The office is much safer than the hallway.
Qin Chu was rummaging through things, and Levi wanted to follow him and cause trouble, but after his gaze swept around the simple office, he stopped.
This office is in a typical military style, extremely simple. Because many things have clearly been moved out, it also feels somewhat empty.
What attracted Levy was a few photographs embedded in the wall.
One photo shows a middle-aged man and several officers. Several of the officers look familiar; Levy had seen them at the base.
Not particularly interested in the photo, Levy shifted his gaze to the side.
Unlike the previous group photo, this photo only has two people in it. One is the middle-aged man from the previous photo, but he looks much older.
The other was a boy of about seventeen or eighteen, with a sour face, coldly throwing glares at the camera.
Levi curled his lips into a smile and leaned closer.
Then his gaze shifted to another photo, which was clearly a graduation photo from a military academy. The middle-aged man, now a bit older, solemnly wore his badge and had his arm around a young man who was already taller than him.
The young man's expression remained unchanged; while others were taking photos, he was trying to kill the photographer with his eyes.
There are some more photos after that, but they are all solo shots of the elderly.
However, the angles of these photos are all very cleverly chosen, with the stubborn back of someone's head or half an arm occasionally showing next to the old man, just like a group photo.
The elderly man with white hair was very happy because of this little trick, while the young man's half-revealed figure was practically saying, "Don't take pictures if you don't want to."
Levy smiled as he looked around at the photos on the wall, and when he went back to look at the group photo, he found a clue.
The man and woman standing to the right of this middle-aged marshal bear a resemblance to the young man in the later photo, Qin Chu.
"Are these your parents?" Levy asked.
Qin Chu, who was fiddling with something behind his desk, peeked out, looked up, and nodded.
It seems that what Qin Chu is investigating now is not only related to the mission, but also to Qin Chu's parents.
Levi walked over to Qin Chu, glanced at him, and asked, "Do you need my help?"
"...Just staying away is helping out." Qin Chu was buried in the pile of documents, not even looking up.
"Okay, then I'll go do something else." Levi gave an OK sign and turned to walk out of the office.
Qin Chu immediately straightened up and asked him, "Where are you going? Don't wander around." There might be robots that can move around in this building.
Levy was both amused and exasperated: "Where could I possibly run off to in this building? Is General Qin that dependent on me?"
“…Get lost.” Qin Chu squatted down again.
He told the man to get lost, but Qin Chu checked the time at least three times within minutes of Levi leaving.
Perhaps because his search for information had yielded no results, Qin Chu felt a little anxious. He glanced at his wrist again; five minutes had passed.
At Levi's speed, five minutes should be enough for him to go downstairs and back. Why is there still no sign of him? What is he doing?
Qin Chu pursed his lips and forced himself to continue focusing on finding information.
A few more minutes passed, and the office was silent, with no sound coming from outside.
Qin Chu looked up from the pile of documents and glanced at the time again.
The inexplicable anxiety in his heart seemed to intensify a little. Qin Chu pressed the communicator twice, preparing to make a call to Levi.
However, after dialing the number, it showed that there was no signal in this area.
Qin Chu turned off the communication and clicked his tongue.
He forgot that once the building's defenses were fully activated, there were specialized facilities to block communications.
In other words, he has absolutely no way to contact Levy now.
The materials in my hands became difficult to concentrate on.
Qin Chu quickly finished flipping through the stack of documents in his hand and stood up from behind his desk.
He knew the source of his anxiety. But Levi had nothing to worry about; the building posed no danger to him, and Qin Chu didn't believe he couldn't complete the mission without Levi.
But for some reason, he just felt a little...worried.
Moreover, the more he suppressed this thought, the heavier it became. The more he forced himself not to think about Levi, the more his thoughts swirled around the man.
After glancing at the desk again, Qin Chu walked out and headed straight for the door to the marshal's office.
As soon as he opened the office door, before he could even step out, he saw Levi holding something in his hand. He rolled away from the scanning rays in the corridor and jumped into the office.
Because Qin Chu was blocking the doorway, Levi almost pounced on Qin Chu.
"What's wrong?" Levy asked.
The man was carrying a small toolbox, which he held up a little higher in case he bumped into Qin Chu.
The unease that had been gripping him suddenly subsided. Qin Chu glanced at him and continued walking toward his desk: "It's nothing."
Levi looked at him for two seconds, then suddenly understood: "You're not going to come looking for me, are you?"
"Who the hell knows where you ran off to?" Qin Chu said irritably.
Levi took two steps to stand in front of Qin Chu, squinted his azure eyes at Qin Chu, and smiled happily: "I've only been gone a short time and I already miss you. Qin Chu, admit it, you need me."
Qin Chu was taken aback.
need?
Levy probably just made a boastful remark without thinking.
But even as Qin Chu went behind his desk to continue reviewing the documents, and Levy resumed fiddling with his toolbox, the same thought kept nagging at him.
Does he need Levy now?
