QT: Don't fall in love with the Male Lead

This time around Xi Zirui is disoriented only for a moment before fully regaining his senses.

"Ni Ni!" he shouts, letting her name scratch his throat raw. "What happened? What the fuck happened?"

He can't believe this. Everything was going so well, he was home free, almost a year living in peace with Han Yu, where had he gone wrong?

"Ni Ni is sorry Host, but there was nothing she could do," Ni Ni says, her voice echoing through the white space. "Su Xueyi bite off his own tongue."

For all the effort Xi Zirui went through to ensure Su Xueyi survived, despite everyone who wanted him dead, suicide wasn't an option he considered.

He lets out a mirthless chuckle, he's always one step behind.

He thinks of their sunny little apartment, of lazy mornings in bed, of Little Thunder jumping into their faces to demand they get out of bed to feed him.

Xi Zirui isn't going to have any of that again.

Like soap suds in the water, it all melts away between his fingers, fine foam he can see but can't grasp.

---

Granny Ma managed to keep up the facade that she was part of the Shen family for months.

Blind and disoriented, Su Xueyi believes he has been captured by on of the Shen retainers and is being held captive and tortured under their orders.

He asks about Xi Zirui's whereabouts often, but Granny Ma doesn't deign him with an answer.

It's just him and Granny Ma in the hutong, now that Li Siqi is back spending her days in hers and Liao Min's house.

Granny Ma revels in Su Xueyi's despair and doesn't answer any of his pleas. She's just his silent jailer, keeping him locked up to protect her family, to avenge her granddaughter.

She has never felt younger.

On New Year's Eve some sound from the outside must queue Su Xueyi in on the occasion, because he starts trying to use the spirit of the holiday to sway Granny Ma into giving him any information about Xi Zirui.

Granny Ma is trying to watch the New Year Gala, and his ragged voice is grating on her nerves.

"He's dead!" she shouts, banging the door of Su Xueyi's cell. "He has been dead for months, now shut up!"

Only the following day does she find Su Xueyi's lifeless body.

---

Li Siqi and Liao Min stay in Beijing. 

The money Xi Zirui transferred Li Siqi is more than enough to buy them a comfortable life for quite some time.

But Liao Min grows restless at home, and starts thinking of ways to keep herself busy.

In the end, it's Li Siqi and seeing her struggle to navigate her laptop that gives her an idea.

There really should be more accessibility tools for blind people. The ones that are available are often expensive and often unreliable. To say nothing of the robotic voice of the screen reader.

Someone should do something about that, and it might as well be her.

The money Xi Zirui gave them might not be enough for an undertaking of that size, though. 

Thankfully, she knows someone who came into her own large sum of money straight out of Su Xueyi's pockets.

Bai Mi doesn't have to think it over for long before accepting a partnership. "That little rat stole my company from me and turned it into a cooperative, so it's not like I have a lot on my plate right now."

They draft an initial proposal, pool their resources together, and go hunting for talent.

Their first prototype is a braille display that works like a tablet, with apps and all.

Li Siqi cries the first time she holds it and reads the message Liao Min left for her on a cheesy weibo post, complete with a beating heart gif that she can feel pulsing under her fingers.

"I love you," she says, tangling her fingers with Liao Min's. "Thank you, for this, for everything."

Liao Min can only nod stiffly, embarrassed of the tears that nearly spill down her cheeks.

Bai Mi has no qualms about ruining the moment, "What am I? Chopped liver? I helped."

Li Siqi pats her awkwardly on the back. "Thank you for not killing Liao Min over business vision differences.

"You don't know how close it was sometimes."

Bai Mi never marries, but she remains good friends with Li Siqi and Liao Min throughout all their lives. 

---

Cao Fei and Jin Ranyu disappear as mysteriously as they appeared, and are never heard of again.

Unlike Xi Zirui's assumption, they weren't initially in a relationship.

But years later, they'll be working on a job that requires them to spend long periods locked inside a cabin in the mountains, observing their target from afar.

One chilly night Cao Fei will offer to sleep with Jin Ranyu to stave off the cold, and they'll end up being creative about it.

They won't need two beds ever again after that day.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

---

Han Yu blames himself for Xi Zirui's death.

He can't shake off the idea that Xi Zirui died because he choked on the tangyuan he shoved into his mouth.

The autopsy cites a massive heart attack, but Han Yu's guilt doesn't give him any rest, even when Li Siqi and Liao Min leave their jobs and house in Beijing to come down to Chongqing to help him prepare the wake and the funeral.

After Xi Zirui's death, Han Yu never celebrates the New Year again. 

As the date draws near he grows more withdrawn and quiet, until he simply disappears into himself, lost in the happy memories of the months they shared together.

The apartment Xi Zirui loved so much seems cold and empty without him.

Han Yu lives there for a few more years until Little Thunder dies, at the age of 13, sooner than Han Yu expected him to.

There's nothing keeping him in Chongqing after Little Thunder's death. He hopes that leaving the city that with its memories of Xi Zirui and his sharp smile will let him restart his life somewhere else.

He never quite succeeds.

