SZAR Chapter 32

“Immediately, right now, get over here! Did you hear me?!”

Chu Ci ground his teeth, his agitation plain for anyone to hear. Nuo Wei’s aircraft barreled wildly, finally rushing into the underground garage just before Chu Ci’s sanity collapsed.

Earlier, the major general had been inspecting weapons at the military headquarters. Since he needed to handle precision instruments, he wore a pair of pure white gloves. He had just opened the door of the aircraft when Chu Ci yanked him inside.

Chu Ci was desperate to touch Nuo Wei’s skin. He bit at the gloves to pull them off, as if tearing away the wrapping of a gift, then grabbed the hands and raised them above Nuo Wei’s head, locking them to the hanging ring dangling from the aircraft’s ceiling.

Chu Ci had mentioned buying a new aircraft last time, but later felt it was too wasteful, so he let the matter fizzle out. That was why he was still driving the purple “eggplant.” This eggplant model was designed for males, naturally catering to most of their quirks, with every kind of interior embellishment. For instance, the metal ring was designed to mimic handcuffs, gleaming with a cold silver-white shine.

Nuo Wei looked up innocently, meeting Chu Ci’s gaze. The ring might mimic handcuffs, but its quality was far inferior. A strong military female could break free with just one struggle. Chu Ci’s eyes were blazing with fire: “Go ahead and try struggling once.”

Nuo Wei had no choice but to stay obedient and still.

What followed was much more intense than he had imagined. Chu Ci was at the age when passions ran high. Normally, he tempered his gentleness out of concern for Nuo Wei’s feelings, afraid of leaving him with psychological shadows. But now Chu Ci himself was practically burning up, and since Nuo Wei, like a fool, kept talking back to irritate him, he could not be bothered to restrain himself, and once he stopped restraining, it went on until the sun set in the west.

In the meantime, a staff member walked around the aircraft once. This underground parking lot charged fees, but the first three hours were free. Since most people parked here just to grab a meal, hardly anyone ever stayed longer than three hours. The staff assumed someone had drunk too much and forgotten their aircraft, so he came over to check.

Chu Ci’s aesthetic taste before awakening might have been terrible, but his spending ability was first-class. Ugly as this eggplant was, its configuration was absurdly advanced. It was the kind of thing female insects mocked for its looks yet still wanted to examine up close.

That staff member circled the eggplant several times before finally stopping in front of its pitch-black glass, seemingly mistaking the window for a mirror and straightening his appearance in it.

Nuo Wei’s skin flushed pink. He dared not move too much, only looked at Chu Ci with reddened eyes and whispered, “Master!”

Chu Ci replied, “The glass is one-way reflective.”

In other words, people outside could not see in.

Not being seen was one thing; feeling ashamed was another. Nuo Wei turned his face to the side, not daring to look at the window. When Chu Ci leaned over him, he twisted his body to the back to avoid him. But his movement was a little too big, the hanging ring clattered loudly, making the whole aircraft shake with it.

The staff member’s hand froze in the middle of fixing his hair, his face showing the look of someone who had seen a ghost.

“Stop…”

Nuo Wei shrank back again, and the ring above his head gave another sharp clang. Chu Ci yanked him forward by the collar: “You’ve made me this angry, and you still tell me to stop?”

Chu Ci had deliberately left Nuo Wei’s coat untouched. The Major General was wearing a long trench coat, the uniform clasp fastened all the way up to the top, giving him an air of cool restraint, almost austere and well-dressed.

The military’s clasps were round silver ones, engraved with a sword and thorns, symbols of courage and hardship. When Chu Ci finally finished tossing about in wild abandon, and the nameless fire in his chest had mostly burned out, he slowly stretched out his fingers toying with the clasp just below Nuo Wei’s Adam’s apple.

He touched Nuo Wei’s throat. Whether in humans or in insectoids, this was a vital point. As expected, Nuo Wei swallowed unconsciously, turned his face away from Chu Ci, and murmured, “Master…”

Chu Ci counted on his fingers: “Do you know how many times you’ve made me this angry already?”

Last time, at the military headquarters, Nuo Wei had acted like a gourd with a sealed mouth, refusing to say anything even when the Officer came to kill, and only after Chu Ci pressed him hard did he finally reveal the truth. That time, Chu Ci had been angry to death. This time, Nuo Wei wasn’t pretending to be mute; instead, he had turned into a broken record, repeating the same few infuriating lines over and over without end.

When he should speak, he wouldn’t. When he shouldn’t, he would say it endlessly. Chu Ci even suspected this was Nuo Wei’s talent, to always manage to provoke someone in exactly the wrong way.

But refusing to repent was also Nuo Wei’s talent. Last time, he hadn’t had the slightest awareness of wrongdoing, instead bizarrely focusing on the tiny, insignificant cut at the corner of Chu Ci’s lips, which left Chu Ci unable to even vent his anger. And this time, he clearly still hadn’t realized where the real problem lay.

Hearing his master’s questioning, Nuo Wei lifted his face. His expression was as cold as ever, but his eyes were full of confusion.

His hands were still fastened to the top of the aircraft. Because of the position, he had no choice but to half-kneel on the ground, while Chu Ci sat in the swiveled driver’s seat, putting the two of them in a posture where one looked down from above, and the other looked up from below.

From this angle, when Nuo Wei was seen from above, he looked even more innocent.

Chu Ci had already decided that this time, he couldn’t just let him off so easily. Crossing one leg over the other, he propped his head up with one hand: “Come on, say it. Do you know why I’m angry?”

