Sunrise, game, two-player mode.

The voice was gone, like a misdialed phone call that hangs up immediately, making you think it was just an illusion.

Chi Xiaochi looked around in surprise, "Mr. Six, did you hear something?"

061 asked rhetorically, "What?"

...... only hear yourself?

Is it really a hallucination?

Chi Xiaochi thought that voice sounded familiar.

Although he couldn't remember who the voice belonged to, Chi Xiaochi's constant depression was slightly relieved by this little accident.

He stretched out his arms and legs and rolled over on the panther's back with abandon, teasing its nose and silver whiskers with his fingers.

The panther crouched, faithfully carrying his master on his back, while turning his face sideways, his barbed tongue licking his calloused fingertips.

Chi Xiaochi feels better after hugging her furry boss.

After adjusting his mindset, he said to 061, "Mr. Six, next, I intend to lead Ding Qiuyun's team ......"

"...... shhh."

To his surprise, the ever-gentlemanly 061 interrupted him decisively.

"Think nothing. Don't do anything." 061 said, "Close your eyes, get some rest, and at least tonight stop being Ding Qiuyun and go back to being Chi Xiaochi."

...... do back to Lou Ying's Chi Xiaochi , can it.

At those words, Chi Xiaochi's heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, and the heat and itchiness of the leopard's fingers became palpable.

He was a bit overwhelmed as he wrapped his arms around Panther's neck, hiding his inner turmoil with a smile, "Teacher Six, you're too skilled at attracting bees and butterflies, that's not good."

061 chuckled softly, "Yeah."

He didn't move, letting the butterflies he'd invited onto himself.

Chi Xiaochi reminded him, as well as herself, "Isn't there someone waiting for you to come back."

061 opened his mouth.

He's trying to say I've waited, trying to say the person I'm waiting for is on my back right now, and I can run with you anywhere you want to go and watch the sunrise with you.

But he couldn't say a word due to the secrecy system.

Chi Xiaochi misinterpreted his silence and reached up to tease his boss's chin wantonly while gently drawing a line in the sand with 061, "Don't dare let that man hear, or I'll be guilty of a great ...... hiss!"

The panther took his thriving hand into his mouth and bit down with a not-so-gentle ah-oh bite.

At the same time, he heard 061's voice, clear, warm, and with a little bit of helplessness, "Your greatest sin is disobedience."

Chi Xiaochi's hand was bitten to the point of numbness, and the voice tugged at his heartstrings, and his wrist and half of his face went numb.

The tone was strange to Chi Xiaochi, yet strikingly familiar.

He was abruptly panicked, and the suspicion that he had willfully ignored for so long rekindled in his mind, telling Chi Xiaochi to tighten his whole body.

"Dare to bite me?" Chi Xiaochi patted her boss on the back of the neck and half threatened, "Daddy doesn't want you."

With that, he was about to get up and quicken his pace, intending to go downstairs to cool off and calm down.

But before she could take two steps, a force came from behind, and Chi Xiaochi could not react, and was thrown to the ground.

A mouthful of sharp teeth took hold of his shirt behind his shoulders and flipped him over vigorously.

This is a common technique used by leopards to hunt for food.

But before Chi Xiaochi could panic, his boss pinned him down and quietly crouched in the crook of his neck, no longer moving.

The cold wind blew through the high platform, and the whistling cold wind rewashed the air that emanated the sandy cold air, inhaling it into the lungs only made one's mind clearer and clearer.

The excessive heat of the beast's body scalded Chi Xiaochi, and within each muscle that clung to him, slightly open and closed, lay raw, wild and terrifying power.

But it surrendered this power tamely, trying to disguise itself as a harmless blanket.

Chi Xiaochi guessed at the boss's mind and thought, probably he had scared him by suddenly trying to leave after he was bitten.

Most animals are sensitive to abandonment, and Chi Xiaochi, realizing that she had done something wrong, softened her tone and rubbed the panther's ears against her shoulder sockets in a dog-like embrace, "Okay, I want you, I want you."

