The Sickly Double Doesn't Want to Be Spoiled - Chapter 22.2

Chapter 22.2

“Then what about this?” Meng Yuan pointed to his plate. “This fish is also delicious.”

“Freshly caught Blue-footed Booby fish, grilled over charcoal. You think it’s delicious because our chef has his own secret sauce.”

“So that’s it,” Meng Yuan agreed deeply. “Sure enough, to succeed in any profession, one must have their own unique skill.”

Lu Cong observed him curiously.

This kid always loved to burst out with life reflections for no reason, acting like an old soul speaking profound truths.

He wouldn’t judge the quality of the reflections, but the way he talked to himself was quite cute.

After finishing breakfast, Meng Yuan covered his stomach and let out a burp.

He had eaten too much; he wouldn’t be able to eat lunch for a while. He hoped the lunch menu wouldn’t be too good.

He had vomited too severely yesterday, and his gastrointestinal tract hadn’t fully recovered. Fearing his stomach would hurt again later, Meng Yuan sat for a while then got up to walk around to aid digestion.

Song Zhen brought Lu Cong a briefing manual. The cover showed a streamlined white submersible wandering in the deep blue sea.

The briefing summarized today’s weather and sea conditions, the basic situation of the submersible, the itinerary time, and precautions.

Song Zhen: “If there are no problems, we can head out to sea after a short rest.”

Lu Cong looked down, thought for a bit: “Are the common medicines prepared?”

“Don’t worry, everything is ready.”

“Mm.” Lu Cong nodded with satisfaction.

Meng Yuan strolled back and was immediately attracted by the booklet in Lu Cong’s hand.

“What a beautiful submersible,” he marveled.

“Do you like it?” Lu Cong asked. “We’re going diving later.”

“Really?” Meng Yuan leaned in excitedly. “Yes, yes! What do I need to prepare? If I’m sitting inside, I don’t need to wear a diving suit, right? Will the door open to go out halfway? I can’t swim.”

If you can’t swim, you can’t swim. Why do you say it with such a proud face?

Lu Cong looked at him, strangely amused into a smile.

“That’s great. It’s fine that you can’t swim. We’re not going out, just sitting inside to watch,” Lu Cong said. “Deep-sea diving requires professional training. Your body can’t handle those pressure changes.”

“Is that so…” Meng Yuan was thoughtful.

Lu Cong laughed: “Why, do you really want to learn diving?”

Meng Yuan curled his lip: “I was just thinking.”

Lu Cong raised an eyebrow, observing Meng Yuan anew.

He noticed that this child was becoming more and more relaxed.

When he first came to the house, he was a bit dull, but now it was as if some childhood nature had been liberated he was curious about everything and wanted to try out everything he saw.

If it were anything else, Lu Cong would let him, but diving really was out of the question.

“Don’t be unhappy,” Lu Cong patted his head. “Sitting in a submersible is also fun. You don’t have to swim yourself, and it’s not tiring, right?”

Meng Yuan thought about it and found it made a lot of sense.

“I’m not unhappy,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it!”

…

At two in the afternoon, the group headed to the main island pier on time.

Meng Yuan and Qin Qing sat in an electric golf cart, passing through a coconut grove to arrive at the east side of the island, a pier specifically designed for deep-sea activities.

At the end of the pier, a twenty-to-thirty-meter-long work boat was quietly moored.

The hull was completely snow-white with elegant lines. It was a submersible mother ship designed for top-tier clients, with an open-air viewing deck on the upper level and rest and equipment cabins on the lower level.

As soon as Meng Yuan got out of the car, he pulled out his phone and took a photo.

Lu Cong had arrived first and was leaning against the pier railing, arms crossed, looking at him with a somewhat sour face.

Before leaving, he had specifically waited for Meng Yuan for a while, wanting to let Meng Yuan get in the car first out of gentlemanly etiquette.

Who would have thought Meng Yuan would go straight into Qin Qing’s car, not sparing him a single glance from beginning to end, successfully turning him into a joke standing by the golf cart.

All the way there, Lu Cong couldn’t help looking back, wondering what magic Qin Qing had cast to make Meng Yuan so enthralled.

It turned out the two of them were taking photos the whole time.

“Oh, so beautiful!”

“Oh, why is our Xiao Yuan so cute and so good at taking photos!”

“Yes, yes, turn your face a bit more…”

“Got it, got it! This set is definitely going to turn out well!”

Qin Qing’s praises drifted far and wide, one after another. Lu Cong heard them from dozens of meters ahead.

He took a peek. Good heavens, Meng Yuan, who couldn’t resist praise, had been coaxed into losing his bearings, twisting himself into a pretzel just for the photos.

“Heh.”

Lu Cong turned his head away disdainfully.

“Heh!”

He crossed his arms, his fingers tapping anxiously.

