The moment I carved out my heart and gave it to Lao Liu, I returned his forgotten memories to him as well. In that same instant, billions of years of memories surged back, swallowing me whole. It is only now that I’ve found the time to slowly savor them. Because the span of time was so vast, there aren't actually many moments that left a deep impression. If there was anything truly remarkable, it was that Lao Liu and I suffered a "Bad Ending" in every single lifetime.
The reasons for these BEs were as bizarre as they were varied. I’ll record a few of the more eccentric ones here.
When I first gained consciousness, I was drifting on the surface of a primordial ocean of molten lava. I say "drifting" because I was, quite literally, a hunk of charred black meat—likely just some scraps Lao Liu had discarded. I drifted for a very long time without ever moving far from him; he was simply too gargantuan. At some point, Lao Liu began to keep me as a pet.
That’s right, a pet.
He used his long tail as a leash, tethering me to ensure I wouldn't drift away.
I drifted in a daze for dozens of centuries.
Lao Liu barely moved. On the rare occasions he did, he would feed me lava.
I really wanted to scream, *Feed me what?!* What else was there on this planet besides lava? Was the lava you handed me supposed to be particularly delicious? Besides, I was a hunk of black meat! Did I even have a mouth? Did I have a digestive tract? Did I even need energy when I was just being dragged around on a leash every day?
Lao Liu seemed to hear the tempestuous roar of my inner thoughts. With a low rumble, he backed away, every orifice on his body stretching into an "O" shape while his fleshy filaments trembled.
Then, he pulled out one of his ribs, shoved it into my mass, and kneaded me around. From that moment on, I evolved from organic matter into a living organism.
At first, he didn't realize that a scrap-creature like me had a memory limit; my storage would seal up every hundred years, requiring a total reset to start over. It took about a dozen cycles before he caught on. Once he realized, he would wrap his tail around me and smack me hard on the head—acting exactly like an old person hitting the side of a flickering TV screen.
But I was a person with a temper. I didn't indulge him. If he hit me, I bit him. Then he would bite me back. I can proudly say that every inch of Lao Liu’s body bears my tooth marks!
We bit each other back and forth into a BE for dozens of centuries.
I was small and agile, while Lao Liu eventually grew callouses all over from my biting, so he gradually stopped seeking an eye for an eye. But I was bitter. Every time I opened my eyes after my memories were sealed, there was nothing in the vast flows of lava but one Lao Liu, and he wouldn't even talk to me. I was so resentful that I spent all day looking for ways to make him miserable. Lao Liu couldn't stand it. Back then, neither of us could speak, and there was no written language in the world, so Lao Liu began to consider how on earth to communicate with me.
Soon, he invented the first person, the second person, and one specific word: *Dumbass*.
Thus, the very first complete sentence of the Divine Language was born: "You are a dumbass."
I mimicked him: "You are a dumbass."
He let out a rumble and shook his head, his filaments trembling along with his orifices. Then, he made the following setting: my true name was the second-person pronoun.
Consequently, the moment I tried to call him a "dumbass," I would instantly become the dumbass myself.
This state of affairs lasted until the third-person pronoun appeared. But the third person wouldn't emerge until Lao Liu discovered Lu Daoshi living in the neighboring bay, which was a long time later. Long before that, Lao Liu uttered the third complete sentence of language: "Then it's settled!"
This setting left me in a position where I couldn't even talk back when insulted. I could only go back to biting him every day. Lao Liu, meanwhile, threw himself into the work of creating the Divine Language and script with even greater passion. He ignored me for several centuries. When I got tired of biting, I would sprawl on his head and howl—*awoo, awoo, awoo*—at the savage moon and the terrifying sun. I was quite the hotshot back then, looking down on the whole world. Though afterward, Lao Liu would usually try to slowly crawl away, letting me tumble into the Archean lava flows.
After ignoring me for a long time, Lao Liu once asked me to help him scrub his back. He said he hadn't washed since birth and was terribly itchy. I tore some tissue off his body and wove it into a giant towel. Lao Liu was so massive that I spent every day drifting in the sea, wiping him down. But my memory was poor. As I scrubbed, I would forget everything, yet I would keep scrubbing. I couldn't help but start contemplating the meaning of life: *Why am I here scrubbing this thing? Who told me to scrub this thing? I scrub and scrub every day; when will I ever get this thing clean? Is my entire life going to be spent in such boredom?* Then I would look up at Lao Liu’s majestic frame—so vast it didn't even look like a biological entity—and a sliver of sorrow, despair, and emptiness would well up from the bottom of my heart. This sorrow, despair, and emptiness wouldn't find a proper expression until a figure named Sisyphus appeared on Earth.
And then I committed suicide, you know? I scrubbed Lao Liu until I lost hope, scrubbed until I killed myself.
Damn it, the news of my suicide took several years just to travel to Lao Liu’s central nervous system. By the time he let out a rumble and turned his head, I had already been reborn and had committed suicide again out of sorrow, despair, and emptiness. He hurriedly tightened his tail, curling me into the crook of his shoulder for a hug.
