Chapter 34: A Roundabout Love, Such a Beautiful Sky

Hearing that question, one answer immediately locked into Howard's mind.

His late wife. The wife who had passed away sixteen years ago.

Beside him, Julian's heart also tightened. Only one answer came to his mind.

His mother. The mother he had never met, who had died sixteen years ago after giving birth to him.

But this was a family matter, a topic the father and son had rarely mentioned in sixteen years. It seemed to have become taboo.

Julian also knew it was one of the painful points of his father's life.

Even now, he still felt that his father had always blamed him—blamed his birth for killing his mother. That was why he had always been so strict with him.

"You two talk first. I'm going out to get some fresh air." Howard took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and left without looking back.

Adrian felt a little helpless again.

He had actually phrased the question as tactfully as he could. But today, first he had provoked a dog, and now he seemed to have broken through Howard's defenses.

Yet because of this, Adrian caught a certain nuance. The Fortune Dog's heartache might not just be one dog's stubbornness.

Seeing Howard leave, Julian finally spoke.

"Adrian, if you put it that way, the only person Fortune could be waiting for is my mom."

"Actually, I don't know much about my mother either. She left after giving birth to me." Julian's voice was calm. "Most of what I know about her, I asked the old butler."

"In front of my father, she cannot be mentioned. When I was little and asked him why I had no mother, why my classmates all had mothers, all I got was long silence."

"My father never hit me. But sometimes his silence was scarier."

"As for Fortune, my father and mother raised it together twenty years ago. According to the old butler, the shop had just opened then. They picked a Fortune Dog because the name had the word 'fortune' in it, for good luck."

"The old butler said my mother had difficulty having children. She was not a beast tamer either. Before she was pregnant with me, she treated Fortune very well, like her child."

"Later, Fortune lost my mother, and gained me."

"From childhood to now, it has always been good to me, because the old butler said I look a lot like my mother."

"Fortune is very smart. It also knows my father cannot bear to hear a single thing about my mother. So it always just sits there obediently."

"The old butler told me that during the first seven days after my mother did not come home, Fortune kept barking in the yard. Then, for some reason, it stopped barking."

"It just kept looking at the sky, at the distance. Every morning, noon, evening, and night."

"Later, it became only morning and night."

"Now it is old too. It only looks for a while at night, then habitually comes to find me."

"My father is partly right. Fortune actually has a very strong will to live. After every failed evolution, it takes any medicine, accepts blood draws, and fears no pain."

"It is just that it seems to have taken after my father's temperament. Most of the time, it is silent."

Julian quietly told Fortune's story from his perspective and from what he had heard.

For some reason, Adrian felt a heaviness in his heart.

He thought he might have guessed something.

Dog-type beasts were very loyal to their masters. Loyalty was carved into their genes.

Talking about Julian's mother was a "taboo" in their family. Fortune also knew this taboo. Howard was its other old master. It did not want to hurt Howard's heart because of its own longings.

Perhaps it was precisely this wall that sealed Fortune's heart.

It hid its worries from Howard, not because it was selfish, but because it was trying, in its own way, not to hurt Howard.

Now Adrian had only one question.

Did Fortune actually know that Julian's mother had already passed away?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

That was a question he probably could not get answered from Howard.

After all, he had been silent for more than ten years. He would not bare his heart to an outsider he had just met.

The only answer might have to come from Fortune itself.

Several minutes passed before Howard returned.

"Sorry. Today both Fortune and I lost some composure. Adrian, did you finish reading the contract? What do you think?" After returning, Howard resumed his usual manner. His tone was steady, his face without extra expression.

As Adrian had guessed, Howard had skillfully avoided his question and changed the subject.

Just like his habitual action over the past decade or so, once a keyword was touched, it triggered his fixed self-protection mode.

Just like Fortune barking earlier. Once it knew someone was about to uncover the worries it wanted to hide, it immediately became hostile.

"Uncle Howard, the contract is very good. I can tell you already gave me favorable terms for Julian's sake."

"Spirit Dew really is a good product for soothing the physical injuries of a Fortune Dog that has failed evolution ten times. And Violet's level and special effects have not even finished improving. The quality produced from now on will only get higher."

"Julian just told me Fortune wants to live longer."

"Spirit Dew will not help it live longer. But evolution can."

"Uncle Howard, although I know this is very presumptuous, can you summon Fortune once more? I will not say anything to provoke it this time."

In his heart, he silently added, 'Nor anything to provoke you.'

Howard knew Adrian had not given up.

But Adrian's tone had changed from the beginning. Earlier, he could tell that Adrian asked about Fortune to gain more bargaining chips.

