“Ha, it must be a mistake on your part,” Tang Le said confidently, “Consultant Ji has a boyfriend, and it was love at first sight. There’s no way he would say something like that so casually.”

At the transit station, in Song Qinglan’s illusion, Ji Yushi had personally mentioned this.

At that time, Tang Le, Tang Qi, and Song Qinglan were present.

Duan Wen, who wasn’t there, was surprised, “Consultant Ji has a boyfriend?”

Tang Qi confirmed, “Yes, I heard about it too.”

Li Chun felt even more embarrassed after hearing this and wished he could take back what he had just said, “Oh no, I knew it must have been a mistake on my part! Just forget what I said, and don’t mention it again. If Consultant Ji finds out, he’ll definitely hold it against me!”

Tang Le teased, “Really? And you thought you could use that phrase to flirt with girls?”

Everyone began to mock Li Chun, making him put on a bitter face, unable to defend himself.

As someone with low self-confidence, he would immediately doubt himself when questioned, so it was absolutely a mistake on his part.

Perhaps because Ji Yushi was the only one in the team with a different sexual orientation, the conversation somehow shifted to whether he actually had a boyfriend.

Who says straight guys don’t gossip? Old straight guy Duan Wen remarked, “Weird, I always thought Consultant Ji was single. I even asked him what type he liked when we were in Chaos.”

“I also thought Consultant Ji was single; otherwise, I wouldn’t have made jokes about him,” Zhou Mingxuan said, with a playful glint in his single eyelid. “Consultant Ji even gave me some advice at the transit station.”

At that time, Li Chun was busy hosting an outdoor party, and Zhou Mingxuan and Ji Yushi did indeed disappear for a while. Later, Song Qinglan found out that they had gone for a walk on the beach, but he didn’t know what they had talked about.

Zhou Mingxuan continued, “Consultant Ji talked to me about my grandma in the bubble world. We chatted for a bit, and I asked him if anything had changed around him. He said, except for three cats becoming one, everything else was the same, no friends, nothing to miss. He didn’t seem like someone who had a partner.”

Song Qinglan’s face suddenly darkened, and he slammed his fist on the nearby table.

The training ground fell silent at the sound, and without a word, Song Qinglan turned and left.

His teammates were shocked, “Captain Song, where are you going?”

“To find someone.”

Song Qinglan’s tone was cold as he walked out of the training ground without looking back.

He walked quickly, even faster than when he had returned to the training ground earlier.

His decision to hold back from reporting to the higher-ups was based on his belief that Ji Yushi had the ability to control himself and that he wanted to give Ji Yushi some time. Ji Yushi had completed 89 B-level missions, and apart from losing control once in the bubble world due to impatience, he had been reliable. So, even if Ji Yushi hadn’t waited for him as promised, Song Qinglan had assumed Ji Yushi just needed some personal time and had suppressed his irritation, knowing he didn’t have the right to be upset.

But now, Song Qinglan was filled with burning anger.

Ji Yushi didn’t need personal time; he was actually saying goodbye.

All that “I wish you all the best in your B-level missions” was a lie.

This wasn’t the first time Song Qinglan had seen Ji Yushi lie, but this time he had overlooked it. Was it because Ji Yushi had been caught lying so many times before that he had evolved his lying skills? Given Ji Yushi’s learning ability, it would have been easy for him.

Unpredictable, hard to read, and impossible to control.

Ji Yushi seemed easy to understand and harmless, but deep down, he was inscrutable.

He had never truly let his guard down with anyone or anything and had never developed an attachment to anyone or anything, just as he had told Song Qinglan. He had joined the Sky Vault as a recorder to fulfill his wish to return to that day.

He had never actually agreed to wait for Song Qinglan.

Because no matter how many B-level missions he had completed, Ji Yushi wasn’t confident he could just stand by and watch after returning to that day.

So he said, “…I don’t know where I’ll be at that time.”

The more Song Qinglan thought about it, the angrier he became.

This anger made his brain swell, and for some reason, a chill ran down his spine, leaving an empty space in his heart that ached and made it hard to breathe.

He strode toward the Minister’s office, flung the door open with a bang.

Minister Wang, who was on the phone, was startled by the noise and looked up, “Did you follow your instincts to get here?”

Song Qinglan had heard that familiar tone of blame and helplessness countless times, but he didn’t have time to apologize.

“Minister Wang,” Song Qinglan said, leaning both hands on the desk, “I request to perform a time-space jump!”

Minister Wang said to the person on the other end of the line, “Hold on a moment.”

She muted the call and then asked, “You just got back, and you’re already going crazy?”

