Chapter 181: Adolescent Girl Alice
Alice refused to answer this question.
She calmed down, watching Klein pretend to seriously listen to the speech, and in the end, following the speech manuscript, delivered a long and stinky (boring and drawn-out) speech.
Listening to the familiar "there are a few more points below" and "let me say a few more points," Alice finally realized that the reason those leadership speeches seem especially long is not the leader, but the secretary who writes the manuscript.
She turned her resentful gaze onto Bilt.
Bilt was at the side listening to "Admiral Amyrius's" speech, doing his best to be a qualified secretary. Suddenly, his spirituality stirred—he felt a sense of crisis.
It wasn't deadly, but…
Before he had time to react, he fell sitting onto the floor—the chair he was sitting on had collapsed.
Klein looked at Bilt who had fallen to the ground, then at the speech manuscript in his hand, and began to consider the possibility that Alice was already annoyed.
After a burst of chaos, Klein chose not to finish the remaining half page of the speech manuscript and hastily summarized to end today's speech.
When the meeting ended, time had already come close to evening. Accompanied by secretary Bilt, Klein left the Oravi base and went to the mansion of a navy broker to attend a dinner party.
At the dinner party, they chatted about fluctuations in port material prices. Klein, imitating Admiral Admiral Amyrius, occasionally told an outdated Backlund joke, drawing enthusiastic reactions from everyone, all praising: "Your Excellency the Admiral is truly humorous."
Alice watched this scene, finding it more and more familiar. After the dinner ended, she finally came to a sudden realization and slapped her forehead—at the Tarot Club, everyone spoke to her just like this.
Ah, this.
Alice lowered her head to seriously reflect on her own behavior—and decided not to change.
When the dinner party ended, Klein finally faced the most difficult matter of his day—dealing with Cynthia.
However, after experiencing the whole day, Klein finally came up with a way to handle Cynthia. He pretended to have an abnormal physical reaction and muddled through the intimacy with Cynthia, managing to get a room alone.
The second day was still an unchanged day—a boring daily life for Alice, a day of water and fire (suffering) for Klein—after all, in addition to dealing with official duties, he also had to deal with Alice…
After finishing a difficult day, Klein lay on the bed, regretting his decision to bring Alice over, and drifted into dreamland.
In the dream, he comfortably soaked in a bath and came out wearing a bathrobe.
Cynthia came out at this time from the master bedroom diagonally opposite, wearing only a silk nightgown.
Her golden hair hung slightly messy, with a few strands drifting before her blue eyes and bright red lips, half covering her gaze, lips half open and half closed. In the dim and ambiguous environment, she appeared extremely seductive.
The collar of that silk nightgown was opened very wide, and Klein's line of sight was involuntarily drawn over, then slowly moved upward, seeing Cynthia's shy face.
This familiar expression made Klein freeze for a moment, and a certain sentence uncontrollably echoed in his mind:
"Mr. Fool, I think, I want to have a child with you…"
He woke up from the dream in horror.
Before he could react, a stabbing pain came from the top of his head. Klein instinctively turned his head to look and found that Alice was holding a few strands of his hair in her hand.
He was dazed for a few seconds, and Alice, taking advantage of those few seconds when he didn't react, destroyed the evidence—used "Restart" to return those few hairs to their original position.
Then, he saw Alice looking at him with a face full of surprise and asking:
"You're awake?
"It's really lively outside right now, do you want to go take a look?"
As everyone knows, "lively" from Alice's mouth is not a good word. Klein instantly gave up on arguing with Alice, quickly flipped out of bed, and put on his general's ceremonial uniform.
He didn't ask Alice what was going on—after all, wanting to have a proper conversation with Alice was just too much of a time sink.
Klein took "Law of Nine" and "Creeping Hunger" with him, put on a serious face, cautiously walked to the door, and reached out to grasp the handle.
"You don't need to be so careful," Alice reminded. "At least this room is safe."
The meaning in those words was self-evident. Klein slightly frowned and turned back to ask:
"The others…?"
Alice rubbed her chin and said: "Although the problem lies with Cynthia, however… not a single one of them escaped, you know?"
After a pause, she sighed:
"Gluttony, pride, sloth, envy, lust…
"So it turns out, when desires are revealed without reservation, humans are like this—and not like what I've always seen…
"Justice, compassion, courage, sacrifice, and love…
"Humans don't only have these beautiful things, right?"
Klein's movement paused. He gently turned his head and looked at Alice.
He suddenly realized—Alice at this moment was not quite the same as in his impression. She looked no different than usual, but her eyes lacked their usual liveliness—instead, they were cold and indifferent.
She was clearly looking at him, but Klein felt that he was not truly in her eyes.
Perhaps it should be "Her."
He hesitated for a moment, withdrew his hand, looked at Alice and cautiously called out:
"Alice?"
"You're worried about me…" Alice looked at him and murmured, "Why aren't you afraid of me? Or hate me… I watched them get corrupted, and didn't intervene…"
If only "Justice" were here… Klein rubbed his brows with a headache and looked at Alice, saying:
"If we go by your principle—it was me who hired you as a bodyguard, not those people outside. You not caring about them is normal.
"I've always known what kind of person you are. I've never asked you to be like me.
"Also, Alice, if something happened to me, wouldn't you be worried about me?"
After a few seconds of silence, that cold indifference receded from Alice like the tide. Then, she glared at him fiercely and vanished from sight.
Klein hesitated for two seconds and couldn't help but ask the air:
"Alice, you're not crying, are you?"
No one answered him—only his belt suddenly came loose.
Klein rubbed his forehead in frustration, gave up on doing psychological counseling for an adolescent girl, grabbed the doorknob again, and prepared to open the door.
At that instant, he finally seemed to reconnect with the real world—he heard many noisy and chaotic sounds from outside the door.
Among them were clear chewing sounds, angry roars, and sharp urging voices.
Just what happened? Everything was normal before! Klein swallowed his saliva and used meditation to maintain the necessary calm.
Wait a minute—was he tricked by Alice? Didn't Alice mention she had an ability to detach emotions to make herself calm…?
Only… three chapters left…
(End of this chapter)