Liu Sha was not always a rich boy who's the son of a CEO.
He was once an orphan who was taken after by a very poor couple that lives on a shack under a bridge. His name back then was not Liu Sha either, it was Luo Tou.
Luo Tou was a smart and hard-working child, who despite being worked to the bones to sell water bottles on the street and getting his glasses broken all day and patched up again with tape, remained always happy and smiling.
He cares for his foster mother and father, who works in the train station just across the bridge doing odd jobs to make ends meet.
Luo Tou never liked girls from the start. He had always liked boys, and was very thin and weak.
He hit like a girl, speak like a girl, likes things that girls usually like. Therefore, he was always bullied.
Because of selling water bottles, he was often found in the street carrying a large sack on his bag that looks like lumps, and his name also happened to sound like the word for 'camel' so that's usually the joke about him.
"Hey, it's the cut-sleeve camel!" The boys on the streets would point to him and laugh.
Luo Tou didn't care. He still had many things to do. He had to sell all these water bottles, go back home and study so he would be the first in his class, and cook dinner for his mother and father once they get home.
But one day at school.....
There was a dancing competition, a ballroom one. He was in middle school at the time, and no one in his class is interested in that sort of thing.
Hip hop dancing is one thing, but ballroom? That's just for sissies.
So, Luo Tou was asked by his teacher to join, and he agreed. He wore a skin-tight shiny suit and showed great promise in dancing. The girls were amazed at him, and this caused many guys to be jealous.
So at the day of the competition, they locked him up in the bathroom and pushed him to the floor.
"Hmph, you're a cut sleeve, right? What are you doing seducing my girlfriend then!?" The big bully punched him in the stomach. "Let's cut his sleeves so we can show what he truly is—"
"No! Please, these clothes are expensive and my parents worked hard for it!"
Luo Tou fought and struggled but four guys were punching and kicking at him.
"Hey! What's takin' you kids so long, I really need to take a piss!" Someone suddenly knocked on the door.
The big bully grinned, thinking this was a chance to add in more tormentors for their victim. He opened the door. "We're just cutting the camel's sleeves, that's all. Wanna join?"
The person outside the door was a boy one year older than them, with sanpaku eyes and a grouchy face. He looked at the situation where poor Luo Tou was being tussled up despite his beautiful costume, one guy even pulling to reveal his collarbone.
The senior scoffed. "You wanna do something like that, go do it somewhere else!!! You kids are nasty, man."
"Please help me!" Luo Tou said. "I have a competition to go to and they're going to destroy my clothes!"
"What the— Is that fucking true!?" The senior cracked his knuckles. "Well then, don't worry! Big brother will take care of these goons for ya!"
This senior with sanpaku eyes protected him and saved him despite not knowing him, and it evolved into such a fight that even more older students and teachers got involved.
But he never saw him again. And so, Luo Tou had developed an obsession for guys with sanpaku eyes.
And their newest subject, Mo Aini, happened to have one.
He dated so many guys with sanpaku eyes of all sorts of personalities. He wasn't that good-looking, so he had to earn them with money. He bought them houses, cars, all sorts of luxuries.... Anything to make them stay until he eventually gets bored of them.
And how did he get that much money?
When Luo Tou went to college, he took a degree in game development. He likes making visual novels and choose-your-own-adventure games. He was so smart that he even get into making VR ones, winning a science fair competition for it.
One of the investors approached him.
He already had his speech prepared for this situation, and he smiled. "Hello, sir! Would you like to sample this latest VR technology that me and my team had created? It even has artificial sensory nodes that you can attach to make you 'feel' the things in the VR world realistically —"
"Is your name Luo Tou, the adoptive son of Mr. and Mrs. Luo in Huaiye Bridge?" The man asked.
Luo Tou blinked. "Uh, yes sir! ...Why do you ask?"
The old man with grey hair and round glasses smiled. "I am Mr. Liu Shui, owner of Shuaige Enterprise. It's just a small money-making business I have started. And...."
"I am your father."
Luo Tou did not believe that a millionaire investor like this is his biological father at first. But it was confirmed through a DNA sample, and by his adoptive parents.
Apparently, Mr. Liu Shui wanted to take back his estranged son under his wing, and let him work as a Director in his company.
Luo Tou did not want to, of course.
