Hesitation seemed to have escaped quite a while ago, yet the Aberration Management Bureau’s alarm hadn’t gone off at all.

“What the hell is going on?” Shi Shaoning snapped. “Don’t tell me the surveillance system is broken again. The detectors too? Weren’t they just fixed?!”

The Director’s expression was equally grim.

A containment failure was already serious enough, but now there wasn't even an alarm!

They hadn’t discovered that Hesitation escaped until they physically arrived at the containment cell themselves!

How could something like this happen?!

Was the Bureau really nothing more than some amateur makeshift operation?!

“This incident is extremely serious and exposes major security flaws! This must be thoroughly investigated! Check every possible human factor!” the Director ordered sharply. “Go. Now!”

The subordinate standing nearby broke into a sweat and rushed off at once.

But Lin Jianyuan said, “Wait. It might not have been human error.”

Everyone turned toward him.

Lin Jianyuan looked up at the cameras covering every angle of the containment cell, and he reached toward his roommate.

“Baby, lift me up.”

His roommate immediately understood. A length of intestine extended toward him and wrapped Lin Jianyuan up from head to toe like a safety harness.

Everyone watched as the intestine straightened upright and hoisted Lin Jianyuan all the way to the ceiling.

Lin Jianyuan held his mobile terminal close to one of the cameras.

The detector needle on the dial trembled.

It moved forward two steps, then backed up. Went forward for another two steps, and went back again.

Right in front of everyone, it gave a live demonstration of “Hesitation.”

Lin Jianyuan squeezed his roommate’s cecum, and the intestine slowly lowered him back down.

“...The cameras are coated with Contamination, so all the detectors are useless. I think Hesitation escaped on its own. There might be no human involvement at all... Why are you all staring at me?” Lin Jianyuan looked suspiciously around at everyone.

Everyone: “.” Nothing.

They simply felt a little physically uncomfortable after seeing a human being and a digestive system interact with such seamless intimacy.

Whatever. They’d already seen a human kiss a digestive system.

Compared to that, what was a digestive system lifting a person into the air?

“Ahem.” As expected of a highly respected senior figure, the Director was the first among them to regain his composure. “In any case, our priority is to capture Hesitation as quickly as possible. An S-class’s Contamination intensity is simply too high. If the Contamination spreads outward, things will become extremely troublesome.”

“Not easy.” Lin Jianyuan rubbed his temple. “The detectors aren’t working now. Finding Hesitation would be like looking for a needle in the ocean. I need to go back to the archives and check its previous containment records... Wife.”

Shi Shaoning’s expression suddenly changed in a subtle way. Before Shi Shaoning could say anything, Lin Jianyuan grabbed his roommate’s intestine and teleported away.

The Director asked, “What were you going to say?”

Shi Shaoning’s mouth twitched. “Isn’t Lin Jianyuan still on vacation?”

The Director replied, “They’re a dual-income household. Very high ideological awareness.”

Shi Shaoning looked at him as if he were an idiot.

The Director became slightly awkward. He coughed, lowered his voice, and said, “Don’t remind him. Someone has to do the work, don’t they? Aren’t you busy filming lately too? While Lin Jianyuan still has enthusiasm for the job, you should hurry up and enjoy your vacation.”

...If Lin Jianyuan heard those words, he would have seen through the old bastard’s little trick in one second.

Unfortunately, Shi Shaoning was still young.

Young Shi Shaoning immediately flew into a rage. “What the fuck do you mean by that?! You want me to take advantage of Lin Jianyuan?! This kind of capitalist bullshit from people like you is exactly how a newcomer’s passion gets drained away! I’m not like you! I refuse to sink to your level!!! I’m going to catch Hesitation right now! Just you wait, I’ll drag it back myself!”

Shi Shaoning stomped furiously out of the Containment Department, his leather boots striking the floor in heavy and rapid clacks.

The subordinate nearby: “...”

The Director asked with a benevolent smile, “What’s wrong? Is there something you want to say?”

The subordinate wore an indescribable expression. “N-No.”

