Thanks Lion Hug for the reminder. I've had a rough week, so I might otherwise have completely forgotten about this. (Blogger does have a scheduling function, but it doesn't seem to work for me...)
***
Since Klaire promised he wouldn’t disturb him, Xi Wei didn’t think about it further, and moved into the military base without any more qualms.
The next morning when he woke up, sure enough, the ground on planet Rennes was covered with a thick layer of downy snow. Xi Wei hadn’t seen it snow for a long time. He had Egret change into an ordinary hovercar, and drove him outside to go sightseeing.
A night of snowfall had wrapped the whole world in silver and white. All that entered his eyes was a field of dazzling snow. Large snowflakes were still fluttering about as they drifted to the ground. Xi Wei sat in Egret’s cockpit and looked at the beautiful scenery outside the windows, full of excitement.
Rennes was a barren and desolate planet at the edge of the empire. Besides the Morningstar Corps which Klaire had just led here to support the marshal and defend the planet, and a few soldiers stationed here long-term for mining, there were very few citizens native to the planet.
Compared to the bustling and lively capital planet, it was a lot quieter here. Especially after it snowed, the whole place was silent. It was like a paradise built of snow, hidden away from the outer world.
Xi Wei really liked the scenery here. After they arrived at an open field, he had Egret land on the ground, and he jumped out of the cockpit.
The temperature outside was very low. Xi Wei was wearing warm clothes, but his exposed hands felt chilled to the bone. Xi Wei rubbed his hands together and ran a few steps to warm up. He looked back, and the two guys who had followed him from the base were actually still behind him.
Offhandedly, Xi Wei shaped two snowballs and threw them into the distance. With twin thumps, they smashed accurately into the faces of those two people.
“...” Smashed in the face by a snowball, the officer looked at Xi Wei with a lifeless expression.
Xi Wei walked up to those two and said with a frown, “What are you doing following me?”
These two were obviously officers from the Morningstar Corps. They were wearing neat, midnight blue uniforms, and from the insignias on their shoulders, they should be senior colonels. They both had a tall and straight physique. They’d been following Egret all the way here.
At first, Xi Wei had thought they were carrying out a military task, and hadn’t paid attention. But as it turned out, when Egret stopped, their hovercar also stopped in the distance. When they saw Xi Wei come out of his cockpit, those two men also got out of their car. Xi Wei immediately realized that they’d been tailing him from a distance.
But those two men were really dumb enough. Xi Wei had shaped two snowballs and suddenly turned to throw them, and those two actually didn’t know to dodge. After getting hit head-on, they looked very comical with their faces full of snow.
“It couldn’t be that Klaire sent you?” Xi Wei looked over the two of them and asked coldly.
The darker-skinned officer saluted him respectfully and said, “Madam, the general was worried about your safety, so he had us follow you from a distance. Please be at ease, we won’t disturb you.”
“...” After falling silent for a good while, Xi Wei smiled and said, “What did you just call me?”
The officer looked blank, and said seriously, “Madam...Warwick?”
Xi Wei frowned. His right hand tightened into a fist, and he toppled the man with a sharp uppercut. He said in a low voice, “I haven’t married Klaire yet, do you think you can just call me “Madam Warwick” whenever you please? Your general hasn’t taught you how to talk?”
After being dealt with, the officer climbed up awkwardly from the ground, and obediently corrected himself. “Yes, mad- …Your Highness.”
Xi Wei rolled his eyes and connected to Bluestar’s communicator. He said with a cold face, “Klaire, is it that you feel like you have nothing to do? I’m coming out to see the scenery, that’s all. What do you mean by sending two men after me?”
Klaire smiled good-naturedly and said gently, “Alright, don’t be angry. Isn’t this just because I’m worried about your safety? Planet Rennes is located at the empire’s border. If you were to be captured by a federal spy or suffered an injury, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to your father.”
Xi Wei said angrily, “Don’t talk shit, hurry up and call them back!”
The two little attendants: “...”
Madam Warwick was really so fierce. He dared to talk like that to the general, and even acted so ferociously. Poor Major General Klaire, after he got married, he was bound to be a henpecked husband, and he’d definitely get beaten—the two little attendants thought silently.