Now, he seemed to simply want… to know the truth.

After thinking for a while.

Howard nodded and summoned it.

Fortune, having calmed down for a while in the beast space, was no longer barking. It looked at itself, looked at the sky outside the window, and after finding that nothing had changed, slowly walked to Julian's feet. It naturally curled up and wrapped itself around the Wonder Shine Grass.

As for Adrian, it indeed did not sense the Spirit-attribute fluctuation from him, so they would keep to their own sides.

"Julian, you just told me a story. Let me tell you a story about my family too." Having lived two lives, Adrian knew that some complicated worries could not be forced. Only by empathizing and finding a point of shared feeling could more emotional truth be obtained.

"You know my parents passed away two years ago."

"My family has a Violet Orchid. It was once my mother's contracted beast. It is the economic pillar of our beast feed shop."

"My mother tried to evolve it twice, and both failed, because it was not the evolution form it wanted. After my mother passed away, it felt very guilty. Guilty that it did not cherish the opportunity, that it failed her expectations."

"Violet is very sensitive. The slightest movement can make it remember my mother's past."

"A few days ago, it mutated and evolved, because it found the form suited to its evolution. After evolving, it was very happy. It wished my mother could be here."

"But as a beast, its feelings toward my father were completely different."

"My father's love was very restrained, very controlled."

"Because he feared heat while alive, he almost always lived in air-conditioned rooms set to very low temperatures."

"Perhaps because he knew that one day he would leave us, most of the time he did not clearly express his love for us."

"It was only occasionally that my mother mentioned what arrangements and thoughts my father had privately made for me, for Violet, for everything in our home."

"Violet also treated my father as family. The Violet Dew it used to produce was cold in nature. It was quite effective for my heat-fearing father. When it was young, it always habitually thought of giving it to him as soon as it was produced."

"What it got instead was scolding. Over time, it got used to it."

"I have only slowly come to understand my father's restrained love over these past two years. But Violet is different. It is ultimately a beast. In its eyes, I, my mother, my father, this small beast feed shop—that is everything. Its home. Its world."

"Some transmissions and expressions of love also give beasts different ways of responding."

"Toward my father, it only knew that no longer giving him Violet Dew, no longer clinging to him, and following his wishes was love."

"The love a beast needs is more direct, not roundabout."

"These past few days, Violet has been in a very good mood. It knows that after evolving, it can accompany me, the only family member left, for much longer. Even though my parents are gone, it still has me."

"But occasionally, it still looks toward the sun, as if it can see my mother singing to it there, and my father's unsmiling yet faintly warm gaze."

"I say all this because I want to ask you: do you think Fortune and Violet are alike?"

Adrian spoke these words from the bottom of his heart.

If not for the experience of two lives, the sixteen-year-old him might still think that his father's attention over the past decade or so was completely inferior to his mother's.

"They are quite alike." It was the first time Julian had heard Adrian's story and felt his emotions. In the past, Adrian had been, to him, a cold problem-solving machine, the terminator of any difficult question.

But with his current life experience, he actually could not fully understand the core of what Adrian was trying to express.

Beside him, Howard and the Fortune Dog were more deeply affected, because they unconsciously put themselves into the roles.

Especially when Adrian mentioned Violet looking toward the sun, Fortune also unconsciously stood up, turned its back to everyone, and looked at the sky outside the window.

Its eyes were full of tears now. It did not want Howard and Julian to see.

It was immersed in its own world. Even if Adrian looked at it again now, it did not notice.

New information appeared on Fortune's panel.

[Status]: It actually knows the mistress has passed away, that she did not truly abandon it.

But on the seventh day after the mistress left, Howard told it that Mom had only gone very, very far away—in the sky, in the clouds, in the moon and the sun. She was always watching them.

So it does not want to change. It cannot change. It knows what a Fortune Dog looks like after evolution.

After evolution, it would not look like itself. If Mom no longer recognized it, would she still watch it from the sky?

What if… one day she really came back, would she still recognize it?

The sky is so beautiful. If Mom lives there, she should be very happy too.

At this moment, sunlight fell on Fortune, a little sacred, a little sorrowful.

This latest status also confirmed Adrian's guess.

Beasts were sometimes very simple. They practiced the love they believed in through various means, but sometimes they hurt themselves.

"Uncle Howard, Julian, I read in a document that among Fortune Dogs, there are some very special existences. They can live a very, very long time, but their appearance never changes."

"It is as if they are always guarding something in the same posture, living loyally and freely with an inner and outer form that has never changed from beginning to end."