I Can Still Salvage It

After Pei Zhiyi woke up, there was a moment when he couldn’t tell whether it was a dream or reality. The lights in the room were off, but the curtains were open. However, it was still too early in the day, and outside was a hazy gray, with the evergreen trees covered in a faint mist. Only the early birds made slight sounds.

His heart was beating fast, but his fingers were cold. As he raised his hand to touch his face, he felt tears.

It had been many years since he last cried, not even when Shen Mian came out. When he himself came out of the closet, he lowered his head, his eyes turned red, but he still didn’t cry.

But now, because of a dream, his face was covered in fresh tear stains.

He still remembered the lifeless face of Shen Mian in the dream, pale and lacking color, leaning on the bed, playing with coloring grids like a child. Occasionally, he looked up at Pei Zhiyi, his eyes still as gentle as before, but the questions he asked were heart-wrenching.

In the dream, Shen Mian asked him, “Brother, if I were really gone, would you always remember me?”

He didn’t remember how he answered, but he remembered Shen Mian’s thoughtful expression as he shook his head and said, “It’s better if you don’t remember me, brother. Just remember me for a year, and then forget. There are so many people who like you, if you choose someone else, they will all be better than me.”

He was truly naive.

He hadn’t said anything yet, but Shen Mian had already taken care of his future for him and was telling him to move on.

Pei Zhiyi got off the bed, hastily changed his clothes, and his first thought was to find Shen Mian. He needed a living, laughing, and mischievous Shen Mian to soothe the fear in his heart.

But before he could leave the room, without being online for a long time or responding to them, the voice of their system, 007, suddenly sounded in his mind.

“Shen Mian is fine for now, he’s just sleeping at home.”

Pei Zhiyi’s hand on the doorknob stopped.

In the past few days, no matter how much he called for 007, he didn’t get any response, only a formatted reply saying, “System updating, temporarily unavailable.”

It felt like a game server shutting down.

But now, 007 inexplicably appeared again.

It reluctantly explained its absence, “I was updating the system, and now it’s complete.”

Pei Zhiyi didn’t care what it had been doing; he just asked, “Is what you said true?”

“It couldn’t be more true. If one of the hosts has a problem right now, my mission will directly collapse,” 007’s voice sounded a bit helpless. “But I must remind you that even though he’s fine now, it doesn’t mean he will be fine forever.”

Pei Zhiyi’s heart tightened. “What do you mean?”

007 fell silent for a moment. “There are still eighteen days until the end of the overall mission. Within these eighteen days, if you haven’t completed the final task, Shen Mian will once again face life-threatening danger. According to estimates, his health deterioration will be rapid.”

Deterioration accelerating.

Those words lingered in Pei Zhiyi’s mind. The room was very quiet, and he could almost hear his own heartbeat.

He turned his head and could see the calendar on the desk, made by Shen Mian himself, with the countdown to the college entrance examination marked on it.

The image of Shen Mian in the dream and the gray wall in front of him kept alternating.

“What is the final task then?”

He had a vague idea of what the final task might be, as the system’s released topics often aligned with their real-life situations.

Sure enough, 007 sighed and said, “The final task is: Family’s Blessing. In other words, it means wishing for your success in coming out.”

Pei Zhiyi let go of the doorknob.

Suddenly, he asked 007, “Can you tell me the level of affection between me and Shen Mian?”

He remembered 007 saying that as long as their affection levels both reached 100, it would be considered as completing all the tasks.

007 reported honestly, “Your affection level is 100, while Shen Mian’s is 97. But I must remind you that this is already very high, enough to make any couple last long. The higher it goes, the more difficult it becomes to make a breakthrough.”

Otherwise, this task wouldn’t be so hard to complete.

“One last reminder: within the countdown of the mission, there will be three warnings. If the task is not completed before the third warning, the mission will fail.”

An ominous premonition rose in Pei Zhiyi’s heart. “What kind of warnings?”

“You will know very soon,” 007 said quietly.

Shen Mian also woke up early that day. He hadn’t slept well the previous night, so he got up before 7 a.m. He guessed that no one else in the family was awake yet, and his parents would be leaving for work in half an hour.