Klaire smiled and said, “Don’t hurry to refuse, these two men are the most loyal officers in the Morningstar Corps guard camp, and what’s more, they’re both married. You can be at ease and trust them. Xi Wei, as a prince, if you went strolling around outside alone and your father learned about it, it’d be very difficult for me as your fiancé. Try and have a little sympathy for me.”
“I…” Xi Wei knew that Klaire was actually being considerate for his sake. Right now, it wasn’t convenient for him to return to the capital planet. Since he was publicly staying at his “fiancé’s” Morningstar Corps, if the matter of him going out alone was spread around, it would indeed arouse people’s suspicions.
—Who would let his omega fiancée run around all by himself?
In the eyes of others, Major General Klaire sending two loyal subordinates to protect Prince Xi Wei would be the normal way of doing things.
Anyway, they were acting for other people to see. After he calmed down, Xi Wei quickly thought through the advantages and disadvantages. He nodded and said, “I understand.”
Klaire smiled and said, “You should relax and have fun. I’ll take care of everything else.” As he said this, he looked at his two subordinates and then said, “You two follow Xi Wei from a distance and protect him. If a situation arises, report it to me immediately. Also, try and stay a little farther from His Highness, don’t disturb him.”
The two men saluted immediately and said, “Yes, General!”
Xi Wei looked back at the two men and thought of how Klaire said they were both already married, and felt momentarily curious. He couldn’t help but beckon to them and say, “Come here.”
The two alphas stood where they were with serious expressions.
Xi Wei frowned and said, “I told you to come here! Are you afraid I’ll eat you?”
Scolded, the alphas came over with red faces.
Xi Wei asked, “How long have you been in the Morningstar Corps?”
One man replied clearly, “Ten years.”
“When did you marry?”
“Three years ago.”
“What’s your wife like?”
When he brought up his wife, that alpha seemed a little shy, and said hesitantly, “My omega has an especially good character, gentle and considerate. He gave birth to a son who’s very cute. Every year I try to make time to go back to the capital planet and visit my son and his dad.”
The son and his dad? Xi Wei asked doubtfully, “Your wife is a man?”
The alpha said, “Yes, Your Highness, my omega is a man.”
Xi Wei frowned and asked the other man, “What about you?”
That man saluted Xi Wei and said seriously, “Your Highness, my omega is also a man. Last year he gave birth to a daughter, and she’s just turned one this year.”
Xi Wei: “......”
This world was crazy!
He was about to collapse just talking with these two alphas. Xi Wei felt Klaire must have sent these two on purpose to irritate him. —Look, these two alphas both married male omegas, and they’re living very blissfully. So Xi Wei, don’t struggle anymore, and hurry up and agree to me.
Xi Wei really wanted to run back to the Morningstar Corps mothership and fiercely give Klaire a good beating!
After he’d seen enough of planet Rennes’s snow scenery with his two little attendants, Xi Wei turned back for the dormitory Klaire had arranged for him.
Klaire wasn’t there, but on the table were a small computer and a brief note. Klaire had written a line on it in confident, free-flying handwriting: “I had Bluestar download a lot of movies for you. If you’re bored at home, you can watch movies.”
Xi Wei opened up the computer and took a look. Sure enough, there were lots of films on varied subjects inside, and the large-scale war movies he was most interested in were at the front. There were more than a hundred in total. It was clear that Klaire had put a lot of thought into this. He had always understood him just like this.
—It’d be great if Klaire was a girl. He was so gentle and considerate that Xi Wei would marry him and take him home without hesitating in the slightest.
Xi Wei thought this in a complicated mood. He opened up a movie and started watching.
But strangely enough, no matter how brilliant the movie, he couldn’t get into it. Instead, it was that scene of Klaire secretly kissing him that replayed again and again in his head. Xi Wei couldn’t stand the irritation, so he just turned off his computer and got into bed to sleep.
The days passed peacefully on planet Rennes like this for three days.
Since Xi Wei’s arrival in this world, it’d been rare to have three days of leisure time free from worries and cares. Every morning when he got up, Klaire would send someone to prepare breakfast for him. Although Klaire himself wasn’t at his side, he always had a way to take care of Xi Wei in every possible manner in his daily life.
