My Roommate is a Non-Human | Chapter 59 | Divine Domesticity and Academic Ambition | Novela.app

Chapter 60 - Divine Domesticity and Academic Ambition The silence that followed Lu Daoshi’s departure was heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and the lingering chill of the Abyss. My roommate stood there, his expression as unreadable as a stagnant pool, having just consigned our senior to eternal punishment. The purple-red arrays that had pulsed with such malevolent light faded into the shadows of the room, leaving only the mundane reality of our surroundings. I stood there, grappling with the weight of his words. He had spared humanity—not out of mercy, not out of some grand design, but simply because they were "toys" he had crafted for my amusement. It was a staggering, ego-bruising, and yet strangely touching realization. I felt a profound sense of honor, the kind that makes your knees weak and your stomach churn. My roommate had literally kept the world spinning just so I wouldn’t get bored. Following that cosmic confrontation, our lives took a turn for the surreal. We settled into a large, somewhat imposing villa that felt far too grand for a student and his "roommate," yet it became the base for our new family of five. It consisted of myself, Lao Liu, and our three sons—Greater Than, Equal To, and Less Than. On the surface, we looked like any other unconventional family, but the reality was far more taxing on my sanity. Lao Liu remained stubbornly committed to his role as a student. He would attend classes with me, his presence a constant, looming shadow, and then spend his extracurricular hours working as a dishwasher. It was a sight that defied logic. Here was a being who could command the forces of Chaos, yet he insisted on scrubbing grease off ceramic plates for a few yuan an hour. "Lao Liu," I had pleaded one evening as he prepared to head out, the faint scent of dishwater and swill already clinging to his clothes. "Chaos is practically knocking at the door, the world is balanced on a needle's point, and you’re going out to wash bowls? It’s not right. You live in a villa! You can’t just ride a rickety old bicycle to a back-alley kitchen and come home smelling like a pigsty." He didn't argue. He simply looked at me with those deep, inscrutable eyes and, in his own silent way, agreed to find a different "internship." My relief was short-lived. He returned the next day and calmly informed me he had found a job at the local crematorium. I didn't even want to imagine what a primordial entity did in a crematorium. Was he "helping" the souls along? Was he snacking? I didn't ask. I couldn't. I simply begged him to go back to the dishwashing. Consequently, I rarely saw him during the day anymore, which left me to deal with the mounting pressure of my own life. My schedule was packed with end-of-term exams, a grueling cycle of library sessions and caffeine-fueled cramming. It was during one of these sessions that I ran into my eldest son, Greater Than. Calling him an "academic overachiever" would be the understatement of the eon. He was a true elite, possessing a mind that didn't just learn—it conquered. I found him standing in a secluded aisle of the library, his tall, lean frame casting a long shadow over the stacks. He wasn't reading in the traditional sense. He would pull a thick tome from the shelf, hold it up, and then his eyes would ignite. Two perfectly straight, crimson beams of light shot from his pupils, scanning the pages with the intensity of a high-powered laser. It looked less like studying and more like he was welding the information directly into his consciousness. The air around him hummed with a faint static charge. I felt a paternal—or perhaps maternal, given the circumstances—urge to intervene. "Hey," I whispered, glancing around to ensure no mundane students were witnessing this divine data-entry. "You might want to tone it down. People are going to notice you’re not exactly human if you keep acting like a high-end photocopier." He didn't even blink, the red light continuing to sizzle against the paper. Two weeks later, while I was still drowning in the misery of my finals, I ran into him again in the hallway. He was dressed in a sharp, tailored suit, looking every bit the refined intellectual. "Professor Liu," a passing student chirped, nodding to him with genuine respect. I froze. "Professor? Did that guy just call you Professor?" My eldest son pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles up the bridge of his nose and cleared his throat with a practiced, scholarly air. "Indeed. I’ve accepted a position here." I felt a surge of pure, unadulterated envy mixed with horror. "How? You were a 'student' two weeks ago! What field could you possibly have mastered that quickly?" He adjusted his tie, looking remarkably composed. "Philosophy and Theology, mostly. It seemed... intuitive." I stared at him, my own son, who was now technically my superior in the university hierarchy. "This is getting out of hand," I muttered, clutching my tattered Marxist Philosophy textbook. "I'm your... I'm the one who brought you into this world! And now I have to call you 'Professor Liu'?" He gave me a small, enigmatic smile that reminded me far too much of his father. "In the eyes of the institution, yes. But in the eyes of the Abyss, we are all just footnotes."