Ch 14 – Charming Corn

Yu Xi found it strange. He didn’t like arguing, and hated disputes, but after the fight, he still found Kersz pleasing to the eye in spite of it all.

“I want humans. You’re human too, but you’re different.” Yu Xi took Kersz’s hand and gently patted the back of it. “My feelings toward you are also a little different.”

Kersz: …..

That may be true, but wasn’t Yu Xi being a little too blunt?

Kersz felt that something was wrong with his own state of mind, and attributed it to the conflicts that shaped his relationship with Yu Xi.

Strictly speaking, Kersz didn’t have any real friends, but he’d had a lot of imaginary friends when he was a child.

Yu Xi’s objective was so simple and straightforward that Kersz didn’t feel the need to erect any defenses in front of him. Of course, it was also possible that Yu Xi harbored some ulterior motives, and everything now was just a facade.

But Kersz had witnessed Yu Xi compress an entire galaxy. How could human society be worth Yu Xi’s concern?

Kersz felt that this was probably his first time making a friend. Ironically, after losing his previous innocence, he finally had a chance to make a genuine friend.

There was nothing about him that Yu Xi could possibly want…..

Okay, maybe Yu Xi did have some ulterior motives. He intended to use Kersz to kidnap more humans, but this sort of scheming was much more sincere and genuine compared to that of those inhuman and treacherous people in power.

Kersz was happy to have met him, but it was a happiness that he thought was best kept to himself, so that their relationship could gradually and silently become closer.

Basically the opposite of what he was doing now, laying side by side in bed with Yu Xi, listening to Yu Xi express how much he liked him.

“I find you exceptionally beautiful,” Yu Xi continued. “Your facial features are very good-looking. Has anyone ever told you that your eyelashes are very long?”

“Someone mentioned it when I was a kid,” Kersz replied dryly.

“So long. So beautiful.” Yu Xi stretched out a finger and touched Kersz’s eyelashes a couple of times.

Kersz moved backward slightly.

“What are you doing?” Yu Xi reached out and grabbed Kersz. “You weren’t like this before. Every time I got even a little close to you, you acted like you were ready to fall into depravity at any moment.”

“I was just teasing you.” Kersz was extremely uncomfortable. He still wanted to back away, but felt that doing so would upset Yu Xi. He didn’t know what to do.

“You shouldn’t have teased me like that.” Yu Xi disapproved of Kersz’s behavior. “There is a difference in strength between us. If I really wanted to do something to you, you wouldn’t be able to stop me, and then you’d be unhappy.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily be unhappy. I can accept anything.” Kersz didn’t look Yu Xi in the eyes again. He liked that cyan-blue color, but he was also afraid of it.

“You would be unhappy. Anyone would be unhappy about being suppressed.” 

Yu Xi didn’t think this was a very healthy way to start a relationship: “We almost ended up hating each other.”

Kersz found Yu Xi’s concerns particularly interesting: “But you’re not interested in my body at all. You just condemned me for being frivolous.”

“I am interested,” Yu Xi corrected him.

Kersz went silent.

Yu Xi gave him an earnest look: “You have a very good physique.”

Kersz: “Thank you for the compliment.”

“It’s truly excellent. Very robust, and seems like it wouldn’t break easily.” Yu Xi corrected himself after speaking, “Not just seems – it really is tough. You survived some terrible injuries back then.”

Kersz had no reply to give.

“I developed a feature to make myself happy, but I’ve never used it. I’m always tempted to take action when you proposition me, but I know it wouldn’t be right.” Yu Xi was a little smug, proud of his sense of morality.

Kersz gave an “oh.” Then he placed his hands on his chest, seemingly lost in thought.

“Perhaps your physical condition is related to your profession, but I haven’t seen a strong and healthy human being in a very, very long time.” Yu Xi explained, “The more developed humans became, the less important muscles were. Everything could be replaced by mechanical parts, and people’s aesthetics changed as they developed.”

Ultimately, the appearance of an ‘early human’ became a peculiar niche aesthetic, because this type of body was really too inconvenient.