The way Song Qinglan looked wasn’t as if he were here to make a request; it was more like he was here to challenge her authority, as if he would forcefully carry it out if she didn’t approve.

The last time Minister Wang had seen Song Qinglan like this was when he had just come out of the special forces. He had been rebellious all over, fierce enough to make people ignore his handsome face.

“Time coordinates, April 6, 1439,” Song Qinglan said simply. “I’ll use my reward for this jump, or I can exchange points. If I don’t go, I’m afraid Ji Yushi will do something wrong. You don’t know how he feels about that day—”

Minister Wang interrupted, “I was just about to tell you, Xiao Ji is back!”

Song Qinglan froze, thinking he had misheard.

“I’ve told you before, you need to stop having such a biased view of people. Why haven’t you changed?” Minister Wang shook her head, half blaming, half teasing, as she opened the ongoing holographic call. “Look, he just returned, and he’s currently being examined.”

The hologram displayed the Third Command Center of the Sky Vault Base.

A capsule pod was quietly parked on the teleportation platform.

In front of it stood a person in a black combat suit.

The figure was slim, with a fair and cool face, surrounded by five or six staff members, extending an arm to cooperate with the health checks.

Ji Yushi had returned four or five hours later than the other six members of Team Seven.

The system had detected that his capsule pod had jumped to another time-space, so after his health check, he wasn’t sent back to the training ground’s rest area like the others but was instead taken to the Inspection Department, just like Captain Song Qinglan.

Time-space management was precise and strict; even the smallest change could cause a time-space disturbance.

The Inspection Department’s conversation with Ji Yushi lasted an hour, and no one knew what they talked about.

When Ji Yushi left the interrogation room, he was granted permission to return to the Team Seven training ground, where he would rest and wait for the psychological evaluation along with everyone else over the next few days.

Escorted back to the training ground, Ji Yushi pushed open the door and was immediately surrounded by his astonished and overjoyed teammates, who couldn’t believe their eyes.

“Consultant Ji!”

“Consultant Ji, you scared us to death!”

“Where did you go?”

“You finally came back!!”

Voices tinged with a mix of reproach and concern made Ji Yushi’s ears heat up.

He knew that his recklessness would worry his teammates, and he was always bad at handling such situations, but their anxiety warmed his heart. The feeling of being cared for and valued was more precious to him than he had imagined.

“Damn it!” Tang Le exclaimed, “We were supposed to come back together, and then you just disappeared!”

Duan Wen cursed as usual, “Was it that damn Sky Vault that sent you on some other mission?”

Tang Qi and Zhou Mingxuan, standing on the outskirts, added, “Alright, now that Consultant Ji is back, the team is complete. We’ve successfully returned, all together.”

“One day without seeing you feels like three years!” Li Chun said tearfully, “Consultant Ji, I haven’t seen you in days! When they said you were going back, I was so scared you wouldn’t return. When did you plan to come back?”

Surrounded in the middle, Ji Yushi responded calmly, “Didn’t you all redeem your rewards?”

Everyone: “…”

“Fuck! How were we supposed to know you could redeem them on the spot?”

“I didn’t take it seriously; I thought you could only redeem after returning!”

“So the Sky Vault allows you to skip levels? One thing doesn’t affect the other?”

Amidst the noisy chatter, someone pushed the door open.

Ji Yushi stood still, his heart trembling slightly, but he didn’t turn around.

“Everyone, go back to your restrooms, take a shower, clean yourselves up. You haven’t slept in days, aren’t you tired?” Song Qinglan’s voice came from behind, “Now that everyone is back, we’ll start writing reports and doing evaluations tomorrow. Once that’s done, you can all go home.”

Having already gone through this process in the bubble world, everyone groaned at the thought and started complaining.

In the midst of the grumbling, Song Qinglan added, “Consultant Ji, come with me.”

Song Qinglan’s expression must not have been pleasant because Ji Yushi noticed that everyone suddenly fell silent.

Feeling a prickling sensation on his back, Ji Yushi replied, “Alright.”

Song Qinglan started walking, his tall figure passing by Ji Yushi, heading towards his private training room.

Li Chun shrank back, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Tang Le said, “Consultant Ji, hang in there.”

As everyone watched Ji Yushi follow Song Qinglan, they recalled the fear of being reprimanded in the private training room after making mistakes and mentally lit a candle for Consultant Ji.

Ji Yushi entered Song Qinglan’s private training room.

The door automatically closed behind him.

Although only a few hours had passed, Song Qinglan looked no different from when they had parted at the central block.

