Chapter 60

60 Learning social skills from a kid

Heavy-hearted Yi Chen stood in front of his bedroom door and as it slid open his mother’s words of it being psychological, not physical had him a little worried. If it was psychological shouldn’t she be making an appointment with the psychiatrist?

Since his father was the Marshal he had access to the best psychiatrist in the federation. The woman was literally one voice call away but his mother didn’t recommend he set up an appointment with her which was puzzling to him.

With this thought clouding his mind he stepped into his room only to find that he had been invaded by the enemy. His brother was lying inside his quilt playing games and his sister was sitting in his chair looking at his stuff curiously.

“You!...,” he yelled but he was at a loss for words. He couldn’t understand how they had invaded his bedroom in the ten minutes he had been downstairs.

Had they been carefully listening in waiting to hear the sound of his door being opened so they could sneak in while he was downstairs?

If that was the case then his mother was raising little spies clever enough to infiltrate anything. “What are you two doing in here?” he asked as he placed the icy bottle of the energy drink on his desk right on top of the coaster.

“Dage, what is that? It has Captain Bobo on it?” asked Ming Ming referring to the cooling patch he had taken out earlier. In fact, he didn’t need it. He just took it out and stared at it mindlessly for a second. Who would have thought twenty minutes later his sister would be staring at the cooling patch with great interest.

Yi Chen picked her up and sat on the chair before placing her on his lap. He took away the cooling patch and put it away saying, “Someone gave it to me for my swollen nose.”

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“Ah..... a girl?’ asked Yi Youxi while rolling on Yi Chen’s bed like it was his own. Yi Chen wanted to kick him off his bed but Ming Ming interrupted him.

.....

“Uh, does she like you. Is that why she gave it to you? How considerate,” said Ming Ming looking for something else to mess with on Yi Chen’s desk.

“No, it’s a boy and he doesn’t like me. Shouldn’t you two be going to bed?” said Yi Chen a little annoyed when he thought of how Zi Han was avoiding him like the plague.

Yi Youxi sighed while staring straight at his disappointing older brother who lacked social skills. “But you do want to be friends with him, right? Then how about doing something nice for them and I don’t mean small things but something huge.

“After that, it would like an unintentional emotional blackmail. They will feel terrible about rejecting you because you did something for them.”

Yi Chen, “...”

He couldn’t help but wonder how many people his little brother had defrauded using this method. At this point, he really didn’t want to know where he learned such an unconventional method.

“That’s very messed up... Okay enough chit chat. It’s time for bed,” he said only for Yi Youxi to nod his head and snuggle in the quilt like he planned to sleep there. Ming Ming even slid off his lap and walked over to the bed to pick a spot on the bed.

“Uh-uh, not happening,” said Yi Chen and two seconds later a disgruntled pair of siblings stood outside the bedroom door looking like abandoned cats.

They were about to give up the struggle for today when their parents’ door down the hall opened. Lin Ruoxi popped her head out of the door and yelled,

“Why aren’t you two in bed?” but instead she had invited pests into her room. Before she knew it the pair slipped under her arms and entered the master bedroom. Like uninvited bed bugs, they simply refused to leave.

While Lin Ruoxi was having a war of words with her kids which she was obviously losing Yi Chen was absentmindedly taking a sip of his energy drink. He didn’t necessarily agree with Yi Youxi but the more he thought about it, the more attractive that plan started to sound.

If he were to copy the Analects text for Zi Han would he be grateful enough to stop avoiding him? It sounded stupid but as seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours this idea was slowly coming to fruition.

He was familiar with calligraphy and that inkstone he overheard him talk about in class, his mother happened to have one. It was on display like dishware that is never going to be used.

The moment he went downstairs and picked the inkstone up the deeper he fell into the trap. The Analects was pretty easy to find.

All he had to do was log in to the Federation’s library system and access the electronic version of the text from the historical philosophy section. It seemed simple enough but in truth, it took him over an hour to pass through various permissions to access the text.

Three hours later he was sitting with his back straight practising. He only slept when the characters on the paper didn’t look like chicken scratches. He was more than determined to finish this task.

Yi Chen wasn’t the only one toiling all night. Zi Han had been working extremely hard to finish this but unlike Yi Chen, he was making very little progress. His final product still looked nothing like the original which made him very frustrated.

Exhausted he dragged his body to the shower and washed away all his burdens. But as he slipped in between the covers his light brain suddenly lit up.

Lo and behold, his mother who had been M.I.A forcibly established a video call hence she didn’t need his permission.

“Hey!” she excitedly yelled startling Zi Han who was sleeping topless underneath the quilt.

“AAAAHHHH!! Shit..... Mum!!” he yelled while pulling the covers tightly.

“Tsk, what is there to hide? You don’t even have a single hair on that chest so what are you embarrassed about,” said Zi Xingxi as she chuckled lightly the excitement of seeing her son clearly written on her face.

“What hair..... is Han Han shirtless? Let me see,” said Lynn Feng before trying to squeeze into the frame.