“Seeing a strong human brings many thoughts to mind.” Yu Xi sighed. “Very sturdy. Very steadfast.” He had a feeling that Kersz would be a very capable worker.

Oh, Kersz was indeed a very capable worker. He used to be a miner.

“Kersz!” Yu Xi’s eyes lit up. “Would you like to try farming?”

“Farming? You mean like growing those vegetables?” Kersz was very interested in food. “Sure.”

“And rice,” Yu Xi added.

“When do we start?!” Kersz’s attention was successfully diverted.

“A month will be about right. Oh, and I also have an ox-shaped robot over there that can help you.” Everything on that planet was automated, and the animals were all machines controlled by Yu Xi.

“Ox-shaped?”

“Oxen are used for plowing fields,” Yu Xi explained.

“That’s amazing!” Kersz exclaimed.

“You can wear a white tank top then. Working the fields is tiring.” Yu Xi had never actually seen a person and an ox working the fields, as he had originally been a robot vacuum cleaner and the family that bought him didn’t own any farmland.

But Yu Xi had watched a lot of TV dramas from that era, and felt that Kersz was particularly suited to the role.

The sun, an old ox, and a profusely sweating farmer.

Yu Xi shifted his position under the covers and let out a comfortable sigh.

It was all his.

Kersz’s curiosity was piqued by Yu Xi’s satisfied expression: “What are you thinking about right now?”

Yu Xi lowered his voice, covering his mouth as if divulging a secret: “Did you know? You can go into a cornfield and do naughty things.”

Yu Xi was thinking of some wild, primitive scenarios.

“Corn? Is there really so much space in a cornfield?” Kersz asked, somewhat puzzled.

“Cornstalks would definitely be bent under the weight,” said Yu Xi.

Kersz exclaimed in shock: “What a waste! Is that corn even fully grown yet?”

Yu Xi: “…..Can you stop thinking about food all the time?”

“I just think we should show a basic level of empathy. That corn is growing perfectly well. Why should we trample it?” Kersz couldn’t quite bring himself to accept it.

“You treat corn much more nicely than you treat other humans,” said Yu Xi.

“Because corn doesn’t have a brain. Between the two of us, you being friendly to humans is enough,” Kersz replied.

“You’re so unromantic.” Yu Xi let out a sigh. “If I was a bad guy, maybe I’d force you to do it and trample your favorite food. And when you accused me of wasting food, I’d stuff it all into your mouth.”

“It sounds like you’re seriously considering the possibility.” Kersz chuckled a little.

“I really am,” Yu Xi confessed, clutching the blanket tightly.

Kersz: “…..Wow.”

“All living things have some bad thoughts in their heads, but as long as they aren’t put into practice, you can pretend that those bad thoughts never existed,” Yu Xi explained. “And I’m not going to put them into practice.”

Kersz felt like his mind had completely spun out.

“Am I wearing clothes in your fantasy?” Kersz asked him.

“Of course. You can’t beat me, and you’re sobbing in a corner,” Yu Xi shared excitedly.

Kersz came to the sudden realization that Yu Xi’s current fantasy was not romantic in nature. Yu Xi was simply thinking about bullying him.

He began to think about Yu Xi’s previous words. He was quite certain that Yu Xi had said something about having feelings when Kersz deliberately came onto him, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint which of his words expressed those ambiguous thoughts and which ones were describing Yu Xi’s wildly imaginative mindscape.

This robot was truly an enigma.

“Kersz,” Yu Xi suddenly called out again.

“Yeah?”

“Perhaps we should discuss the matter of that child, Tau. He may not be accustomed to being away from his father.”

Yu Xi: “It will take a joint effort between the two of us to integrate him into our family.”

Kersz: …..

Great, now it was a parenting channel.

“He must have some troublesome emotional trauma.” Yu Xi sighed.

“He’s not a child to me. He’s over seventy, and I’m only in my early thirties.” Kersz had no interest in taking care of Tau. He simply knew what Tau cared about and wanted to torment him with it. “He’s not old enough yet to go to a nursing home, and I haven’t passed the caregiver certification exam.”

Yu Xi exclaimed: “You’re so mean to him! If he were a corn cob, you would never talk about him like that!”

