His fiancé stolen by his (supposedly) kind-hearted and merciful younger brother, Sun Fang decides to take the high road. (To the surprise of everyone who's ever known him.) Instead of fighting to get his cheating fiancé back, Sun Fang sets out to fu...
The waves beat gently on the beach, a rhythmic pattern that time upon time nearly reached Sun Fang's feat.
Walking along the edge of the wide, wide ocean, Sun Fang tilted his head up to the sky and breathed in the fresh air. He wasn't wearing sunglasses; the sun behind his eyelids was a gorgeous beast. In his ears he wore tiny headphones that were blasting music at a low volume, his head occasionally nodding in beat with it. He spun around; arms out wide and his long skirt flaring out like a sun around him.
"Xiao Fang?" Ivy knocked on his shoulder and when Sun Fang finally gave it attention, it rose an impeccably and newly redesigned eyebrow at him.
Sun Fang pulled an earbud out of his ear. "Yes?" he asked, tilting his head.
"There's an ice cream stand over there," Ivy nodded to the left, Sun Fang's gaze following, at a stand parked right in the middle of the sand. It continued, "Do you want me to get you a cone? It won't melt as fast as on Guillotine."
Sun Fang smiled. "Yes, thank you!" He pulled the other earbud out as well and armed himself with his purse (Ivy had been carrying it so far), pulling the strap over his shoulder and beginning to walk across the sand. Ivy didn't miss a second; following after him and easily keeping pace. The sand was hard to walk on, his feet sank into it. He wasn't used to it—Sun Fang had barely been at a beach in his life. It must have been decades, at the very least.
Ivy, at least, had seemingly no problems. "I'll order," Sun Fang piped out before Ivy could get too far ahead of him and get in line. There were two other people waiting to pay, and Sun Fang cheerfully stopped behind them. The line moved quickly, though, and soon enough it was his turn to order.
Wrinkling his eyebrows, he stared at the different options laid out before him. There was chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, strawberry, blueberry, mint, lemon, and a bunch more. Biting on his thumb, Sun Fang carefully considered the pro and cons of each flavor, taking his current mood, location and the weather into account. Ice cream was serious business.
When he finally decided, he smiled apologetically at the seller. "Sorry," he said, scratching his nose.
Thankfully, the seller forgave him. Probably because he was so pretty (not that he was bragging!). with his ice cream squarely in hand, Sun Fang and Ivy began to wander along the ocean's stretch again. The sun was beginning to set; the light was soft and adorable, nothing like the stark, raving madness of Guillotine. It was a rest his eyes hadn't had for almost a year now.
The ice cream was gone soon enough and then it was once more simply Ivy and Sun Fang wondering. "Do you like it here?" SunFang asked after a while, once he'd finished licking his fingers for any trace of his ruthlessly devoured ice cream.
Ivy looked at him. Then it looked at the sunset on the horizon, coloring the ocean orange and red and yellow at the very edge of the world. It nodded. "It is peaceful here."
"That's good," Sun Fang smiled and patted Ivy's shoulder. He stopped, then, and spun around again, simply for the pure joy of it. "I'm glad that you enjoy it here," he added once he'd stopped spinning, the world still moving too quickly. Quite possibly, he'd spun too much, too fast. Curse his stupid human limits!
He plopped down on the sand. Ivy, who had fragile circuitry and a tone of parts, did not. It would be an utter pain to clean all that sand out of it, and Ivy was a responsible person who knew better. Sun Fang grinned up at Ivy, the AI just as remarkable from this angle as any other. "I'm gonna call Mo Cheng," he said, then.
Ivy blinked down at him, hands crossed behind its back. "That is good," Ivy remarked. Sun Fang rolled his eyes, puffing. He crossed his arms and glared up at Ivy until Ivy added, "Talking about your feelings will be good for you."
"Sure, sure," Sun Fang muttered. He looked out over the ocean again, and muttered, "That's absolutely why I'm doing it."
"I am proud of you, Fang'er," Ivy said. Sun Fang's head snapped around, and he stared wordlessly at it. Ivy, who could read Sun Fang just about as well as any nonhuman sentient person could be expected to, then said, "Humans need positive reinforcement. So I am positively reinforcing you. You are now enforced."
"Pfft!" Sun Fang giggled, raising a hand to cover his mouth. He fell on his back, eyes glued to the sky. "Did you read a How to Raise Your Human manual?" he snickered, his eyes slowly falling shut. He turned on his side when he didn't get a response, making a questioning noise in Ivy's direction. Ivy was still standing, and Sun Fang thought it had to be a bummer that it couldn't sit down with him.
"I read many books about human childrearing when you were young," Ivy finally said. Sun Fang rose an encouraging eyebrow and Ivy gave him a look, but continued, "There was nobody who was willing to entertain my questions about you, or how to raise you, and so I had to find recourses on my own. Positive reinforcement is crucial according to several of those sources."
Sun Fang's lips wobbled slightly. He turned his gaze away, rubbing at his nose. "Ivy really is the best person in the entire universe," he said, crossing his hands under his head and closing his eyes. Ivy gave a low sigh next to him, an expression of exasperation more than anything, and Sun Fang stubbornly kept his eyes shut.
And because he was an exceedingly stubborn person, he then added, "You can't change my mind," in a sing-song voice. Ivy simply sighed again, while Sun Fang suppressed yet another smile.
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A/N: Hey! I'm participating in a novel contest on Neovel (a free site, no worries) where I've thus just started posting a new (also free) novel, titled TEMPORAL CASE FILES. It doesn't have a proper summary yet, because I'm just winging everything.
I don't know if I'll ever finish it, or if I'll keep going passed the contest. Hell, I don't know if I'll keep contesting. Just had a flash of inspiration, I guess.
But the contest is judged in large part by readers' votes, so why not head over to neovel.io and give it a read? Only 1 chapter is out so far (nr 2 is already written) so it won't take long, lol. And while only logged-in users can vote, as I said, it's completely free.
Also, TEMPORAL CASE FILES is an M/M novel. And neovel does have an app, if that matters.
