011 Reward, Closed Loop, Tablet
“I’m back.”
“Qin Ren, Qin Ren~!”
A petite figure, like a cheerful bird, flopped into his arms. She was fragrant, soft, and very clingy. Qin Ren had to use his hand to brace her little forehead just to push her away.
“Meow…”
A certain furball lying on the sofa let out a somewhat resentful cry.
In the past, she was always the first one to act cute with Qin Ren…
Very resentful, but also very restrained.
Because Tuantuan was a cat, one of the noblest species in the world, a being that could play foolish humans in the palm of her paw.
So when she felt resentful, her actions were limited to deliberately hiding behind a cushion when lying on the sofa, making it so Qin Ren couldn’t pet her as easily as before.
“You’re home early today~”
“Mhm, I have the day off. Did you eat the breakfast I left for you?”
“I did. Qin Ren, I’ve already read many pages of the Xinhua Dictionary and Cihai you bought for me. So can I… have that as a reward?”
“…”
Qin Ren knew what “that” she was talking about. He looked speechlessly at Luo Yao’s flushed little face.
“Do you know that Coke is also called ‘Otaku Happy Water’? Luo Yao, do you want to become an otaku? Do you want to become Zhou Chi?”
Luo Yao bit her finger and pondered. She seemed to remember hearing Qin Ren mention the name “Zhou Chi” one day. Her impression was that it wasn’t anything good, so she shook her head.
“I don’t. But a reward is a reward. An adult has to keep their word…”
“An adult?”
Qin Ren chuckled, unable to resist reminding her.
“May I ask your esteemed age?”
“18.”
“Speak human.”
“18 years and 3636 months old.”
Looks like she’s figured out the calculator at home too.
What to do? This kid has learned how to “morally blackmail” me.
In the end, as an adult who keeps his word, after a simple test, Qin Ren could only fulfill his earlier promise of “rewarding you with black bubbly water if you study hard.” He got her a few bottles of chilled Coca-Cola—sugar-free.
Gulp, gulp, gulp—
“Sss-haaa~~~”
After a few gulps, Luo Yao’s eyes nearly rolled back in bliss. She collapsed onto the sofa, patting her soft, white tummy, and offered the bottle to Tuantuan.
“Want some?”
“Meow…”
“Hmph hmph~ Even if you want it, I won’t give it to you. It’s from Qin Ren, for Luo Yao~”
“Meow meow meow…”
Although Qin Ren couldn’t understand cat language, for a moment, he inexplicably felt that Tuantuan was cursing.
“Tuantuan, mind your manners.”
“Meow?”
Seeing Tuantuan’s shocked eyes as she lay sprawled on her back, Qin Ren figured he had guessed right.
————————
A corporate slave’s days off are both precious and empty.
If you worked a nine-to-five government job, you could cultivate some hobbies, like fishing, cooking, basketball, or plaza dancing.
But for someone like Qin Ren, whose rest time was scarce and irregular, the methods of relaxation could only be short, simple, and quick.
For example, browsing Bilibili, browsing Bilibili, or browsing Bilibili.
Or playing games, playing games, or playing games.
And the games couldn’t be the AAA titles he was addicted to in his student days.
Souls this, Sekiro that—they were all too tiring.
Never mind playing them, just watching was exhausting.
Qin Ren missed the days in his college dorm, clearing out question marks in the entire Ubisoft collection day and night, or repeatedly adjusting various graphics settings, trying to challenge graphics card killers like Crysis 3 and Metro: Last Light with his budget-limited computer.
In contrast, now his computer was better, and those former graphics card killers had become tears of a bygone era. Yet, at most, Qin Ren was only interested in playing a round of Hearthstone or League of Legends.
As for professional competitions, he could no longer hear the roars from the entire dormitory building. Qin Ren only watched the finals or semifinals when he remembered.
And because of work, watching live streams was also unrealistic.
He would occasionally wait for the trending topics on various platforms. If there was a trending topic about “Team X vs. Team Y,” it meant that match was probably worth watching. He would click on the replay before bed. If he fell asleep watching it, he would catch up on the highlight clips the next day during a meal.
