Chapter 41 - I Was Born For You

This chapter is the first one to be locked as Premium, and I was expecting it to take a while before it's activated, but it was activated on the same day I published it lol. I was planning to take a 1-2 week hiatus to stock some chapters. But it's already locked, so I will have to align my hiatus to the day my other book will have its Premium activated.

Speaking of my other book, if you haven't tried it yet, please check out my other Quick Transmigration novel, 'QT: No To Bad Boys! Transmigrated as An Otome Side Character'. It will also go Premium and you can try to read it first before I come back with a new update for this novel. (The MC there is also a top/seme/gong, I only write top MCs because that's the perspective I'm familiar with. *wink wink*.)

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Zhe Chouhen woke up in a dark room, a stormy night brewing outside.

It was too dark for him to see. He was wearing glasses again, but a different kind, made of really thin metal that seems like real silver. They were round, and made to perfectly fit the bridge of his nose. It was more appropriate to call it spectacles.

He really hates bastards with glasses, because they were bound to be the worst, like Henry.

In real life, he almost had to wear one himself, but he declined them since he knows the more often you wear one, the higher the grading becomes. Even when his eyes aren't perfectly 20/20 on both sides, he refused to be a glasses freak.

He took an old Victorian-style lamp from a desk nearby where he was sitting, and approached the open room. He had a hunch on where exactly he was, but he need one thing to make sure...

There it was, in the room that looks to be a laboratory, surrounded by many vials and glass cases of strange boiling blue liquid. In the middle lay a cadaver, a dead body wrapped in white sheets. The tray with a bunch of surgical equipment beside it suggests that it had been tampered with. Raising the white sheets, he watched with both hesitation, and anticipation.

Another beautiful blond boy.

This time though, only the face is soft and babyish like Daniele and Ashton. The dead body has a torso of a strong, muscular man, and bicep with rippling muscles, and a towering height of six foot six. Even the body Zhe Chouhen was inhabiting, which was exactly six-foot, look like a child compared to it. Its long hair flowed like Rapunzel's all the way to the floor, white at the roots. It had the appearance of a perfect Adonis, the man so beloved by the gods and goddesses that they fought over him even until he died.....

Except for the stitches that kept its body parts together.

A stitch on its neck, on both arms, and legs. One bicep is muscular and tanned, the other is small and thin compared to it, like a delicate woman's. The pale white torso with many scars does not match the legs, which were the color of dark oak. It was a man made of mismatched body parts.

"Frank and Stein...." Zhe Chouhen muttered.

He saw the switch, a large lever that must be yanked with both hands, on the farthest part of the room. There were nodes connected all over the dead body, as well as needles attached to those strange blue liquid that seems to be the only ones preserving the body from decomposing. Zhe Chouhen knows he is at the start of the story, and knows what he must do.

"But what if I don't?"

What if he doesn't begin this story at all?

He took one of the knives in the metal tray, standing over the sleeping beautiful man.....

He can't do it.

This man, no matter how huge and monstrous he appears, reminds him too much of the love he lost. And besides....

Who else does he have, besides this corpse?

His friend just died in front of him seconds ago.

Not winning the bet would make Daoist Panda's death in vain. He can't mess this up. He have to win, for the both of them.

He put down the knife, and with a shaky breath.....

Went over to pull the lever.

BOOM!!!!

Thunder came after the lightning strikes. That is because light travels faster than sound. So in theory, we actually see people faster than we hear them. Within this gap, there is empty space, where the mouth opens but there are no words at all.

Similar to seeing an open-mouthed dead corpse.

And once we hear them speak, they come back to life!

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

It shouted and shouted as electricity, the same electricity that once punished Zhe Chouhen so many times that he had grown accustomed to it already, pulsated through the nodes and permeated into the body's hard flesh. Smoke billowed as the whole room shook from so much energy, and the gas lights start to turn back and off again.

The room is really advanced and ahead of its time, for it is not often that so many incandescent bulbs could be found during the reign of Queen Victoria. The owner must be rich, most likely a noble, or at least... an heir.

An heir to a family of scientific prodigies.

Zhe Chouhen adjusted his glasses once the rattling stopped.

He waited patiently, walking over to the dead body. He waved a hand over it.

And the eyes opened!

"Can you see me?" He asked with a leveled tone.

The cadaver slowly closed its eyes again. Then it opened once more.

"Can you see me?" He repeated patiently.

The dead body continued blinking. Then...

It grunted, hoarse and low.

Zhe Chouhen smiled, just like in the script of the original book. "Good. You can also understand me."

"Can you sit up on your own?"

The dead body just continued blinking and grunting for a while.....

Until it eventually rose up from its hard metal bed, painstakingly slow, but what matters is that it succeeded. It turned to Zhe Chouhen with its beautiful yet strange pair of eyes.....

They were both blue, but one of them is lighter. One is a soft shade that reminded him of the endless skies with doors. The other one was sharp and frosty, like the tip of an iceberg that a ship will soon crash into.

"Are you alright?" He placed a hand gently over the corpse's head. "Nothing hurts?"

