Chapter 40
First day.
In this silent world of black and white, even the vehicles on the street were silent. Numbness was written on the faces of the people hurrying by. The streets were obviously bustling with people, yet they seemed dead and deserted. Shen Chumo couldn't understand why at first, but later he realized that this world lacked vitality.
Shen Huaixin, dressed in a business suit, walked past on the sidewalk. Before he could catch up, he was blocked by traffic and could only watch her disappear at the subway station entrance. Shen Chumo waited for a while, relying on common sense to judge whether the green light was on, and then followed her footsteps into the subway station.
She had a wooden face, and without even looking up at the sign for the huge subway station, she turned a corner, took the elevator, and headed for her destination. Shen Chumo followed behind her and found that she was very familiar with this route, but this was not based on any place he had seen before. It was as if she had made it up out of thin air, and each station on the subway was unheard of.
Next, Shen Huaixin took another subway, walked out of the station, and stopped after walking for more than ten minutes. Shen Chumo looked in the direction she was going. It was an ordinary office building with Zhuoding Advertising Co., Ltd. written on the nameplate. He had never heard of it.
She swiped her card at the door and filed in with other employees.
Shen Chumo borrowed a card from someone else and tried to sneak in, but as soon as he reached the door, the warning light at the door flashed gray, and then the security guard appeared and kicked him out. Faced with such a small fighting force, forcing his way in was not impossible, but Shen Chumo was worried about the impact on the operating rules of this world.
the next day.
Shen Chumo tried to get in by using several different ID cards, but was stopped every time. He even forged a resume and submitted it to the HR department, but the moment they saw him, they told him he was out. "I'm sorry, you don't meet our company's hiring requirements." They handed him a score sheet with his interview results.
"You don't meet my aesthetic standards either." Shen Chumo looked at the horns on HR's head and felt a little angry.
Although hr couldn't hear, he could see Shen Chumo's contempt, so he kicked him out of the door with his neatly cut and polished horseshoe. Because it was nailed with horseshoes, the kick was not light. Shen Chumo staggered two steps and his thigh was bruised.
"Does he even know that I'm beyond saving?" Shen Huaixin asked the system while floating in the air. She received the usual silence from the other side. She didn't care and continued to talk to herself, "The purification has already failed, so why is he so obsessed..."
Two days ago, despite the persuasion of Su Zihan and the other two, Shen Chumo resolutely bid farewell to them and entered Shen Huaixin's pollution source alone. Here, he returned the core and used his own pollution to feed her back, allowing the world to continue to operate, the rules to be more perfect, and the pollution level to rise subtly.
At night, the office building was brightly lit, and a thin figure walked out. She bought a cup of black coffee at a nearby 24-hour convenience store, took out her phone, answered a call, and then operated something on the phone screen. Not far away, Shen Chumo silently watched her expressionless face, his eyes filled with some kind of nostalgia. He raised the corners of his dry lips and said silently,
"Sister, you're already working. It's so hard to work overtime every day."
Maintaining this illusion, he knew that he was drinking poison to quench his thirst, but he couldn't help it.
After she left, Shen Chumo walked into the convenience store and bought the same coffee as her, but after taking a sip, he couldn't help but spit it out - a smell of motor oil.
Day 3.
The weather was foggy and drizzling. It was a rare day off, so Shen Huaixin walked into the coffee shop, folded her umbrella, and placed it in a nearby umbrella bucket. She followed the waiter's instructions and sat at a table by the window. She turned on her computer, her fingers tapping away, her lifeless eyes mingling with the sound of a drowsy, tedious routine, as if she were about to fall into an eternal sleep.
Even Shen Huaixin himself frowned at this scene, feeling that it was meaningless to continue watching.
She sighed and called out the system: "I've been here long enough, I should leave."
【System: OK.】
Shen Chumo walked over quickly without knowing when, walked straight through Shen Huaixin's transparent body, stood in front of the door opposite Shen Huaixin in the coffee shop, knocked on the glass, and said something loudly. But because this world is silent, his words dissipated into the air as soon as they came out.
[System: Host is about to begin traveling through time, please be prepared, three...]
Shen Chumo knocked on the glass again, and Shen Huaixin, who was sitting in the coffee shop, finally noticed him. He raised his eyelids and looked over blankly, his eyes without any highlights.
Shen Chumo quickly opened the notebook. The first page said "Hello". He turned another page and said, "I want to be your brother".
Shen Huaixin sat in his seat, his face stiff, with no sadness or joy. Just as he was about to turn around and continue working, Shen Chumo knocked on the window again.
[System: Two…]
Shen Huaixin, who was about to return to her original world, found him adorable and pitiful. She had never recognized him as her brother. He could only write his wishes in a notebook after she was contaminated and hand it to his unconscious sister. If it weren't for the character setting, she would actually...
Shen Chumo turned to the third page, looked at her seriously, opened his mouth, and spoke the words on it.