That was all, and only that.
Comparing the before and after, Qin Ren sometimes felt that in this era, a man’s youth seemed to end earlier and more briefly than a woman’s.
Of course, it was just a thought, not necessarily correct, and he wouldn’t dare say it out loud everywhere.
Especially on Weibo.
“Right, speaking of which, it seems like I haven’t used Weibo in a year…”
Out of curiosity, Qin Ren clicked into that big-eyed app for the first time in a long while.
…
In the fragmented information age of the mobile internet, distracting a person was incredibly easy.
Qin Ren had originally intended to just take a look at Weibo, but who knew that he would randomly click on a food video on the homepage and find it quite good. A glance at the watermark showed it was from a certain blogger on Douyin.
So he exited Weibo, went to Douyin, and scrolled through this blogger’s videos for a while. When he got tired of it, he casually scrolled through other things. This scrolling went on for half an hour. Finally, he saw someone recommending a cat-loving UP master on Bilibili.
So Qin Ren exited Douyin and went to Bilibili. While Tuantuan was unaware, he secretly petted other people’s cats online with great enthusiasm. Then, the big data algorithm quickly pushed a Zhihu article to him titled “What if your cat could transform?”
And so, Bilibili was closed, and Zhihu was launched.
And then, Zhihu was closed, and Tieba was launched.
…
When Qin Ren, for some unknown reason, finally returned to Weibo, he had already completed a closed loop consisting of various major information platforms. A look at the time showed that two hours had passed unknowingly.
“Sigh! What a waste of time!”
Qin Ren was filled with regret and emotion, then had a flash of inspiration.
“Huh? Maybe I should look for some videos about self-discipline on Bilibili and learn a thing or two…”
And so, Qin Ren opened Bilibili, and a new round of the closed loop began.
————————————
“Qin Ren…”
This closed loop didn’t last long, because soon, the High Immortal, wearing the little yellow duck slippers Qin Ren had bought for her, came pattering into the bedroom.
“Qin Ren… sob sob…”
“Hm?”
Qin Ren sat up and took a look, finding the little girl’s eyes were red.
This was the first time Luo Yao had cried since coming to this world.
“Oh, my dear little lady… What’s wrong?”
Qin Ren got out of bed, frowned, and knelt down. He gently put one arm around her slender waist and wiped the faint tear tracks under her eyes with the other. But the more he wiped, the more aggrieved the High Immortal became. Glistening tears welled up in her eyes, spun once, twice, and then all pattered down onto Qin Ren’s wrist.
“Don’t just cry, use your words.”
Qin Ren didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This kid was just crying without saying anything, leaving him at a loss.
“Qin Ren… Qin Ren…”
A wronged little girl just wants to be coddled. The gentler he was, the more Luo Yao wanted to lean into his arms, wanting him to stroke her head more. It wasn’t until her slender shoulders finally stopped trembling that she lifted her moist eyes and whispered with her tender, pink lips.
“Tuantuan… Tuantuan, she…”
“Tuantuan?”
“She snatched the remote from me… sob…”
“…”
The only way to describe Qin Ren’s mood at that moment was a mix of complex emotions.
“This eminence wanted to watch Chinese Paladin, but she insisted on watching Tom and Jerry. So I… I said, can we each watch for half an hour? She said okay, and then…”
“Wait, she said okay?”
Qin Ren did a tactical lean back. Tuantuan can talk?
“What did she say?”
“She… she just…”
Luo Yao paused her sobbing, wiped her eyes, and thought for a moment, then opened her little mouth.
“Meow~”
“…”
A milky meow actually made Qin Ren’s heart stir.
“She just meowed like that. It probably meant she agreed.”
“You understand cat language?”
“I don’t, but this eminence can feel it.”
Coming from a Pixiu, who was also a beast, Qin Ren felt there was some credibility to her words.
