Chapter 348 - 345: Fee

Chapter 348: Chapter 345: Fee

"This is this month’s friendship fee."

Xiaopang shuffled up to the little girl’s desk again, sniffling, and placed a few bags of snacks on it.

"What are you building today? The Eiffel Tower?"

Xiaopang asked curiously, looking at the tall tower on the little girl’s desk.

"This is the Pisa Leaning Tower..." the little girl replied helplessly.

Xiaopang was indeed a bit slow, and because he was very overweight, none of the other kids in class wanted to play with him. Only the little girl, who "worked for pay," was willing to be his friend.

These snacks were the price he paid.

After being in school for a while, the little girl had come to understand that the outside world wasn’t like her home—everything came at a price.

Making friends, for example, didn’t require a price.

But Xiaopang still paid the "friendship fee" every month because he was afraid the little girl wouldn’t play with him otherwise.

Xiaopang was easy to handle. He would just watch quietly from the side, asking a few questions from time to time, and was very well-behaved.

It was just that his questions were always very strange:

"Can you build an abyss?"

"Can you build people? You know, like those sculptures."

"The teacher talked about some famous observation stations today. Can you build them?"

"..."

Sometimes the little girl would ignore Xiaopang’s questions, and he wouldn’t mind. Other times, she would build a few of the things he wanted to see, just as he asked.

’It’s a friend’s duty.’

One day, when the little girl used a photo Xiaopang gave her to build a human head out of blocks, he laid his head on the desk and stared at it for a long time, unwilling to leave even after school was out.

"I have to go home now. I have to walk, and if it gets too late, I won’t be able to see the path." The little girl started to pack up her Blocks to go home.

Xiaopang looked at the head made of blocks, full of reluctance.

"Who is this?" The little girl asked, handing the photo back to Xiaopang.

"It’s my dad. He went down into the Abyss a long time ago and never came back. My mom has been sad ever since." Xiaopang took an electronic screen out of his bag and recorded a video of the head.

"I’ll show this to my mom when I get home. It should make her a little happier."

"Thank you," Xiaopang said earnestly, looking at the little girl.

"You paid the friendship fee. This is what I’m supposed to do," the little girl replied sternly.

Xiaopang carefully put the photo back in his bag.

"I know you’re just comforting me. No one else wants to play with me, only you do. It has nothing to do with any friendship fee."

"I may be slow, but I know what a friend is..."

After saying this, Xiaopang ran out of the classroom in embarrassment, leaving the little girl standing there, stunned.

Not long after, the teacher announced to the class that Xiaopang was transferring schools.

"His father didn’t make it back. His mother didn’t want to stay in Dawn City, a place of such painful memories, so she left the city with him."

Things like this happened every day in Dawn City; it wasn’t anything new.

Students in the classroom came and went. Xiaopang was just one of them.

But after that, no one ever paid the little girl a friendship fee again.

...

The little girl looked down at the Block in her hand, calmly recounting her experience to Lin Nian.

It all seemed so ordinary.

Lin Nian didn’t say anything, either. He just patted the little girl’s head.

"Next time I come see you, I’ll bring a friendship fee, too. If anything strange happens at your house, you have to tell me."

"Okay," the little girl agreed.

...

’What could be strange?’

The little girl didn’t know. She returned home and, as usual, started on her chores.

In the vast Manor, there was never a shortage of chores. Today, she planned to clean the swimming pool, which hadn’t been used in a long time.

The family’s idiotic robot vacuum often fell into the pool, and it was always a huge effort for her to fish it out. This time, she planned to fence off the entire pool.

After working late into the night, the little girl finally went back inside.

What she found strange was that none of the lights in the entire house were on today.

She pushed the door open to complete darkness. Flipping the switch did nothing.

’Are the lights broken? Or did the electricity bill not get paid?’

She remembered having just paid the electricity bill, and the lightbulbs had been replaced not long ago. This shouldn’t be happening.

Feeling her way through the darkness, the little girl returned to her room.

By the moonlight filtering through the window, she could see her Blocks scattered all over the floor. She flipped the light switch, but again, there was no reaction.

She still hadn’t done her homework from class today. The little girl had no choice but to find one of the household robots and ask why it was so dark.

However, all the robots were shut down, completely motionless.

With no other options, the little girl walked to her parents’ room.

To her, this place was a forbidden zone.

She didn’t have enough to pay the "disturbance fee," so the room had always been a mystery to her.

Her mother had warned her repeatedly not to go in. If she disturbed her father, it would cost her all of her "savings."

After a moment’s hesitation, the little girl walked up and knocked gently on the closed door.

After a few knocks, the door suddenly creaked open a crack, as if blown by the wind.

A blinding light shot out from the gap. Having been in the dark for so long, the sudden glare made it impossible for the little girl to open her eyes.

After a while, her eyes finally adjusted to the brightness. She pushed the door open and walked inside.

Upon entering, the little girl froze. What greeted her was not a room, but a boundless, silver space.

A metallic floor stretched out into the infinite distance.

BANG! The door behind her suddenly slammed shut, leaving her all alone, standing in the silver expanse.

"You’ve come." A cold voice suddenly rang out, echoing through the space.

"Dad, where are you?" The little girl looked all around but couldn’t find any sign of her parents.

The voice was her father’s, but the little girl couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was as if the sound was coming from all directions at once.

"Disturbance fee: one micro Block."

Her father didn’t answer her question, instead stating this coldly.

The little girl could only take a small Block from her pocket.

The Block vanished instantly.

"Where are you, Dad?" the little girl asked again, now very frightened.

"Questioning fee: one micro Block," the voice said again.

After paying with another Block, the little girl received her answer.

"Ahead."

With the answer, the little girl ran forward in fear. She didn’t have to run far before she saw two figures.

A man and a woman.

The woman was lying on the ground, a pool of red spreading out around her. The man stood coldly beside her, holding a sharp blade that also shone with a silver light.

"Dad! Mom!"

The little girl stumbled and rushed toward them.

The woman was still struggling on the ground, blood flowing endlessly from her abdomen. The crimson blood crept further and further across the metal floor, yet even so, there wasn’t a trace of pain on her face.

She looked tenderly at the man holding the blade, then at the approaching little girl, and a smile of relief spread across her face.

"Li Luo, you’re free now."