Raising You This Small Stuff

Chapter 30.1 A glitch in the game!

The popularity of the ‘circle’s spraying cutie’ on Weibo gradually cooled down. No matter how much they dug, they couldn’t find the ‘sprayer’ that spat out the words, “which little cookie are you?” in a soft and sticky manner.

On the school bus after school.

Yuan Suo clutched his tablet, feeling anxious. He had to apologize to Mo Yi Cheng seriously when he went back today and his attitude had to be sincere.

Just as he was piecing together an apology in his heart, a sound suddenly rang out from the back of the school bus.

“You, you which little cookie are you!…..” It turned out to be his voice during the live broadcast last night.

Yuan Suo was surprised. Turning his head quickly, he met Su Yi’s smiling eyes.

“Du Du, are you still going to deny it? I’ve compared the voices repeatedly, it’s definitely you!” Su Yi had already forced a wave of questions this morning, but afraid that it would continue to cause trouble, Yuan Suo had refused to admit that the little cutie who had sprayed people online was him.

Long Bow who still had dark circles under his eyes glanced back, “If you still have this much free time, it’s better to go back and plan an outline so that you can buy a popsicle with the 50 cents you earn a day.”

“Ahhhhh! Fu Changgong, this mouth of yours will ruin you sooner or later!” Su Yi wanted to punch his dog head.

Long Bow helped Yuan Suo out of this siege, but the result was that he was caught in a whirlwind containing various damages by Su Yi. Yuan Suo didn’t quite understand certain words, but the word that appeared the most was ‘dog’ and Long Bow seemed to….. not mind at all. Annoyed from all the scolding, Long Bow simply stretched his hands to quickly cover his ears, sniffed again, wrapped himself up in his jacket, and went to sleep.

Su Yi’s anger more or less extinguished, she went back to question Yuan Suo. Yuan Suo was unable to ward off her questions, and just as he was about to be cornered, the school bus stopped! As if he had been granted amnesty, he nudged Long Bow gently, “Long Bow, I want to get off~”

Long Bow stretched his head out of his jacket, sent Yuan Suo out of the bus, then returned to sleep, using Su Yi’s mutterings behind him as a lullaby.

Yuan Suo pushed the door, and entered the house.

Mo Yi Cheng wasn’t at home today too…

Although he had caused trouble yesterday and was reprimanded by Mo Yi Cheng, after not seeing Mo Yi Cheng for a whole day, he missed him, so after opening the door and not seeing anyone, his heart felt empty.

Not waiting to put his school bag down, he ran to read the system’s guestbook. Because the system’s guestbook was at a higher position on the screen, Yuan Suo would usually move a small stool and stand on it, but this time he was too anxious, so he just ran straight over and jumped to click the [messages] at the top of the screen.

Ding!

System prompt: Your inbox has 0 unread messages.

Huh… how could it be? Every time Mo Yi Cheng was busy and couldn’t wait for him to come back from school, he would leave a message. Not willing to give up, Yuan Suo moved the small stool over. He flipped through the previous messages then clicked the refresh button. Ten minutes later, his forehead was filled with fine beads of sweat.

“There’s really… really nothing.” He got down from the small stool, put his school bag down, wiped the small stool clean, placed it at the right place, then sat on the sofa, feeling the strange quietness around him. It was as if… it was much quieter than usual, so quiet that he could even hear the sound of his own breathing.

He just sat there in a daze for a while, his heart flustered. Mo Yi Cheng wasn’t waiting for him after school, nor did he leave a message, and the sky outside was getting darker and darker. It was past their usual dinner time, but Mo Yi Cheng still didn’t appear.

Yuan Suo had eaten very little in the afternoon. His stomach had already growled twice, but he wasn’t really hungry. It seemed that all his senses had been replaced by his tightly gripped heart…

Was Mo Yi Cheng still angry?

He got up, thinking that it was better to clean up first, and then when Mo Yi Cheng came back later, he would apologize properly. Mo Yi Cheng was such a good person, he would definitely forgive him.

