Chapter 14

Two more baskets of earth beans were added to the cellar. Though the earth beans were counted in baskets, there were in fact not a lot of them. According to the result of Rong Gui’s final count last night, they now had 198 earth beans in total.

In addition, they also had an extra chair, two basins, a flower pot, and two more terry cloth towels.

All of them were made amidst Rong Gui’s unrelenting mantra of “do it, do it~ we really need a blah blah blah”.

To be more precise, it’s Xiao Mei who made all of them.

There was originally only one chair in the house. After all, only one person lived in this house previously, and there was no need for a second chair without any guest. But now, “there were two of them”, and Rong Gui indicated that he “would like to have a chair to sit side by side with Xiao Mei”. Rong Gui kept rambling about this for a whole day, so the next day, Xiao Mei collected the tools and made him a chair.

There was originally no such thing as washbasin in the house. Yet, wasn’t the massage their main job every day now? Before the massage, Rong Gui even demanded to wash the bodies of the two people. Under such circumstance, “a washbasin would be really useful~” ← Such were the original words from Rong Gui.

Of course, now that there’s a washbasin, how could there be no foot bath basin? How could you use the same basin simultaneously for washing feet and washing hands and body? Thus, Xiao Mei was forced to fire an extra foot bath basin.

Things like flower pots would seem quite unnecessary, right? Yet after having the washbasin and foot bath basin, Rong Gui felt that “their bodies would easily get dirty if they directly spread the soil on the table in their room to grow mushrooms”. So he believed that “the mushrooms should have a home, too”. During the next two days, he made every effort to beg Xiao Mei to fire a few more flower pots for him.

Just one? Not enough! They should at least have ten!

Of course, Xiao Mei didn’t end up firing ten flower pots, but only five.

As to those two cloth towels… It’s true that Xiao Mei had never woven any cloth before, but what kind of person do you think he was? Just by examining a few more pieces of existing fabrics, and combining all other knowledge in his mind, he could make a loom without difficulty. But as capable as Xiao Mei was, he couldn’t just weave things out of thin air without any materials. Yet apart from earth beans, no other kind of plants could be found here!

Therefore…

Those two cloth towels were ultimately made from the only piece of fabric they had on themselves.

As to that “only piece of fabric they had on themselves”…

Naturally, it could only be the underpants originally worn by Xiao Mei.

In the end, he still failed to retain his honor in front of Rong Gui in this regard.

oRZ

Basically, all these seemingly simple but extremely hard-to-make items were made by Xiao Mei, who was “forced” by Rong Gui to do so.

It’s not that Rong Gui didn’t help with anything in the meantime. Quite the contrary, he was rather eager to assist. But because he had really clumsy fingers, basically what he could do was only making some suggestions, digging the soil, or, at last, writing the phrase “for face” on the washbasin and the phrase “for feet” on the foot bath basin, and drawing a few abstract small flowers on the flower pots…

And that’s all.

orZ

By the way, didn’t Rong Gui diligently make a mushroom umbrella before for both of their bodies to get some “sunbaths”?

That stuff collapsed right away that night. Fortunately, their bodies had already been put back at that time. Otherwise, Xiao Mei would have worked to death solely to clean up the mud and the “mushrooms” which had fallen all over the place.

Why, you may ask, would Xiao Mei have worked to death?

What a dumb question! Would Rong Gui be capable of such kind of work requiring meticulous attention to details?

Needless to say, he must have been cheering on the sideline, and let Xiao Mei finish all the work alone!

Ah…yes, didn’t they need baskets to store earth beans? The baskets were woven by Xiao Mei, too, with iron wires. We forgot to count this.

“Xiao Mei, you are really great!”

“You are so capable of what you do~”

While Xiao Mei was painstakingly increasing the GDP of the household, Rong Gui was sending all kinds of honeyed words and sweet speeches from aside. The first time Xiao Mei heard such words, his entire robotic body started to feel unwell. However, after hearing them so many times… he gradually got used to them.

Early this morning, as usual, Rong Gui began to praise Xiao Mei again:

“Wow, Xiao Mei, you are awesome! I just said that I wanted some marks on each cloth towel to distinguish one from another, but you actually embroidered flowers!!! And there were green ones and red ones! You even managed to create different colors?”