Until now, Lu Cong maintained that same posture, silently staring at Meng Yuan.

Meng Yuan finally finished taking photos. Probably because they really turned out well, his face was red with happiness, his hands constantly scrolling through his phone.

“Let me see,” Lu Cong said.

Meng Yuan generously handed him the phone: “Sister Qin Qing is so amazing, she’s great at taking photos, no editing needed.”

Lu Cong flipped through them patiently; they were indeed quite good.

Meng Yuan was good-looking; actually, no matter how he was photographed, he wouldn’t be ugly. What was rare was that he really looked very happy, so it was beautiful exceptionally beautiful.

This beauty was separate from his features or appearance; it was a beauty that made one’s heart feel warm and full of vitality just by looking at it.

For some reason, the slight displeasure in Lu Cong’s heart vanished along with those smiles. He selected a few to forward to himself and returned the phone to Meng Yuan.

“Let’s go, time to board.”

The mother ship slowly left the pier, passing through the calm emerald waters of the lagoon and heading toward the gap in the atoll.

The lagoon was calm, but after sailing out of the atoll into the open South Pacific, the hull gradually began to sway slightly.

Feeling that swaying, Meng Yuan instinctively grabbed the armrest of his seat.

This movement was extremely subtle, yet Lu Cong perceived it keenly.

“Sea sick?” he asked.

It wasn’t his first time on a boat with Meng Yuan. In his memory, Meng Yuan shouldn’t get seasick during the last cruise night tour, Meng Yuan’s condition had been quite good.

But perhaps because the situation on the plane had been so tragic, as soon as Lu Cong saw Meng Yuan, he couldn’t help remembering the way he had vomited as if his life depended on it, and a faint unease grew in his heart.

“A little, but it’s okay,” Meng Yuan answered truthfully.

It probably wasn’t seasickness. Since he had vomited, his stomach hadn’t fully recovered and twitched from time to time. Meng Yuan felt this had nothing to do with being on a boat.

And it wasn’t unbearable; his excitement for deep-sea diving completely overshadowed this minor discomfort.

Lu Cong didn’t say anything more. He got up and walked toward the mini-bar inside the cabin, returning a moment later with a small glass of ginger ale and a slice of lime on the rim.

“Drink this. It’s gentler than motion sickness medicine and safer for you.”

Meng Yuan didn’t expect him to have gone to get him a drink. He froze for half a second before taking it, still not quite used to Lu Cong’s occasional outbursts of tenderness and thoughtfulness.

“Thank you.”

He lowered his eyelids and took a sip. The slight spiciness of the ginger spread on the tip of his tongue, indeed easing that faint sense of nausea.

Soon, the ship reached the boarding point. The submersible had detached from the stern of the mother ship and was floating quietly on the sea surface.

Entering the submersible hatch required a small floating platform, necessitating a step across a half-meter-wide gap of water.

Although the waves were small, the platform still swayed slightly.

Lu Cong stood on it first, then turned around and reached out his hand to Meng Yuan.

“What are you dazed for? Come here,” he said. “Didn’t you say you can’t swim? Let’s get this straight: if you fall in, I’m not responsible for fishing you out.”

He made a gesture as if to withdraw his hand, and Meng Yuan quickly grabbed it: “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

He held on very tight, as if afraid Lu Cong was serious and would really leave him behind, grabbing Lu Cong’s arm as he stepped across.

The platform swayed gently. Lu Cong wrapped his arm around Meng Yuan’s waist to help him maintain balance, only to see Meng Yuan bury his head in his chest, looking nervously at the surrounding sea.

“So easy to trick.”

“What?” Meng Yuan looked up.

Lu Cong pursed his lips: “Nothing. Don’t worry, with me here, I won’t really let you fall in.”

“Then I’ll thank you first,” Meng Yuan was still very nervous, saying urgently: “Can we go in now?”

Lu Cong: “…”

Great, this kid doesn’t believe him at all.

He sighed in his heart, supported Meng Yuan steadily, and guided him to sit in the right cabin of the submersible.

Each seat in the cabin was customized to the passenger’s body size, soft and comfortable. Before Meng Yuan was a giant hemispherical glass dome, providing an excellent view.

“This control panel,” Lu Cong pointed to the row of buttons in front of him, “you don’t need to touch it. The shore-based team will handle remote control for you. Once we go down, just focus on the scenery, okay?”

Meng Yuan nodded, the excitement in his eyes uncontrollable: “Understood!”

Lu Cong smiled, closed the hatch from the outside, and went around to the left cabin to take his own seat.

Click!

The seal lock made a crisp sound.

“Mr. Lu,” the instructor confirmed via the surface communication system, “pressure normal, life support system normal, communication normal. Are you ready to submerge?”

Lu Cong looked at Meng Yuan, who took a deep breath and nodded heavily.