But even though he thought so in his heart, the hand that was holding his small school bag shook slightly. He went back to his bedroom, changed out of his school uniform, opened the refrigerator which had some spare fruits, snacks and vegetables in it, took a bottle of milk out, then sat down on the sofa and drank it carefully with a straw.

After drinking the small carton of milk and hesitating for a while, Yuan Suo finally plucked up the courage and ran to the front of the screen. He clicked: send a text message to the player.

“Mo Yi Cheng, when are you coming back?”

He clicked send.

For ten minutes, Yuan Suo stood by the wall, waiting for Mo Yi Cheng’s reply, but the system didn’t push in any new messages.

He rubbed his eyes, took a deep breath, then typed out another message.

“Mo Yi Cheng, I’ve already eaten dinner by myself. I’ll be obedient from now on and won’t make you angry anymore.”

His hands trembled as he clicked send.

An hour later, he was still standing by the wall, his calves numb, but he refused to move, tapping the dormant screen from time to time to check for a non-existent reply.

At this moment, he suddenly felt a tremor under his feet. The house seemed to be shaking, then his feet became unstable, causing him to sit down on the ground. At the same time, a violent sound came from outside the house, like the crackling of burning wood. All the street lights outside the window went out instantly, even the moonlight in the sky seemed to be covered by a thick curtain, completely without any light.

Yuan Suo flinched for a moment, then stood up, pushing his hands against the floor. Walking to the side of the bed carefully, he looked out the window…

The outside world…

Disappeared…

It was like falling into the black hole of a boundless abyss, without any life or light.

This feeling…

He took a few steps back in horror, then trembled violently all over. This… this was the same situation he had been in when he hadn’t met Mo Yi Cheng yet! It was the system’s basic settings when he was an elf without a player. The never-ending darkness outside was like the time when his soul had been separated from his body and was drifting about in the boundless universe, the kind that caused him to give up all hope. It was so fearful!

Mo Yi Cheng… didn’t want him? It was as if a big hole had suddenly opened up in his heart, so painful that it became difficult to breathe.

There was another slight shaking, then the lights inside the house went out! Only the emergency light still emitted a faint light, but it was only so much so that one wouldn’t completely lose sight of their surrounding environment.

Yuan Suo’s feet tripped over something and he fell onto the carpet, his arm knocking into the corner of the coffee table. It hurt so much that he sucked in a sharp breath from the pain but although his eyes were red in the dark, he still bit his lips, not crying out.

No, Mo Yi Cheng wouldn’t uninstall him, he had promised!

Today…. Didn’t they already reconcile this morning? And he had also promised that he wouldn’t do it again.

“Ci la– !” Snowflakes suddenly appeared on the screen used to communicate with the player, followed by an ear-splitting sound, and then everything went dark, entering into a complete shutdown.

A few drops of water suddenly appeared on the ground, tiny choking sounds echoing in the room.

Yuan Suo hugged his arms, sitting curled up in the gap between the sofa and the coffee table, his head buried, afraid to look outside.

He had really been abandoned…

Chapter 30.2 A glitch in the game!

The charity event went very well. After Mo Yi Cheng gave a donation on behalf of the company, he exchanged pleasantries with certain bigwigs, then asked Chen Jiao to get the car and prepare to go home.

It was already past nine o’clock. The little thing usually went to bed at around 10, 10:30pm. Now that he was going back he would ask the little thing if he was full. Perhaps the two of them could have a little midnight snack then he would urge the little thing to go to bed.

As Chen Jiao opened the door of the car for Mo Yi Cheng, the reporters waiting outside swarmed up to take pictures, but the security stopped them, making it possible for Mo Yi Cheng’s car to leave smoothly.

Loosening his tie, Mo Yi Cheng took his phone out and a hot search news from WeChat immediately popped up at the top of the screen. It was news about an earthquake somewhere in C province with a medium magnitude. Fortunately, the epicenter was in a sparsely populated area and didn’t cause too many casualties.

He glanced through the information quickly, then closed it.

He clicked into the game.

Game loading…

Usually the loading speed of the game was extremely fast, and there was almost no need to wait. Even in crews that had bad signals, there was no wait during the loading time.

