"Nian’er..." Jin Jiuchi’s chest rumbled in delight as he inhaled deeply, savoring the sweet fragrance he had yearned for the most. "Nian’er..." He did it again, this ti with his nose nuzzling into the area beneath Shen Nianzu’s ear, eliciting a shudder from the latter.
"It’s so good to be tall," Jin Jiuchi whispered quietly, arms tightening around Shen Nianzu as though wishing to devour the man into his body. "To hug Nian’er like this, to taste Shen Nianzu like this. Nian’er is small and petite; we will be able to protect you better this way."
Shen Nianzu almost cried again when he heard that. He wrapped his arms around Jin Jiuchi’s broad back and hugged the man closer to him, grasping fervently onto the black material of his shirt. It was soft and elastic, quite unlike ordinary fabric. It did not tear no matter how hard Shen Nianzu dug his nails into it.
"Did it hurt?" he asked in a soft whisper, his heart aching in distress. "Foolish, why would you do that? What if sothing went wrong in the process? What if..."
Any ordinary person would have reassured their lover, unwilling to see them worry. But how could Jin Jiuchi miss the opportunity to act spoiled toward his beloved Nian’er? Even though his current self did not have any mories of their ti together in the real world, he still acted based on his instinct and nodded, "It hurt. It hurt so bad that we felt like we were going to die..." he even let out a few pitiful whimpers for good asure.
As expected, he received a few tender kisses all over his face. Not only that, Shen Nianzu also gently scratched the area behind his ears, making him feel so blissful that he almost lted into a puddle of rainbow goo. "Oh my poor boys..." Shen Nianzu cooed softly, his tears falling like a string of translucent pearls down the beautiful curve of his cheeks.
Strangely enamored, Jin Jiuchi leaned in and licked his tears away, his chest rumbling in delight at the salty and delicious taste.
It was then that Shen Nianzu’s peripheral vision caught sight of sothing behind Jin Jiuchi’s back he had overlooked before due to how dark it was. If not for its exaggerated swinging motion and the shallow gust of wind it created, he wouldn’t have noticed its existence in the first place.
It was... a tail?
No, calling it a tail was not necessarily correct, because its size was so massive that it lood over him several tis the height. It was not furry either. Just a massive expanse of darkness connected to Jin Jiuchi’s back, a little more solid and tangible than the darkness around the room – if this space could be called as such.
Shen Nianzu belatedly realized that Jin Jiuchi’s lower half was still shrouded in dense darkness, and he couldn’t help but beco worried. "What is happening to you right now? Can you leave this place? This... this is the Forbidden Area, how did you get here in the first place?" He shot off a barrage of questions, while his hands gingerly moved below Jin Jiuchi’s torso to feel the darkness, but then he ended up shocked when his hand brushed against empty air. Jin Jiuchi’s lower half was not solid at all!
"This... this..."
Jin Jiuchi shrugged with a nonchalant attitude, as opposed to Shen Nianzu who looked absolutely aghast. "Well, it feels like we have been asleep for so long that we kinda forgot how to maintain a human form. It takes too much energy for us to do so. Don’t worry, Nian’er, everything will be okay once we rge with the main body."
"You... have been here for so long?" Shen Nianzu asked, his brows furrowed in concern.
"Longer than you could imagine," Jin Jiuchi chuckled. "Why does Nian’er look so sad? It’s okay, we have each other and... we often dreamt of Nian’er, so everything is fine." His different colored eyes twinkled as he cupped Shen Nianzu’s face and dragged his thumb across the area beneath Shen Nianzu’s eyes with a movent oh so gentle it was as if Shen Nianzu was a fragile porcelain that would shatter at the slightest force. "Whether it’s your smiling, your angry, crying, or serious face, you have always appeared in our dreams. Nian’er, is it weird that we feel like we have always known you, even before we t each other?"
Shen Nianzu blinked, attempting to process those words. Sothing seed to flash across his mind, on the cusp of breaking into the surface, but before he could grasp onto it properly, Jin Jiuchi’s gaze went through him and he nodded,
"You’re here."
Shen Nianzu swiveled around in shock, as he had not noticed any other presence except for the two of them. And imagine his surprise when he found a familiar small figure standing in the doorway, his brilliant blue eyes blinking up at him.