Xi Wei actually felt pretty moved at heart. It was really hard to find someone who’d understand and care about him like this.
But unfortunately he was a man, and even liked him. This really gave Xi Wei a headache.
When he thought of Joen, who’d intended to subdue him with pheromone stimulants in the Royal Hotel on the capital planet, Xi Wei felt his head hurting even more. Being a male omega was really annoying!
But what would happen after Joen woke up? How come there hadn’t been the slightest movement from the capital planet in three days straight?
Feeling uncertain, Xi Wei was just thinking of contacting Klaire when, as if he’d read his mind, Klaire gave him a video call. He smiled and said, “Have you gotten up? I’ve got some good news to tell you.”
“What news?” Xi Wei asked curiously, “Does it have something to do with Joen?”
“That’s right.” Klaire nodded and said, “Joen’s the eldest grandson of the Thunderclap Corps head, after all, so right now I still can’t kill him outright. All I could do was think of a way to arrest him first.”
Xi Wei said in surprise, “You went back to the capital planet to deal with Joen? Wasn’t it that you couldn’t get away from the base?”
“I didn’t go back in person.” Klaire smiled and said, “Actually, back when I took you away from the hotel, I sent a message to Carlo so he could go to the hotel and deal with the aftermath. He locked Joen away while he was unconscious, then found an opportunity to send him to planet Rennes for me to deal with.”
Klaire clearly had foresight. He knew that Joen was a person who absolutely couldn’t be left alone. At the time, Xi Wei’s pheromones had been in a mess, and he needed urgent treatment. He could only take Xi Wei and leave, and entrust the cleanup to Carlo, who he had confidence in.
Carlo and Klaire had taken the exam for military school together, and after that they were roommates for four years. They knew each other’s secrets, and they could be called brothers who treated each other with sincerity. Carlo was one of the few people Klaire could trust. Once Carlo heard that that bastard Joen had actually dared to scheme against Xi Wei, he immediately ran over to the hotel, his blood boiling, to grab him.
Joen had been unconscious at the time, and after Carlo caught him, he continued to inject him with anesthetic according to Klaire’s wishes.
However, Carlo was studying under his uncle General Drew at the Cobra Corps right then. He couldn’t leave the capital planet without permission, and the more he dragged things out, the higher his risk of being found out was. Without a better option, he could only entrust the matter to Aiden.
Aiden’s movements were relatively unrestricted. On the pretext of going on a tour, he asked Craig for an interstellar travel permit, and then came to planet Rennes as a “tourist.” Of course, he came dragging an enormous suitcase with Joen, still unconscious, packed inside it.
When he heard this, Xi Wei had endless admiration for the meticulous care Klaire took. He asked in excitement, “So Aiden’s already arrived? What about that bastard Joen?”
“He’s waiting for you to deal with him.” Klaire smiled and said, “Wait a while, I’ll come over and pick you up.”
A while later, a familiar man opened the door and entered.
Klaire was wearing a trim military uniform. Probably because he had hurried over, his shoulders were covered with snow. After not seeing him for a few days, his face showed obvious exhaustion. The dark circles under his eyes were clearly from not having slept enough. But at the moment those sky-blue eyes saw Xi Wei, they couldn’t help but fill with a warm smile.
Faced with Klaire’s smile, Xi Wei’s heart suddenly throbbed. He had really troubled Klaire. After getting rejected by the person he liked, he still had to act like he didn’t care, and juggle military affairs and the aftermath of Joen’s incident at the same time. And for the sake of not disturbing him, he hadn’t come back to sleep for the last few days. He’d probably just slept in his mecha cockpit outside.
“What’s wrong?” Seeing Xi Wei’s expression didn’t look quite right, Klaire couldn’t help but ask worriedly.
“...Um...it’s nothing.” Xi Wei hurriedly put away his confused thoughts of distress for Klaire’s sake, and steadied his pulse. He looked up and said, “Take me to see Joen, we’ll see how I deal with him!"
***
4 hours and 26 minutes for 2,465 words, or 10.8 minutes for every 100 words. An increase in rate by 2 minutes.
I know "Rennes" is what's on the Novel Updates summary, but I haven't caught up with ABO Cadets. Do you guys know if bobadarling is also translating it as "Rennes?"
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