Sigh. What a brutally hierarchical food chain.

Captain Lin → Director → Captain Shi.

Each level had the next one firmly in hand.

Meanwhile, in the archives.

Lin Jianyuan rapidly skimmed through [Hesitation]’s containment records.

Naturally, he came to investigate Hesitation, but not because he had any particular enthusiasm for work at this makeshift Bureau.

It was purely because... Damn! One mystery after another after another! If he didn’t figure this sh*t out, he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight!

Were S-class Aberrants all professional riddle masters or what?!

F**k this. The next time he saw one, he’d beat the sh*t out of it! Drag them all in! Tickle the soles of their feet! Make them listen to claws scraping across a blackboard! Force them to solve advanced math! No sleeping allowed!

So f**king annoying!

Lin Jianyuan opened [Hesitation]’s containment process. Then he involuntarily blurted: “Holy shit.”

Xie Yu asked, “What?”

The corner of Lin Jianyuan’s mouth twitched. “This Hesitation... was captured in a Pop Mart store??”

What the f**k?! Aberrants collected blind boxes too?!

And apparently this one was f**king loaded? Other people bought a whole display case, while this thing bought a shipping container???

He scrolled farther down, and a mugshot of Hesitation appeared on-screen.

The photo showed an ordinary-looking human girl with black hair.

It was a girl?

Although Lin Jianyuan already knew that all S-class Aberrants looked human, seeing this long and straight-haired girl still surprised him a little.

Then again, they already had Flash Granny. What was another blind-box-collector girl on top of that?

Lin Jianyuan wasn’t particularly good at estimating girls’ ages. To him, Hesitation looked somewhere between fifteen and twenty. So for now, he would call her a girl.

Great.

The moment he saw her photo, he stopped calling her “it” and started calling her “she.”

Sure enough. If something looked human, people really did instinctively treat it as human. Could this be some kind of method that S-class Aberrants used to bewitch people?

A thought suddenly struck Lin Jianyuan, and he turned to look at his roommate.

His roommate’s stomach, esophagus, liver, gallbladder, spleen, and pancreas all floated in their anatomically correct positions.

His soft pink intestines wriggled slowly, occasionally making a little gurgle sound, around four to five times per minute. A perfectly healthy rhythm.

And farther up... there was a beautifully curved mouth floating on its own, despite having no face.

“What?” The corner of his roommate’s mouth curved upward. Gentle and warm, as if he would never lose his temper. “Why are you staring at me?”

“Baby, why are you the only one who’s a digestive system?” Lin Jianyuan looked at his roommate carefully from top to bottom, then bottom to top.

Even though they spent every day together, Lin Jianyuan never got tired of looking at this entire digestive system. Every time he looked, it somehow felt fresh and interesting all over again.

No matter how many times he saw it, he still thought it was fascinating.

Everyone had a digestive system. But normally, it was inside the body.

Under ordinary circumstances, most people could live their entire lives without ever seeing a complete human digestive system. And yet this was undeniably a human digestive system.

It felt a little like the bubble hairy crabs. They looked exactly like fully cooked hairy crabs, but they were alive, crawled around, and blew bubbles.

That same uncanny violation of common sense.

And yet... so cute.

If Lin Jianyuan wasn't formally diagnosed with mental illness before, he would have seriously started wondering whether he truly had something wrong with his head.

At what exact point did things go off track? When did he start sincerely believing that pink innards were cute?

“No idea.” His roommate’s appendix swayed back and forth. “I’ve always been like this.”

Lin Jianyuan asked, “How old are you now?”

His roommate: “Huh?”

“Do Aberrants even have a concept of age? Or, put another way, how long has it been since you first developed self-awareness?”

His roommate thought for a while. “I don’t really remember.”

Lin Jianyuan stroked his chin and fell into thought.

Everyone else thought that Lin Jianyuan wasn’t an ordinary person. But now, Lin Jianyuan was starting to feel that maybe his wife wasn’t an ordinary S-class Aberrant either.

Great.

Mr. and Mr. Smith, right?

