Don’t Pick Up Boyfriends From the Trash Bin

translator: baumkuchen  editor: glitterypanda, serefina

After hearing the description of the task, Chi Xiaochi plunged the needle down without a change in his expression, almost stabbing his own hand in the process.

The ninth task would be on the 23rd of the next month, and would take place at the Yunshan Child Welfare Centre.

The task requirements were to survive three days there and get along well with the children. 

……Why stop at getting along well, if need be, Chi Xiaochi was completely willing to take on the identity of their grandson. 

However, unlike before, there was also a small notice under the message.

“The tenth task mode will be exactly the same as the preceding nine tasks. You will attempt it as a team, and the time and location will be announced separately.”

Chi Xiaochi, “……What is this?”

Xi Lou, “Oh, I went back to headquarters. I went to give the boss a work report and told him that there was a rumour that the last task would be performed solo, which was causing a bit of panic. So the boss launched a new reminder function, which will give the task takers a head’s up at their ninth task, so as to reduce panic.”

Understood, sexy official Weibo account, online to refute rumours.

After completing his routine rounds of injections, he returned to the nurses’ station and found that Yuan Benshan had called him six or seven times.

He sent back a “Busy. Was there a gas leak at home”, but Yuan Benshan didn’t reply.

Chi Xiaochi simply left him to his own devices, planning on looking up information relevant to the task when he got back. After completing his registrations, he struck up an idle chat with a resident Mister Ghost.

The Mister’s son was one of the chief medical doctors in the hospital. Song Chunyang had already been very familiar with him before. Now, Chi Xiaochi had received the baton, listening to him as he bragged about how outstanding his son was, and laughingly affirmed him with a line or two every once in a while. 

Outside, a light rain fell in a drizzle. The patients in the corridors were all wrapped in cotton quilts smelling slightly of medicine as they fell back asleep. Other than a few family members of patients coming to return nebulisers, he couldn’t be considered busy. A few harmless ghosts floated slowly through the hospital corridors, and were all slammed with a “socialist gaze.jpg”. There was a sleepiness in the air.

Half an hour later, a set of hurried footsteps made their way over from the elevator.

Chi Xiaochi looked up, unsurprised, “Old Yuan?”

In the moment his gaze met Yuan Benshan’s, the screen displaying regret value before Chi Xiaochi changed, shooting up from 7 points to 20 points. The goodwill points soared even higher, directly breaking through the milestone of 80 points. 

Yuan Benshan didn’t say a word, walking forward in silence. He reached out and pulled Chi Xiaochi into his arms, giving him a silent hug.

He should have just gotten off of work. It looked like he’d hastily thrown on his clothes, and his shoulders and hair were slightly wet. It seemed like he hadn’t even stopped to open an umbrella before he ran all the way here from the parking lot.

Zlrafg Xtbra, ecvfgrajcvlcu atf mlgmewrajcmfr, qijmfv tlr tjcvr yftlcv tlr yjmx jcv kjixfv boo. Ktf ofwjif cegrf wjcclcu atf rajalbc klat tlw ktb kjr mbwlcu yjmx ogbw jvwlclrafglcu wfvlmlcf jirb gfjilrfv ktja kjr ublcu bc. Vtf ugjyyfv j atfgwbr jcv kfca boo ab ufa rbwf kjafg.

Jtl Wljbmtl delfais gfyexfv, “Qts kfgf sbe ralii gecclcu bearlvf ktfc la kjr gjlclcu? Po sbe vbc’a riffq abcluta, yfkjgf bo ublcu yjiv.” 

Yuan Benshan didn’t respond to his words, “Have you received the task?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Yuan Benshan, “I just suddenly missed you.”

Chi Xiaochi let him hug him. A shallow smile curved the corners of his lips.

Humans were indeed complex creatures. No matter the time or situation, they could always find excuses and ways out for themselves.

When he was planning to steal Song Chunyang’s eyes, Yuan Benshan had found himself all kinds of excuses, like “this is human nature”, or “I don’t want to die”, draping such lines around himself like an old sow putting on bras. When he realised that stealing his eyes was no longer necessary, he then started thinking about their previous feelings again, beginning to feel a belated sense of guilt after the fact. 

However, this worked fine for Chi Xiaochi.

Chi Xiaochi leaned against his shoulder as he clicked into the storehouse and selected a certain item.

All the supernatural props in the storehouse were very expensive, with the cheapest being 20 regret points, and could only be bought with regret points. 

Chi Xiaochi had previously classified and summed up all the items in the storehouse. Thinking that he wouldn’t have much use for this kind of prop, he’d placed it in the “not needed for now” list.

Who would’ve known that he’d been so wrong.

Xi Lou couldn’t get used to seeing Chi Xiaochi use Song Chunyang’s body to lean into someone else’s arms so yieldingly. Through gritted teeth, he said, “What are you doing, gotten addicted to hugs?” 

Chi Xiaochi, “Be good, don’t fuss, wait for me to buy something.”

Xi Lou, “……Didn’t you need that regret value or whatever it was to leave? You’re not going to save up a little?”

Chi Xiaochi, “When this phase of his ends, his regret value will definitely drop. If I don’t take advantage of it now, it’ll be gone later.”