“Only you would use such a metaphor.” Kersz was a little sleepy.

Yu Xi caught the fatigue in his words, so he reached out and pulled Kersz into his embrace: “Okay, my good friend. Let’s sleep together.”

“Heh. Good friend,” Kersz muttered subconsciously as he shut his eyes.

Yu Xi added: “I’m so glad I’ll be able to see you the moment I open my eyes tomorrow.”

Kersz mumbled again, but this time it was just meaningless sounds.

Yu Xi smiled and simply sensed the human’s temperature and heartbeat for a while. Then he stretched out a finger and poked Kersz’s body.

After playing to his satisfaction, Yu Xi then squeezed his head next to Kersz’s: “I’m so happy. It feels like a dream.”

Yu Xi closed his eyes, and really did start to dream. This time, the dream was no longer about the old house and the big fat cat sitting on him.

He dreamed that a group of humans opened their arms to hug him, but he couldn’t possibly hug them all, and new humans kept sprouting out of the ground.

There were so many humans. He was about to be overwhelmed by them.

Yu Xi joyfully embraced the humans, falling into a sweet dilemma.

Kersz, dreaming next to him, was also in a dilemma.

The words Yu Xi had spoken to him were absorbed into his dreamscape. Kersz felt that he was doing farmwork, but since he had never actually done farmwork, his dream was abstract and illogical.

But his dream of being pinned down in a vegetable field by Yu Xi was very vivid.

This could probably be attributed to the fact that he had seen too many inappropriate videos.

When he was a miner, his coworkers absolutely loved this type of stimuli. Unlike Kersz, who was a madman obsessed with killing and revenge, they lived for the moment, never knowing what tomorrow might bring.

Under perilous conditions, the human desire to copulate was particularly strong.

Kersz wasn’t neutered, and his little companion mouse couldn’t completely evolve him into a desireless saint.

He had a little bit of knowledge in this area, and thanks to the generous sharing of his coworkers, his knowledge expanded even more.

Therefore, this dream was exceptionally detailed.

He could feel the goosebumps on his skin as Yu Xi’s fingers brushed against it.

He could also feel his muscles reflexively tensing and relaxing at the scrape of fingernails.

Yu Xi’s actions were hardly friendly.

Just like Yu Xi had said, he gripped Kersz’s neck from above, pinning him facedown. Kersz also had something stuffed in his mouth.

“Shh, don’t cry, don’t cry~” Yu Xi leaned down and whispered in his ear, “All the good food is yours. Come on, chew slowly and swallow.”

Yu Xi guided him step by step, one hand still pressing down on Kersz’s neck and the other stroking soothingly through Kersz’s hair.

Kersz tried to protest, but he couldn’t swallow the lump in his mouth.

In the end, he coughed violently – but just as he was about to spit the thing out of his mouth, Yu Xi suddenly covered his mouth with both hands.

Kersz struggled, but he was utterly unable to break free.

Kersz felt like he was suffocating. He was about to die. His vision started to go out of focus.

“You can’t~” Yu Xi whispered in his ear.

Can’t what?

Kersz awoke with a start.

Yu Xi was already up and sitting on the edge of the bed, recording something on a semi-transparent screen.

When he noticed that Kersz had woken up, Yu Xi greeted him with a smile: “I’m so happy to see you today.”

Instead of smiling back at him, Kersz cried out in shock: “Am I a masochistic pervert?!”

Yu Xi: “What did you dream about?”

Kersz: “…..Corn.” He felt that there were some things that shouldn’t be said.

Upon hearing this answer, Yu Xi leaned back slightly. He had just heard Kersz making some indecent noises when he was half-asleep.

Yu Xi silently deleted a few lines of text from the computer. This file was a record of Kersz’s behavior, which Yu Xi used to study him.

Yu Xi retyped.

[Kersz considers himself to be a masochistic pervert….]

[He seems to be a die-hard corn fanatic.]

[Humans are truly magical.]

Yu Xi paused briefly, then typed out another line of text.

[Truly, truly magical.]

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Chapter 13 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 15