Chapter 294: I Need A Hobby
I sighed as I stared out the living room window, grumbling under my breath the only thing that stared back at me was a Mario flower eating a mouth full of zombie rats.
That really wasn’t interesting at all.
I sighed again as I stared out past the flower and to the rest of the front yard.
There was nothing wrong out there either, which was exactly the problem. The vines weren’t attacking anyone, there were no strangers threatening to take my house at the gate, and there wasn’t a single idiot appearing in front of me to give me an excuse to stab them. Everything was peaceful.
Disgustingly peaceful.
And I hated it.
I sighed again, louder this time like I was ready to give up on life.
Every few minutes, someone carried something past the window, shouted for someone else, or stopped to argue about whether a board was straight.
It wasn’t.
I could tell that from where I was sitting, but apparently pointing that out would make me "unhelpful," so I kept my mouth shut and sighed again. No one appreciated me in this house as much as they should.
My tenth sigh was louder still.
But not a single person reacted.
I waited a few seconds before trying an eleventh time, mostly because everyone in the room was clearly too distracted to appreciate how much I was suffering.
Lingyun finally looked up from the weapon he’d been cleaning. "That is a lot of sighs. What are you thinking about?"
"I need a hobby," I announced. Never once had I thought that those words would pass through my lips, but here we were. When you weren’t so focused on surviving, you realized just how.... boring... everything was.
He paused, probably because he hadn’t expected that for an answer. Yuche lowered the tablet in his hands, while Zhou Chenghai glanced over from where he was standing near the doorway. Xu Zhenlan remained at the dining table with a collection of papers spread in front of him, but his pen stopped moving.
I turned away from the window and tucked one leg beneath me. "I’m so bored that I’m starting to think even more about stabbing people for fun. Not because they’ve done anything wrong. Just because I want to do something different! I’ve watched all my shows, there is nothing new being produced! I’m so bored!!"
Okay, so I would fully admit that I was whining and pouting. Two things that I also hadn’t done in two life times. But hey... apparently, I wanted to turn over a new leaf.
As if to either support me or mock me, I really wasn’t sure which, my baby, still wrapped around my wrist like it was its permanent home, sprouted a second leaf.
Huh. That never happened before either.
Turning its now two heads, it looked at me and grinned, showing off two identical mouths with identical teeth, and identical poison dripping from them.
The moment one of the workers walked past the window carrying a toolbox, my baby vine hissed at him. It cocked its head to the side, both leaves moving in perfect sync as it asked me a silent question.
I wanted someone dead. Was he on the table?
I considered the man outside for half a second before dismissing the idea. Fang Lihua would complain if I damaged anyone useful, and I didn’t want to hear another lecture about how difficult it was to find people who understood plumbing.
"Maybe I should learn cross-stitch instead," I continued, stroking the second leaf’s head. "I could make one of those little signs that people used to hang in their kitchens. Something like, ’Warning: this is proof that I have the patience to stab something a thousand times.’"
Lingyun nodded sagely, like I’d just presented him with a detailed plan for my future. "I see you’ve thought hard about this."
"I have," I agreed. I mean, I thought about it for about five minutes before it came out of my mouth, but that was thinking about it... in a way.
"But," he started slowly, his hands now held in the air like he was showing off the fact that he wasn’t holding a weapon. "And hear me out before you reject the idea... but have you considered going outside and stabbing someone who isn’t responsible for mansion repairs or making you laugh?"
He dropped his hand and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "It’s a big world out there. There must be hundreds of people who deserve it. Who knows? You might have fun."
I glared at him even as I shook my head. "No. Not happening. Absolutely not."
His eyebrows rose. "You didn’t think about it."
"I’ve thought about it before. I said I refuse to leave home, so guess what? I’m not leaving the house." Honestly, I thought I was being perfectly reasonable. Sure... I was going just a bit crazy, but in this new world, who wasn’t stabby or crazy in some fun, completely unreasonable way?
My refusal should’ve ended the conversation, but clearly I had invited everyone to have an input in my life.
Xu Zhenlan, the man who had clearly agreed not to go out supply hunting without saying a single word, put down his pen and folded his hands in front of him. Dear Lord, I knew before he opened his mouth that I wasn’t going to like whatever was about to come out of it.
"No one’s asking you to leave forever," he pointed out, his voice calm, clear, and... reasonable. Yet another word I was beginning to hate. It made everything and everyone else so... unreasonable... by default. "You could leave for an hour. Maybe a day. Long enough for everyone to stop walking on eggshells whenever you look bored because they are too scared that they are going to die."
I slowly turned my glare toward him, my lips twitching in a smile when Lingyun started to hum the theme for Jaws.
People kept saying things like that as though my boredom was somehow dangerous. I had only threatened to stab someone once, and technically, I hadn’t threatened anyone specific. That showed restraint.
And I wasn’t even the one to kill the dude at the checkpoint. That was all the vines and mutant plants doing. I really had nothing to do with it.
In fact, my track record for kills was almost abysmal this time around.
Maybe that was why I was bored and needed to stab someone... I wasn’t getting enough at home.