It was none other than their baby tour guide, Toki!
"You... are you here to bring away?" Shen Nianzu guessed, to which the baby responded with a nod. "Where is Xinxin? He’s not with you?"
Toki did not attempt to take another step into the room, rely beckoning for him to co. "Chirp."
"But..." Shen Nianzu grasped onto Jin Jiuchi tighter, afraid that they would be separated again. "What about him?"
"Don’t worry, Nian’er," Jin Jiuchi told him with a shit-eating grin. "Haven’t I said that I would follow you wherever you go?"
In the next second, Shen Nianzu was caught off guard when the space around him trembled – no, to be more exact, it was the darkness that twisted and shrunk in size. The abyssal torrent surged around Jin Jiuchi and engulfed him whole, and under Shen Nianzu’s stupefied gaze, its size kept shrinking and shrinking until it beca as small as marble.
It floated before Shen Nianzu, emitting a dark pulse of energy, waiting for him to grasp onto it.
"Chirp!" Toki exclaid in shock. Following Jin Jiuchi’s change in form, the darkness fully dissipated from the space, revealing the real appearance of the Forbidden Area— an endless expanse of empty space as far as the eye could see.
Swallowing hard, Shen Nianzu reached out to hold the marble in his hand, feeling it vibrate and thrum as if echoing Jin Jiuchi’s eagerness and delight. Sohow, the notion brought a small smile to his face. Taking a deep breath, Shen Nianzu turned to Toki and said, "I’m ready. How should I leave a piece of my mory behind?"
"Chirp..." Still shell-shocked, Toki forced himself to avert his gaze from the black marble to focus on Shen Nianzu. Hesitantly, he reached out a claw and tapped on the empty space before him.
A magical scene unfolded. From Shen Nianzu’s body floated out countless specks of light that glowed in an otherworldly light. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that these light spheres contained snippets of his mories. The scenes were entirely random— mini him in a small tuxedo accompanying his parents to attend a banquet, him undergoing one dical examination after another, him receiving his first personal task from the Nightmare, him battling against the nightmare creatures in the Cycles... there were also a lot of mories about Jin Jiuchi. Starting from the ti when they t on the bus, when they rood together for a week where Shen Nianzu’s annoyance slowly morphed into amusent and helplessness. When they curled up against each other inside the tent on an icy desert, when they danced within the depths of the sea, locked in each other’s embrace...
All of them were Shen Nianzu’s precious mories.
"I... have to choose one of them?" he asked, his voice hoarse with emotion.
"Chirp!" Toki nodded firmly.
"What would happen after that? Will I simply forget about it? Like it never happens at all?"
Toki gave another nod.
Shen Nianzu let out a shaky breath as he swept his gaze around once more. Which mory should he choose? He supposed he should opt for his childhood mories. That way, it wouldn’t be strange to forget it altogether. It seed like a much better option than sacrificing his recent mories.
After contemplating his choices, Shen Nianzu was ready to decide, when his peripheral vision caught sight of an extrely familiar scene.
It was the scene he had just experienced in the ’Reflection of Emotions’— the mont when he almost drowned in the sea during his first Cycle, only to be rescued by the twins.
"This...!" Shen Nianzu reached out to the light sphere, his eyes wide in shock and disbelief. "Don’t tell ... has this really happened?! Were they really the ones who saved in my first Cycle, and not sothing the attraction made up to test ?!"
Toki scratched his head, confused by Shen Nianzu’s sudden outbursts. "Chirp...?"
Of course, he wouldn’t get it. He was just responsible for maintaining the rules in this place, after all. Shen Nianzu closed his eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to regain his bearings. Million thoughts churned inside his mind; he couldn’t help but rewind everything that had happened in this Cycle. The ti-related concept, the paradox rules, and the law of cause and effect...
Everything would eventually co to a full circle, and it was difficult to distinguish between the starting and ending point.
Perhaps... perhaps this was what Shen Nianzu should do to complete the circle, to obey the laws of the universe, to not create any further error within their dinsions. Suppressing the chaotic emotions in his chest, he raised his head and nodded firmly, the edges of his eyes tinged with red.
"I have made up my mind."
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