Whether it was Shen Zhizhao as a child or as an adult.
He was always helpless against someone with a strange thought process like Shen Yi.
"You are Shen Yi?"
The boy looked up, recalling her name. He subconsciously hugged her neck tighter and whispered, "I thought you were dead."
The dead should be forgotten.
This was a truth he had learned from a very young age.
Besides...
Why did she suddenly change from someone his own age into Adult Shen Yi?
Even someone as highly adaptable as Shen Zhizhao couldn't help but feel astonished.
Shen Yi put him down. The bustling commercial street was lively. The gunmen secretly following them saw there was no danger, and seeing their young master looking like he was enjoying himself, the group tactfully followed behind without disturbing them.
"Little Zhizhao, I am very disappointed in you," Shen Yi said, deciding to tease him when she saw his tense little face.
The young woman stopped, bent down, leaned close to him, pinched his pointed chin, and announced, "You are no longer my little underling."
"...Why?"
Shen Zhizhao instinctively asked the next question, his tone carrying a vigilance he didn't even notice himself: "Do you have another dog?"
Shen Yi: "Yes."
She had the very useful Li Jianwei now.
Shen Zhizhao's cheeks puffed out uncontrollably, looking like a poked pufferfish, written all over with displeasure.
Since they met this time, it was the first time Shen Yi had seen him show such a childish expression.
"Since you already have another dog, why would you appear in front of me again? Why did you come back?"
Shen Zhizhao couldn't quite control his tone.
He still remembered when she was short and declared she was going to be his big sister.
He didn't expect that she would get a new dog when she grew up.
Shen Yi almost laughed out loud hearing the kid's defensive breakdown.
She gently poked his forehead. "You can study these questions yourself when you grow up. It's rare for you to get to come out, do you really want to waste time on these useless questions?"
The boy bit the corner of his lip.
"Then what do you want to talk about?"
Hearing his calm and brief words, Shen Yi envisioned the grown-up Shen Zhizhao.
She couldn't hold back. She made a fist and bopped him on the top of his head:
"Shen Zhizhao, you are not allowed to speak to me in such a mature, adult tone. I am the adult now!"
It hurt a little, and he shrank his neck. Seeing her serious expression, the boy burst into laughter, his eyes curving into crescents, gentle and lingering:
"Sister, why isn't there much difference between you now that you're grown up and when you were little?"
He tilted his head, a hint of inquiry in his gaze.
After all these years, did she only grow in height but not in intelligence?
Shen Yi: "???"
When she caught the sarcasm in his subtext, she almost screamed.
What exactly had this kid been through? Why had he evolved from a sweet bean into a poisonous green bean?
"How old are you this year?"
"Nine."
"It's only been a year since you attended training when you were eight." Shen Yi held his shoulders. "How did you become like this?"
Shen Zhizhao grabbed the hem of her shirt and clung to her:
"Isn't it a good thing that I don't like to cry anymore? Can you wait for me to grow up? I will be very useful when I grow up too. Crying doesn't bring anything, and I will be the best card in the family."
The boy looked up, the emotion in his eyes a prematurely clear, almost ruthless lucidity.
"But comparing yourself to a good card is also very strange." Shen Yi felt uncomfortable seeing it and reached out to rub away his cold expression. "Don't pretend to be mature with me."
"Am I?"
Being rubbed so abruptly by her, Shen Zhizhao's previous emotions vanished into thin air, and he said muffledly:
"I thought this was normal logic."
"What normal logic? A child acting like a child is normal logic." Shen Yi argued back. "You're not cute at all right now."
"Cute? It's more like I was pathetic back then." He smiled, reached out, and firmly grabbed her, speaking softly, "Do you really want me to cry for you again, Sister?"
Shen Yi looked at the boy in front of her, whose emotions had clearly become more restrained, and gave up on the idea.
She didn't want to stand around catching up with him.
She pulled Shen Zhizhao into a restaurant.
There was warm yellow lighting, and the smell of fried food and cream floated in the air.
Shen Yi rummaged through her wallet and, finding it completely empty, reached out without hesitation to check Shen Zhizhao's jacket pockets.
"Do you have any money? I'll treat you to a kids' meal."
Shen Zhizhao: "..."
He lowered his eyes, watching her practiced movements of rummaging through his pockets. He wanted to laugh a little but held it back.
"No," he said. "But I can have the people following us pay."
"That works too." Shen Yi sat down, ordered a kids' meal for him, and bought herself an ice cream.
She held the ice cream and took a bite, the cream melting on the tip of her tongue. "Why has your personality changed so obviously?"
"Suddenly you don't cry or make a fuss, it's so weird."
Shen Zhizhao leaned on the table, turning his head to look out the glass window.
"Crying and making a fuss is of no use."
"Who said it's of no use?"
Shen Yi took another bite of her ice cream, the cone making a soft crunch.
"If you cry, I can comfort you."
"But you really are the only man I haven't been able to figure out how to comfort so far."
Shen Zhizhao accurately caught the main point: "You've comforted other men?"
"Yeah," Shen Yi admitted readily. "Your younger brothers."
Shen Zhizhao frowned. "Shen Ruxu? Or Shen Wenta?"
"Both of them."
Anyone was easier to deal with than the stubborn Shen Zhizhao.
"Sister, you really are a great person," the boy's tone was soft, bearing a smile that made it hard to tell if he was genuine or not.
"To actually be willing to coax those two clingy, annoying troublemakers."
"..."
Shen Yi stopped chewing and looked up at him.
"Are you being sarcastic with me again?"
The faint dissatisfaction hidden beneath Shen Zhizhao's docile tone was too obvious.
He quickly put on a fake smile, slowly drawing out his words, "I'm not."
"..."
"I'm not talking about this with you anymore."
Shen Yi swallowed the last bite of her cone and clapped her hands together.
"Where do you want to go play? I'll take you. It's rare for us to come out."
She always viewed him through the filter of a child.
No matter what he said or did, in her eyes, he was ultimately a child who needed to be taken care of.
Shen Zhizhao didn't have anywhere he wanted to go.
He spent the entire time observing Shen Yi, taking in her movements and expressions little by little, afraid that she would disappear in the next second.
"Are you going to leave after spending the day playing with me?"
Shen Yi thought for a moment. "Or, if you don't want to go home, I can stay with you a little longer."
Shen Zhizhao agreed almost the exact second her voice faded.
"Okay."
Since Shen Yi had promised, she wouldn't go back on her word.
She also had a little experience taking care of kids.
It was just that during the few days she spent with Shen Zhizhao, she was entirely spending Shen Zhizhao's money.
Shen Yi was truly very poor.
She couldn't produce a single penny in this timeline.
For the first few days, the two of them were still bickering endlessly, just like when they were seven or eight years old.
Later, he became a bit clingy.
He would always unconsciously get closer to her, his words full of probing lines:
"Can't you stay?"
"I'll give you everything I have."
When he said these things, his tone was overflowing with a desperate plea.
