Lu Huan had never encountered such a situation before. The curtain actually vanished all of a sudden, as if it had never appeared at all. He stepped over the shattered desk, looked around, sunlight streaming in through the carved wooden window, and all he could see was the dust floating in the air.
His heart panicked and pounded wildly. He instinctively tested the air and said, “Xiao Xi, Xiao Xi……?”
He called out several times, each more urgent than the last, yet the room was as deathly silent as a tomb. Even the wind that often brushed against his sleeves no longer appeared.
There was no response at all.
Lu Huan looked around, his face as pale as paper, suspecting that he might be trapped in a nightmare.
This was the scene that only appeared when he had nightmares before.
Precisely because he was never sure when she might suddenly disappear, from the very beginning he had desperately wanted to know her identity, wanted to see her, wanted to go to her world. Only when she stayed by his side did his heart settle. But he had never expected that the thing he feared most had actually happened.
It was as if some kind of premonition rose in his heart: this time and the time she failed to appear for eight full days were not the same situation at all. If he couldn’t find her this time, then he might never see her again in the future……
But why would it suddenly become like this?!
Did something happen on her side? Or had he pressed her too tightly these days, so she… didn’t want him anymore… and took the initiative to turn off their means of contact?
Lu Huan felt as if he had fallen into an icy abyss.
The desk had crashed loudly onto the floor just now, and the noise startled the guards outside. Two guards rushed in in a panic and saw the scrolls scattered across the floor, trampled under the Ninth Prince’s feet. They hurriedly asked, “Your Highness, has something happened?”
Lu Huan steadied himself, forced himself to calm down, and said heavily, “Nothing.”
Now that the curtain had completely vanished, and there was absolutely no response from her side, he didn’t know how long this situation would last. If he could only wait like this, he would be far too passive. Besides, he feared something sudden had happened to her. The only thing he could do now was to follow the instructions of Task Fifteen that appeared before the curtain disappeared, and complete it as quickly as possible.
Thinking of this, Lu Huan no longer cared about the mess of ink and paper on the floor and strode out quickly.
As he walked, he said to the guard behind him, “Prepare a horse. I need to go to Chengzhou.”
And the eunuch from the palace hurried over from the carved corridor, but failed to catch up. He could only see the Ninth Prince’s silhouette disappearing into the prince’s residence. The eunuchs looked at one another, not knowing what had happened to make His Highness so anxious.
───♡───
Su Xi had been crouching at home blow-drying her phone with a hair dryer for half an hour, but the phone still wouldn’t turn on.
So she dug out an old phone she had discarded last year, spent more than twenty minutes forcing a bit of charge into it, then opened the app store on the old phone. However, the game couldn’t be found in the old phone at all. No matter which character from the game’s name she searched, even in English, not the slightest related thing appeared. Baidu was the same—no matter what she searched, nothing came up.
Su Xi started to panic a little. She wasn’t afraid of the phone being broken; she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to contact her little cub’s world.
“It should be repairable……” Su Xi anxiously comforted herself, then grabbed her keys and the two phones, changed shoes, and headed out, planning to hurry to a phone repair shop.
The scorching sun outside was brutal, but Su Xi couldn’t be bothered to take a parasol or anything. She walked to the entrance of the residential community and just happened to run into Huo Jingchuan, who was returning from playing basketball. Seeing her rushing out on her bicycle, Huo Jingchuan stopped her. “Su Xi, it’s so hot outside, where are you going?”
Seeing Huo Jingchuan, Su Xi hurriedly said, “Lend me your phone for a bit.”
“Your phone broke?” Only then did Huo Jingchuan notice the black-screened phone in her hand. He fished around his pocket and handed his phone to her.
As usual, Su Xi operated his phone for a bit, trying to find the game, but just like at the hospital, she still couldn’t search it at all—this game had evaporated from the human world.
……Could it be that this game only existed on her own broken phone?!
The bad premonition in Su Xi’s heart grew stronger and stronger. She tossed the phone back to Huo Jingchuan, didn’t have time to explain anything, and pedaled her bicycle out of the residential complex in a panic.
There was a phone repair shop just two streets away, but because the noon weather was too hot, when Su Xi rode over she found it wasn’t open. So she searched on the old phone again and found another shop two streets further. Without thinking, she immediately sped off on her bike.
Fortunately, the shop wasn’t busy, no need to queue. Su Xi threw her bike outside, rushed in drenched in sweat, and anxiously handed her phone to the owner. “Boss, can you see if this can be fixed as soon as possible?”
“Depends on the extent of the damage.” The owner looked up from behind the counter and took the phone.
After handing it over, Su Xi quickly searched on the demo phones displayed on the counter, and discovered that none of them could find the game.
Which meant—there was only one way: fix this phone, otherwise—
Her heart twisted so tightly it hurt. She held her breath and looked at the owner. “How is it?”