The corpse shook its head, painstakingly slow, but again, what matters is its success, not speed.

"Wonderful." Zhe Chouhen grinned. "Now..... For the most important question...."

"Do you love me, my dear creation?"

The corpse looked down, its heterochromatic eyes blank.

".....Love..." It finally spoke. Its first word as it finally came into this world. Most people say 'Dada' or 'Mama', but its first word was 'love'.

Then, it grappled Zhe Chouhen into a tight, bear hug!

"YES! ME..... LOVE..... YOU...."

"Oooof, I know bud....." Zhe Chouhen huffed, then changed his tone of voice. "I mean, I can presume that, big guy. With how tightly you are embracing me. But..... Umpf..... Your muscles are as hard as rocks..... If you keep squeezing, I might die of suffocation, and then who will bring me back to life?"

The once cadaver let go of him, yelling with its booming voice. "SORRY! ME! LOVE! YOU!"

Zhe Chouhen could not help but grin as repeated the words of the male lead. "I know, I know! I made you that way, my dear creation."

The corpse smiled at him with those pale lips and yellow teeth, just staring blankly and happily.

Then, it asked with a giddy smile. "Who..... are... you?"

"Oh, of course! Where are my manners." Zhe Chouhen already knows how this goes, he is just playing the inciting incident just like how it was in the books. He cannot let the animal skull be suspicious of him. "I have yet to introduce myself. Well, then..."

He placed the corpse's cold hand over his cheek, and said with a dry smirk, his glasses glinting. "Franklin Storitz. Your humble creator and lover."

"Frankie...." The corpse repeated adorably with its gruff voice.

Zhe Chouhen, or 'Franklin' now, nodded. "That is correct. Do your best to remember it as well."

"Then..... who me?" The corpse tilted its head to the side. Some of its long hair went on its face as it did so, looking quite precious like this.

"I have not thought of it yet." 'Franklin' pretended to think. "Well, since you are hard as a rock from the carbon compression from being electrocuted..."

"I believe Stein fits you perfectly."

The corpse was now given a name. He was Stein.

He pointed to the one who named him. "You..... Frank....."

He pointed to himself. "Me..... Stein....."

Then, he took 'Franklin's' hand, interlacing them with his eyes shining bright like white dwarf stars. "Frank..... Stein... love each other....?"

Zhe Chouhen gave a sad smile as he said the next line of his script. "Yes. Frank and Stein. Together forever."

(Well.... That's a motherfucking lie.) He said to himself. (I would leave this world soon by separating you and Franklin no matter what it takes. Even when I don't want to lie, what choice do I have?)

(Poor Stein.)

He went on to make some observations about this 'creation' of his, a bunch of scientific nonsense. He had a piece of paper and took an old fountain pen, checking a list of vital signs and other bullshit. He was not really paying attention to this. He was recounting the story's plot in his mind.

(Oh man, now I miss Panda's recaps.) He chuckled sadly to himself. (I always give him shit when he does that. But actually..... it was pretty endearing, how enthusiastic he sounds when talking about his own stories.)

(Let's see.... This book was the fifth one he published under the title 'The Tale of Frank and Stein.' A very obvious reference to Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. One of the most popular horror science fiction novels until today.) He recalled. (The book's similarity with the original plot ends with a not-licensed scientist creating life through dead bodies. Everything else is completely twisted on itself like a snake on a caduceus into a toxic, abusive BL story. One of the worst of its kind.)

(The male lead, Franklin Storitz, does not only want to play God and replicate life itself. He wanted to replicate love too. And so he engineered artificial love into the head of this dead man, using his knowledge in early neurology into good use. The book is written in Stein's perspective, so it's hard to discern why he wanted to create a lover in the first place, it was never revealed. But if I have to guess....)

Zhe Chouhen sneered. (He's just a sick fuck like the rest of them who can't love normally that's why he had to use science to make a sweetheart for him. This is basically necrophilia!!! Banging a dead corpse, urkkkk!!)

He tried hard not to puke, since it would be disrespectful to the dead corpse that is sitting right in front of him, watching him with those big innocent eyes of a newborn that knows nothing of this world.

( Anyway..... Speaking of banging, Stein is different from the rest of the shou MCs. He's the biggest, not just muscular like some others I've read, but a true freaking bear! Taller than Franklin too, strong enough to kill him if he wants! He's no match for him if he ever came to want to destroy his own creator, but because of the artificial love, he can't.)

(I actually like this kind of shou with more meat on him.....) He accidentally thought, then shook his head. (Aiisssh, if Panda-laoshi was here, I'd get called a pervert again.)

(Also, no matter what, I won't be seduced again like what happened with Ashton. I will keep a respectful distance. I have a talisman to protect me from such a situation now. I wonder where it was.....)

He touched his forehead, and felt a slight change of texture in it. It turns out that he has a very light scar, hidden by his large curly black hair with a strand in the middle that was white at the ends.

(Huh..... This scar feels like Chinese characters...)

But when he checked in the mirror, it was too light to distinguish. He just has a weird feeling, a gut instinct.....

That it must be a name.