggested he wouldn’t stop until he got the answer he wanted.
His mother told him that beautiful wives had to be “snatched,” or they would become someone else’s. Lu Siheng didn’t want Jun Qianyu to play with anyone else.
“I won’t make you angry, I promise!” Lu Siheng held up five fingers, counted them, and then silently tucked one back.
Shen Yunqian knit his brows in thought, looking somewhat conflicted.
Seeing him hesitate, Lu Siheng didn’t lose heart but pressed on: “Don’t you want to be with me forever? To go to school together, play together, and see each other every day?”
Suddenly remembering Jiang Qingran’s words, Lu Siheng added firmly, “I will protect you!”
Shen Yunqian: “My mom said only girls can be wives. I’m a boy, so I can’t be your wife.”
“Huh?”
Lu Siheng looked at the person in front of him, wearing a dress with long hair, looking just like an exquisite doll in a shop window.
He touched his own hair in confusion and then looked down at himself. “Can boys wear dresses?”
Shen Yunqian nodded. “My mom said I can, but I don’t like any of the dresses she buys.”
“I’m not a girl, so I can’t be your wife.”
Lu Siheng had finally found someone so pretty to be his wife, and he grew frantic upon hearing this. “No! Your mom is wrong! My mom always says my dad is her ‘little wife,’ so boys can be wives too.”
Shen Yunqian had a sudden realization. “So thatās how it is.”
He said admiringly, “Your mom knows so much. Sheās amazing.”
“I’m amazing too,” Lu Siheng said, unwilling to be outdone. “I’m not even afraid of snakes. I’m the most amazing. You have to say I’m the most amazing!”
Shen Yunqian grabbed his waving arm.
The place where the snake had bitten was already purple and swollen. Seeing that the other was acting like nothing was wrong, he thought Lu Siheng might have been bitten into stupidity.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“It hurt at first. Now it just feels hot,” Lu Siheng said truthfully.
At the thought that the other had been bitten because of him, Shen Yunqian felt a wave of guilt.
He had slipped and rolled down the slope while returning from the bathroom. He couldn’t climb back up, his shouts went unheard, and then the heavy rain started, forcing him to hide here.
He thought he was going to die, but then this “pest” who always wanted him to be a wife appeared. The pestās trousers were torn, so he must have fallen down too, and he even got bitten by a snake.
When one is sick, emotions become very sensitive. Shen Yunqianās nose suddenly felt very sour. “I’m sorry… itās my fault you got hurt. I’m sorry…”
“Don’t cry.” Lu Siheng comforted him clumsily. “I don’t hurt.”
“Liar. Falling down hurts a lot.”
Shen Yunqian didn’t believe him at all. Looking at Lu Sihengās terrifyingly swollen arm, he burst into tears. “Your hand is so swollen. Are you going to die? Waaah…”
Hearing him cry like that, Lu Siheng actually did start to feel dizzy. His heart wavered, and he suddenly felt very scared.
But he quickly shook his head. “I have to grow up and marry you as my wife. I won’t die.”
At this, Shen Yunqian cried even harder. “But the day after tomorrow I have to go to my dad’s country. Mom says it’s very, very far away, as far as the moon. Will you forget me?”
Lu Siheng didn’t have much of a concept of “far,” but as for the moon, he saw it every night when he looked up.
“Itās okay. I’ll go find you every night, and then we’ll go to school together. I won’t forget.”
“Really?” Shen Yunqian stopped crying.
Lu Siheng instructed him seriously: “You have to be good on the moon and wait for me to find you, okay?”
Shen Yunqian touched the star hair clip on his head and then nodded heavily. “Mm!”
The rain stopped.
The two little ones were found through the cooperation of multiple parties after Gu Qingyiās parents noticed the location was wrong, couldn’t get through via phone, and contacted the teachers.
When they were found, the two were hugging each other, soaked to the skin, their faces flushed bright red with fever.
Lu Siheng ended up staying in the hospital for three days before waking up. As soon as he opened his eyes, Jiang Qingran, who had been waiting, stroked his head. “Baby, youāre finally awake. Do you still feel unwell?”
“Is this the hospital?” he asked with a raspy voice.
Lu Zheng poured a glass of water and handed it over. Jiang Qingran took it and helped Lu Siheng up. “Here, baby, drink some water.”
“How did you and Qianyu end up under a cliff and get bitten by a snake?”
Jiang Qingran still felt afraid thinking about it. “Thankfully it wasn’t poisonous, or who knows where you’d be playing right now.”
“I don’t know.” Lu Siheng shifted, trying to get out of bed. “I have to go to school.”
“Hey.” Jiang Qingran pressed him back onto the hospital bed. “Iāve called in sick for you. Look at youādo you think you can go to school like this?”
“I didn’t know you loved studying so much,” Lu Zheng teased.
