"Oh, you actually know how to fix a door."
She sounded genuinely surprised.
Shen Sixing was crouched on the floor, rummaging through a toolbox. He turned his head to glance at her when he heard that.
His expression was calm, with a hint of reproach. "I'm not completely useless in daily life."
He had been living on his own since he was fifteen.
Fixing doors, changing lightbulbs, unclogging drains—he could do all of it.
Shen Yi rested her chin on her hand. "I think I'm starting to understand why Mom likes you."
A man should have some handy skills.
And fixing a door was certainly a skill, wasn't it?
But honestly, Shen Sixing's current look was just too pitiful.
Crouched there, he was curled into a tiny ball, his shoulders narrow and his whole frame thin and fragile, struggling to turn a screwdriver on the old screws of a hinge, with an expression that screamed, "We're all just trying to survive."
How did he end up living like this?
"Dad," Shen Yi said, crouching down and resting her hands on her knees, positioning herself beside him by the door. "Aren't you the crown prince of the Black Dao's Zheng Hei sect?"
Shen Sixing's hand, turning the screwdriver, paused for a moment.
"What sect?" He turned to look at her, a look of disbelief on his face. "What did you say?"
Shen Yi said, "I mean, don't you have incredibly rich parents? Why are you living here?"
The apartment was probably just over twenty square meters. There was a single bed, and in the corner were a few cardboard boxes filled with random electronic parts and documents.
Her voice was laced with genuine confusion.
The two of them had been going back and forth at the doorway for what felt like forever.
Not only had they not managed to eat a single breakfast,
but now she was crouching there watching Shen Sixing fix a door.
Shen Sixing put down his screwdriver. "You seem to know everything about my family background."
"Are you some kind of spy, little kid?"
If there really was an organization behind her, and they'd sent an eight-year-old to trick him, trying to get something useful out of him,
then their plan was probably going to fail.
Shen Sixing's expression had turned completely cold.
Shen Yi immediately scurried back into the room, pressing her back against the wall.
She knew that revealing too much wasn't always a good thing.
For someone as dangerous as Shen Sixing, instead of trying to coax his secrets out of him, he was probably considering whether to just strangle her and be done with it.
"Let's talk," he said.
He clapped his hands together after fixing the door, then sat down on a chair, clasping his hands, staring at her.
"First question."
Shen Sixing said, "Who are you?"
"My name is Shen Yi."
"Shen—" He emphasized the syllable with a smirk. "And you're going to tell me the people behind you didn't deliberately give you that surname?"
Shen Yi didn't want to argue about this with him.
She chose to remain silent.
"Then, the second question."
"Where did you come from?" Shen Sixing asked.
Shen Yi looked down, unable to resist kicking her feet a little. Between lying and telling the truth,
she chose the latter.
Lies were too easily seen through by someone as shrewd as him.
"The future."
Those two simple words made Shen Sixing let out a light, scoffing sound through his nose.
"So I don't even need to ask the third question. If I ask why you know me, you're just going to say—you know me from the future?"
Shen Yi nodded.
This absurd answer made Shen Sixing lose all desire to keep interrogating her. He had thought he could dig up something useful,
but here was this kid talking about the future.
What was this? Had she watched too many sci-fi movies?
"Prove it," he said.
He had nothing better to do, so he rested his chin on his hand and decided to continue, just to see what earth-shattering answer this little spy could come up with.
Shen Yi thought for a moment.
"You have a scar on the inside of your left wrist," she said, gesturing with her fingers about three fingers wide. "You got it when you were fifteen, from a piece of glass. It took six stitches, and it was done without anesthesia."
The motion of Shen Sixing's fingers tapping against the armrest stopped.
There was indeed a scar on the inside of his left wrist.
He always kept it hidden under his sleeve, never showing it in public.
But so what? What person in a dangerous line of work didn't have some scars?
"And your father," Shen Yi continued. "Your father's name is Shen Shu. He's my grandfather."
"He and your mother will get divorced when you're around twenty. As far as I know, you were exiled from the family at fifteen."
"Back then, you thought life was boring. And your father thought you still had too much money, grew up too comfortably. He said you worked too little in your life to have those kinds of meaningless thoughts."
"Your grandfather said you were living too easy, floating, never touching the ground."
"So when you were fifteen, before you even finished school, you were kicked out of the house."
"This is your third year wandering around outside. Am I right?"
"Oh, right. In a little while, your family will bring you home and send you abroad to study."
"And then you'll go from being a broke nobody—" Shen Yi's tone shifted from a flat recitation to one brimming with excitement. "To becoming an internationally wanted criminal!"
Her voice pitched up at the end, her eyes sparkling.
As if him being broke was an embarrassment to her,
and becoming an internationally wanted criminal would make her proud.
"..."
Shen Sixing listened to her whole spiel. The corner of his mouth twitched.
Forget everything else, but that phrase "living too easy" was exactly what his father had said when he kicked him out.
How did she know such specific details?
Shen Sixing clasped his hands together and sat silently in the chair. The dim light inside the room cast a gloomy pallor over his pale face.
"One last question," he said.
"What is your mother's name?"
Shen Yi: "Her name is Wen Ya!"
Shen Sixing let out a cold laugh. "Never heard of her."
If he was being honest, that woman was from a completely different world than he was.
He still didn't fully believe her words, but he had at least given up on the idea of sending her away.
Shen Sixing stood up. "I need to go out."
Shen Yi immediately sprang up from the floor. "I'm coming too."
"I need to go make some money so we don't starve to death this winter. Don't get in my way," Shen Sixing said, glancing at her tiredly. "There's a loaf of bread in the fridge that expired six months ago. You can have some to fill your stomach."
Shen Yi: "..."
Shen Yi grabbed his sleeve. "I want to come with you too. Please, please."
"Don't you want to know about your future? I can tell you everything."
She was not about to stay behind and keep the spiders and mice in his rental room company.
Shen Sixing stopped, his hand on his coat.
The young man tilted his head, tapping his fingertips on the edge of the table a couple of times. The rhythm was slow.
"The future, huh?"
He drew out the words lazily, making a reasonable and bored guess. "I'm going to become a qualified head of the family?"
"Nope," Shen Yi said excitedly. "In the future, you're going to become a very beaten-down, miserable office worker!"
Shen Sixing: "...No way!!"