Considering how much he had hurt his parents recently, Shen Mian resisted the urge to stay in bed and got up with a yawn. He planned to prepare breakfast for his parents and show them that their son was actually quite well-behaved and capable.

But as soon as he reached the living room, he froze.

Because Shen Changhe was sitting in the living room wearing his pajamas, alone on the couch, with an album spread open on his knees.

He had always been elegant and handsome, not showing signs of aging even at the age of forty. You could still see traces of his youthful spirit. But now, he sat alone in the living room, as if he had turned into an ordinary and weary middle-aged man overnight.

He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

He also saw Shen Mian. After the father and son looked at each other for a while, Shen Changhe waved at him, “Mian Mian, come over here.”

Shen Mian walked over slowly, not knowing what to say, so he could only sit obediently beside his father like an elementary school student.

Their family hadn’t been as relaxed and carefree as before for quite some time. Shen Changhe and Su Ying actively avoided mentioning anything about him and Pei Zhiyi, only asking about trivial daily matters without any emotional undertones.

It was as if not mentioning it meant it hadn’t happened, like the frost patterns on the window pane in winter that would naturally melt over time.

But now Shen Mian saw it. In the photo album that Shen Changhe was looking at, there were pictures of him and Pei Zhiyi. It was a picture of sixteen-year-old him and Pei Zhiyi, taken by Lake Garda during a family trip to Italy.

Everyone in the photo was looking at the camera, except Pei Zhiyi, who was looking at Shen Mian.

Shen Changhe pushed his glasses and tightened his fingers that were placed on the photo. He asked Shen Mian, “Do you still remember when we went to Italy and you almost fell off the bridge? Your mother and I couldn’t catch you in time, but it was Pei Zhiyi who held onto you.”

Shen Mian certainly remembered, but he couldn’t figure out what his dad meant, so he could only timidly nod.

Shen Changhe continued, “And last year when you were sick and had a high fever, we weren’t home, but it was Pei Zhiyi who took you to the hospital and took care of you for a day. At the time, I thought, young Pei is indeed a bit older than you, and he really knows how to take care of others like an older brother. But now, thinking back, maybe he wasn’t taking care of a younger brother…”

But regardless of whether it was a younger brother or a loved one, no one could deny that Pei Zhiyi was good to Shen Mian.

He had flipped through the photo album all night, going over every little detail of Shen Mian and Pei Zhiyi growing up together. He remembered when young Shen Mian would even share a piece of candy with Pei Zhiyi, and when Pei Zhiyi went to cram school, he was scared to death but still followed along.

Back then, he and Su Ying only knew how to make fun of Shen Mian, joking that he would cry every time he went to cram school, but he would still diligently follow behind Pei Zhiyi every time.

But now, thinking back, those overlooked details seemed to have hinted at the future of those two children.

He didn’t want to be a strict father scolding Shen Mian anymore. He couldn’t do it.

He reached out and tousled Shen Mian’s hair. In the light, Shen Mian’s face still looked youthful, to the point that sometimes he forgot that this child was already eighteen years old.

But he also knew with certainty that Shen Mian had grown up.

He knew that Shen Mian had been having a hard time recently. The previously lively and energetic young man had become quiet at home, like a pitiful little mouse.

Shen Changhe felt powerless.

He rubbed Shen Mian’s hair and asked, “Mian Mian, tell Daddy, can’t you really change? Don’t think that the opposition from your parents now is the biggest challenge. It’s only the beginning. In the future, you might face even more people who don’t understand you, who insult you as abnormal, who discriminate against you…”

Shen Changhe thought about it and felt his heart breaking.

He, who had cherished and taken care of the two older children, how could he bear them experiencing such hurtful things?

Shen Mian shook his head. He knew all the things his dad was saying, but he also wanted to tell his dad that that wasn’t an impossible problem, it could be corrected.

But he couldn’t say anything. Suddenly, he felt dizzy, and the world before his eyes began to spin. He couldn’t utter a single word and collapsed onto the couch.

Before losing consciousness, he seemed to hear the voice of 007.

“Remind the host Shen Mian, the first warning has appeared. Please complete the mission as soon as possible.”