He redeemed something he had been interested in from the start, which was also the cheapest of this dazzling line-up of various supernatural props.

Name: Spirit-sealing bottle

Duration: Permanent

Quantity: 1 

Quality: Medium

Type: Single use product

Points required: 20 regret points

Description: There is a different world in the bottle. Macrolepiota sauce is mellow and rich, teihuangyou is delicious, and minced beef sauce is fresh and tasty. Sometimes, a bottle can be its own little universe.

……Fuck, so philosophical. 

This spirit-sealing bottle was only a medium quality product. According to the detailed description below, it could only be used once, storing one ghost at a time, and would not result in any substantial damage. When it was reopened after being used once,  the bottle would automatically break.

On the whole, it was abso-fucking-lutely useless.

But Chi Xiaochi still very carefully placed the little bottle into his storage, putting it away properly before pulling away from Yuan Benshan. Just as he was thinking about fulfilling his duties as a boyfriend by coaxing him a bit before telling him to get lost asap, he saw another person appear not far away. 

Chi Xiaochi ……Oho.

Gan Yu walked over. He greeted in a warm voice, “Hello.”

Yuan Benshan frowned slightly. He wrapped an arm around Chi Xiaochi’s shoulders. “What did you come here for?”

Gan Yu turned towards Chi Xiaochi. “I came to lend you an umbrella. I saw that you hadn’t brought one this morning.” 

Chi Xiaochi glanced at the black umbrella with a golden handle in his hands. He then wrapped his hands around Yuan Benshan’s arm and hid behind him, not moving to take it. “Thank you.”

061 in Gan Yu’s skin, “……” Really very angry.

From 061’s point of view, Xiaochi was like an overly wary stray cat. Clearly, he looked like he’d already been moved slightly, willing to let him give him a few hugs and a kiss, but in the end, he immediately ran away with his tail between his legs at the slightest rustle of grass in the wind, licking his paws as he stuck his head out from behind a corner, cautiously observing him and refusing to be caught no matter how 061 tried. 

He was really too good at whetting one’s appetite. Sometimes, 061 really didn’t want to pay him any attention anymore.

……But those were only ever just thoughts.

“The umbrella’s an excuse.” The rejected Gan Yu didn’t actually lose his composure, smoothly shifting to another topic. He said, “I received the task notification. Tangtang did too. I’ve done some preliminary investigating into this Yunshan Child Welfare Centre, and I wanted to exchange some of my findings with you. Are you two free right now?”

Yunshan Child Welfare Centre had been built 20 years ago, and was located in a small county in their city. Adding on the fact that the head of the welfare home was greedy and ignorant, its speciality was the same from the start. In one word: Poor.

Until it was struck with the huge fire that shocked the entire country ten years ago, no one knew of this welfare home’s name.

The cause of the fire was the electrical wiring that the employees had installed in the junk storage without a permit. In the middle of the night, the wires were chewed up by rats, resulting in a fire. By the time the fire was noticed, it was already completely out of control.

The teacher on duty was shocked awake from his dreams and in a panic, fled by himself. The only thing he found the time to do was shout out a “quickly run”. 

More than seventy children escaped from the fire after hearing that, all of them frightened and injured in the process to varying degrees. However, by the time the teacher gave the call to run, the fire had already spread to one of the dorm rooms. The lock on the metal door had melted in the heat, and the door itself had warped, making it utterly impossible to open.

In order to keep the children from being able to sneak out in the middle of the night to play, there weren’t any windows to the corridors in each room, and the only two windows were tightly sealed off by cold bars.

More than twenty children waved their small hands out from the iron windows on the third floor, sobbing uncontrollably in pain, but gradually, their cries stopped as they fell to the flames and burned or suffocated to death. 

When the fire department and the police came to investigate, they were outraged to find that the welfare centre was only equipped with two fire extinguishers, and because the fire prevention devices hadn’t been maintained yearly, their levers had already rusted.

After the incident, all the people involved in the running of the welfare centre were detained and the matter was aggressively reported on for several days before being buried amongst the overgrown weeds with the ruins of the welfare centre.

This is so sad and infuriating. Kinda like what the news makes me feel all the time these days.  

As the ninth world, this task’s difficulty wouldn’t be low, but the so-called “get along well” was too vague, no one could come up with a precise definition.

After sharing what he knew, Gan Yu didn’t linger any longer, bowing politely and turning away.

After the two spoke for another while longer, it was about time to get something to eat. Chi Xiaochi handed over his work to another nurse. Just as he was about to leave together with Yuan Benshan, he absently caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Gan Yu had actually left the umbrella he’d brought leaning against the nurse’s station desk.

This quiet consideration made Chi Xiaochi’s heart skip a beat. 

Yuan Benshan had also noticed the umbrella. His face turned cold, but he then immediately fixed his expression and said, “I was in too much of a rush when I came over here, so I didn’t bring an umbrella either. I’d rather the two of us not get wet, so let’s just use this umbrella.”

Five minutes later, in Gan Yu’s office, the man himself was leaning against a polished glass window, his head bent, watching Chi Xiaochi and Yuan Benshan walking side by side under his umbrella. Supporting himself against the window, he let out a few deep breaths.

If I die of anger, it’ll be doing what a certain someone wants me to do. Besides, getting upset is a waste of energy.