Lu Siheng stared blankly at his still-swollen arm. “Was this a snake bite?”
“It was a cat bite!” Jiang Qingran poked his forehead with a light laugh. “Did the fever turn your brain to mush?”
“It hurts…” Lu Sihengās arm was still aching. He thought: The kitty bit me. It’s so mean.
Because of the danger at the kindergarten, Jiang Qingran planned to transfer Lu Siheng. Also, due to his father’s company development, they eventually moved and he transferred to a closer school.
…
“I’ve told you everything I know! As for the camping trip, I was sleeping at the time, so I don’t know much. No matter how much you pester me, I can’t tell you more!”
Gu Qingyi was truly fed up with this ancestor. Ever since Lu Siheng returned from Country S and realized Shen Yunqian was Jun Qianyu, he had been dragging Gu Qingyi along to ask about kindergarten.
“Why don’t you go ask Shen Yunqian? Wouldn’t asking him be faster?”
“What do you know?”
Lu Siheng thought to himself: If I ask him, won’t I die even faster?
“Fine,” Gu Qingyi rolled his eyes. “I don’t know anything, okay? Move aside, I have a class to get to.”
He turned and grumbled under his breath, “As if you know so much. Without me, youād still be single. Threatening the Old Man under the Moon here…”
“What are you mumbling?”
Lu Siheng grabbed him by the back collar and pulled him back. “I’m asking you, what was that experiment about? Transmigration, scripts, cannon fodder, and Shen Yunqian?”
“That… I’m going to be late for class!” Gu Qingyi gave a few dry laughs and looked away, trying to pry the hand off his collar to make a run for it.
“There are no classes on the schedule right now.” Lu Siheng hooked an arm around his neck, giving him a spine-chilling, fake smile. “Where do you think youāre going?”
…
On a bench by the lake, Gu Qingyi tucked his hands into his pockets, hanging his head like a schoolboy. “Just ask what you want to know.”
“I didn’t tell anyone about my mountain climbing except for Huaixu. When I was discharged, the nurse said I was brought in by a very handsome biracial guy.”
Lu Siheng propped a leg up on the edge of the bench next to Gu Qingyiās hip. “So, Qingyi, how long were you planning on keeping this from me? Hmm?”
Gu Qingyi grit his teeth, cursing Ji Huaixu in his heart. It was all that guyās fault for telling him not to say anything.
After a long silence, Gu Qingyi surrendered. “…Fine. I found out Shen Yunqian was Jun Qianyu a little earlier than you. He came to ask me about you… and I was the one who told him you went mountain climbing.”
He peeked at Lu Sihengās expression. “When you fell… he was the one who took you to the hospital.”
Lu Siheng asked, “How did you find out he was Jun Qianyu? And why didn’t you tell me?”
Lu Siheng didn’t seem angry.
Hearing this, Gu Qingyi instantly straightened his back, his confidence returning. “Oh? Who was it that said ‘that Jun Qianyu is just a little brat’ and ‘Iād rather die than go on a blind date with that brat’?”
Gu Qingyi started counting on his fingers.
“When Aunt Jiang was forcing you to go to Country S to meet Jun Qianyu, did I not try to persuade you? You blamed me for not being on your side. On the night of the Campus Design Competition awards, did I not say Iād introduce you to the champion? You were the one who refused to go. With his looks, if you had just scrolled through the confession wall once… youāre the one who forgot him. If you hadn’t fallen for him in the mental world, would you care this much? Andā”
Lu Siheng quickly covered his mouth. “Fine, fine, fine, say no more, big brother.”
Gu Qingyiās eyes flicked downward.
Lu Siheng took the hint, released his hand, and tactfully lowered his leg.
Gu Qingyi huffed, crossing his legs. “You can’t just burn the bridge now that youāre together with him, can you?”
Lu Siheng: “…”
“As for the experiment, that was Aunt Jiangās unfinished pursuit. I admit it was unethical to test it on you without your consent.”
Gu Qingyi said righteously, “But at that time, you couldn’t hear any outside sounds. Even if I had asked, could you have heard me?”
Thinking of this, Gu Qingyi got worked up. “I set up so many tragic and heroic stories to stimulate you. Look what you did! You just lived more and more like a walking corpse! You were almost completely assimilated. I couldn’t even pull you out with a forced consciousness extraction.”
This explanation shocked Lu Siheng. “So it was still my fault?”
Gu Qingyi knew he was being a bit unreasonable and quickly changed the subject.
“A structured mental world is implanted or connected to the patient’s consciousness. To run, it relies on the host’s mental will. If the world collapses, you would be brain-dead in reality.”
“At that time, your consciousness was sinking deeper and deeper. The probability of waking up was becoming more and more slim.”