He waited for a minute, his eyebrows tightening gradually, his relaxed back tensing up again. He exited the game, closed all programs, and loaded it again. This time the progress bar seemed to be a bit faster than before, but it was still stuck at 95%, and it was difficult to enter the game interface.

A few minutes later, when the game still showed loading failure, Mo Yi Cheng panicked completely.

Another ten minutes later, his hand that was holding the phone shook, but the game was still stuck at 95%, reloading.

“Chen Jiao, stop the car!” He snapped.

Chen Jiao stepped on the brake, stopping the car on the side of the road.

He opened the door and got out of the car, only feeling that the air inside the car was suffocating. There were very few pedestrians and vehicles on the road.

He quickly used his other cell phone to call Kan Ming, telling him to immediately contact the company’s technical department and call someone to deal with the phone’s malfunction.

Kan Ming who was on the other end of the phone was quite surprised. He rarely saw his boss so flustered to the point of losing his ability to handle things with good judgment. Most of the Mo family’s companies were either in the entertainment or real estate business. The technical department only managed their computer network systems and hardware. A mobile game, to them, was so out of their jurisdiction that it was worlds apart.

“Second young master, why don’t we contact Mr. Chen. He has close contact with game companies and the technology development side, moreover the Chen family seems to be trying to enter the mobile game market, so he should be able to find the right person to handle it.” Kan Ming said.

Mo Yi Cheng hesitated for a moment. The less people knew about the game, the better, but the current situation couldn’t be helped, “… Alright, I’ll contact Chen Sheng.”

After hanging up, he called Chen Sheng who was getting wasted with a group of friends, the background music on the other end of the phone deafening.

“Chen Sheng, where are you now, I’ll come to you immediately!” Mo Yi Cheng’s voice was urgent, very different from the ‘even if the sky is falling I won’t be alarmed’ impression that Chen Sheng had of him.

“Alright.” Chen Sheng knew that something big must have happened. He went back to the private box, said goodbye to his friends, picked up his jacket and headed out. After standing at the door for less than five minutes, Mo Yi Cheng’s car arrived.

Mo Yi Cheng opened the door for him from the inside hurriedly, motioning for him to get into the car immediately. Chen Sheng jumped in, asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Chen Sheng, you have to help me with something, but you must be tight-lipped about it.” The gaze with which Mo Yi Cheng used to look at him was extremely serious.

Having known each other for so many years, this was the first time Mo Yi Cheng had spoken to him like this. Chen Sheng pulled his collar up nervously, “Alright, go ahead.”

An hour later.

He still failed to log in to the game successfully.

Mo Yi Cheng paced inside Chen Sheng’s office. The technical experts that Chen Sheng had invited had failed to solve the problem even after seeing the cell phone and the game. To them, the ‘Elf Rebirth Program’ game was just a very simple low-end mobile game. As to why there was no way to log in, it was likely that there was a problem with the game’s terminal, which couldn’t be solved by technical means from the cell phone’s end.

Chen Sheng snuffed out the cigarette… he didn’t even know the count, “Yi Cheng, how about you give the phone to me, I’ll find someone…”

“No.” Mo Yi Cheng interrupted without thinking. He ripped the tie off his neck with one hand and threw it onto the leather seat. Closing his eyes slightly, he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window with his back to him.

It was already 22:35.

Mo Yi Cheng was now full of thoughts about Yuan Suo alone at home. Would he be afraid if he couldn’t contact him? What was even more frightening was that if the malfunctioning couldn’t be resolved from the game’s end, or the game’s interface had problems in the future… the consequences would be unimaginable. This was why he had asked Kan Ming to investigate the game around the world early as possible, in order to prevent such a thing from happening, but it had still happened!

He held his forehead with one hand, massaging his aching temple.

“Chen Sheng.”

“Hmm.” Chen Sheng responded, before discovering after a while that Mo Yi Cheng had merely called his name unconsciously, not looking like he intended to say anything.

All of a sudden, Mo Yi Cheng’s head jerked up, immediately striding out the door. Kan Ming and Chen Jiao who had been guarding the door were shocked when they saw him.

His eyes were a little red and his bangs that had been done with utmost care had become messy because of his movements.

“Kan Ming, drive, we’re going to find that Long Bow right now!”