The Protagonist and the Villain Both Kissed Me [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 46

Inside the silent room, Su Xi was pinned ruthlessly in Xiao Yangyao’s arms. The alluring scent of orchids wafted from him, growing increasingly thick in the air. His delicate face was beaded with sweat, his skin flushed as if he had just undergone intense physical exertion.

Hearing Uranus’s voice, he regained a flicker of clarity. He squinted, trying to look toward the source of the sound, but his head was forced back by his captor. A torrential kiss followed, hot and overbearing, blocking almost all the oxygen in his lungs. Saliva he couldn’t swallow in time slid down the corner of his mouth.

Su Xi pressed his hands against the man’s chest, his eyes fluttering open to look at Uranus, silently pleading for him to stop Xiao Yangyao again.

Xiao Yangyao, ever attentive, sensed the intention. His brow furrowed as he reached out to pull Su Xi away, but before he could apply any force, the youth began to whimper in pain.

“Mm… gentler… it hurts.” Su Xi’s usually calm black eyes were now a hazy mess of confusion.

Xiao Yangyao’s gaze swept over Su Xi’s swollen, red lips before landing sharply on Uranus. “Let go of him.”

Uranus did not let go. Instead, he stared at the semi-conscious Su Xi. “He was the one who took the backup device, Su Xi. Did you hear me?”

The moment the words left his mouth, Xiao Yangyao felt the person in his arms stiffen. Su Xi began a small, weak struggle to escape. Xiao Yangyao sneered, countering: “You’d rather believe the words of this stranger with an unknown background than believe me?”

Su Xi frowned and pushed with all his might. Caught off guard, Xiao Yangyao let him slip away.

He had come to the Director’s office to find clues, not to get caught in a standoff. Su Xi bit his lip, checked his pocket to ensure the surveillance room key was still there, and quickly rounded Uranus. He yanked the door open and bolted. He nearly stumbled and fell, but he ignored the hands reaching out to steady him.

Bolting down the stairs at the fastest speed of his life, Su Xi didn’t stop until he was certain no one was following. He ducked into the nearest restroom, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water over his face. Looking at his flushed reflection in the mirror, his eyes were clouded with irritable gloom.

“System, this cursed constitution… this orchid scent won’t follow me to the next world, will it?” Su Xi sighed helplessly in his mind. In the first world, Duan Cheng had been obsessed with biting his gland and his scent; he couldn’t help but feel a lingering fear.

Having a strange, attractive scent was bad enough, but now he had “skin hunger” a condition that left him weak at a single touch. He felt like the protagonist of a “total bottom” web novel; in a polite society, a character like this would be locked away in a “little dark room.”

“Don’t worry, Host! It definitely won’t,” 1368 replied cautiously. “However, I’ve received the ‘After-Story’ from the previous world. Would you like to see it?” The System was careful; Su Xi’s ending in the last world had been tragic, and it feared that mentioning Duan Cheng would cause him grief.

“You guys even have after-sales service? Let’s see it.” Su Xi was genuinely curious. He leaned against the sink as a large screen flickered to life, showing the scenes after his departure.

He watched with cold indifference as Duan Cheng held his body, face twisted in agony. Su Xi lay in a pool of blood, eyes closed tight. By the time the ambulance arrived, he had no pulse.

Duan Cheng refused to let go of the corpse. The look on that cold, sharp face was something Su Xi had never seen before, perhaps pain, perhaps regret, but to the current Su Xi, it didn’t matter.

Fu Heng and Li Huai, who rushed in after receiving the news, were equally stunned. They couldn’t believe the vibrant person they had seen just a short while ago was now a cold body on a white stretcher, his skin so pale it looked as if it might turn transparent and vanish.

Duan Cheng sat in a daze, ignoring the heavy punches and vicious curses thrown at him. He stared only at the person lying peacefully, as if asleep except for the garish mark on his neck that screamed the truth: he had hounded his lover to death. He had hounded the person who originally loved him into the grave.

The “love” he thought he gave was nothing more than a shackle, the fuse that forced Su Xi to leave him.

He saw the scalpel in the medical kit. He lunged for it, intending to slash his own throat, but people rushed in to restrain him, forcibly injecting him with two doses of sedative.

