The car was parked at the roadside, about ten meters away.
Fu Tingchuan held the umbrella with one hand, tilting its wide rim toward Jiang Luoluo.
The street lights are always not bright enough at night when it rains heavily. Pools of water on the ground reflected the lamps and cast shadows on the two figures under the umbrella.
This Fu Tingchuan seemed more approachable than the tycoon he knew, so Jiang Luoluo couldn’t help but ask, “How was your work today, Fu Tingchuan?”
“Fine.”
Quick footsteps approached from behind. Fu Tingchuan tightened his arm around Jiang Luoluo’s shoulders, and the footsteps stopped.
“I’m sorry!” An anxious-looking boy bent down to apologize, holding a rolled-up umbrella and a bag. His eyes kept glancing toward the girl who had angrily walked off ahead. “I’m sorry for bumping into you!”
“It’s okay.”
Fu Tingchuan let go of Jiang Luoluo and looked at him. “Let’s talk in the car.”
The car’s temperature was just right. After sitting all afternoon, Jiang Luoluo felt tired and stiff. He turned his head, and his eyes landed on dark marks on the light beige car rug. His head froze.
Looking up further, he saw those slender fingers stained with dark red blood, slowly dripping one drop at a time.
Fu Tingchuan stared off into the distance, his eyes unreadable. He seemed completely oblivious to any pain.
“It must be from that guy’s backpack. I saw it had so many sharp rivets!” a bystander remarked.
Panicking, Jiang Luoluo grabbed some tissues and carefully lifted Fu Tingchuan’s hand. His brow furrowed deeply as he asked, “Why aren’t you talking, Fu Tingchuan? They say the fingertips are connected to the heart, so it must hurt!”
The dried blood on the wound couldn’t be wiped off. It twisted around his finger like a red centipede. Flustered, Jiang Luoluo searched his pockets and found some disinfectant wipes from the first aid kit. He gently cleaned the area around the injury and put a bandage on it.
But in his rush to help Fu Tingchuan, he’d forgotten about the blood on his own hand.
Pale fingers, like sculpted jade, traced the sparse bloodstains. The red was rich and eerie, half of each finger disappearing into the shadow as if unwittingly venturing into the devil’s realm.
Fu Tingchuan gazed down at the hand for a moment, his expression like that of a demon in the shadows eyeing its prey who had strayed into the abyss.
A faint, inscrutable smile appeared between his eyebrows. He said softly, “It’s fine. The pain is gone.”
…
Night descended as Jiang Luoluo, clad in white nightclothes, sprawled on his soft bed. He shopped online while chatting casually with the System:
“I think the current Fu Tingchuan is quite decent, treating me pretty well too.”
System:
[But I find this sudden appearance and his split personality rather strange.]
Jiang Luoluo added a pile of snack foods to his shopping cart and continued talking to himself:
“He even got injured today because of me. I feel a bit guilty now.”
System:
[How is it so coincidental? The mainframe resumes operation, and he splits his personality?]
The shopping cart display hit its limit. Jiang Luoluo first cleared out a batch of items before continuing to add more: 1 T/N: I do the same too -_-
“Ah, to be honest, when we got out of the car and I saw a half of his suit jacket was wet, I felt even more embarrassed. He’s a good person though; just because I treated him a little bit well, he goes this far to repay me.”
System:
[Forget it, I’m probably overthinking.]
“Ah, I didn’t have any experience with my first mission either. I just treated him like a tool, and now that I think about it, I was being a bit unreasonable.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll treat him better!”
System:
[Really, he’s just another villain in one of the millions of pocket dimensions. I was overthinking it indeed.]
“Yay! All done shopping!”
Jiang Luoluo reached out to turn off the light, then burrowed deep under the blanket. “I’m sleeping now, leave me alone!”
System:
[…]
T/N; Chapters ahead may appear a little shorter than the other chapters. Please be aware that this is how the original chapters were posted!
“Looks like I’m translating faster than Fu Tingchuan’s mood swings—but I still need that coffee boost to keep up with all this chaos! If you want more updates (and fewer typos), toss me a coffee on Ko-fi to keep the words flowing and the translations top-notch!”
![After the Deception [BL]](https://www.freenovels.net/wp-content/themes/lightnovel/assets/images/noimg165px.png "After the Deception [BL]")
