If he abandoned everything, if he needed nothing, if he gave everything to the young man... then he would certainly not be abandoned again.
This love would surely not dissipate like a bubble.
Vil-V gently clutched her skirt, her rosy lower lip bitten until it was pale, yet she refused to give up the posture that allowed her to shed her skin at any moment.
This sense of vigilance, born of unwillingness, persisted until the young man began to communicate with those people.
"Using this method will do."
"Move the door over there three centimeters to the left."
"The architecture here is too old-fashioned, it's like something from the last century. Does Moth Chasing Fire not have any professional designers?"
"It's good that you have some foresight; Vil-V is the top engineer in this world."
"If you don't understand, don't speak. You can't keep up with my pace."
"If you really want to ask something, it's not impossible. Vil-V is the sole core of the Spiral Workshop, at least in terms of engineering."
"Don't look at her; she seems young, but wasn't Doctor Mobius also quite young when she rose to fame back then?"
"Don't always judge a book by its cover. I thought you all knew better~?"
There was no extraordinary talent.
No extreme hard work.
It was merely through some abilities and techniques learned from Vil-V, through imitating that girl in daily life—no matter how weak, how insecure, she still had an irrepressible confidence in her area of expertise.
Jiang Cheng could easily command a large group of Scholars, whose hair had all fallen out and whose exact ages were almost indistinguishable.
At the same time, he combined the affinity of the fairy lady for others with Vil-V's pride.
At least in terms of bluffing, he had reached the level of a genius.
Ah...—With thirty people present, had he really said too much?
Watching the young man in the center of the crowd converse lightly with everyone, remaining calm no matter how the thirty people questioned him, his gentle lips—no matter how bad her mood, she couldn't muster even a hint of anger.
Yet, that dazzling posture in the crowd filled the girl with an inexplicable fear.
She was the one who pushed the young man to the forefront, making him the expert. Why did seeing this scene make her feel annoyed and uncomfortable?
Why hadn't she considered this possibility back then?
—Vil-V felt a strange sense of familiarity.
The young man communicating with others, and her, watching everything alone as a bystander, the scene seemed to be missing only one other girl—the one who would have been secretly filming with a camera at a birthday party, or even engaging in perverted behavior by smelling the young man's clothes.
She must have been mistaken.
How could there be a girl who would engage in perverted behavior by smelling a young man's clothes?
It's not like another person like her from back then could pop out.
The relationship with the young man wasn't like Aili Xiya's indifference and neglect; what was before her was merely a necessary negotiation for a task, with no loopholes that could be exploited or interfered with by others.
Even so, watching the young man converse with everyone, the girl still clutched her skirt tighter.
Perhaps...—it would be better not to take the order after all.
—She still had some money.
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51. Vil-V is really bad.
Less than two hundred meters away, the flawless girl stood lightly in a tall building, her skirt hem fluttering in the breeze, her pink long hair swaying with the wind, standing on the rooftop, like a dreamy fairy.
With her back to the sun and spring, no one could raise the slightest objection, her pure white pantyhose perfectly accentuated the curve of her calves.
—If one could ignore the suspicious camera in her hand.
Since the young man left that day, Aili Xiya could not accept a life without him, nor could she allow his happiness to be broken. She could only pick up the abandoned camera and play the role Vil-V once played.
Although every time she saw the young man, she felt a pang of bitterness, a hollowness from her surroundings and her heart.
Aili Xiya always followed behind the young man.
No matter where, no matter how, no matter what he was doing.
It had always been like this... [In the end, I still let you, this unqualified person, be the expert senior, just as I let you, this unqualified person, be the owner of the workshop before.]
[The only thing that might make you feel a little relieved is that after the first day, Vil-V found you and said that if you didn't like it, you could give up this job, as she already had enough funds for the two of you to live together.]
["Don't worry, I'm fine."]
[You just gently stroked the girl's head, feeling the softness that seemed to massage her skin.]
["Then... I'll join too."]
["I can't let everything pile up on you."]
[Vil-V's eyes held a surprising urgency, fear, hesitation, and then, driven by some other emotion, she took a step forward.]
[You vaguely felt that it wasn't that simple; although the girl was a top genius, some of your methods were a bit crude and obvious to her.]
[It doesn't matter.]
[It would be too meaningless to scold the girl for such a thing.]
[This only means that the sense of security you bring is not yet enough.]
[Letting you stand at the forefront like this is a good thing in some sense; at least the girl will definitely go all out to ensure your safety.]
[As for the parts related to wisdom, you still gave them all to Vil-V. Whether she is a senior or not doesn't matter; the girl's credit should not be forgotten.]
[With your wisdom and talent, if you praised yourself too highly, you would inevitably be exposed.]
[The girl is the real expert, the top genius.]
[As for the rest...]
[Anyway, you are also the owner of the Spiral Workshop.]
[Letting you stand at the forefront as that senior back then was indeed not a bad thing.]
[Halfway through this project, you already clearly realized the problem here.]