“Ready,” Lu Cong said.

“Alright.”

The ballast tanks began to flood, and the submersible slowly sank.

The view gradually darkened. Meng Yuan looked up and saw the sunlight retracting from the surface above, turning into an increasingly smaller speck of light.

The seawater grew deeper before his eyes, finally presenting a deep blue that was almost black vast and profound, as if it could seal everything away.

Meng Yuan felt his heart instinctively tighten.

The control panel showed the depth of the descent.

10 meters.

15 meters.

At 20 meters, the submersible gave a slight shudder and stopped.

Outside the window was another world.

Vast stretches of coral reefs spread out grandly, extending into the endless deep sea, their colors gradually changing from pale yellow to dark brown with the waves.

Schools of fish swept by like a cyclone, flashing past Meng Yuan’s eyes, their fins leaving behind a pale blue metallic glimmer.

Meng Yuan entered.

He had never seen such a sight. Seeing it with his own eyes was completely different from the sea on those TV programs about the underwater world; they weren’t even in the same league.

In fact, Meng Yuan rarely even watched TV. Every day after coming home from work, he only wanted to collapse on the bed and pass out, without a single bit of extra energy.

Let alone watching documentaries to cultivate his mind.

The last time he had watched one, Meng Yuan recalled, seemed to have been back in primary school.

“What you are seeing now is one of the most intact primitive coral colonies preserved in the South Pacific,” the instructor’s voice came through the communication system. “This area has never been open to the public and only a very small number of scientific research teams are allowed entry each year.”

Lu Cong didn’t respond.

He was watching Meng Yuan.

Meng Yuan’s face was almost pressed against the observation window, his pupils dilated and his lips slightly parted it was pure, unguarded wonder.

The light from the searchlights illuminated the depths of his eyes, and the ripples of water were reflected on his face. It was as if he couldn’t see enough; he was even reluctant to blink.

It was as if his subconscious believed the world before him wasn’t something he should be seeing, and that it would vanish if he got distracted. He looked very seriously, as if wanting to carve everything into his mind.

“You like it that much?” Lu Cong was somewhat surprised.

“Mm.”

Meng Yuan’s nod was very slight, as if afraid of disturbing the fish in the sea.

His eyes were so bright that Lu Cong suddenly had a feeling that behind his immense joy, there seemed to be hidden a kind of near-staggered sense of loss.

But this feeling made no sense, so Lu Cong dismissed it as an illusion.

Suddenly, Meng Yuan reached out: “What is that over there?”

Lu Cong looked in the direction he was pointing.

Further away, in the deep blue water, there was an abrupt shadow, like a black hole.

“That’s the outer wall of the atoll,” Lu Cong said. “The edge of the coral reef breaks and drops off. You can think of it as an underwater cliff; some drops can be several hundred meters.”

“Wow,” Meng Yuan marveled. “It’s like a scene from a tomb-raiding novel.”

Lu Cong raised an eyebrow at him: “You read tomb-raiding novels?”

“I’ve dabbled a bit,” Meng Yuan pursed his lips shyly. “Just a bit.”

Lu Cong shook his head with a smile.

Since Meng Yuan loved this underwater world so much and couldn’t pull his eyes away from the window, the two stayed for a few minutes longer than planned.

“Isn’t it stuffy?” Lu Cong asked him.

“You’re stuffy?” Meng Yuan snapped back, his face showing some apology. “Am I wasting too much time? Let’s go back now.”

Realizing Meng Yuan had misunderstood his meaning, Lu Cong felt somewhat helpless.

“I don’t feel anything. I was afraid you… forget it. If you like it, stay a bit longer. We have plenty of oxygen reserves, it’s fine.”

“Good,” Meng Yuan laughed happily, turning back to continue watching as he spoke. “Even if it weren’t enough, I wouldn’t be afraid. I’m used to lacking oxygen from time to time anyway, hehe.”

These words, however, caused Lu Cong to suddenly frown: “Do you always feel like you lack oxygen?”

“Not always,” Meng Yuan said casually. “Occasionally.”

Lu Cong didn’t speak again, his expression becoming somewhat solemn.

Suddenly, a slight crackle of static came from the communication system inside the submersible.

Meng Yuan instinctively looked over. A red light on the panel lit up, showing a system interruption.

At the same time, one of the submersible’s external lights automatically went out. The sudden darkness made Meng Yuan’s heart skip a beat.

His body stiffened slightly, and he instinctively looked toward Lu Cong.

Deep sea, confined space, lost communication, intense unease surged toward Meng Yuan along with the darkness.

He didn’t know if it was nervousness or a common MDS palpitation reaction, but Meng Yuan’s heart rate accelerated sharply, and cold sweat broke out on his palms.

His voice trembled: “Lu…”

Lu Cong grabbed his hand.