Xiao Mei the robot, who was just about to drip the last drop of dye on the cloth towel, glanced up at him: “The green pigment was extracted from the leaves of the earth beans, or mushrooms, as you call them.”

“As to the red pigment, it’s a natural dye obtained by processing the anthocyanins extracted from the earth beans. Although anthocyanins are water-soluble, after processing them, the color may last a bit longer.”

Of course, without the earth beans, he could still think of a way to obtain the pigment from iron rust. But since earth beans alone could solve the problem, there was no need for him to waste any metal.

These were the words that he kept to himself.

However –

Rong Gui obviously had no interest in any principle or process of making dyes. After hearing Xiao Mei’s words, he praised him again and then said: “Red and green indeed look great, but it will look better if there are a variety of colors! Xiao Mei, how about you try to create some yellow color next? I really like the color yellow~ You see, we still have five dusty flower pots waiting to be decorated…”

Xiao Mei: “……”

Do you think there were only five flower pots waiting for Xiao Mei?

You are too naive to think this way~

Even Xiao Mei himself wouldn’t believe it to be this simple.

Soon, after admiring his self-made small mushroom bonsai for a moment, Rong Gui called on Xiao Mei again to start massaging both their bodies.

After being nursed for a period of time, both bodies were in a better condition than before.

“Xiao Mei has grown one centimeter taller.” The image-forming system of the robots was really convenient to use – it even came with a measuring scale!

“My hair has grown one centimeter longer.” Gently stroking his hair, Rong Gui continued to announce.

Xiao Mei’s body was in excellent condition, which, of course, had something to do with the fact that he received adequate care within a mere few days after being put into the cabin. The condition of Rong Gui’s body naturally couldn’t match that of Xiao Mei’s, but compared to its earlier dry, withered looks, now…

At least it wasn’t so stiff when he touched it.

This was the result of the diligent daily massage.

But wherever there were gains, there were losses. Because the two bodies were moved around every day during this period of time, although the skin of the two bodies still looked fine – it was not so dirty due to daily cleaning, the hair’s condition was not so good.

“Xiao Mei, I think we need a comb. At lease we can dip it into the water and use it to clean up our hair a bit.”

Softly twisting a strand of Xiao Mei’s hair around his rough mechanical fingers, Rong Gui raised his head and said to Xiao Mei.

As he had expected –

Xiao Mei the robot was able to keep his countenance.

“It’s a shame that even with a comb, we can only brush the exposed part of the hair. As to the hair grown on the back of our heads, we can do nothing about it…”

↑

These were the words spoken by Rong Gui as he looked at his own body.

Apart from the respirator, there was a metal cover over the back of their heads, which was connected to their brains. Under normal circumstance, the metal cover could produce electrical waves to massage the head and stimulate the brain. But the device connected to the back of Rong Gui’s head was apparently more complicated than that.

According to Xiao Mei’s explanation, the metal cover on the back of Xiao Mei’s head could be removed briefly, but the one on the back of Rong Gui’s head could not. That’s because the catheter inserted into the back of Rong Gui’s brain was attached to this device.

At first, Rong Gui didn’t care much about this problem, until Xiao Mei made the comb and they used it to finish brushing Xiao Mei’s hair. Now it’s Rong Gui’s turn to have his hair combed.

While moving his head, Rong Gui finally had a clear view of what his back head looked like. It was a translucent metal cover – a bit strange, wasn’t it? Although it’s metal, it’s translucent.

It’s probably some sort of Clarketech in this future world ← Though it’s unclear what year it was, but time was always moving forward, so it must be future now. Rong Gui thought so as a matter taken for granted.

Since the cover was translucent, for the first time, Rong Gui saw that a hole was actually now opened at the back of his head.

A very large hole.

In fact, there was no blood. Blocked by a metal cover, Rong Gui couldn’t accurately determine the current color there. But it didn’t look like a badly mutilated wound with a mixture of flesh and blood. Instead, it’s just a round hole opened with great precision, with two catheters of finger width stuck in there. The hair around it was all shaved. After a few days of nursing, the rest of Rong Gui’s hair had all grown a little longer. However, it’s unknown whether some special treatment had been done to the scalp below the metal cover – for some reason it remained to be completely bare.