The owner fiddled with some tools, frowned, and said to her, “Can’t be too sure whether your motherboard is broken. If the motherboard’s damaged, chances are pretty high it can’t be repaired. And even if it can be repaired, any formatted data in your phone can’t be recovered. I’ll try my best, let’s see.”
“Chances are pretty high it can’t be repaired?” Su Xi froze.
“Yeah,” the owner said. “Better prepare yourself mentally. But phones are cheap now, you know. Add a few thousand and buy a new model that just came out…”
Su Xi didn’t hear a single word after that. She walked out of the shop with icy hands and feet, pushing her bicycle along the roadside. As she walked, tears suddenly fell with a soft “pat.”
The scorching sun baked the ground until it was burning hot. When Su Xi crossed the long bridge, her vision blurred. She couldn’t help stopping her bike, sitting down on the edge of the curb, rubbing her eyes.
It wasn’t about a phone.
A phone worth tens of thousands was meaningless to her if it couldn’t connect her to that world.
What if—what if just because she dropped her phone into the sink, she had cut off contact with his world forever?
What if she never saw him again?
And the last time she saw him, she had acted so poorly, even said things that upset him. She clearly hadn’t wanted to avoid him; she just hadn’t known how to face him these days, so she escaped uselessly, but made him misunderstand that she didn’t really want to see him—he even told her that if she was free tonight, she should visit him. But now she couldn’t keep that promise.
Su Xi’s heart hung suspended with fear. If this phone could never be repaired, then would her first meeting with that world, their first knowing each other, their companionship, the reliance gradually formed between them—would all of it come to an abrupt, unfinished end this summer? The thought made her feel like she had woken from a long, long dream. She stared blankly at the ground, so frightened she wanted to cry.
───♡───
The owner said it would take at least three days to know whether it could be fixed, so Su Xi could only return home and fall into a state of anxious waiting.
When Father Su and Mother Su heard that her phone had gotten water inside after returning home, and saw her curled up on the sofa looking listless, they thought she was just upset, and wanted to take her out to buy a new phone. But Su Xi had no desire to go out at all, and only said, “Let’s wait a bit longer. What if it can be repaired? I’ll use the old one for now.”
Mother Su was puzzled. “It’s just a phone. If it’s broken, just buy another.”
Su Xi shoveled food into her mouth in big bites, forcing back the tears in her eyes. She had never felt three days pass so slowly.
On the third day, she impatiently called the shop owner, only to be told that the phone was still being repaired, that the motherboard was damaged to a certain extent and was already unusable. The technicians were trying to see if the previous data could be transferred out, so she could use it on a new phone.
“Useless already?” Su Xi couldn’t believe her ears.
She hung up the phone, stayed alone in her room, her mind buzzing, sadness crashing over her in waves.
It was all her fault for being careless…
These past days, there had been no reaction from her side at all. It seemed that after her phone crashed, the curtain on Lu Huan’s side must have disappeared as well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have stopped coming to find her.
Su Xi hugged her knees and buried her face against them, her mind blank.
Countless scenes flooded her thoughts… The first time she moved the teacup in the firewood shed of Prince Ning’s residence, the little stick-figure version of Lu Huan had been on full alert, suspecting it was a haunting. Thinking of that, Su Xi couldn’t help but laugh. And the first time a little beating heart popped up above his head, she had been astonished; afterward, she couldn’t help poking him often, just to see what kind of bubbles would appear above his head.
When he first thought she was a ghost, he even tried to hold an umbrella for a ghost to shield her from the snow… Later, after he acquired the curtain on his side, he forcibly changed the cartoon avatar she saw into his own original drawing. Although Su Xi really missed that little steamed-bun face, she didn’t want to upset Lu Huan, so she never switched it back, thinking that there would be a long future ahead—one day when he wasn’t paying attention, she would quietly switch it back…
But now… there was no “long future” left…
A small patch of her knee grew damp from her tears.
Day after day, it had seemed like she was accompanying him, but in reality—on those late nights when she stayed up doing homework—wasn’t he the one accompanying her instead?
She hadn’t realized anything while she still had him. Only after losing him did she suddenly discover how many memories they had already accumulated. And now those memories were about to be cut off abruptly today. From now on, whether it was her little cub or Lu Huan, neither would appear before her again… That was why she felt as if a piece of her heart had been carved out.
───♡───
Seven days passed on Su Xi’s side. Although she still ate as usual, she was lethargic every day. Mother Su couldn’t help worrying. After dinner, she touched Su Xi’s forehead and said, “No fever… Xixi, why does your complexion look so bad? Do you want to go to the hospital for a check-up tomorrow?”
“I’m fine.” Su Xi paused, took another bite of food, and said, “Probably just overslept too much during summer break.”
Mother Su was still uneasy. She said, “Your father and I both have things to do tomorrow and can’t get away. Let Jingchuan and Xiao Qin accompany you to the hospital and get checked.”
Su Xi hesitated, but not wanting her parents to worry, she nodded and agreed.
Her phone was already broken and couldn’t be repaired. Yesterday, she bought a new one and brought it to the owner, asking him to help with the data transfer.
