Arknights: It Was Game Over for Me a Bit Too Early

"Eh?! Old fellow, what are you doing here visiting me?!" Nian opened the knocked door, her face a mixture of surprise and delight.

"Can't I come to see you if there's nothing wrong?" Hong Yu tilted his head and smiled. "And what do you mean, 'have time to see you'? Don't I come to see you every time you finish writing a letter?"

Hiss—why does this sentence sound so familiar? Did I say it once at Shu's place too? Ah, my brain is already confused by my repeated teleportations.

"Hah, every time you just appear out of nowhere, and usually you disappear mysteriously after saying just a few words. This time you actually knocked on the door! Are you planning to stay here for a while?" Nian leaned forward, poking Hong Yu's waist with her elbow with a smile on her face.

"Ha, congratulations, you guessed right. Your reward is one lonely old man Hong Yu. Please take care of me in the coming days, Nian," Hong Yu naturally walked into the house where Nian lived in Shangshu.

"Lonely old man? You? What about Xi-gua and Sister Ling?" Hong Yu walked into the house. Nian closed the door with a look of disbelief after hearing him call himself a "lonely old man."

"Xi-gua...?" Hong Yu was surprised. This nickname had appeared after all?

Ah, a strange sense of nostalgia, I don't know why...

"You mean Xi, right? She... went out to travel Yan with your Sister Ling. So now I'm a bona fide 'lonely old man.' What? You don't like me coming to find you?"

As he asked this, Hong Yu even pretended to wipe away a tear that wasn't there. "Sigh, sure enough, when children grow up, they all..."

Seeing this, Nian's face became a sweating soybean emoji. "That's enough, old fellow."

Hiss—even more familiar, isn't it? It seems like this scene is also playing out simultaneously at Shu's place with "me."

Is it because they're sisters? They can see through my superb acting at the same time?!

"Hey, it just so happens that I bought a lot of storybooks here in Shangshu... you know, storybooks? The kind where people record their own fantasies. I found several very interesting ones," Nian no longer responded to Hong Yu's clowning, but instead started talking to him excitedly about her recent interest.

Storybooks?

Oh, novels.

I'm familiar with those. When I first came to Arknights, I even tried to become a plagiarist to get rich, but because my writing skills were really not that good, I gave up after writing two chapters.

Scratching his head, Hong Yu shook off the random thoughts in his head and carefully observed Nian's condition.

She looked fine, and could even put her arm around Hong Yu's shoulder and joke with him, but the situation Hong Yu observed was not optimistic.

Nian... has she already begun to question her own existence?

Hong Yu had thought that the first to be corroded by "Sui's" consciousness would be either Xi or Ling. But to Hong Yu's surprise, the first one to be corroded was actually Nian, this Nian who had never shown any signs of abnormality.

But this girl... why has she been hiding it from me all this time?

If it weren't for the fact that I came here this time out of concern for everyone because of Xi's obvious symptoms, Nian would probably have hidden it from me for the rest of her life...

Nian's initial proposal to leave... was it because of this?

Hah... I'm really an incompetent "Prefect."

Fortunately, it's not the worst timeline yet. There's still time.

"Storybooks? Of course I know what they are. Don't really treat me like some old fellow who only reads newspapers," Hong Yu waved his hand and followed up on Nian's topic, at the same time starting to suppress "Sui" without Nian noticing.

In an instant, dizziness and intense pain constantly stimulated Hong Yu's brain, causing him to frown slightly, and the shoulder held by Nian also stiffened slightly.

Nian, who had always been carefree, did not notice Hong Yu's abnormality. She just continued to complain about Hong Yu after hearing him refute that he was an "old fellow."

"Who was it that went out for a walk with a bird cage at the crack of dawn before?" Nian's tone was sharp.

"Didn't I stop raising them after that bird passed away..." Hong Yu averted his gaze.

"Then who was it that dragged Big Brother out to practice Tai Chi every morning?" Nian was relentless.

"That was your big brother's request, it has nothing to do with me, okay?" Hong Yu had no way to defend himself.

"Alright, old fellow, no matter how much you say, it can't cover up the fact that you're older than all of us giant beasts. A normal person would have passed away hundreds of years ago..." Nian killed the conversation.

"..." The corners of Hong Yu's mouth twitched slightly. This was the first time he had been so persistently held on the topic of age by someone.

It was a good thing he didn't care much about the issue of age. If it were a female version of himself, Nian would probably be on his knee reminiscing about her childhood by now.

"Alright, alright, I'm an old man. But even so, I'm still a dashing, handsome, and cool old man who is thousands of years ahead of the times," Hong Yu slightly raised his head and proudly accepted Nian's evaluation of him as an "old fellow."

"..." Nian was silent for a moment, then smiled.

Still the same, Yu.

To say he's narcissistic... he is indeed handsome. As the Prefect, even if he covers his eyes and works three days on, two days off, the majority of the candle holders at the Sui Regulator are still young ladies. Needless to say, they're all there for a chance to exchange a few words with Hong Yu.

To say he's not narcissistic... an old man of several hundred years is still praising himself. His mentality is really young...

But Nian did like Hong Yu, both now and in the past.

Even after several hundred years, Hong Yu still maintained his youthful appearance from a hundred years ago, and still maintained his mentality at that time. Being with him even gave Nian a feeling that she had never grown up, as if time had stopped flowing for that person.

Ever since I was a child, I've felt that that old fellow is really omnipotent.

There seems to be nothing he's not good at in any aspect.

If I want to understand him more... it seems like there's no way to start.

Although Yu's time is still long, and everything can be taken slowly, but what about myself...

Nian, who had gradually become dejected due to the influence of "Sui," thought this, and then casually picked up a storybook from the shelf on the side and began to explain it to Hong Yu.

"This one is very interesting. It's about a scholar who was going to the capital for an exam and was walking through a deserted wilderness..." Nian began to explain the specific plot to Hong Yu.

"...He rescued a Vulpine beast, and then a few years later, that beast turned into a beautiful Vulpine girl to come and repay the scholar's kindness?" Hong Yu directly interrupted Nian's explanation. To be honest, it was no wonder it was the Yan of a thousand years ago. Even such a clichéd story could become popular.

What kind of storybook are you reading?

Liaozhai Zhiyi?

Even Liaozhai wouldn't bother to write such a clichéd story, okay?

"Eh? You've read it, old fellow?"

"Well... I guess I have."

This story was really too classic. It was impossible not to know it.

Hong Yu thought helplessly.

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"Mmm... this year's novels... are so watery." Nian sat on the sofa in a "Ge You slouch," bored, holding a novel in her hand.

"So bad," Xi said directly, a rotten orange is a rotten orange.

"It's even worse than the opening ceremony of the world sports games held in Gaul before."

"By the way, didn't you adapt many of the stories the Master told you into movies? How did they turn out?" Xi was a little curious at this time, mainly curious about Hong Yu's stories. Nian's movies were just a side note.

"Well, those movies were all successful. It's just that the ones I came up with myself all flopped..." the greatest and also the worst legendary director in the history of Yan said.

Up to now, all the movies directed by Nian were either renowned throughout Yan, or they were shit-tier works with a Douban score of at most 2.0.

So every time Nian was going to make a movie and recruit actors, all the actors participated with a gambling mentality.

What if this time the movie directed by Nian became a big hit again?

Many people thought so, but once Nian was not prepared to adapt a story told by Hong Yu as the blueprint, what awaited these actors was a major stain on their lives.

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