“But after half an hour, she said to wait a little longer. So I waited. And then after another half hour, she still wouldn’t give me the remote. So I asked her for it… and as I was asking, we started arguing. And as we were arguing, she scratched me…”
“…”
Qin Ren understood. In short, it was the story of a dignified Spirit Beast Pixiu losing a fight to an ordinary cat and ending up in tears.
Speaking of the sad part, Luo Yao’s eyes became moist again. She held out her little white forearm for Qin Ren to see. There were three red scratch marks on it.
Qin Ren checked it. Fortunately, the skin wasn’t broken.
Based on his understanding of Tuantuan, she definitely hadn’t used much force. It was just that Luo Yao’s skin was too delicate.
Of course, afterwards, Qin Ren would still have to criticize Tuantuan and punish her with no dried fish for two days.
“Meow…”
“What? You feel wronged? Look at how you scratched her hand.”
Tuantuan said nothing more and silently accepted her punishment.
However, from then on, for about a whole week, Tuantuan ignored Qin Ren.
And whenever Qin Ren and Luo Yao were eating at the table, she would deliberately move the litter box next to Luo Yao’s feet and start producing “coffee beans.”
A similar cold war lasted for a week. Qin Ren would stop her pranks but didn’t scold her.
Because during that week, he had more than once gotten up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and found Tuantuan squatting blankly on the balcony with her tail drooping, gazing at the starry sky, who knows what she was thinking.
That small, furry figure looked somewhat desolate in the night, and seeing it always left a strange feeling in Qin Ren’s heart.
Strange, she’s just a cat…
Qin Ren didn’t know why this feeling appeared, but the good news was that after a week, everything slowly returned to normal.
Luo Yao took the initiative to give the TV to Tuantuan. To reward her for her “Kong Rong giving up the pear” spirit, Qin Ren spent a huge sum of money to buy a tablet computer.
“From now on, she’ll watch the big one, you’ll watch the small one. Each to their own, okay?”
“Okay~” Luo Yao was very happy.
“Meow…” Tuantuan expressed her indifference.
“Come, let me teach you some basic operations first. You’ve probably learned a bit from watching me use my phone, right?”
“Mhm, mhm.”
“Give me your hand.”
Luo Yao placed her small hand in his large one. Qin Ren held her slender white fingers and used them as a stylus, teaching her hand over hand.
“Swiping like this turns the page. Swiping like this brings up the background…”
“What’s the background?”
“The background is…”
…
Teaching a Pixiu to use a tablet was naturally more troublesome than teaching an ordinary child. Fortunately, Qin Ren’s patience had been trained a bit these days, and he answered every question he could.
And Tuantuan, sitting at the other end of the sofa, although her eyes were fixed on Tom on the TV screen, the plot didn’t register in her mind at all.
Occasionally, she would glance sideways at the large hand Qin Ren used to hold Luo Yao’s fingers, only to feel that the two paws resting on the remote were a bit cold…
***
Translator’s Notes
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Xinhua Dictionary / Cihai: The Xinhua Dictionary is the most popular and authoritative modern Chinese dictionary. The Cihai is a large-scale, comprehensive dictionary and encyclopedia.
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Bilibili, Douyin, Zhihu, Tieba: These are all major Chinese online platforms. Bilibili is a video-sharing site (like YouTube). Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok. Zhihu is a question-and-answer site (like Quora). Tieba is a massive forum community hosted by Baidu.
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UP master: On Bilibili, video creators are referred to as “UP主” (UP zhǔ), which comes from the English “uploader.”
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Chinese Paladin (仙剑奇侠传): A hugely popular and influential Chinese RPG series that has been adapted into several famous TV dramas. It’s a classic of the xianxia genre.
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Coffee beans (咖啡豆): A euphemism for cat poop.
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Kong Rong giving up the pear (孔融让梨): A famous historical story used to teach children about humility and respect for elders. The young Kong Rong chose the smallest pear for himself, letting his older brothers have the larger ones. Qin Ren is humorously praising Luo Yao for her “selfless” act of giving the TV to Tuantuan.