The leopard lifted its eyes to look at him, a very pretty mist of watery film in its gray-blue eyes, and its tail flicked around Chi Xiaochi's calf, eventually wrapping around his ankle.

Chi Xiaochi was so pestered by it that he had no choice but to coax him, "I'm not leaving."

The panther's mood cheered up at this, biting the end of Chi Xiaochi's scarf and tightening the loose scarf for him.

Unlike an open post, a dark post is hidden in the shadows, so it cannot have a fire, and usually comes with marching blankets that can be heated automatically, so as not to cool down in the middle of the night and freeze your body.

Chi Xiaochi rustled into the warm blankets, his ears listening to the crew talking from downstairs, but his mind thinking about what 061 had said to him.

...... Too tired to do Ding Qiuyun tonight.

...... Get some rest.

As if he could penetrate his mind, 061 said gently, "Go to sleep, the boss and I will keep watch for you."

The boss rubbed against him knowingly as well, crouching down beside him.

061 was so in sync with his boss's words and actions that it had to make Chi Xiaochi suspicious.

But he reassured himself, as he had done in the past, that how could it be.

061 is 061, never Lou.

If not, wouldn't he have been able to see all of his scheming and plotting these days, as well as those deeds that could be called despicable?

He wrapped his little blanket tightly around himself and said to himself in mock relief, "There's no point in being Chi Xiaochi, it's not like it's a good thing."

061 returned mildly, "Chi Xiaochi is fine. Don't you talk about him like that."

Chi Xiaochi froze again.

He thought to himself, "He's a great man, the district system, the small mouth blathered like a building sales, there is no God.

He shrank back into the blankets, covering his reddened ears and eyes, and his heart did indeed quiet down, followed by a weariness that was as overwhelming as it was overwhelming.

As he fell asleep, he once again dreamed of the past.

This time the dream is a bit of a jumble, but the main character, as always, is still the one who is warm and alive with light.

When Chi Xiaochi was still in fifth grade, arcades and red and white machines became popular among elementary and middle school students.

Lou Ying received a broken second-hand set of red and white machines, turned them into magic, moved them into his room, and since then, he has been inviting Chi Xiaochi over to play.

The original owner of that used red-and-white machine was a meaty middle-aged douchebag because he put little stickers all over the front and back of that red-and-white machine.

To Chi Xiaochi at the time, the sticker was a monster with a goat's head.

He asked Lou Ying, "What is this?"

Lou Ying replied, "Satan. A kind of monster in the West."

Chi Xiaochi oohed and aahed, "I thought it was Goat Power."

Lou Ying laughed and touched Chi Xiaochi's head, "You, what strange things are in your head."

Chi Xiaochi, sweet-talking, hugged the handle and curried, "It's all Lou, no one else."

Lou Ying pinches his face, and Chi Xiaochi leans back and lets him pinch him.

After the brother and sister have had enough, Lou Ying puts a bought FC game cartridge into the machine and plays it with Chi Xiaochi.

In the dream, the game screen in front of Chi Xiaochi is blurred, just a cloud of light and shadow, the only clear thing is the slightly warm touch of the joystick, and the mechanical sound of the plastic buttons popping up and down.

They played racing for a while, and Chi Xiaochi always lost.

But Chi Xiaochi is stubborn, clicking the arrow keys, gazing at the screen, his mouth slightly open in earnest.

I don't know which game Lou Ying started to lose, but her win/loss ratio gradually equalized with Chi Xiaochi's, and it was a 50/50 split.

Chi Xiaochi's little tail tipped up in triumph: "Lou, you can't."

Lou Ying shook off the handle and said, "It doesn't feel right."

Chi Xiaochi: "Making excuses."

Lou Ying: "I'll beat you in the next game."

The next game, of course, Lou Ying loses.