But Ji Yushi knew that Song Qinglan had completed a B-level mission with Zhou Mingxuan and Li Chun and had returned shortly after the others.

In the not-so-cramped space, Song Qinglan’s presence was overwhelmingly strong.

His sharp eyebrows were strikingly handsome, and it was clear that he was in a very bad mood, but all he asked was, “Did you see what you wanted to see?”

Ji Yushi replied, “I didn’t go upstairs.”

Song Qinglan, like an interrogator, asked a second question, “You went back to that day but didn’t go upstairs. So what were you doing for those few hours?”

Ji Yushi’s mental state seemed fairly good.

He spoke clearly, without any pretense: “I was spacing out.”

“Spacing out?” Song Qinglan questioned.

“Yes,” Ji Yushi responded calmly.

Song Qinglan pressed on, “Why?”

Ji Yushi remained silent for a long time before finally saying, “I don’t have confidence in myself.”

Song Qinglan said nothing.

With his head lowered, Ji Yushi’s expression was unreadable as he continued, “I thought I could do it. In fact, I was prepared to mess things up. But in the end, I realized… I couldn’t do it, so I didn’t go upstairs.”

“Prepared to mess things up.”

Song Qinglan’s deep voice ground out the words as he slowly approached Ji Yushi, seemingly suppressing his anger, “So you weren’t planning to come back?”

Ji Yushi replied, “Yes.”

Song Qinglan was now standing very close to him, staring intently at his cold face, and hoarsely asked, “Then why did you come back?”

Ji Yushi’s eyelashes trembled slightly as he parted his lips to say, “I suddenly didn’t want to go alone.”

It seemed difficult for him to admit, but he continued, “I wanted to try what it feels like to have someone accompany me.”

Song Qinglan either didn’t understand or chose not to respond.

Ji Yushi suspected that this steel-hearted man might never understand what he was saying, but since he wasn’t expecting any response in the first place, he added, “The feeling of having a friend with you. Didn’t you say you would go with me?”

Song Qinglan still didn’t say anything, though his chest rose and fell slightly.

His silence made the atmosphere in the training room feel strange.

“Captain Song, you’re not going to back out, are you?” Ji Yushi asked. “If you’re done asking, I’m going to rest.”

He turned and headed for the door.

Suddenly, a strong force pulled him back, yanking him by the wrist, causing him to stumble a step backward.

Song Qinglan loomed over him, his deep, dark eyes pinning Ji Yushi in place, making it impossible to look away.

“Consultant Ji,” Song Qinglan said, “before we returned, I told you there was something important you needed to seriously consider.”

Ji Yushi had no choice but to meet his gaze. “What is it?”

The closeness made his heart race, and all he wanted was to leave quickly.

But what Song Qinglan said next left Ji Yushi completely stunned.

He froze on the spot, his mind going blank for the first time in his life.

“No one can manage three relationships at once. I originally wanted you to seriously consider whether you want to get out of such a situation and start a new, one-on-one relationship where it’s just the two of you.”

Ji Yushi’s cat-like, beautiful eyes widened in surprise.

Paired with his cold expression, it was the perfect example of a cute contrast.

Song Qinglan’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he felt his cheeks involuntarily heat up.

He had thought about this for a long time—about morality, boundaries… about all the unspeakable reasons. But all those concerns shattered when he saw Ji Yushi moving through those various colored rooms time and time again.

He had even considered that if Ji Yushi couldn’t let go, he would wait until Ji Yushi was ready to move on.

Song Qinglan never expected that the countless thoughts swirling in his mind would come out under such circumstances.

He wasn’t afraid anymore, and he wasn’t holding back. He simply said, “Maybe you won’t need to do that anymore. I just found out that even though your ‘three boyfriends’ are clingy and love to act spoiled, and press down on you so much at night that you can hardly breathe, luckily they can sometimes turn from three into one, and they’re cute enough that I’m sure you can handle it.”

Ji Yushi: “…”

But Song Qinglan wasn’t trying to settle scores with him, and he certainly didn’t hold grudges.

“I wanted to ask…”

Song Qinglan’s voice was low, that rich tone, just like the first time Ji Yushi had heard it over the public channel, made his ears itch.

At that moment, the door to the private training room suddenly slammed open with a bang.

The teammates who had been eavesdropping were originally worried that Consultant Ji would get scolded, but as they listened, it got more and more suggestive, shattering their worldview.

Too excited, one of them accidentally slipped.

They were all exposed.

“Keep going!”

“We’re leaving right away!”

“Keep going, keep going!!”

Facing their captain’s livid expression, the five light bulbs covered their heads, not daring to make a sound.