Then again, maybe this was just the lover’s-eye effect. Even intestines looked beautiful to him.

After all, even back when he was mentally ill, Lin Jianyuan already felt that his roommate was different from everyone else. (Although, to be fair, he really was different.)

Now that Lin Jianyuan wasn’t mentally ill anymore, thinking that Xie Yu was different from every other S-class Aberrant was perfectly reasonable too.

That was just what a love-brain does~

His roommate suddenly asked, “You don’t suspect me?”

Lin Jianyuan said, “Suspect you of what?”

“All the things you’re asking.” His roommate said, “I can’t answer any of your questions.”

“Not all of them.” Lin Jianyuan smiled. “And so what if you can’t answer? If you asked me right now why every Aberrant keeps coming to find me, or that it takes two to tango so there must obviously be something wrong with me... I wouldn’t be able to answer that either, right?”

The corner of his roommate’s mouth curved upward as his appendix swayed back and forth like a cat’s tail. It made you want to grab it.

Honestly...

Lin Jianyuan never once felt the slightest suspicion toward Xie Yu.

Maybe because... of what happened when he was mentally ill.

At this point, as long as Xie Yu genuinely existed... as long as Xie Yu wasn’t something he imagined... then that was enough.

Nothing else mattered.

As long as Xie Yu truly, truly existed. As long as he really wasn’t a hallucination.

That was enough.

While continuing to read Hesitation’s containment records, Lin Jianyuan casually asked his roommate a few other questions.

For example: How many S-class Aberrants were there in total? Did they ever get together socially?

His roommate burst out laughing. “No. I usually keep to myself. I don’t interact with other S-classes.”

As far as Xie Yu was concerned, his relationship with most Aberrants could be summarized as: eating and eaten.

Or, to be more precise... most Aberrants only occupied the “eaten” role when dealing with him.

So far, he had never encountered an Aberrant whose mouth was bigger than his, and apart from Remorse, he had never swallowed an Aberrant that he couldn’t digest.

(He hadn’t tasted the other S-classes yet. Maybe he could try next time. For example, Hesitation, who dared to break out.)

That was why Xie Yu was called a “combat-type S-class.”

Because aside from him, none of the other S-classes possessed abilities with clear offensive properties.

For example, Delirium’s ability made people confused and caused them to babble nonsense.

Remorse’s ability made people drown in regret, to the point where they would wake up in the middle of the night and slap themselves twice.

Hesitation’s ability made people indecisive. That ability could technically be used in combat, since... those who hesitate are bound to lose.

Then what about Flash Granny? Could her ability make people forget?

No. That wasn’t right. The abilities of these humanoid S-classes seemed to be related to emotions.

Like other Aberrants, they fed on negative human emotions and could also spread them.

But “forgetting” wasn’t an emotion.

Then what the hell was that old woman’s ability...

“Aaaaah, I'm done thinking!” The more Lin Jianyuan thought, the more irritated he became. “There aren’t enough clues! If I keep thinking about this, my brain is going to rot!”

His roommate laughed. “Then shall we go home?”

Only then did Lin Jianyuan remember that he was still on vacation. He immediately stood up. “Home!”

He reached out to grab his roommate’s little duodenum and was just about to teleport home when the mobile terminal on his wrist suddenly made the most hateful sound in the world.

Beep-beep-beep!

A long block of text appeared on the screen:

[

A-class Combatant Lin Jianyuan, please attend an emergency meeting today (2025/X/XX) at 16:30 in Conference Room XXXX. 

Agenda: Discussion of response and containment measures regarding the rapid spread of the A-class Aberrant [Cocoon Room] on the internet. All middle-management personnel are required to attend! No leave permitted! 

To reiterate: all middle-management personnel, including Field Operations, Containment, Internal Affairs, all logistics departments, personnel currently on vacation, and personnel currently on duty, must attend. No leave permitted. Medical leave is the sole exception.

]

Lin Jianyuan: “..................”

Sometimes he genuinely wanted to punch this stupid f**king Bureau into oblivion.

Then throw another punch and destroy this stupid f**king world too.