Rebirth of a Mercenary: The Ace Mercenary Forced to Be the Beloved of the Group

Bai Ye woke up completely.

He blinked twice, and his eyes, which had been misty with sleep, quickly regained their clarity. His expression shifted from the drowsy state of someone just waking up to the standard calm of a white night, as if turning the pages of a book—his lips straightened, his brows returned to their normal position, and the soft, languid aura he exuded vanished completely within three seconds.

He turned to look at Zhao Xiaohu: "?"

Zhao Xiaohu felt a chill run down his spine from that one look.

The Bai Ye who had been leaning on Xuan Xiao's shoulder, his cheeks bulging from drinking strawberry milk, was gone. In his place stood the familiar Ye-ge, the one who could freeze the entire training ground with a single glance. But the hunger in his stomach overcame his awe of Bai Ye's cold face. He braced himself on his knees, leaned forward, and stared at Bai Ye expectantly, his expression like a large dog crouching under a table waiting to be fed: "Ye-ge, are you hungry?"

Bai Ye was about to say that he wasn't hungry.

Then he saw Zhao Xiaohu's eyes—those bright, hungry eyes that placed all their hopes on him.

He glanced at Qian Duoduo again. Qian Duoduo was sitting on the other side of Lu Xiao, with her hands on her knees and her neck stretched out. Her expression wasn't as exaggerated as Zhao Xiaohu's, but her eyes were filled with the same thing.

The two people, separated by Lu Xiao, were like two animals locked in the same cage waiting for their meal, their gazes so intense they could pierce two holes in the carriage.

Bai Ye was silent for a moment. Then he sighed—a very soft sigh, but it was definitely a sigh. The kind of sigh that says, "Why should I care about these things?"

He turned around, stretched out his left hand, pinched the cuff of Li Mo's training uniform with two fingers, and gently tugged at it. He had done this before in the infirmary. At that time, he had just finished surgery, his right arm was in a cast, and he had pulled Li Mo's cuff in the same way, dragging the furious Li Mo back from Xuan Xiao's sight.

"Class monitor."

Li Mo opened his eyes. He hadn't actually been asleep; he'd just been resting with his eyes closed. He'd clearly felt Bai Ye tugging at his sleeve. He turned his head, his gaze falling on Bai Ye's fingers still gripping his sleeve. He paused for half a second, then looked up, his tone as brief as ever: "Call me brother."

Bai Ye paused for a moment. He tilted his head, his expression changing from calm to obvious confusion. His lips parted slightly, and a very faint frown appeared between his brows, as if he was trying to understand the connection between those two words and the request he had just made.

"I told you to stop the car, and you want me to call you brother?" Bai Ye's voice returned to its usual indifferent tone, but the slight rise at the end revealed his genuine confusion.

"Call me 'brother' and I'll stop the car."

Bai Ye stared at Li Mo for two seconds.

Li Mo's expression remained unchanged, his lips showed no curve, his eyes were unwavering, and he exuded a cold, hard aura that said, "I'm not joking and I never will." But what he said was clearly loaded with his own agenda.

Bai Ye quickly weighed the options in his mind—calling someone "brother" in exchange for stopping Zhao Xiaohu and Qian Duoduo's stomachs from growling was a low-investment, high-return deal in economics.

"...Brother Mo?"

Call me brother.

Bai Ye took a deep breath. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, his lips moving as if he were mentally preparing himself.

In his past life, he was a top assassin in a mercenary group. No one dared to bargain with him, and no one dared to force him to call him "brother." But now he was a sixteen-year-old recruit. To his left sat his brother's second-in-command and current squad leader, and to his right sat his partner and dedicated troublemaker. Across from him sat two comrades who were starving.

"……elder brother."

The word came out of Bai Ye's mouth not loudly, and the tone was very flat, but the ending sound was a bit abrupt, as if he wanted to throw the word on the ground and walk away quickly after saying it.

Li Mo's lips curled slightly. He maintained that slight smile as he looked at Bai Ye, his tone still commanding, but his voice was much gentler than before: "Call me that from now on."

Bai Ye frowned. "I just wanted you to stop the car—"

"It's settled then." Li Mo interrupted him, turned back, took out his communicator from his pocket, pressed the call button, and told the driver, "Stop at the next rest area." Then he put the communicator back in his pocket, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes.

Bai Ye opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but seeing Li Mo's closed eyes and that cold face that seemed to say "this matter is over," he swallowed his words. He turned back, his expression a calculated calm—the kind of calm that says, "I know I've been tricked, but I choose not to care."

Then Xuanxiao came over.

His shoulder pressed against Bai Ye's right shoulder, his head lowered, and he leaned close to Bai Ye's ear. His breath brushed against Bai Ye's earlobe, carrying the lingering scent of laundry detergent from his training uniform. He lowered his voice so that only the two of them could hear, his tone carrying a sly expectation: "Call me 'brother' too, okay?"

Bai Ye turned to look at him expressionlessly. "Don't call out."

"Call me brother and I'll buy you a blueberry cake."

Bai Ye's pupils twitched slightly.

Bai Ye's lips moved. Silence. Then:

"……elder brother."

Xuan Xiao's expression exploded in that instant. The corners of his mouth curled up into a smile that he tried desperately to suppress but couldn't.

He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, chin slightly raised, radiating a triumphant glow. He turned to look at Bai Ye, letting out a low, smug laugh: "Good boy."

Bai Ye's expression had returned to its standard indifferent mode, but when he spoke, his gaze did not look at Xuan Xiao, but stared at the back of the seat in front of him, his tone carrying a sense of helplessness as if he had sold himself out and was even helping to count the money.

He stretched out his hand, palm up, and laid it out in front of Xuan Xiao: "Cake."

"I'll buy it for you after we get off the bus." Xuanxiao smiled and raised an eyebrow. "Your brother keeps his word."

"You're not my brother."

"You just called him 'brother' yourself, two words. You only said one word on Li Mo's end, but I said one more, so it's a sure win."

Bai Ye stared at him for two seconds. A faint, suppressed helplessness flashed in his calm eyes, like a seasoned assassin facing a shameless classmate, realizing that all his cold-blooded killer moves had failed.

He looked away, leaned back in his chair, and squeezed out a single syllable: "Mmm."

After receiving the instructions, the driver changed the bus's direction of travel from the main road to the ramp leading to the rest area.

Half an hour later, the bus slowly pulled into the rest area. The gravel in the parking lot crunched under the tires. The driver pulled the handbrake, and the pneumatic door opened with a hiss.