Chi Xiaochi fought him back and forth with a lot of flavor.

Later, they played the strategy game Red Fortress together.

In this game, Lou Ying appears to be even more of a noob, especially in the third level, where his character is always killed before Chi Xiaochi.

Chi Xiaochi was clearing the troop line, and when he occasionally turned his head, he realized that Lou Ying had disappeared, so he laughed at him, "Lou, you're dead again."

Lou Ying said, "I'm not familiar with the game yet."

Chi Xiaochi: "Making excuses again."

Though often less than half a minute into mocking Lou Ying, the jeep Chi Xiaochi was maneuvering was bound to be blown away, he still felt proud of himself.

After a long time, Chi Xiaochi felt that his level of red-and-white gameplay was still in the middle of the pack.

So one weekend, he gladly accepted an invitation from some of his classmates to go to their house to play Red and White.

That was Chi Xiaochi's first glimpse of what it means to be strong.

Chi Xiaochi, who had been bloodily abused, found the outside world downright frightening, and it wasn't until she returned to the silo and saw Lou Ying, who was doing her homework in the shadow of the light from the first-floor window, that she felt like she had met a loved one.

Chi Xiaochi knocked on Lou's door and jumped into Lou Ying's arms.

He commiserated, "Lou, you're still the best."

The half-grown teenager was a little confused by the hug, and looked down at the child in his arms, stroking his head and coaxing it back before asking what happened.

Chi Xiaochi said the whole wilting thing in a dismal way, "I suck."

Lou Ying couldn't help but comfort him by saying, "You're fine, don't talk about yourself like that. "

Chi Xiaochi changed his words, "I'm too good."

"I dish it out too."

Chi Xiaochi thought about it and felt comforted by it.

He made up his mind to stick close to Lou in the future and dish it out with him for a long time.

A little rookie searches and finds another little rookie, and huddles with him with gusto, thinking he's keeping each other warm, but not seeing how many virtual gunshots he's shielded from by a wing right over his head.

Later, when they set up another two-player game in the Red Fortress, they always got one life.

At first, Chi Xiaochi thought he was improving his skills like Lou Ying.

One day, long after Lou Ying was gone, he turned on the old red-and-white machine, pushed the old "Red Fortress" cassette into the slot, and selected the single-player mode.

He then realized that without his teammates, he couldn't even pass the first level.

Chi Xiaochi realized that at that time, Lou Ying was not lying.

It's true that they couldn't get past the third level before because Lou Ying wasn't familiar with the game.

After familiarizing himself with the game, he was able to become more proficient at clearing out NPCs coming at him from all directions for Chi Xiaochi, who was running all the way across the board and forward, without getting hit by the stray bullets that were pinning him down before he did.

When playing with Chi Xiaochi, Lou Ying always plays a two-player game, and even tried to reassure Chi Xiaochi, "You're not a bad player at all. Even if everyone else says so, at least you have me with you."

After this, Chi Xiaochi did not change his style in the game, still rampage, hard in his life game to kill a bloody road, all the way to the top, until the peak, the original mediocre life of their own early hit a happy ending.

But who knows how much he misses the two-player mode, the teenager who made every effort to disguise himself as a rookie so that he could take him, who loved to play the game, through the levels with him.

He awoke to the electronic music of the end of the game.

The leopard remained curled up at his feet, warming them for him, and after he opened his eyes, the early morning sunlight pierced the heavy misty clouds like a gorgon's spear, casting a smoky haze of reddish gold.

He was fortunate enough to see a brilliant and magnificent sunrise in the last days, and for a moment he thought he was on the second floor of his childhood silo, and when he opened his eyes in a daze, the window sash glued with newspaper was half-open and half-covered, and through it he could see the gold-dyed, fish-scaled clouds.

Lou was downstairs, at a distance he could reach with a lift of his leg.

Between a false sense of reality, Chi Xiaochi had a gentle greeting in her ear, "Good morning."