Shu's gaze was firmly locked on the open window.
The night wind blew, causing the curtains to sway slightly, as if extending a silent invitation to him. Outside was a quiet corridor, an empty public area, a... a safe zone!
Escape this scene that made his heart beat too fast and his thoughts chaotic! Right now!
His body was almost about to follow his instincts and launch himself. His muscles were already tense—
"Shu, Shu! Look what I found!" A weight, along with a joyful emotion, suddenly landed on Shu's back, causing his body to collapse. If it weren't for the fact that he had tensed his muscles in advance, this could have even directly knocked over the wandering Shu.
But Shu's action of getting up was still stopped... in fact, this was a small matter. The most important thing was that the string in Shu's mind had snapped directly under Kiana's oblivious pounce.
Kiana, the culprit, was completely unaware of the life-and-death race that was playing out in Shu's heart. She just held up a packaging bag with an exaggerated cartoon pattern in front of him as if she were presenting a treasure.
"It's the super~ limited edition HOMU popping candy! I remember this was discontinued a long time ago! Where did you find it?!"
"..."
"I really wanted to eat this before, but even my old man couldn't get it! I didn't expect to find it here!"
"..."
"But I remember I've never seen this before. Shu, Shu, are these really the snacks I hid?"
"..."
"Shu?"
Kiana finally noticed that something was wrong with Shu. The arm that was resting on his shoulder quickly retracted, and instead, she pressed her palm on his shoulder to support her body, allowing her head to stick out from his left shoulder.
The lights in the room were off, and many places in the room were completely submerged in darkness at this moment. But Shu was currently facing the window that had been opened by Kiana.
The designer of the tenth underground floor of Heliopolis Life Sciences Pharmaceutical had added a holographic sky screen that could provide real-time feedback of the external environment at the beginning of the design. And at this moment, the false starlight passed through the window and shone on a real person.
So, with this ray of starlight, Kiana saw Shu's face.
So Shu's face could be this red...
"Shu," after a moment of daze, Kiana's mouth moved faster than her consciousness. "Your face is so red."
A simple and direct declarative sentence, the sound started from the Big Bang, crossed the composition of the world and the origin of species, and finally landed in Shu's ears.
Blushing?
The broken string was brutally tied into a temporary dead knot. Reason reoccupied the high ground, and even wanted to break through the top of his head and fly to the moon with his brain.
...even if he flew to the moon, he probably couldn't escape Kiana! Maybe he should just fly to the sun and self-destruct.
Hmm? Kiana?! Did she just say something? I'm blushing?
A burning sensation suddenly came from his face. It was the large amount of blood flowing through his face that expanded the capillaries on his face and stimulated the nerves on his face...
He was indeed blushing.
Blushing = shy = self-incriminating = death
"You're mistaken," Shu's head suddenly slammed down. While his whole body curled up, he didn't forget to cover his eyes tightly with his hands.
"What are you shy about?" Shu's ostrich behavior made Kiana's face full of strangeness. She straightened her body a little more, her hand still resting on Shu's shoulder.
This time it was not a declarative sentence, but it was still a subconscious question from Kiana.
Or rather, Kiana was like this. Most of the words she said did not have the experience of being repeatedly polished in Shu's throat. Saying whatever came to her mind had almost become a permanent label on Kiana.
Shu's body suddenly trembled. The hand that was covering his eyes was put down. He made eight feints in one second, and in the end, he didn't know where to put it, so he could only wring it in a mess on his lap.
At the same time, Shu's back bent even more. His head was now less than thirty centimeters away from his knees.
"...No... I'm not shy..." But a defense was still needed. Shu struggled to give Kiana a convincing denial, but after a lot of effort, the limit he could do was to squeeze out these few words that were as soft as a mosquito's buzz from his throat.
"Then are your eyes uncomfortable?"
Eyes?
Shu's hand froze. He finally realized that he had a subconscious action of "covering his eyes when he was shy." Just a simple thought would tell him that this exaggerated subconscious action must have been cultivated when he was alone in the past...
Why did Kiana know so clearly what this action meant? He had just realized it himself! How many more of these subconscious actions that would expose his emotions did she know?
Wait... Shu suddenly thought of something even more terrifying.
Even Kiana knew this... then what about Mei, who was good at observing others' emotions... and Bronya, who looked like a three-no, but her eyes were sharper than that evolution guy's?
And then think about the people around him, like Sin Mal, who could look directly into others' souls, Sirin, who could peek into dreams, Seele, who could probe others' essence, and Fréllei and Rita, who had maxed out their "people-reading skills."
So my life had ended a long time ago?
I thought I was like a Wallfacer, hiding my thoughts very well. I didn't expect there to be Wallbreakers everywhere around me. I didn't even expect that I wasn't Luo Ji at all, but a dehydrated Trisolaran.
Hahaha, actually, I fell asleep a long time ago. Everything that is happening now is just a dream. When I wake up, I will still see the familiar ceiling, and then hear Mei calling Kiana to get up...
"You were just shy, weren't you?" Kiana's certain voice came from the side, cruelly shattering Shu's fantasy.
It was—real.
The weight and touch on his back were so real. Shu could even feel Kiana's breath on his left side. At this moment, she must be squinting her eyes and frowning, her lips tightly pressed together and the corners of her mouth pulled down, and even her nose was exerting force, right?
"You hesitated just now. You must have been thinking about how to lie, right?" Kiana's expression was exactly as Shu had guessed. With the second sentence, Kiana moved her head closer to Shu.
This person actually lied, so bad. I'm going to glare at him with my eyes.
No, Shu is a good person.
Kiana's expression instantly returned to normal. Her straightened body became lazy and soft again, and she slumped back against Shu's back.
After about a second of silence between the two, Kiana's mind suddenly turned.
Wait, could it be that Shu's shyness is because...
"Ooh~~ Shu, could it be because..."
"Shu, could it be that you... like me?"