[—Moth Chasing Fire is not suitable for Vil-V.]
[This stage is not suitable for the current girl.]
[Even if her talent here is absolutely unparalleled, when she tried to prepare lunch for you, she casually wrote a simple formula in a few minutes that others couldn't understand even after a month of study.]
[It was only after that group of seemingly gray-haired, old-fashioned people personally sought out Vil-V, sincerely and diligently studying for several weeks, that they barely understood a tiny bit of the simplest beginning.]
[Although part of the reason was that Vil-V dedicated most of her time to being with you every day.]
[She probably spent every day thinking about how to get closer to you, even if it meant being shameless or sacrificing her dignity.]
[This is enough to prove how groundbreaking this innate talent is; it shouldn't belong to a human life form at all.]
[It also unexpectedly brought you a lot of hatred.]
[They always muttered that you were a femme fatale.]
[To make the most rare and top-tier genius to date unable to improve herself and focus on academic research for most of her day.]
[Despite being old men, their words were extremely sharp, coupled with their huffing and puffing, white-haired elderly demeanor, which gave you a strange, inexplicable sense of guilt, as if you were Daji or Mei Xi.]
[This undoubtedly represents Vil-V's overwhelming ability.]
[In high-end scientific research, even a slight advantage in ability can easily make others unable to catch up, even if they spend their entire lives trying, just missing by a tiny bit.]
[Even if that 'just missing' person might also be at the very top of the pyramid.]
[The stage of Moth Chasing Fire is indeed grand; even if it is still far from the so-called pan-human common body, it can be called a paradise for scientific research.]
[—This cannot erase the reason why the girl is not suitable here.]
[It has nothing to do with talent, and even less with brilliance, but rather the girl's overly reclusive personality itself is absolutely unsuited for this hail of bullets... battlefield.]
[The more people there are, the more crowded it becomes, and the more easily some 'bacteria' can breed.]
[This is not something that talent can rewrite.]
[Even if those ridiculous behaviors and provocations could be easily seen through by the girl, the emotional impact caused cannot be erased or diminished.]
[There are indeed people who purely pursue knowledge and their dreams, and certainly not a few; they make up the absolute majority here.]
[But Moth Chasing Fire is simply too vast; this is a stage unprecedented in human history, large enough to allow anyone to put on their performance.]
[Although it hasn't yet reached the extent of almost becoming the world's heart and brain in the future.]
[Even now, it already has, to a certain extent, the entire world's blood supply. Created by Mobius as one of the elders, her not-yet-completely-darkened reputation alone was enough to attract a large number of Scholars.]
[And with Scholars, an extremely important resource, politics would naturally enter the arena.]
[Their sugar-coated bullets were not something ordinary people could avoid.]
[The various schemes were unimaginable; even if the girl could clearly recognize them every time, her wisdom was not proportional to those politicians with their heads full of schemes.]
[But due to her slightly weaker personality and somewhat excessive talent, those politicians still rushed to pursue Vil-V.]
[Originally, you could have left, since you hadn't signed that contract, and becoming a minister here meant you had no obligation to them.]
[But Vil-V has recently started a major project that requires a lot of funds and assistance.]
[In this world, if you don't want to be a dog for other places, you can only be a partner of an organization, which gives them the opportunity to pursue you.]
[This is an absolutely bad thing.]
[It offers no advantage to Vil-V whatsoever.]
[She never needed resources given by outsiders; her wisdom, which transcends human understanding, is not something any individual in the world can attempt to fathom.]
[Once she joins them, she will lose her freedom, the freedom to research, and even all freedom; even her thoughts will only be able to exist in her mind.]
[When to research? How to research? She might even be unable to control whether her research is used for things that harm ordinary people. But if she doesn't join them, those scumbags will start to exclude her.]
[This even makes it so that you almost have to stay with the girl twenty-four hours a day; at least, having traveled, you have enough methods to deal with them.]
[When in doubt, just learn from Aili Xiya's demeanor.]
[Human attention, after all, has its limits.]
[The girl sticks to you twenty-four hours a day, even when sleeping, she doesn't want to leave, wanting to stay on your bed, or even under the bed.]
[As long as she can be by your side, it's fine, whether she sleeps on the floor or under the bed, even if you buy a portable dog bed and let the girl crawl inside.]
[This kind of behavior, where she gives up all dignity, is ultimately unacceptable. You prefer that the two of you coexist harmoniously as equals, each utilizing your abilities, helping the girl heal her emotional wounds, rather than attributing everything to you, a normal person, to bear the future of a genius.]
[This is not you being overly sentimental.]
[It's just that this burden is simply too heavy.]
[The girl's talent, the girl's love.]
[Not a single bit of it is something that an ordinary person like you, who is as common as can be and possesses no special qualities, can easily bear.]
[If you weren't intentionally controlling your thoughts, you probably wouldn't even be able to understand what the girl says.]
[For ordinary mortals, the thinking of a genius is always Jumpiness ; there are always missing steps between one point and another.]