Shen Yi was startled, twisting her head around on the ground to look at him.
The girl was lying on her stomach with her legs kicked up, her face dirty, still clutching the half-disassembled gun in her hand.
Parts were scattered all over the floor—she was in the middle of fitting a component back into the receiver.
Shen Yi beamed.
“You’re awake? I’m trying my best to put it back together for you.”
She quickly raised the gun in her hand, showing it off to him.
Seeing that she hadn’t gotten herself hurt, Shen Sixing let out a breath, then snapped:
“I don’t need that!”
He stood up—tall, towering over her—bent down to take a close look at what she held, then reached out and lightly tapped a finger at it, telling her impatiently:
“You’ve got this part backwards. The spring’s facing the wrong way. Try flipping it around.”
Shen Yi looked up at him, then down at the spring in her hand, turned it the other way, and pushed it back in.
Click. The part slotted into place.
There was a faint, glittering delight in her eyes. “You’re really amazing.”
Shen Sixing glanced at her.
No one had ever praised him so bluntly before.
“Stop assembling it.”
He took the half-built gun from her hands, wanting to keep this little brat from accidentally blowing herself up.
Shen Sixing carefully gathered up all the dangerous items she’d been fiddling with.
Locked them away.
Then turned back around.
He circled around this kid, pacing slowly.
“You’re from the future.”
This time, his question had shifted from a query to a statement.
From the obvious change in his attitude, Shen Yi could tell—he must have found some way to verify whether what she said was true.
And now, Shen Sixing was thoroughly convinced.
Shen Yi felt a bit happy. “Mm-hm!”
“I…” Shen Sixing hesitated, drawing in a soft breath. “In the future… I’m your father?”
Shen Yi: “Mm-hm!!”
What came next was hard for him to ask. He wrestled with it for a long time, his voice trembling slightly before he finally managed:
“In the future… in your eyes, was I a qualified father?”
He asked not because he wanted to know what kind of person he’d become, but simply because he couldn’t help testing—gauging—how this child felt about him.
“Yes.” Shen Yi answered firmly. “In my heart, you’re a perfect score.”
Shen Sixing let out a soft laugh.
No way he believed that.
He knew his own personality well enough.
A child’s “perfect score” meant nothing.
But even so, hearing her say it, Shen Sixing felt his whole body relax a little.
This proved that this daughter of his, at least, cared for him.
Not some spy, and tied to him in a deep, intimate way.
Even if he treated her badly, she’d still like him.
He had to admit—that thought brought him a certain quiet pleasure.
Shen Yi’s only gun had been taken away, and she watched helplessly as it was locked up in the cabinet.
She crossed her arms.
Shen Sixing didn’t understand himself, but Shen Yi did.
Even if the younger version of him differed from the future one, Shen Yi could still easily guess his turbulent, agonizing inner thoughts right now.
She said, “I won’t distance myself from you because of your personality, and I won’t fear you because of your harshness.”
“You can trust me.”
“I have no moral compass—my compass is you.”
Shen Sixing was startled again by her bold declaration.
He looked up, a bit taken aback.
Then quickly, he laughed. “You’re just a little kid, aren’t you? Future me brainwashed you until you went soft in the head?”
“I’m not a good man, and I won’t be a good father.”
“Don’t expect to find any sense of belonging with me.”
When he finished, Shen Yi tugged at his sleeve and changed the subject. “Can we eat instant noodles tomorrow? I want some.”
Today, Shen Yi’s three meals had just been the bread he bought.
Dry and tasteless. Hard to swallow.
Shen Sixing instinctively pulled her arm away, and as he did, he brushed against her thin cotton jacket, his fingertips rubbing the fabric slightly.
Her clothes weren’t exactly thin for staying in the rental, but it was freezing out—she’d come back with a red face from the cold.
Shen Sixing hadn’t bothered with her the whole time.
After all, he didn’t have warm clothes to wear himself.
It had only been a few days.
She’d followed him, cold and hungry, without a single complaint the whole way.
Shen Sixing looked into her eyes.
And couldn’t help but think:
Is this what they call a child’s natural dependence on a parent?
“Go to bed first.”
He hesitated for a moment, then patted Shen Yi’s head like she was a little dog.
Kids’ hair was soft. It felt nice to touch.
Shen Yi immediately ran to the bed. “Good night, Dad.”
Shen Sixing didn’t answer her “Dad.” Instead, he dodged it, grabbing his laptop and hastily retreating to the corner.
He opened the computer and pulled up an encrypted chat app.
The gray avatars in his contact list lit up one by one, most of them names he hadn’t talked to in ages.
He scrolled to a familiar icon, hesitated for a few seconds.
Then clicked on the chat window.
Shen Sixing hemmed and hawed for a while before typing:
“Do you have any jobs lately? Simple ones that pay fast?”
The reply came quickly. “Yes.”
Shen Sixing bit his lip, then released it, typing another line: “Besides that, do you have any steady work on your end?”
There was a pause. The other person was probably caught off guard by the question.
The “typing…” indicator flickered on and off, on and off, several times, before a message finally popped up:
“...What’s wrong with you?”
Shen Sixing typed cautiously: “There’s suddenly a creature at my place that needs to be fed.”
“You got a dog?”
“It’s a person.” His fingers paused mid-typing, then he added another line, “A kid.”
“I mean, yeah, there are jobs like that… but you used to look down on that kind of monthly-salary work. Did you become a dad or something?”
Shen Sixing didn’t answer.
He just impatiently urged the other person to send him the job details.
Unbelievable.
At an age where he could barely take care of himself, he had to take care of someone else.
Should he be grateful that she was at the reasonable age of eight, and not a screaming infant?
Shen Sixing had a fragile temperament.
Just imagining a baby crying in the middle of the night, standing there with no idea what to do, was enough to make him want to cry right along with it.
Soon enough, Shen Sixing found a job with excellent pay—though it would come with a string of messy problems afterward: being hunted down, investigated, and all that.
His family wouldn’t interfere in any of it.
For all the years he’d been out on his own, every problem was handled by Shen Sixing himself.
If he couldn’t handle it, that was proof of his own incompetence.
And incompetence meant death.
That was his father’s attitude toward him.
Shen Sixing closed the chat window, leaned back in his chair, and quickly scanned over the target vehicle model, possible routes, and the ideal window for making his move.
He didn’t need a full blueprint for this kind of work—the map in his head generated itself.
Every checkpoint was marked clearly in his mind.
He closed his eyes, ran through the whole process in his head once, confirmed there were no obvious holes, and only then reopened them, letting out a soft sigh.
…Who would’ve thought. In the end, he’d still become the very thing he hated most.
But there was no way he could drag Shen Yi out into the freezing winter and make her experience the harshness of life in this bleak, wind-and-rain weather, was there?
He might have been somewhat pessimistic, living his own life carelessly.
But his childhood upbringing had taught him...
That no matter how miserable a man was, he still had to find a way to shoulder the responsibility of a family.