Despite Li Siqi's and Liao Min's constant offers of help, his life is like a sinking ship and he's threading water in the lower levels.

He gets married, once, twice, and then gives up.

He finds solace at the end of a bottle, and tells everyone who'll listen about his youth, and about the boy he stole from under a rich man's arm, so the two of them could squeeze together in a tiny balcony under the warm morning sun, and smell the fresh chilies he planted to season the food they cooked together.

Han Yu dies at the age of 60, officially from liver failure, but Ni Ni doesn't spare Xi Zirui and tells him the real cause of death:

A broken heart. 

---

"Stop, stop! That's enough," Xi Zirui groans pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. 

He doesn't know what's worse: knowing there's a happy life he's been robbed of, or that Han Yu has suffered all alone, without anyone to support him.

"Take me out of here, just take me out," he says, closing his eyes against the blinding whiteness around him.

---

He comes to with the Shopkeeper's animated face hovering inches away from his own.

"That was a rough one, uh?" she asks, and pops her bubblegum loudly.

Xi Zirui glares at her. "Why the fuck did Su Xueyi remember his life in one of the other worlds?"

"Funny thing...that," she rubs the back of her neck sheepishly and averts her eyes from Xi Zirui's. "There's a lot we still down't know about the multiverse, and as I said, the Transmigrator 4000 is only a prototy-"

Xi Zirui cuts her off. "Cut the crap, I want some answers, now!"

She lets out a deep sigh. "Okay, listen, so maybe you're not the only person who is visiting different worlds."

Does that mean what he thinks he means? "Are you saying Su Xueyi is using a Transmigrator machine, too?"

"It's complicated."

"What about Han Yu?" Xi Zirui asks, his heart beating furiously inside his ribcage. "Is he also using a Transmigrator 4000?"

"It's complicated."

"He was also talking about being a god? What was that all about?"

"Brain damage."

Xi Zirui glares at her. "I told you I wanted answers."

This time, she's the one who levels him with a glare. "And I need you to trust that I'm telling you as much as I can."

Their glaring contest reaches a standstill, and Xi Zirui is the first to concede. "Fine...I- just no more surprises," he rubs the bridge of his nose. "Please don't make me be married to Su Xueyi again, I don't know if I can take it. I'm not even going to ask to have a relationship with Han Yu from the get go, because I know my life isn't that easy."

The Shopkeeper is already adjusting the settings on the Transmigrator 4000 as Xi Zirui speaks. "I'm afraid not," she says, tapping instructions on the screen, and activating the restraints that came lose when Xi Zirui woke up again.

Before she can fully turn on the machine, Xi Zirui's arm shoots out to hold on to her wrist. "Just tell me one thing," his fierce gaze meets hers, "Is there hope for me and him? Or am I just losing my time?"

Her gaze hardens and it's as if she stops being the bubbly Shopkeeper and becomes someone else, someone whose eyes are filled with wisdom gathered over millennia. 

"I really hope so," she says, and turns the machine on.

The next second, Xi Zirui loses consciousness.

---

Ni Ni crawls over to the Shopkeeper and climbs onto her shoulder so the two of them can look down at Xi Zirui's sleeping face.

"I didn't know what to tell him," she admits with a sigh. "It's like the world begun unspooling in front of me and I couldn't do anything."

The Shopkeeper scratches Ni Ni's scaly back in acquiescence. "It's not your fault, this is such a fragile environment, of course choices other than his would impact the world."

"Wouldn't it be better to tell him the truth?" Ni Ni asks.

"Tell him that the life he knows is just another parallel universe, and that in reality he's from somewhere else? That he is someone he doesn't even have the means to understand?" she shakes her head. "No, he wouldn't be able to accept it."

Her eyes drift over Xi Zirui's face, slack with sleep. "Not yet."

---

The first thing Xi Zirui hears is the faint drip of water, like a faucet someone didn't close properly.

The second thing he notices is the metallic tang of humidity in the air.

Once the full scope of his senses returns to him, he realizes that he's in a cave in which an underground river flows.

He also realizes he's siting in the lotus position on top of a smooth rock formation.

And Wearing pristine silver and white robes with delicate grey accents.

Experimentally, he moves his head from side to side and feels a long waterfall of hair brush against the silk of his robes.

All that hair is definitely attached to his scalp, but the robes don't strike him as historical accurate.

That amount of hair and such fine robes can only mean one thing. "Ni Ni, wake the fuck up."

"Hello Host! Ni NI is glad to see that Host is well," she chirps animatedly. 

"Am I in a cultivation novel?" he asks.

"No."

Some of the tension drains off Xi Zirui's tense muscles. "But then-"

"Host isn't in a novel, but in a real world where cultivation exists and Host is an immortal cultivator and renowned Master of the Heavenly Dragon sect." She doesn't wait for Xi Zirui to catch his breath before adding, "Host also has two disciples under his care."

Disciples? How is he going to teach them cultivation, or whatever, if doesn't know anything about it himself?

"Host must fill his disciples' admiration meters, as well as increase their cultivation level in order to have a chance at a happy ending in this world."

Great, because the favor meter wasn't bad enough. Now his world hopping adventure comes with increasing difficulty levels.