We spent two entire lifetimes in a BE just because of that back-scrubbing incident. You can imagine the rest.
We existed in our wild, primordial forms for a long time. Basically, if you can imagine it, we could grow into it. I expect you can't quite visualize it, so you probably don't feel much of a connection. Let me tell you about the strange anecdotes we left behind in the civilized world after we took on human forms.
Lao Liu and I once had a honeymoon trip. However, I could never accept that Lao Liu was "higher" than me. Why should he be? He was slow and sluggish all day. I was often very unhappy about it and was frequently tricked by Zhang Litian and his ill-intentioned gang. Back in Ancient Egypt, I was incited and deluded by them into openly opposing Lao Liu.
"I want to be a boy too!" I changed from Isis into Seth. "I'm just as good as you. I want to be the king here."
Lao Liu was still quite indulgent toward me. Besides, he was so powerful that he didn't take my challenge seriously. He said, "Fine, if you want to compete, let's compete." So, we called in Lu Daoshi to be the judge. Lu Daoshi said, "Then you two should have a breath-holding contest."
Back then, entertainment options were limited. Everyone had just evolved from daily brawling to sitting down and talking properly. Even a famously clever man like Lu Daoshi could only think of this kind of competition.
Lao Liu and I turned into water buffaloes, jumped into the Nile, and began the breath-holding contest.
Zhang Litian wanted me to win. He threw a harpoon into the water. Damn it, he missed Lao Liu and hit me instead. On his second try, he hit Lao Liu. Lao Liu’s giant eyes snapped toward him, staring him down. Zhang Litian retracted the harpoon in a flash. I got so angry that I went ashore and cut his head off. What use was a subordinate like that? Before a new head could grow back, Zhang Litian found a dog’s head to stick on his neck. That’s right—the big boss who caused us so much trouble was once that pathetic. It proves the old saying: a dog-headed man in the early game, a man-headed dog in the late game.
Since I had cut off Zhang Litian’s head, Lu Daoshi said, "Forget it, forget it. The culprit who incited you two has been punished. You two should just make up."
I wasn't convinced, but I pretended to reconcile with Lao Liu because I had already made up my mind: I would sleep with him that night and plant my seed inside his body! We gods had an unwritten rule: if Person A plants their seed in Person B’s body, then A is more noble than B! Come to think of it, humans still seem to follow that rule today.
Anyway, that night, I tried to deliver the goods. I felt like I succeeded, but it turned out Lao Liu was just faking sleep! He covered his backside with his hand and snatched my seed away. The next day, he very despicably mixed his own seed into my lettuce and fed it to me!
I didn't suspect a thing. I went to find Lu Daoshi. In front of all the gods, I declared, "Liu Wukong has my seed inside him!"
Lao Liu said calmly, "It is Ye Xiao who has my seed inside him."
Lu Daoshi gave a serious rumble. "Well then, who exactly is on top and who is on the bottom? Words alone don't count; seeing is believing. Summon your seeds."
And then, the result was a tragedy! A tragedy! I summoned my seed, and nothing happened to Lao Liu. But when Lao Liu summoned his, his seed popped right out of my forehead! Oh, for f*ck's sake!
Lu Daoshi told me to just go wash up and go to bed. "If you're on the bottom, you're on the bottom. You've been on the bottom for billions of years. Is there any point in shouting about a counter-attack everywhere? Are you just trying to amuse us?"
I was unhappy for that entire lifetime. I turned into a Nile crocodile and buried myself in the riverbank for a century. Lao Liu dug a hole next to me and buried himself too, but I ignored him. For the rest of that life, I was extremely vigilant about guarding my backside.
Oh, right. One of the spectating gods was so happy that he took Lao Liu’s seed and stuck it on top of his head. From then on, whenever the Ancient Egyptians drew him in murals, he had a large, round seed on his head. His name was Thoth. If you don't believe me, you can Baidu it. That round thing on his head in those murals—that’s Lao Liu’s seed!
In short, every lifetime Lao Liu and I shared ended in some inexplicable BE, yet for some reason, it felt exceptionally happy. Now, thanks to the Holy Light Dumpling, the bug in my memory capacity has been fixed. I won't get angry anymore about Lao Liu "abandoning" me or throwing scraps at me. It seems our days will only get better from here.
But the urgent matter at hand is how to get Lao Liu to get off me. Nowadays, he does absolutely nothing but hang onto me, refusing to let go. Wherever I go, he drags along, too lazy to even move his own feet. However, any attempt to pry him off results in his fierce retaliation... Of course, if it’s me trying to pull his hands away, he just whimpers pitifully until I stop and throw myself into his arms.
"Are you two a pair of gorillas huddling together to pick lice off each other?!" the Holy Light Dumpling demanded.
The two of us glared at him simultaneously and then slammed the door shut.
Although doing this in front of a child is a total failure of parenting, still...
Who told us we were meant to be one entity in the first place?
This feeling is probably what they call love.
***
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My Roommate is a Non-Human | Chapter 74 | A History of Bad Endings | Novela.app | Novela.app