“That way, you can be yourself.”
“…”
[Chen Huaixin: Wait! Wait a moment!]
Shen Huaixin floated down and floated in front of him. His eyes passed through her and focused on the girl in the coffee shop. His eyes were still as bright as a baby's, but with a little more sadness and silence. He opened his mouth to speak, and his voice should be soft and slow, because his expression was like that, but it disappeared before she could hear it.
Shen Huaixin suddenly wanted to know what he was talking about. Very much.
She clenched her fists, her nails digging into the flesh of her palms. Suddenly, thunder roared from the sky, like a cannonball shattering this enclosed world. All the sounds—the splash of cars passing through the puddles, the hurried footsteps of people running for shelter—became clear and clamorous.
Then, heavy rain fell, hitting the glass with a "clatter", soaking Shen Chumo's eyebrows and eyes, and the paper in his hand gradually had drops of dark water stains.
His eyelids didn't move, the wind and rain couldn't pull down his eyes. He just looked at her steadily and said, "...as long as you want, you can do it."
Shen Huaixin only caught this last sentence, but it was enough. She rubbed her eyes, pursed her lips, and choked in her throat, unable to speak.
She misunderstood. He wanted to be her brother, not for himself, but for her.
The sound of mechanical keyboards rang out in the coffee shop again. The virtual "Chen Huaixin" in the pollution source was not as shallow-eyed as the real her, and was not moved by a few words. She typed blankly, and at regular intervals, she would pick up the coffee and take a sip.
"I want to know more about your world." Seeing Shen Huaixin like this, he was not discouraged, but just lowered his eyes and said to himself, "It's a pity... it's still too late."
Day 4 to Day 10.
Chen Chumo gradually grasped the laws of this world. As pollution worsened, it became increasingly bizarre. At night, neon lights converged into a multicolored mass of gutter oil, flowing down the drain. High-rise buildings warped, their lights burning brightly all night long. Many of the lower-level employees inside gradually grew long, overgrown donkey ears, while the senior HR staff who had interviewed him last time had ox horns that grew ever stronger. They didn't need to go home; they could just eat some grass and continue working until they collapsed.
There was more and more noise around Shen Huaixin, but she remained silent. She went to and from work every day. The most common sounds she made were probably the sound of the keyboard and the ringing of the phone. Whenever this happened, her indifferent face would be shrouded in a layer of gloom.
Shen Chumo found a fake donkey ear and put it on, successfully sneaking into the company. It took him so long to realize that the people in this company were not human, but either cattle, horses or donkeys. Therefore, when he, a living person, applied for the job, he would naturally be eliminated immediately.
As soon as you enter the office, you see rows of workstations with no private space. On the workstations are identical laptops and documents. Everyone is busy typing on the keyboard, and all the keyboard sounds mix together to become the sound of a huge machine engine.
Shen Huaixin entered the boss's office. She heard a scolding voice coming from the crack of the glass door. She came out after more than ten minutes with an even more dead look in her eyes. She sat back in her original position, embedded in her workstation like a part, and naturally integrated into the machine.
When Shen Huaixin left her workstation, Shen Chumo secretly replaced the coffee on her desk with milk tea. When she returned, she drank a few sips without noticing. Then, electric sparks flashed on her body, her head tilted, and her eyes were completely extinguished. Shen Chumo realized that she had caused trouble - it turned out that she was not a human, but a humanoid machine.
This company is not hiring. Although Shen Huaixin looks exactly like a human, she is just a bionic person.
Shen Huaixin's scrapping attracted the boss's attention. After sending him to the repair shop for repair, many pieces of paper with words such as "subsidy", "work injury", and "sick leave" flew towards the boss. The boss's fat body was very flexible at this time. He dodged left and right, and even flicked his finger with a gold ring and responded with a dismissal notice.
After the repair was completed, Shen Huaixin learned that he was fired and his face turned pale.
She remained silent as always, and went to the convenience store to carefully select a discounted coffee. Now Shen Chumo knew that she was drinking gasoline to sustain her survival, and she could not eat human food.
After receiving a phone call after losing her job, Shen Huaixin threw a tantrum for the first time in her life. She walked alone to the subway station and sat down on the ground, seemingly unable to hold on any longer. She buried her head between her knees, her shoulders shaking. A vortex formed around her, and countless symbols resembling voice icons appeared out of thin air, with (presumably) a red dot in the upper right corner, indicating that the video needed to be played.
She covered her ears, but as the red dot flashed, the voice began to play automatically, looping continuously.
"I've been working here for two years, and I still make such a low-level mistake."
"Xingxing, your brother needs money for school, and families should help each other. He will pay you back when he gets a job."
"Hand in the watch tonight. Please work hard."
The vortex grew bigger and bigger until it completely enveloped Shen Huaixin, and then swept across the entire subway station.
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