All these years, and he suddenly decided to come back to his life!?????
All these years that he had to suffer getting constantly beaten up and carrying water bottles across the hot roads... All of that could have been avoided if he wasn't given away in the first place!
But his mother and father were both sick of lung cancer, because of the constant smoke from the trains they worked in.
So he had no choice but to return to the man who put him up for adoption. He took up the name Liu Sha. His father was 'running water', and he thought it fits to have a son named 'quicksand', because soon, they would sink and flood their competitors in business.
In the end, his adoptive parents still died.
Liu Sha did not have to finish college. At 21, he already had a salary of more than 300,000 yuan per month.
But the people he loved and cherished are gone, and it left a hole in his heart that he only filled with flings and fuckboys that disappeared as quickly as they came into his life.
He felt that he was the one being engulfed in quicksand instead, helpless and constantly sinking into despair.
One day, an intern presented a project that changed his life forever.
"UToPia?"
"Y-Yes sir." The intern nodded nervously but also enthusiastically.
He rambled. "It's a combination of the word 'UTP' and 'utopia'. UTP, as you know, are Unshielded Twisted Pairs inside cables that serve as conductors to make connection possible. And utopia means a perfect world. It's a good name, if I do say so myself."
Liu Sha indifferently nodded, more interested in the papers presented to him than this intern. "Yes, yes. Very clever name for a device that connects you to a perfect world."
He scanned them with his pulse quickening at every word, yet he did not show this reaction to the inventor of the device.
He compiled the papers cooly and pretended to seem skeptical. "This project seems to require many funds and resources, but I'll consider bringing it up to the CEO. You may go now."
"Thank you, sir!" The intern bowed and smiled happily, going out of the office to celebrate by buying his favorite drink at a cafe.
But just as this intern did, he got involved in a car accident that killed 20 people in total, 12 men and 8 women, and the project was left to Liu Sha's hands.
Liu Sha did not feel any guilt claiming an invention that wasn't his. What's more important is the possibility UToPia presented for him.
A perfect world.
It used to mean a world where every man in there loves him and would grovel at his feet, asking him not to leave him. But his definition of a perfect world has changed ever since he met Test Subject #083, their first male test subject, User Mo Aini.
Mo Aini was perfect. He had sanpaku eyes, swore like a sailor, and would get into fights just to protect the people he care for. If Liu Sha didn't know any better, he might have thought he was the same senior that saved him.
But the age is not correct, since Mo Aini is younger than him. And fate is not that kind to him, the only stroke of luck he had is when the intern died.
Still, his goal is to live in a world where Mo Aini was only his now. It doesn't matter if he was his former savior or not, the moment he locked eyes on him at that park while he was drunk, he was already drawn to this man.
If only he wasn't a test subject! And if only he did not fall in love with Hu Chuntian!
What's so good about Hu Chuntian, anyway!? He's a bully, a delinquent like the ones that were trying to cut his sleeves in the bathroom!!! Why would Mo Aini fall for him after saying many times that he doesn't like bad boys!?
But it's not too late, Mo Aini cannot possibly be attached with this 2D man from another dimension after knowing him for only 8 months, right?
He'll make him forget about him, and they're going to wait until UToPia becomes successful and live in a world where they only have each other, and no blond delinquents can steal him from him.
As he spent all day and night and 20 cups of iced coffee just to detect the bug, he finally found it. The first clue.
"The data from this anomaly..... It looks similar to..... Where did I see it last again?"
He racked his brain and tried to remember, then clicked his fingers once it hit him.
"Of course! That intern!"
He immediately called in a staff.
"Yes, sir?"
"Give me the records of that intern. The one who introduced UToPia." Liu Sha said. "I forgot his name..... What was it..... Something about sweets....."
"Sir..... I'm afraid I won't be able to do that. All records of those involved in the incident....."
The staff member fidgeted nervously."They were redacted and disposed of according to the CEO's orders. Even their identity had been taken care of so there would be no trace relating them to the company."
Liu Sha froze in shock. "What?"
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~BRIBE ME, PLEASE~
Ok, I'm getting desperate and pathetic so now I'm willing to accept bribes. I get jealous easily of other books that have a huge following and get sad everytime, thinking what's the point of writing if I feel like no one's reading/appreciate it.
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