Hi again! :D Another chapter of our beloved manhua, Half Prince is finally out so be sure to check it out! ;)

That new chapter has inspired me to write this, so I hope you would enjoy reading this one. Thanks to all the readers who have read/ reviewed this story! I was rushing to type out this story, so please let me know if you find any grammatical errors. Don't forget to review too! :D

Mei Wen: Yup, you are right; time passes so fast, so we got to enjoy every moment that we have! :D Thanks for liking Psycho/ Mei Ling! She can be weak at certain times, but I hope she can be stronger and learn from her weaknesses... This chapter is all about romance (Shounen-Ai? xD), so hope you'll like it! :D Haha! xD Glad you like Shounen-Ai! *Give me ten!*

Mercy: Thanks for liking and supporting this story! *Hugs* Hope you'll like this one too! :)

I only own the characters which don't belong to Miss Yu Wo. :)

Chapter 35 – His Smile

I could barely open my eyes.

Although it was just a game I was playing, it felt so real my whole body was aching so hard like it was going to break to bits.

It had been aeons since I ran like that, like I was still prancing around in the muddy football field with my late Dad, while learning how to do a Super Kick to strike the ball and shoot it high across the field. That very moment was memorable to me because I had never felt anything like that before; I felt very invincible, unbreakable, triumphant, as if I had won the 'FIFA Best Player of the World', just by making a so-called 'winning kick' of the ball towards the goal posts.

What made that moment even more memorable was the proud smile on Dad's face. Knowing that he was so proud of me... I felt that I had found a significant purpose of my existence. I wanted to make him smile every time, and to keep his precious smile on his face was what I intended to do by proving my worth of being a female football player in the male-dominated football world. I thought that he would always keep smiling for me.

Till my Mom called Dad to tell him about her water breaking...

I shut my eyes tight, trying hard to fall back into Dream Land, determined not to dwell upon such a silly old past anymore. It was useless to think about it, especially about something that we can never ever change.

"Yeah, I don't think I could change my gender. If I could, you would be so proud of me you wouldn't have gone away so quickly..."

Irritated by the fact that I wasn't really drawn into a peaceful sleep, I sat upright and gave my snow-white pillow a few weak punches to flatten it. I wouldn't want to make it too flat because my neck would definitely hurt after sleeping on it.

To ensure that my neck would be as straight as possible once I woke up, I rubbed my hands gently against my sweet and soft pillow, my eyelids feeling more relaxed and more sleepy at each second...

"Hey, that tickles!"

My hands stopped at that familiar laughter. When I opened my puffy eyes, the first thing that I saw on my pillow was... A belly button?

"Good evening, Psycho. Did you dream of me?"

"Oh my shit!"

I immediately sprang out of the bed and my big heavy butt promptly fell onto the hard floor. I couldn't even fall properly since my legs were still tangled in the blanket sheets. My derriere wasn't hurt at all, since I still remembered about my inability to feel any pain in the game, but that doesn't mean my ego didn't hurt. After all, whose ego wasn't bruised if he had just realised that he had been using someone's stomach as a pillow?

"But I thought I had already logged out... Or am I dreaming again?"

I immediately removed the thick blanket away from my body to find that... My skin and flesh were not exposed like a naked chicken. I sighed with so much relief I thought I could cry tears of happiness. Phew, thank Buddha!

Wait a sec! I looked down alarmingly at my costume again. Where did the white robe come from? I thought I only had a basic pair of wolf fur pants on!

"Your body felt so cold just now. Do you feel more warm now?"

I found myself staring straight at the messy yet comfy bed for the source for that sinister-sounding voice.

Wen Zi's head peeked out from under the blankets like an adorable bunny out of its rabbit hole, his pale green hair messy over his forehead. He was staring back at me with his dreamy eyes half-closed, grinning goofily at me as though he had just eaten some fresh tofu a moment ago.

I instantly felt cold at the disgusting thought of my avatar's body being virtually prostituted like nobody's business. And it had happened twice. My head stooped so low I felt it was going to fall off the moment I shook it a little. Haiz...