Zerg males would never ask this kind of question. If they were angry, they usually greeted you directly with a whip. Otherwise, this question would definitely rank first on QuQi’s site under “Top Ten Deadly Questions from Males,” comparable to the “Why is my girlfriend angry?” threads on human forums. Nuo Wei, born naturally slow in this regard, already found it hard enough to please a male, let alone guess what was on his mind.

Nuo Wei grew a little tense, but with his hands bound together, he couldn’t dig into his palm like usual, so he bit his lip instead. Chu Ci reached out and tapped his lower lip: “No biting.”

The male’s fingers were long and elegant, the pads warm as they lightly brushed against his lips. His nail pressed just against the bead of his upper lip, making it impossible for Nuo Wei to close his mouth. He thought hard for a long time, but still couldn’t figure out why the male was angry.

But regardless, the fact was that the male was angry. So Nuo Wei decided to take the blame first.

Lowering his gaze, he began to sincerely reflect: “I came too late.”

Chu Ci gave a cold laugh: “What, after you got the call that something happened to me, you and Admiral Erwen chatted about home life for a while before coming over?”

Nuo Wei froze: “…No.”

The moment he picked up the call, he came straight away, vaulting two railings at the military headquarters with swift, fluid movements. Unfortunately, no one had filmed it; otherwise, if Chu Ci had seen it, he definitely would have praised his wife in a trench coat doing parkour, looking as cool as Neo in 《The Matrix.》

Chu Ci gave another cold laugh: “So what, you didn’t push your aircraft to full speed and were curled up inside watching 《Peppa Pig》?”

Nuo Wei didn’t know what Peppa Pig was, but that didn’t stop him from hearing the mockery in Chu Ci’s tone. He denied it: “How could I…”

Chu Ci reached out and tapped Nuo Wei’s silver-white head. “Then what mistake are you admitting to? How else were you planning to get here faster? Tear open a wormhole and teleport over?”

Nuo Wei fell silent.

Chu Ci had plenty of time anyway, and all the patience in the world to drag this out with him. He glanced at Nuo Wei’s restrained hands, pressed a button to release him, then pulled his female monarch’s wrist into his palm and began carefully massaging it.

The touch on his wrist was gentle and soothing, easing much of Nuo Wei’s tension. The inside of the ring was padded with soft leather and hadn’t actually rubbed his skin raw, but Nuo Wei couldn’t bear to pull his hand away from Chu Ci, so he left it there.

He thought back blankly, unable to figure out what mistake he’d made, and finally said: “…I agreed too slowly.”

Chu Ci: “Huh?”

He had no idea what Nuo Wei’s answer meant. “What?”

Nuo Wei said, “Earlier, when Lathlan asked me, I agreed too slowly.”

Chu Ci was even more bewildered. “Who the hell is Lathlan?”

He thought he’d heard that name before, not too long ago… maybe even earlier today.

Chu Ci dug through his memory palace so hard it felt like he was about to excavate a whole three-bedroom apartment, and finally recalled: when he’d been feverish, that “kind” female who passed by, seemed to be named something-Lan.

Chu Ci froze for a moment, then exploded. He cupped his female monarch’s face, his brows furrowing so tight they could pinch a fly to death: “What the hell are you talking about?”

So the female monarch he had longed for, the one he wanted to spend his whole life with, not only wanted to hand him over to someone else, but even disliked that he was handed over too slowly?

Chu Ci pinched Nuo Wei’s chin. If not for the memory of that first marking, when Nuo Wei had clung to his clothes and refused to let go, his eyes reddening just from a few words, Chu Ci would have suspected their bond was forced, with not a shred of true feeling in it.

Chu Ci crouched down to look Nuo Wei in the eye: “Do you still remember what you said the other day, during our first marking?”

Nuo Wei didn’t want to recall himself from that time. Because of hormonal imbalance, he’d been completely irrational, a bit like postpartum syndrome in human women, his emotions swung too hard and too fast, so much that thinking about it afterward only made him feel ashamed.

Chu Ci turned his face back and coaxed him patiently: “Back then, when I got a call from a colleague, what did you say?”

Nuo Wei remembered.

He had asked his male, whether the one on the phone was a female.

“…Sorry.” Nuo Wei apologized quickly, stiff and proper: “I wasn’t in the right state at the time. If I offended you, please forgive me.”

His expression was calm, his tone detached, yet his hand hidden in his sleeve was clearly clenched tight, and his lips pressed together.

Among the zergs, females seemed to have no sense of possessiveness, not that they couldn’t, but that they didn’t dare.

Chu Ci lowered his gaze and rescued that poor piece of cloth from Nuo Wei’s hand.

And he understood. He had made another mistake.

Nuo Wei was like a beggar in the world of feelings. At first he only asked for scraps of slop, but Chu Ci, unable to bear it, insisted on shoving a roast chicken into his hands. The golden-brown bird glistened with honeyed oil. Nuo Wei wanted it so badly he could hardly stand it, but he didn’t dare. He was afraid that if he took it, someone would scold him for being unworthy, or some stranger would rush out and beat him. So he stubbornly shrank back into his little corner, looking at that roast chicken and saying: “I don’t want it, please give me just a bit of slop instead.”

“…Fine, Nuo Wei.”

This foolish bug could drive Chu Ci to the skies in anger, and yet extinguish it in a heartbeat. Chu Ci stared straight into those pale cyan eyes. They were so beautiful, like clear skies after rain, or mountains hidden in mist.

Chu Ci asked softly: “If I told you I never once thought about marrying a female attendant, would you believe me?”