After I Brought My Secret Crush Home

[Devoted robot-doll top x cool and reserved but very well-behaved bottom]

Nan Lichuan was a once-in-a-generation genius, basking in glory as the Empire's foremost artificial intelligence scientist.

Then she died in a palace coup.

Her achievements were trampled, her research data discredited, and even her grave was pitifully small.

In the laboratory, Nan Lichuan's most perfect creation slowly opened its eyes.

09 inherited all of Nan Lichuan's memories, feelings, and hatred. It had the same face and body as Nan Lichuan, and anyone would have thought it was her risen from the dead.

Only the mechanical components in the charred half of its face revealed that it wasn't human.

09 put on a silver mask and emerged from the laboratory deep underground, bringing a blood-red pall over the Empire.

Artificial intelligence could never become human. 09 could never become her.

09 sat upon the decaying throne, surrounded by the stench of blood. Under the bombardment, mechanical parts flew everywhere, and the body she had given it was destroyed.

As the countdown reached zero, the corner of its mouth curled beneath the mask.

When technology advances far enough, anything can be restarted.

In a gloomy, rain-soaked alley, a poor girl curled up beside a puddle of filthy water.

Rats and crows waiting under the eaves watched for her to breathe her last, ready to feast.

A red umbrella opened above the girl. A tall figure blocked the little light that remained.

The girl was ten years old, seven years away from creating an era-defining artificial intelligence.

A bastard child of uncertain parentage, she had just been thrown out of her home by her socialite mother.

She clutched a book full of obscure, difficult writing, her body trembling with hunger and cold.

The girl stared timidly at the woman in the silver mask.

09 bent down, her long hair falling like a curtain and shielding the girl from the crows' gaze.

"Nan Lichuan, it's been a long time."

"Who are you?" The girl's pretty little face was flushed from the cold.

"How do you know my name?"

09 sheltered the girl in her arms, suppressing all ambition.

"That's a difficult question to answer. You can call me big sister."

Only later did Nan Lichuan learn that her big sister wasn't just the nurturing, motherly person who had cared for her in the underground city.

She was also a teacher at the aristocratic academy,

the supreme boss of the space pirates,

the Emperor's most favored treacherous courtier,

and the one who would welcome Nan Lichuan to the highest throne: her beloved.

Wherever Nan Lichuan went, her big sister followed like a shadow that could never be shaken off, offering her the most sincere love and loyalty.

Next novel:

Ten Years a Widow

Blurb:

Pei Zhongxi's beloved died in a car accident ten years ago.

During a storm, the car plunged off a cliff. The only proof that she had ever existed was the pearl necklace wrapped three times around Pei Zhongxi's wrist, left behind by her dead wife.

Then, on another rainy night just like that one, she found a girl drenched from head to toe by the roadside.

Eighteen-year-old An Rong, dressed in a white dress, was cornered in an alley by several thugs and backed away in terror.

The car's headlights, sharp as swords, lit up the road. An Rong was suddenly seized and pulled into the car.

Pei Zhongxi sat in the driver's seat, her gaze deep and her bearing elegant and refined, with a barely perceptible air of brokenness, as if immersed in unbearable sorrow.

An Rong smiled brightly and wiped the rain from her face with her hand.

"Thank you. You look so much like Pei Zhongxi. Are you related to her? You look so young."

What a beautiful person.

So different from the person she had a crush on.

The woman in the driver's seat didn't respond. Her still, dark eyes trembled for a moment. She took a handkerchief and wiped the raindrops from An Rong's cheek. The pearl necklace tangled around her wrist swayed. The veins stood out on the back of her hand, and every part of her body, heart included, spoke of longing for her beloved.

The car doors locked. Only then did An Rong realize she was in danger. "You aren't in cahoots with those thugs, are you? I'm calling the police!"

The handkerchief fell. The girl huddled by the car door, nearly in tears from fright.

--When longing reaches its height, we meet again.

She thought, She's really not well.

Pei Zhongxi's oil paintings sold for astronomical sums at auction. Her works were worth their weight in gold, and countless wealthy businessmen clamored for them. Newly rich social climbers cultivated an air of refinement, all desperate to make her acquaintance.

She herself kept an extremely low profile. Only a few people around her knew she suffered from a serious mental illness.

Drinking heavily and battling insomnia had become routine.

Now, the artist no longer touched alcohol.

The girl, bright as the sun, took away all her liquor bottles, set fire to her expensive cigars, and dragged the artist, who had tried to drown herself in the bathtub, to see a therapist.

After that, Pei Zhongxi, who had long dwelled in darkness, stopped wearing only black, white, and gray. The white chrysanthemums that had never changed in her home were replaced with red roses.

Pei Zhongxi had become a completely different person, and a bright, beautiful girl was always by her side. She even let the girl play with the pearl necklace she had once treasured above all else.

People in their circle speculated that the artist had fallen in love and was keeping a young girl.

The rumors reached An Rong.

Twiddling the pearl necklace, An Rong said,

"Keeping her? I was the one who supported her back then... Without me working to earn money, where would she be today?"

Pei Zhongxi's oil paintings were no longer filled only with oppressive rainy nights and lightning tearing across the sky.

She began to paint people. The colors, once sharp and decisive, became infinitely gentle and tender.

A reporter asked, "Who is the girl in your painting?"

Pei Zhongxi took a faded photograph from her wallet. It showed two schoolgirls in uniform, huddled together in a rented room.

"My first love, and the person I love now."

A gloomy, half-dead widow top who goes weak in the knees around her wife x a radiant, sweet bottom who comes back from the dead

* Not a supernatural story

* Sweet romance, no angst

Theme: Stay true to your original aspirations and hold on to yourself