"What's the matter? You don't look very happy," Wen Zi's gentle voice sounded worried, oddly.

I snorted with extreme jest.

"Oh yeah, I should be very happy because I just got laid by a hot guy like you. I know we're going to re-spawn if we get AIDS but next time..."

It was hard for me to turn to face him, but I did it anyway. I stared at him so hard in the eye I felt some kind of imaginary pain in my eye sockets.

"Next time can you please do it with someone else? I bet there are many better-looking guys out there who are interested in you! Even if you did it with me, it felt so bad you swore to yourself and to God up above that you won't ever, ever, ever do it with me again!"

I paused momentarily to take a deep breath, "Right?"

My head turned away and looked down, feeling even more tired than ever. This feeling of exhaustion must be the one of the side effects of an inhumane sexual assault. As I was shaking my head in despair, I stopped halfway.

I realised something so significantly important that only an old woman with the third stage of amnesia (like me) could forget it.

"If Wen Zi had really done it with me, then he would have known that my bottom half belongs to a..."

Wen Zi's sudden burst of laughter just interrupted my disturbing line of thought. I quickly turned to him, checking for any hidden signs that he had discovered about my true identity.

He merely greeted me with a warm handsome smile.

"Relax a little. I haven't done anything to you... Yet."

"What?" My eyes twitched, "You haven't?"

Wen Zi shook his head, a light chuckle escaping from his lips, "At least not without your knowledge and consent. Anyway, do you like rice wine?"

O O O

I regretted telling Wen Zi that I like rice wine.

That nice Samaritan guy ended up bringing me outside to the heart of the Infinite City just to purchase a few bottles of the wine (his treat, that 'multi-millionaire' said, but I made a mental note to myself that I was going to treat him back once I got myself some virtual money later). I was rather hesitant of the idea of going out from the inn; who knew what those fanatic girls from the 'Legendary Wen Zi Super Fanclub' was going to do to me.

I knew all the things that the whole fanclub would definitely do to their 'beloved prince'; not the Prince of Second Life, but of course we all know, all the gorgeous guys would undeniably become princes in the ladies' eyes (Prince Abyss, anyone?). But if the whole female population got to me, well, I wouldn't be so lucky like 'Prince Wen Zi'...

In fact, I already got beaten up by them. Really hard. I sighed sadly at my poor failing memory.

"This is where you passed out."

With his long and lean finger, Wen Zi pointed at one dark spot on the bridge that we were crossing on, reminding me of the embarrassing event that I tried so hard to forget. I winced at that painful memory, while waving my fingers wildly to get rid of the strong unpleasant smell that filled up my nose.

Whose brilliant idea was it to soak Wen Zi's white cloak with a large bottle of traditional black ink so that I could wear it and sneak out without being detected by his groupies?

I turned to glare accusingly at Wen Zi, whose charcoaled face was totally covered up by his curtain of green hair. He looked just like a sick female ghost that you tend to see on all those cliche horror movies shown in the cinemas around you.

It did make feel guilty that he was all being receptive to my proposal of messing up his silky hair and applying some 'charcoal-painting' on his beautiful face. If I were to know that he was willing to be 'ugly', I doubted that I would be willing enough to present that proposal to him.

Sometimes he was being too nice to me that I felt I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Okay, okay, I passed out here and you killed all those pretty ladies, " I took another quick sip from the cup of wine, "But that's still not the right way to treat them."

As always, Wen Zi smiled at me, "No, I just froze them."

"You froze them?" I blinked, bewildered, "What'd you mean by that? Did you bring a freezer along-"

The more times I blinked my eyes, the more clearer my memory had become. It all came back to me that Wen Zi was more than capable of freezing a group of fifteen mobs to diamond ice sculptures. I cursed inwardly more at my own stupidity than at him.

"Since you're an 'ice specialist', why didn't you use that spell earlier before we even ran?"

