48 Hours a Day

“No, that’s impossible. There aren’t any flaws with my design. I repeatedly checked,” Evil Scientist said confidently.

“Your design is indeed problematic. Otherwise, why did the machine explode in the end? Also, I wanted to complain about you a long time ago. Was it necessary to make an automatic popcorn machine two buildings tall? You even used nuclear energy to power them! Are you serious? Your quantum collider is only as big as a biscuit box!”

“This is some sort of… contrasting beauty. But that is not the point. The point is that you operated the automatic popcorn machine wrongly, and it killed my wife and daughter. Now, you want to push the responsibility to me? That’s too much.”

“On the contrary, your design has been flawed from the beginning. We just did what you asked us to do. Then the machine exploded.”

“No, it was your fault. You already admitted it. And the main operator, Phantom Ninja, also admitted that it was his mistake as well.”

The bald man(Baldy) shrugged, “That was just to make you feel better. We all know how important your wife and daughter were to you, so we decided to refrain from telling you the truth after we discussed it. After all, you have done a lot for us. On the other hand, we didn’t get a chance to do anything for you, and we didn’t want you to blame yourself for the mistakes you’ve made. I know you well. If you knew that you were the one who actually killed them, you would drown in your guild until the day you die.” “Oh, you don’t know me at all.”

“No, I know you very well. I said that I admired you very much, and you’re like my idol. I know everything about you. I even rummaged through your trash!”

“That’s a bit too much.”

“It was one of those stupid things I did before, I know. I told myself that I wouldn’t do it again. Do you remember that time in Tangxia? A dangerous building was about to collapse, and a group of children was playing downstairs. You showed up at the critical point and demolished the building, rescuing them in the end. At that time, news channels covered it for a whole week, and the internet was abuzz with the praises that people had for you. However, you still became depressed for an entire month because a block from the building you demolished accidentally crushed a stray cat. You blamed the incident on yourself because it wasn’t actually under the building when you demolished it. In other words, the building should have never been able to hurt it. The cat was killed instead by the block you tossed. I have never seen you blame yourself so much.”

Baldy shook his head, “You thought you were the one who caused its death. You were feeling so guilty that you couldn’t even eat properly. Sometimes you… are really too harsh on yourself. I can’t imagine how you’ll be when you discover that you were actually the one who killed your wife and daughter. How will you punish yourself? I don’t even know if your heart is strong enough to face this.”

“Well, even if you know about the Tangxia incident, it still doesn’t prove the explosion wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t actually believe what I said, don’t you?” Baldy sighed, “If you need proof, fine, Messenger.”

Messenger: “…??????”

“Help me contact Ocean King and tell him to send the video to my mailbox.”

Messenger nodded, immediately assembling a homing pigeon.

“What video?” Evil Scientist frowned.

“Ocean King works at Zhujiang New Town. It’s very close to here. You will know soon about the video,” said Baldy.

The pigeon came back ten minutes later. Baldy then quickly built a laptop and turned to ask Evil Scientist, “What is your WiFi

password?”

“Ilovechangzeyamei.”

“Wow, you haven’t changed your WiFi password for almost ten years!”

“So what? As long as Nagasawa Masami is still acting, my password will not change,” Evil Scientist proudly proclaimed.

“Okay, okay…” Baldy typed in the password and pressed Enter. “Okay. Now I’m connected to the internet. You want to come closer and check out the video?”

When he heard that, Evil Scientist moved from where he stood and came to Baldy’s side.

“Come a little closer, the screen is a kind of small.”

Evil Scientist held back for two seconds, moved closer, and stood almost side by side with Baldy.

“Ha! Next, I will open my mailbox.”

“Wow! You have a lot of junk mail!” Evil Scientist frowned as his head shook.

“Yeah, I can’t help it. They keep sending me these spam emails, and I can’t delete them in time.”

“Really? And you even registered for an adult forum?” Evil Scientist asked curiously.

“No. You must have seen wrongly.”

Baldy then clicked on the new mail sent by Ocean King as fast as he could.

The attachment was a video file, and after clicking the play button, a huge factory building appeared on the screen.

Evil Scientist’s face immediately changed, “This is…”

“Yes, your laboratory. To be more precise, this is your previous laboratory.”

The video shook a little—the recording should be from a handheld DVR, and the person behind the camera seemed extremely excited. He pointed to the massive microwave-like machine in front of him and said, “Did you see it? It is a nuclear-powered automatic popcorn machine! Use this! This popcorn machine is so cool!!! Oh, I can’t believe such a cool popcorn machine exists in the world!”

“I love the Scientist. His inventions are not only practical, but they are very cool as well! I want to ask him to create something for me when I move into a new house. I need one of his inventions in my life,” a voice said.

“Forget it, can you put that in your new home? Doesn’t it use enriched uranium as fuel?! Does that mean that the next time we have popcorn, they’ll be genetically modified? But it’s still cool…” exclaimed another voice.

At the same time, the camera rotated and aimed at the eyes of Ocean King. The person then started to zoom in on his face quickly, before zooming out again. By repeating it, the person seemed he would never get tired of it.

“Have you guys always been this stupid when I was away?” Evil Scientist asked in disgust.

“Not all the time… but most of the time, yes. We have to have some fun, too,” said Baldy.

While the two talked, a voice in the video said, “Let’s see who is here, our little birthday star!”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!!!” Everyone roared, and the camera finally stopped pointing the poorly focussed Ocean King’s face. This time the camera was pointing toward a woman with a little girl. The little girl was so shy that she hugged her mother tightly.

Evil Scientist was shocked when he saw the video, “Qianqian, and Mengjie.” A gentle look appeared on his face, “I miss you so very much.”