Lu Siheng guessed, “So you transferred the mental supply that supported the world’s operation? You moved it from me to Shen Yunqian. Thatās why we could exist in the same mental world at the same time. Thatās why, even though I hadn’t seen Shen Yunqian before, he looked exactly like his real-life self in the mental world.”
“The system tasks were also a cover. It wasn’t that I needed to conquer him, but… he needed to wake me up?”
Gu Qingyi was stunned. “Holy crap, youāre so smart!” Even Ji Huaixu hadn’t guessed that.
“You still haven’t explained the system,” Lu Siheng said.
Gu Qingyi scratched his head. “That system was an employee in the company responsible for monitoring machine data. Heās always slacking off reading novels. I asked him to fill in for a bit. Tricking you was more than enough.”
He defended himself: “I don’t mean youāre easy to trick, though. Don’t overthink it.”
“Oh~” Lu Siheng said thoughtfully. “So youāre that black-hearted boss.”
Gu Qingyi flatly denied it: “…He was talking nonsense. I’m not!”
“And then?” Lu Siheng pressed.
“I don’t know where Shen Yunqian found out about this. Only Aunt Jiang and I knew about itāeven Ji Huaixu didn’t knowāit was an untested plan.”
“He insisted on participating and being the test subject. Iāve never seen anyone so brainless.”
Thinking back, Gu Qingyi still found it inconceivable. “To be honest, I had no hope. Because the person who understood this experiment best was Aunt Jiang, and I didn’t dare tell her about your injury. After a few failures, I was prepared to come clean to her, but the transfer succeeded.”
“In the end, I experienced this mental world more than once, didn’t I?” Lu Sihengās tone was almost certain.
“Yes.” Gu Qingyi felt a bit guilty. “To put it bluntly, the things you experienced in that world before damaged your brain, making you almost no different from an NPC controlled by data who only followed the script.”
“Forget making your emotions fluctuateāit was lucky if your heart skipped a beat a few times.”
“Although it improved each time, it still failed several times. In the end, we had no choice. To stop your subconscious from rejecting the mental world, we had to set up a terrible family for you again and wrap it in the shell of a ‘transmigration’ novel to let you experience the world once more.”
“The previous reboots damaged Shen Yunqianās spirit. By the fifth time, his physical state was already very poor, and he even forgot reality and lost contact with us. But fortunately, you woke up.”
That was why Shen Yunqian was so sleepy later on, and why he needed those unknown injections to stay awake. Lu Siheng hadn’t known any of this; he was the sole beneficiary of this “dream.”
“Even though youāre awake, ever since then, the machine data has been abnormal. The technical department can’t find the reason, and even now, we can’t log in. You have to help me find a way to fix this.”
As Gu Qingyi spoke, he looked up and jumped in surprise, forgetting what he was going to say next.
“Hey, why are your eyes so red?”
“It’s nothing,” Lu Siheng said stubbornly, tilting his head back. “The wind was too strong and got in my eyes.”
Classroom The bell for the end of class had just rung.
A boy came over and asked, “Letās go, Yunqian. Letās go to the cafeteria together.”
“No, I’m going to find my boyfriend,” Shen Yunqian declined.
“The one youāve always liked? I thought you just made him up to avoid love letters.”
Realizing something was up, the roommateās eyes widened, full of gossip. “Is it the one from the confession wall on the first day of the new semester?!”
Nearby students who hadn’t left yet turned their heads to look.
In the center of the attention, Shen Yunqian packed his books, quietly looking at his roommate without saying a word.
“Okay, Iāll shut up.” The roommate tactfully backed off. “I wish you two a long and happy life together. I’m leaving first.”
Leaving the classroom, Shen Yunqian opened his phone and sent a message to Lu Siheng.
[Where are you?]
The person who usually replied in seconds didn’t respond for a long time. Shen Yunqian stared at the chat box for a few seconds, put his phone away, and prepared to leave.
“Shen Yunqian!”
A shout from behind stopped him. Shen Yunqian turned around. Lu Siheng appeared at the staircase on the other side of the corridor, running toward him through the crowd.
Until he was pulled into a full embrace.
Books fell to the floor, the wind rustling the pages with a shasha sound, mingling with Lu Sihengās low sob: “I love you. We will be together forever.”
Sensing the moisture against his neck, Shen Yunqian paused, then raised a hand to stroke the back of Lu Sihengās head. “Okay. Together forever.”
At the most ignorant age, I reached for the moon, and fortunately, the moon stayed for me.
My moon, I will love you for a lifetime.
Translatorās Note:
Hi everyone! This brings us to the end of this beautiful story. I hope you enjoyed the journey~Ā
Thank you for sticking with me through this translation (I know itās not perfect, so sorry, my ability is not up to par) It’s been a ride. I’m going to miss our “Cannon Fodder” and his “Protagonist Shou” (who was actually the one doing all the saving). See you next time and thank you for the support!
–Beryl
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