"A knight's true strength relies significantly on his charisma. Taking down other players would reduce your reputation points by so much. I wouldn't want to jeopardise your chances of levelling."

I looked at his concerned face in silence, unable to speak any more audible words to him.

Rewinding his long explanation over and over again in my head like a stubborn broken recorder, I turned away from his face to gaze at the starry night sky above us. I wasn't an avid researcher of stars, but I didn't know what else to do at that moment. It was getting harder and harder to have a proper conversation with him, even though both of us were 'men'.

Already bored with the stars, I went staring at the empty cup in my hand instead.

"Do you want another cup? I can pour the wine for you."

As his hand reached for my cup, I threw it down into the dark peaceful river and glowered up at him. Behind his long dirty curtain of hair, his soft blue eyes did not even sway to observe the falling cup. All his eyes ever did were just watching at me in complete silence, as if he was already expecting me to vent my frustration on him, and yet he didn't even flinch about it.

If his faithful obssession for Hei_Psycho was allowed to continue, I was afraid that I would only ruin his life.

"This homosexual relationship... " I paused to steady my breathing, and continued, "It's just not my thing. Basically to me, boys like girls, and girls like boys. It's as simple as that. Not complex at all, right? Then what's your problem with this biological species concept?"

At the end of my sentence, Wen Zi's dusty face turned away, before indulging in an increasingly-loud laughter, which sounded almost maniacal to me. My jaw dropped at the sight of the introverted gentleman going mad and kooky.

"Is he already drunk? But didn't he drink like... Only a cup or two?"

"Sorry," Wen Zi's face had turned bright red from laughing too much, "But I'm not a major in Biology. That kind of difficult concept is beyond my understanding capabilities."

I forced myself to shout at him, "You really don't get it, or are you just acting dumb? I already told you that I'm only interested in girls! Why do you have to be such a major pain-in-the-ass?"

"Does gender matter that much to you, Psycho?"

I snorted at his silly question, my eyes instinctively darting at the glowing ancient-looking castle, which was standing high and proud at a distance not far away from the isolated old bridge that we were standing on. That lovely view would have looked more breathtaking, if it wasn't for the suffocating atmosphere that I found very hard to breathe in.

"Do you even need to ask?" I spoke more to myself than to Wen Zi, "If gender doesn't matter, who breast-fed you? Your father? And who taught you how to pee? Your mother?"

I snorted again, though my voice already softening into a whisper, "Whether you like it or not, gender does matter."

"Come to think of it, if gender doesn't matter, I wouldn't be here in Second Life in the first place. I guess we wouldn't even meet at all, Wen Zi."

"To answer your questions of my parents..."

As I turned to look at him, he kept on smiling, as though his beautiful smile had never left his face.

"I'm afraid I have no recollection of my childhood," He then smirked victoriously, as though forgetting something was an achievement to be proud of, "Those are the perfect questions to ask Pa and Ma once I've logged out."

"H-Hey, that was just a silly joke, Wen Zi! You can't just go ask your parents whether they..." I quickly turned up to look back at the boring shiny stars, "To cut it short, you're not going to like what they're going to say to you."

"I'm... I suppose I'm already used to it," Wen Zi ended with a tinge of awful sadness.

"Oh!" My itchy big mouth blurted out, "Does that mean they already know that you're a gay?"

I quickly bit my tongue but it was a nanosecond too late. How could I be so cruel and insensitive to say such things to hurt his feelings? I was praying really, really hard that he didn't hear the end part.

Some kind of human being I am...

"They already know."

I was completely stunned by Wen Zi's sudden reply.

By saying that, didn't he already mean that he really likes guys for real? And all this while, somehow I had been thinking that he was just teasing me for the fun of it...

"When he found out that he was actually in love with a girl in disguise of a guy... I can't imagine what would happen. I really can't imagine it."

"Psycho?" Wen Zi's drunken voice seeped again into my tangled brain.

I turned to him. "What?"

"Do you like me?"

For Chinese, 'eating tofu' means 'sexually harassing someone'.