She couldn't help herself and asked. "A mindscape — so you two can read each other's thoughts?"
Yi Yi nodded with a smile. "In a manner of speaking, yes. Chen Wan is my host — we can communicate directly without speaking, just through thought."
"Oh." Jiang Wanning looked at Yi Yi's cheerful expression with a carefully neutral face and gave the most noncommittal sound she could manage.
Qin Ke, observing all four of them from her corner, sensed the subtle shift in atmosphere and leaned back with quiet interest, thoroughly content to watch events unfold.
Chen Wan, who had a very clear memory of the last time jealousy had made things complicated, cleared her throat and pivoted quickly. "Right — Yi Yi, what do we need for the next upgrade?"
"One thousand Level 2 zombie crystal cores, thirty heavy-duty trucks, and five hundred smaller vehicles. So far, we've absorbed nine heavy trucks and five hundred and forty-one small vehicles. We have just over seven hundred Level 1 zombie cores remaining from before, plus recent additions, two hundred and thirty-six Level 2 zombie cores, and three Level 1 mutant animal cores. In summary, the small vehicle count is sufficient. Everything else still needs work."
"All right. Tomorrow we'll head toward Funan University and collect what we need from there, while picking up more vehicles and cores along the way. These zombies are getting smarter — the sooner we upgrade the RV, the safer everyone will be." Chen Wan thought it through and nodded.
"Yes!" Yang Yang, sitting in Jiang Yanxin's lap, kicked her little legs with great authority and added her full endorsement — sending the adults into laughter.
Jiang Yanxin poked gently at Yang Yang's little belly and smiled. "Little troublemaker — you don't even know what we're talking about. Look at this tummy. It's got folds."
Yang Yang pinched one of the folds herself, looked up at Jiang Yanxin, and offered a single word in her defense: "Squish~."
"Yes, it certainly is squish — because you ate everything in sight." Jiang Yanxin kept laughing even as she pinched the little rolls of baby fat between her fingers. Yang Yang bore this with perfect dignity, lying placidly in her mom's arms, completely unbothered by the examination.
Chen Wan looked around the table, decided there was nothing left that urgently needed discussing, and scooped Yang Yang out of Jiang Yanxin's arms. "We don't know the route to Funan University yet anyway — we'll figure it out on the fly tomorrow. Everyone's exhausted. Early night."
"Good call. I'm going to lie down." Qin Ke caught Yi Yi's glance in her direction, averted her eyes with a small, deliberate calmness, picked up a paperback novel from nearby, and walked to the lower bunk. She settled in, clicked on the reading lamp, and lay there alternating between reading and watching the room with quiet, entertained eyes.
Jiang Yanxin excused herself to shower and get to bed. Chen Wan carried Yang Yang toward the bedroom to tell her a bedtime story. The moment the others had dispersed, Yi Yi reached out and caught Jiang Wanning's wrist.
Jiang Wanning's ears immediately went pink. She had only just finished feeling the tiniest twinge of something — annoyance, maybe, or something less definable — about Yi Yi being able to communicate with Chen Wan through thought. And now Yi Yi was grabbing her wrist.
"Wanning — are you sleepy? If not, will you stay and talk with me for a bit? Look at them — everyone just disappeared." Yi Yi cast a long-suffering look in the direction of her absent companions. "Is keeping me company really that much to ask?"
As she spoke, her bright peach-blossom eyes were fixed on Jiang Wanning with full attention. Her left hand was still loosely wrapped around Jiang Wanning's wrist, with no apparent intention of letting go.
Under that gaze, Jiang Wanning forgot entirely about the small pang she'd felt moments before. "I'm not that tired, actually. I'll stay for a while."
"I knew you were the reliable one. The others are hopeless." Yi Yi's eyes lit up the moment Jiang Wanning agreed. Only then did she release her wrist — and immediately shifted a little closer on the seat. "Let me tell you about my previous-to-last host. That one was an absolute disaster case. I thought for certain I'd never get to take human form with her at the helm — and do you know what happened?..."
Yi Yi launched into her story with great animation, clearly making up for lost time after weeks of being cooped up at the base with barely anyone to talk to. Having finally found a soft-natured, patient audience, she told the story with full dramatic flair. Across the room, Qin Ke had been ostensibly reading her novel — but she kept stealing glances at the two of them. She had noticed something earlier, and now she was more certain than ever. Something was going on there. She settled deeper into the pillow, novel in one hand, and watched with thoroughly unashamed interest. She felt, inexplicably, rather content — the people around her were all wonderful, and tomorrow they would be one step closer to finding what Yan Yan needed. Life, she decided, was going to be all right for a while.
Jiang Wanning listened to Yi Yi's story, which was funny and meant to be lighthearted. Yi Yi told it well. But the more Wanning heard, the more a quiet heaviness settled in her chest.
She gradually came to understand the nature of Yi Yi's existence. Yi Yi could only take human form in a given world if her host completed certain tasks. Yet across world after world, host after host had tried—and failed. Each time, Yi Yi would revert to being nothing more than a system, waiting once again, welcoming the next host, only to watch the same ending unfold. Chen Wan was just one in a long, uncountable line.
Yi Yi had expected this time to be no different.
She hadn't expected Chen Wan to stand out—to truly bind with the RV, to follow through, and to push all the way to the required upgrades. For the first time in what must have been ages, Yi Yi could walk in her own body again.
That was why she talked so much.
It was the kind of talking that came from someone who had been silent for far too long.
