The Heartthrob Guide: Dodder of S-Class Sentinels

Chapter 259 Broken Dream
Lin Nan followed Lin Nian to sit down at the dining table, and as he had done for many years, he would always put the first bite of each dish into her bowl.

The tenderest part of the steamed mandarin fish belly, the small pieces of sweet and sour pork ribs stewed until they fell off the bone, and the dewy leaves of the stir-fried vegetables—each dish was precisely placed on her rice, in just the right proportions, neither too much nor too little.

She had been living with Lin Nian since she was fourteen, and the man knew her tastes and habits very well.

Lin Nan stared at the ordinary food in her bowl, then turned to look at the familiar person beside her. For a moment, she felt a little dazed, as if her post-apocalyptic life had really just been a dream.

"Why aren't you eating? Didn't you keep saying you wanted this this morning?" Lin Nian put the deboned fish meat into her bowl, and when she looked up, she met her gaze. The smile in her eyes was so gentle it could melt ice and snow.

"No...it's delicious." Lin Nan came back to her senses, picked up her chopsticks, took a piece of fish and put it in her mouth. The familiar freshness spread on her tongue, and her eyes became hot again. She quickly lowered her head and ate her rice to hide her embarrassment.

"Eat more if you like it, there's more in the pot." The man added another chopstickful to her plate.

"I can pick it up myself, I'm not a child anymore."

"Haha." After hearing her pouting words, the man laughed, a deep chuckle coming from his chest. He put down his chopsticks, reached out and ruffled her hair. "That's right, our Nannan is a grown-up now. Next month is your eighteenth birthday, have you thought about what gift you want?"

Lin Nan paused in her eating, then said, "I already turned eighteen, I'm almost twenty-three this year..."

"..." Lin Nian didn't reply. Under the warm yellow light, the outline of his profile seemed to become somewhat blurred, and even the curve of his mouth seemed less real.

An eerie atmosphere enveloped the entire space once again. The aroma of food that had been filling the air seemed to fade considerably in an instant, and Lin Nan's fingers tightened slightly as she held the chopsticks.

"I'm sorry," she finally said hesitantly after a long pause.

The man stopped eating, put down his chopsticks and bowl, and his smile remained gentle.

"That's strange, why are you apologizing?"

"I'm sorry..." Lin Nan repeated. At this moment, she didn't know what else to say besides apologizing. All the complex emotions that had been building up in her heart—guilt, regret, and reluctance—were stuck in her throat, leaving only these three words to be repeated palely, as if repaying a debt that was too late.

In the last few years of her original world, she seemed to be enveloped by resentment. She resented the man's tyranny and domineering attitude towards her, but forgot that over the years, besides the untimely "love," there was also a deep "family bond" that had long been ingrained in their bones.

He had always wanted to find an opportunity to have a proper talk with her, but she always avoided it and hurt him time and time again with her indifferent attitude.

Lin Nian looked at her quietly, and after a while, she quietly got up and walked behind Lin Nan.

The familiar surroundings vanished, leaving only a vast expanse of white in the entire space.

The man stood behind the girl, and this time he did not rush to hug her, but maintained a relatively safe distance.

"Did she hurt you just now?" the man asked quietly. "Although she can be a bit extreme at times, she's actually a good girl."

Lin Nan shook her head and replied, "No."

Even though the girl wanted to corrupt her, she still treated her very gently. Just as Lin Nian said, she wasn't a bad child.

"That's good." The man finally let out a sigh of relief, his tense shoulders relaxing slightly, a hint of relieved weariness in his eyes. "She was synthesized from your data, a program that was supposed to make an epic leap forward in human life engineering, but it was ruined by me in my extreme state at the time. The one who should really apologize is me..."

"If that pollution hadn't happened five hundred years ago, would humanity have ended up like this?" Lin Nan asked, gazing at the gradually blurring streets outside the window. "I don't know either," Lin Nian replied. "What's done is done; there are no 'ifs.' But one thing is clear to me: even if I hadn't developed this system, and you hadn't been the chosen observer, someone else would have done it."

"Human beings should pay a huge price for trying to change the laws of life. The evolution of history has its natural laws. Although all science and technology and ecology have regressed and the living environment is unimaginably harsh, it must be said that the changes in human beings have achieved what we initially expected."

"Are you referring to the sentinels' spiritual entities and their different abilities?"

“Yes, life is a very magical species. They adapt to the environment and make the right choices.” Lin Nian’s gaze drifted to the window, as if she were seeing a laboratory from five hundred years ago through a dream. “After the pollution outbreak, radiation was like a brutal key that forcibly opened Pandora’s box of the human gene pool.”

"Some humans survived the radiation and their bodies spontaneously integrated gene fragments from the surrounding plants and animals, resulting in an 'evolution' that went beyond basic physical abilities. But in fact, our initial idea was just to achieve a gentler genetic optimization so that humans would have a stronger ability to adapt to harsh environments in the future."

"..."

Lin Nan lowered her eyes. The man's logic was too powerful; she could no longer find any reason to refute him.

As before, in their standoff, she was always the one in a weaker position.

That's why they eventually drifted apart.

"Did I upset you again?" the man asked cautiously, a hint of unease in his voice. Looking at Lin Nan's silence, he belatedly realized he had repeated his past mistakes.

The man knelt down on one knee silently. After struggling for a long time, he gently tugged at the corner of her sleeve, his voice as dejected as an abandoned puppy: "I'm sorry, please don't be angry with me anymore, okay?"

The humility and pleading in his posture were completely different from his calm and composed demeanor, which made Lin Nan's heart clench.

She silently shook her head: "I'm not angry. Can you let me... and my sentinel out now?" Caesar was still outside fighting the pollution. Every second he was delayed, his mental energy was depleted. She couldn't stay any longer.

“I can let that lion out.”

"what about me?"

"..."

"Can't you?"

"...Wouldn't it be better if you stayed here with me? If you want, you can continue living like you did five hundred years ago. Your sister and brother-in-law, your former classmates and colleagues, they will all be here with you forever."

As he spoke, he raised his hand and waved it gently. Suddenly, flowing light and shadow appeared behind him, conjuring vivid images: his mother's back as she cooked for him in the kitchen, his father's profile as he sat in a wicker chair reading the newspaper, the laughter and playfulness he shared with his classmates while staying up all night in bed during college, and even the boss who always made things difficult for her when she first started working, raising an eyebrow at her in the light and shadow... Those people who had long since passed away were now vividly presented before his eyes, so warm that it made his heart tremble.

Lin Nan looked at those familiar faces, and her eyes reddened again.

This is exactly the scene she longs for most in her midnight dreams.

but--

"Lin Nian," Lin Nan looked at him sadly, "I'm already dead, and five hundred years have passed in this world. Although the illusions you created were very tempting, and although I longed to reach out and hug them, it was all fake..."

(End of this chapter)