At first, there was some rebellion, and they didn't really want to admit it.
Qin Chu had been struggling on a garbage planet since he was a few years old, and even after being adopted, he didn't feel that he needed anyone.
But now, a single sentence from Levy has resolved his biggest question that had been lingering for some time.
Suppressing his surging emotions, Qin Chu finished reviewing the documents in his hand and turned to look at Levi.
I was so angry when I saw it that I almost fainted.
This thing is actually removing several photos that are embedded in the wall?
His adoptive father was a nostalgic person. When he moved out of this office, he took almost everything he could, except for these few photos embedded in the wall, so he had no choice but to leave them behind.
I never imagined that I would fall victim to Levy's wickedness.
Qin Chu walked over and looked at the electric drill and crowbar in Levi's hands, his expression indescribable: "You just went through all that trouble to run out just to find something to dismantle the photos?"
"Otherwise what?" Levy disassembled it very carefully, without damaging the photo itself at all. "If you take this apart by hand, it will be unusable."
Levy's target was clearly Qin Chu's two photos.
After taking it down, since I was already taking it down, I also took down the other photos on the wall, including the group photo.
Although Qin Chu didn't say it explicitly, Levy knew a little about what had happened in the First Legion and knew that this group photo might be the last thing Qin Chu could get related to his parents.
Qin Chu sat to the side, watching Levi dismantle the photos with a complex mix of emotions.
He didn't quite understand.
Just as he couldn't understand why his adoptive father enjoyed taking pictures of him so much, he also couldn't understand Levy's passion for these photos.
Just as I was about to urge Levi to hurry up, I saw Levi take down the group photo and suddenly let out a "Huh?"
“General Qin, I may have discovered another little secret,” Levy said.
Qin Chu walked over and was startled to see the hidden compartment revealed after the photo fell off.
"Do you know about this?" Levy asked.
Qin Chu shook his head silently. He frowned as he looked at the items in the hidden compartment, and after a long while, he finally spoke: "When we were moving the items, he said to leave these photos here. I thought we couldn't take them with us, but I didn't expect..."
Levi reached into the hidden compartment and felt around; a pupil scanner quickly popped out. Levi stepped aside and turned to look at Qin Chu: "This was probably prepared for you."
Qin Chu understood, but looking at the thing his adoptive father had left him, he hesitated for a moment.
"Why are you feeling nervous about returning home?" Levy teased with a smile. "How about I sweep the area for you and see if your adoptive father expected you to bring your boyfriend?"
“...Go stand over there.” Qin Chu pulled him away, but did not refute the term “boyfriend.”
The pupil scanning device was clearly intact. Qin Chu stood over, and soon a "beep" sound came out, and a box popped out.
Reaching out of the box, Qin Chu noticed a piece of paper underneath the metal box.
These were the words his adoptive father left for him.
"I've gone to great lengths to prepare all this, and I'm not even sure if you'll ever see it."
“Raising children is definitely not my thing, even a child your age. And I have to say it again, your quiet, unassuming manner is really infuriating.”
“Adopting you was out of a sense of responsibility, but thanks to your terrible personality, it has certainly brought me a lot of joy in my later years. In my spare time, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make a good living for you, my adopted son.”
"God is fair. Your parents' genes gave you the strongest body possible, but they also left you with a defect. I believe you have also noticed that you have a low sensitivity to emotions. When I discovered this, like other parents who found out their children had defects, I went through a lot of agonizing time."
"Qin Chu, I wonder if you've ever thought about why I groomed you to be the successor of the military so early on? You might think that this decision was because of your abilities. That's certainly true, but I also had some other ulterior motives."
“You don’t have much interest in human relationships, and you don’t even have any feelings of dependence on me, your adoptive father. You don’t even care about your biological parents as much as other children do. You’re too calm.”
"Emotions are very important to humans. They can cause pain and are an important part of the will to survive in critical moments. But you have none of these."
"I've thought more than once about what will happen to you after I leave, when you have no attachment to this world. A strong yet lonely person suffers, and I don't want you to experience that pain, so I choose to replace emotions with responsibility and become your connection to this world."
“I’m not sure if this choice is right. But even if I make this choice, I hope that one day, you will open this box out of some strong emotion and persistently pursue everything related to your parents from back then.”
"Child, everyone has weaknesses and things they care about. I'm really happy if you can see this..."
After reading the letter, Qin Chu couldn't quite describe how he felt.
He never imagined that his adoptive father's upbringing of him was for this purpose...
Even now, he hasn't become the person his adoptive father hoped for in that letter. He does care about the cause of his biological parents' deaths and has researched a lot of information, but that's not enough to motivate him to take down the photos from the wall and keep them safe.
But then, he got together with Levy.
By a twist of fate, Levy did these things, filling the void in his life.
Perhaps he still hasn't become the person his adoptive father expected, but for some reason, Qin Chu always felt that one day in the future, he would.
After reading the letter, Qin Chu opened the box that Levi was holding.