Later, warm yellow light spilled through a window onto a hospital bed.

Duan Cheng woke up, his pupils vacant and unfocused. He scrambled out of the room, asking everyone for Su Xi’s whereabouts.

Behind the blue-lit screen, Su Xi watched calmly as the man went mad, searching everywhere until he found himself lying in the morgue. Time seemed to stop. Next to the body was a cardboard box filled with various hand-folded paper cranes gifts that were never sent.

The ten-minute video summarized Duan Cheng’s remaining life. He died clutching that box of paper cranes in a golden cage. Until the day he died, he never knew that those cranes were merely a final “gift” of phantom affection Su Xi had left for him in his dying delusions.

“Host, the bloodier scenes were edited out. I can apply for them if you want to see,” 1368 noted. Seeing Su Xi’s long silence, the System thought he didn’t find the ending tragic enough. “He died less than three months after you left that world.”

“Did he go insane…?” Su Xi lowered his lashes, murmuring to himself. He thought a psychopath like Duan Cheng would be different, but apparently, even monsters regret losing what they love. But late-coming affection is worth less than grass; regret only comes after it’s too late.

“No need,” Su Xi declined. He tossed a wet paper towel into the trash, closed the screen, and headed toward the second-floor surveillance room.

Perhaps because it was lunch hour, he didn’t encounter many subjects on the way. It felt unnervingly quiet. Su Xi crept along, slipped into the surveillance room, and locked the door behind him. He looked at the wall of monitors displaying real-time feeds of the Institute.

He pulled up a chair and scanned the screens. His eyes locked onto several unusual feeds. Unlike the chaotic hallways elsewhere, a few corridors were completely deserted the walls and floors pristine.

“The fourth floor is Mephisto’s territory. What about the fifth?” Su Xi frowned. If he recalled correctly, there was a special subject on the fifth floor—S92, whom he was technically responsible for. However, S92 had been in a deep sleep for a long time.

His files on S92 were sparse: a gene-mutated hybrid of human and reptile. He had never seen it. According to the System, how am I supposed to ‘eliminate or recapture’ these things?

“Host, what are you thinking about?” 1368 asked curiously.

Su Xi blinked. “I’ll look for the backup device first. If I can’t find it, I’ll just burn the Institute down. I’m the only human left, anyway.”

His tone was casual, as if arson were a perfectly logical solution.

“…But the Salvation Value is only at 85! What about our mission?” The System was clearly more worried than Su Xi. The main goal was saving the villain; the hidden mission was secondary.

“I just remembered a third option,” Su Xi said, a flash of excitement in his black eyes. “The mirror on the second basement level can grant wishes. But the Institute is on lockdown… and I need a cake…”

He opened the System shop and scrolled through the dessert section. After much digging, he found a strawberry cream cake. It was a basic cake, yet it cost 3,000 points!

“This is a robbery!” Su Xi gnashed his teeth and hit buy, wishing he could call a consumer rights hotline to complain about the System shop.

Despite having checked the monitors, he ran into trouble the moment he stepped out. It was the purple octopus he had seen earlier, the one that had strangled a researcher. When its round eyes caught sight of him, it immediately waved its tentacles and squeezed toward him, deforming the walls in its path.

Su Xi cursed his luck and bolted. But he was no match for a mutant’s speed. Within a few meters, a deep purple tentacle snared his ankle and dragged him back. Su Xi’s breath hitched, his face turning deathly pale. The slimy tentacle gripped his ankle so hard he felt his bone might snap.

The black, beady eyes stared straight at him. The octopus slammed him against the wall with a dull thud. The impact on his spine left Su Xi crumpled on the floor, unable to crawl away.

His vision blurred from the pain as the massive silhouette loomed over him. Slimy, foul-smelling suckers crept up his legs. His neck was given special attention, the suckers latched on until the skin was red and swollen.

The unintelligent octopus only felt that this human smelled delicious; it didn’t kill him instantly. Instead, it manipulated its tentacles to bundle him up, intending to drag him back to its lair.

Su Xi felt like he was floating in a fog, weak and devoid of strength. He struggled to get up, but the surrounding tentacles were too slick; he repeatedly stumbled and fell back into the monster’s grasp.