Chapter 49: NGC 2237

San had always enjoyed being deliberately annoying—no different from a military rogue.

Bunny’s expression darkened. She would never beg him for help. Just as she was about to fetch a stool, the ground suddenly vanished from beneath her feet.

A strong, solid arm securely lifted her by the backside. Even through the thin cotton of her nightgown, she could feel the hard muscle and searing heat.

So this was what it felt like to look down on others from a height?

Standing atop the highest peak, surveying all the smaller mountains below.

San held her with his left arm while his right hand rested casually against the refrigerator door.

He looked as though he had just finished night training—bare from the waist up, wearing only a pair of camouflage combat trousers. Those puppy-dog eyes carried a clear note of helpless amusement.

"Tell me, what’s so hard about opening that little mouth and asking nicely?"

"I’d rather beg anyone else before I beg you."

Small chest, huge temper. And he just happened to like that kind of stubbornness.

Without a word, San suddenly loosened his hold. Her entire body dropped in a straight line. She cried out instinctively and locked her arms tightly around his neck.

He had done it on purpose.

"Are you sick in the head?!"

"If I’m sick, will you help me get better?"

"Idiot."

"I like hearing you scold me."

"Put me down!"

She pounded furiously at his shoulders, but his grip remained as unyielding as an iron clamp.

San carried her outward.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To look at the stars."

What stars were left there? The high concentrations of radiation and pollution had turned the night sky as black as ash.

"You’re lying. Put me down."

San looked at her with complete seriousness. Those fire-red eyes sparkled.

"Really. If I’m lying, I’m a mischievous puppy."

San carried her up to the rooftop terrace at the very top of the base. The wind was strong here.

The cool night air lifted her long hair and whipped it messily against her cheeks. Compared with the man’s scorching body heat, the chill felt almost negligible.

In the corner stood an astronomical telescope. He set her on a high stool and began adjusting the focal length and aligning the finder scope. The process took a long time; this step required patience.

"Found it."

San turned back and flashed her a grin that showed his pointed canines. He lifted her over, and she pressed her eye to the lens.

What filled her vision was a magnificent nebula, layers upon layers of color blooming outward. At the heart of the flower were countless brilliant points of light—like shattered diamonds of the Milky Way scattered across the heavens.

"This is NGC 2237, also known as the Rosette Nebula."

San’s low, magnetic voice sounded beside her ear.

The Rosette Nebula was one of the most beautiful large emission nebulae in the universe. With a diameter of more than 130 light-years, it resembled a rose suspended in the Milky Way that would never wither.

"Beautiful, right?"

Bunny turned her head and, for once, answered honestly. "Very beautiful."

It had been a long time since she last saw stars—counting all the years she had spent in cryogenic sleep.

"But why did you bring me up here to look at stars?"

San’s red hair was tossed wildly by the wind. He said, "My mother once told me that taking the person you like to look at the stars is a very romantic thing."

She pulled a disdainful face. "Looks like it’s easy for you to like someone, huh?"

How many days had she even been here, and he already claimed to like her?

Frivolous sentinel.

San acted as though he couldn’t tell good words from bad. He answered with complete seriousness:

"Does liking someone need to take a lot of time?"

For sentinels, there was no need for all those games. Genetic recognition happened in an instant. He simply liked her guide pheromones, liked the scent of her, liked the way she glared at him. That was all.

What he didn’t like, he had no interest in—he wouldn’t even glance at it.

Some people said sentinels only became dogs for guides because of pheromones, that they were nothing more than desire puppets controlled by hormones and genes.

Yet a person’s true feelings were sometimes less loyal and less passionate than biological instinct.

The bond between sentinel and guide began with pheromones, but it never stopped there.

Besides, Bunny was different.

She looked at San and decided he didn’t seem to be lying. He had always been a straight shooter—he said whatever was on his mind.

She remembered the boy who had chased her for half a year, constantly declaring how much he liked her. When she refused to kiss or sleep with him, he immediately turned around and started dating someone else.

"Some people just lie about it."

San let out a contemptuous scoff. "That must be a very tiring life."

For a moment she found these sentinels rather interesting. Their way of expressing emotions seemed very direct—no complicated twists and turns.

If they were unhappy, they fought. If they disliked someone, they traded insults. And if they liked someone... they simply said so.

They never hid things. Of course, a deep and calculating pervert like Cyrus was the exception.

When she first arrived, communicating with them had felt exhausting. Now she had grown used to their mode of expression.

It was like not having to guess a superior’s thoughts, not having to carefully weigh every word before speaking, not having to figure out whether someone was praising you or mocking you.

Very uncomplicated.

She propped her chin on her hand. "Were you also adopted by your mother?"

San immediately looked offended. "I was born by my mom! I’m her biological child!"

Eh?

Meeting Bunny’s astonished gaze, he lowered his voice. "My mother was a wild person."

More precisely, a guide of wild-person origin.

During a cleanup operation, she had been discovered by tower soldiers, taken back to Central, and forcibly matched with Astin’s father.

If she had never met Astin’s father, their family of three might have been happy.

It was all that despicable third party’s fault!!

To San, Astin was the child of the mistress. He hated him!

Bunny was a little surprised. "So you were actually born from your mother’s womb."

San’s expression turned strange. "Bunny, what are you talking about?"

"In this era, how could there still be fetuses produced by a mother’s body?"

Lethal levels of radiation and pollution had long since severely damaged human reproductive function. In an unsuitable environment, fertility tended to shut down and degenerate.

The most typical signs were a sharp decline in the number of eggs women produced, and the inability of fetuses to develop and survive normally inside the uterus—almost all of them miscarried within the first three months.

A very small number could complete an intrauterine pregnancy, but the newborns easily died in the polluted environment afterward.

Survival was pure luck.

That was why they all extracted viable sperm and eggs from the father and mother and cultivated them artificially outside the body.

Children who still had parents this way carried genes that were a little purer than the hybrid embryos from the breeding chambers. After all, the mixed gene pool of the chambers easily accumulated genetic diseases over successive generations of rapid breeding.

Examples included Rain’s complete color blindness, Arden’s dulled sense of pain, and Orion’s congenital muteness.

Mass-produced goods were inevitably uneven in quality.

As the end times progressed to the present day, many rules had been cruelly rewritten. Humans were not like aliens, who could hatch hundreds or thousands of eggs at once. Forced into a corner, they could only maintain the continuation of the species through this cold, ruthless, and completely inhuman method.

Bunny unconsciously pinched her fingers. Would her own body also change with the environment?

That would actually be for the best. What she feared was that she was different from the women of this era.

San noticed her strange expression. "What’s wrong? Your face looks terrible."

She forced herself to stay calm. "Nothing. Your mother must have been a very good person."

"But she took her own life."

"Why?"

"Because she hated Terra."

She hated working like a machine, hated being separated from San’s father, simply hated that suffocating place.