What was it like to witness your own head split open?

Holding his head gingerly, Rong Gui didn’t dare to move an inch.

“No need to be particularly nervous. This medical care device is very solidly implanted.” Seeing his action, Xiao Mei said flatly from aside.

Yet Rong Gui was too nervous to even nod his head.

He talked very little that day.

At first, Xiao Mei really enjoyed this long-lost tranquility. But at night, when Rong Gui, who had always dutifully shut down himself every day, suddenly got up at the middle of the night, he felt a little strange.

Since these two were connected together to recharge every day, he was aware of it when Rong Gui left.

He didn’t pay any attention to it in the beginning until thirty minutes later, and Rong Gui still hadn’t come back then.

Jumping down from the charger, Xiao Mei decided to go out and take a look.

He directly went outside ← Rong Gui had pushed the door open to go out, and he heard it.

It’s easy to find people in an open space, so he soon found Rong Gui next to the glittering green earth bean field outside. In the darkness, the shabby little robot just sat there on the ridge of the field, with arms around his knees. The iridescent green light illuminated certain parts of the little robot’s surface, making him look even shabbier.

It seemed that he had stayed there in this position for almost thirty minutes.

“Is there any problem with the earth bean field?” Xiao Mei’s first reaction…was to carefully examine the earth bean field in front of Rong Gui.

Rong Gui shook his head.

“It’s you then. Do you have any problem?” Xiao Mei asked again.

Rong Gui didn’t respond.

Xiao Mei stood in silence by his side.

The one robot on the ridge of the field now turned into two.

After a while further, just when Xiao Mei decided to go back and continue to recharge, Rong Gui, who was crouching beneath him, suddenly spoke up:

“Xiao Mei, there’s such a large hole split open on my head. Will I…die?”

So he was frightened by his actual abysmal condition?

“I don’t want to die. I’m only eighteen and I haven’t seen anything yet. Our orphanage was in a small place, and it had only been a month since I went to the big city. I haven’t seen anything in the world yet…” Rong Gui whispered again.

Xiao Mei stood quietly in the wind for a long time, and said, “In fact, the physical body is merely a vessel for concretizing our consciousness in front of others. In the past, this vessel used to be unique and irreplaceable, but now it isn’t. For instance, you now have two vessels in this world – one inside the house, and the other in front of me.”

Rong Gui was dazed for a moment.

“Xiao Mei, what you said was so complicated. I…I can’t understand…”

“It means that, it doesn’t matter if your body in the house is damaged – you can replace it with other vessels.” Xiao Mei rephrased his words.

“But I only want that one in the house!”

Xiao Mei lowered his head. Standing tall, he looked down condescendingly at the other robot who had curled himself into a tiny ball.

At this moment, he was really puzzled.

“If you think the current mechanical body is shabby and poorly made, in fact, in the future, you may go out to change it to better materials. If you want artificial skin, that’s fine, too. Advanced materials are very durable, and it doesn’t matter if they are damaged – you can replace them anytime.”

“But I only want that one in the house.” What the little robot beneath him responded were still the same words as before.

“That’s my own body, abandoned by the parents I had never met, raised by the granny dean of the orphanage, fighting with friends, climbing up the walls and trees to pick bird eggs out of their nests… There are actually a lot of scars on my body! Of course, due to my persistent skin care, those scars are almost invisible now, but you can still see them if you look closely. Whenever I see those scars, they will remind me of what happened back then…”

“Later, I took care of my skin every day! And I trained my muscles, too. In fact, it was not easy for me to grow muscles, and I trained very hard to get those. Every muscle took me a lot of effort – it’s some hard labor…”

“I don’t have anything, and my body is my only property…”

“I only want that one in the house.”

Rong Gui said a lot of things, over and over, but in the end, he still fell back on his initial words.

Author has something to say:

Have you noticed today’s word count –

A, lot, of, words!

Hahaha, happy weekend everyone!