By the time Jiang Wanning had put all of this together, her eyes had gone red.
This alarmed Yi Yi considerably. She had told this story to keep someone company — at worst, she expected boredom or polite inattention. Nobody had ever actually cried. She had not expected this gentle girl to cry before she'd even gotten to the difficult parts.
"You don't have to keep listening if you don't want to," Yi Yi said quickly, her voice dropping softly. "Please don't cry — I genuinely don't know what to do when people cry."
She pulled several tissues from the box on the table in a mild panic, already reaching toward Jiang Wanning's face.
Jiang Wanning sniffled, but the tears slipped down anyway. And then — before Yi Yi's hand could reach her — Jiang Wanning lifted her own hand and gently patted Yi Yi on the top of the head.
Yi Yi went completely still.
"I'm all right," Jiang Wanning said softly, her eyes still red at the rims but her expression warm and steady. "I just wanted to tell you — if you ever have something you want to say, you can say it to me. I'll always listen."
Yi Yi didn't hear a word. The hand on her head stilled her completely, the gentle, unhurried gesture leaving her frozen in place. She had crossed countless worlds and worn a human form more than once, but no one had ever treated her like this. No one.
"WARNING. WARNING. Optical brain CPU temperature critical. Initiating automatic cooling protocol."
Yi Yi startled at her own system alert. A full system crisis didn't overheat her CPU — but one pat on the head did? She hadn't even done anything. She had just been sitting there. This was completely disproportionate.
Except, as it turned out, it wasn't — because her face was already going red, keeping perfect pace with her CPU temperature. The last time she'd been paying attention, she had been analytically categorizing the various reasons humans blush. She wasn't doing any analyzing right now. She was just sitting there being red.
Jiang Wanning noticed. Her expression shifted from tearful to quietly delighted. She gave Yi Yi's wrist a small, gentle shake. "Weren't you going to wipe my tears? If you wait any longer, they'll dry on their own."
"Oh — right, yes, sorry—" Yi Yi fumbled with the tissues, face still warm, and dabbed carefully at the damp tracks on Jiang Wanning's cheeks.
Jiang Wanning tilted her head, studying her with curiosity. "Do androids blush when they're embarrassed?"
"WARNING. WARNING. CPU temperature critical. Increasing cooling fanning speed."
Yi Yi's lovely peach-blossom eyes blinked — once, twice — with something approaching helplessness. "That — that's not blushing. It's a system irregularity. Thermal fluctuation. Routine processing lag — it self-corrects automatically. We don't get embarrassed. That's a human thing."
Jiang Wanning watched Yi Yi stumble over her own explanation and smiled quietly. She didn't believe a word of it, but she let it go. "I'm fine now. Shall we keep talking?"
"Actually — I'm suddenly very tired." Yi Yi smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear and produced this excuse from thin air. Her CPU temperature had not come down yet, and she absolutely could not continue this conversation until she figured out what was happening to her.
"Tired? You told me yourself that you don't need to sleep. How can you be tired already?" Jiang Wanning asked, perfectly reasonably.
"We — we do enter a kind of system dormancy occasionally. It's getting late. You should go upstairs and rest." Yi Yi made to stand, then realized Jiang Wanning was sitting between her and the exit, and she was effectively trapped. She stood there for a moment, not quite certain what to do.
Jiang Wanning saw her predicament and caught her wrist with a smile. "One last question. Answer it, and I'll go straight to bed."
Yi Yi's main priority at this moment was getting Jiang Wanning to leave so she could think in peace. Her CPU had overheated for reasons she had not yet identified, and she was not going to accept her own system's explanation. She was an android. Androids didn't get flustered. She was nothing like the hopeless, wife-fearing Chen Wan.
At that precise moment, Chen Wan sneezed in the bedroom.
Yang Yang looked up from her story with round, concerned eyes. "Mama, are you okay?"
"Fine, sweetheart. It just means someone is thinking about Mama." Chen Wan resumed her gentle circles on Yang Yang's little tummy.
Yang Yang seized the opening immediately: "That's me. I'm thinking about Mama~."
"Of course it is. My baby was thinking about me." Chen Wan scooped her up and planted several enthusiastic kisses on her soft cheek, completely unaware of what her system was privately saying about her.
Back at the dining table, Yi Yi answered quickly. "Yes — go ahead. I'll answer properly."
Jiang Wanning stood. She looked at Yi Yi, and the tips of her ears turned a soft, unmistakable pink. "Have you ever had a girlfriend? In any of the other worlds, I mean. Or — a boyfriend counts too."
Yi Yi stared.
She hadn't. She had only ever been a system, moving from world to world to support her host. There had never been room — or reason — for anything else. She shook her head quickly. "No. I was always focused on helping the host complete their tasks."
Jiang Wanning turned and walked quickly toward the small elevator, her ears still pink. "Good to know," she said simply, over her shoulder. "I'm going to sleep. Goodnight."
Yi Yi stood in the dining area and watched her go, genuinely puzzled by the question and what it meant. She sat back down slowly, alone now, and only then did her CPU temperature begin — finally — to return to normal. She pulled out the sofa bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling.
She needed to think about what had just happened to her.
Qin Ke had caught a glimpse of Jiang Wanning's expression as she walked away — she had definitely been blushing. Qin Ke factored this in alongside everything she'd quietly observed from the bunk, set her novel down, and smiled to herself in the dark.
She was fairly certain she had just witnessed something significant. And she had watched it happen entirely in plain sight.