Chapter 30: So What If It's Overtime?

Jiang Xiao sat to one side, watching the three little girls giggling and making a ruckus nonstop.

Even Shi Shi, who seemed the coldest, couldn't stop laughing.

This scene before his eyes soothed the last bit of restlessness in his mind.

That's right, this was the feeling of clarity.

He was Jiang Xiao now, neither Pai Daxing nor Shinjiro!

Come to think of it, watching these kids happily playing games... his own feelings weren't too bad?

Jiang Xiao's mind was now incredibly clear.

"Shi Shi, do you think Daddy's mentally ill?"

"Huh? Daddy, what are you talking about?"

Shi Shi, who had been intently trying to snatch a speed-boosting red potion from Mu Xitang, was taken aback.

"Goose honk honk, actually, it's nothing much. By the way, do you want to go for a drive with me?"

Having uttered just one sentence, Jiang Xiao's brain was reset by the rules.

[Talent Effect Three: Inside Analog Horror, your illness will be more severe than in reality, affecting some of your judgments.]

"No! We want to play video games!"

"We've never been for a drive, is it fun?"

"Hey, Daddy, let's go for a drive after we finish playing, okay?"

...

Besides Jiang Xiao, the other Chosen Ones had also encountered demands from the children to play video games.

[Rule One: You will act as a dutiful father, fulfilling all your children's requests.]

Just the first rule had made it impossible for the Chosen Ones to refuse the children's requests.

Not to mention, they also had to pay attention to Rule Three.

[Rule Three: Your children may play games, but gaming time must not exceed 30 minutes.]

They couldn't refuse the children's requests, nor could they let them play overtime—how were they supposed to manage this?

This time, the Chosen Ones were all fathers.

As people who had gone through it themselves, they knew all too well the allure that Nintendo held for kids of that age.

Half an hour? That was nothing. Playing continuously for half a day or even a whole day was a piece of cake.

Since Jiang Xiao had played a "play dead" game with the girls for half an hour in the afternoon, Shi Shi and the others had only just started their video game time.

But for the other children, the 30-minute gaming limit was about to expire.

Each father brought out their Divine Skills, desperately trying to get their children to stop playing.

The representative of the humble approach: Cherry Blossom Country.

Meichuan Neiku from Cherry Blossom Country knelt on the ground, begging Da Pang to stop playing, and if that didn't work, he was willing to slap himself in the face a few times...

The representative of the seductive approach: Korea.

Pu Buwen brought out his exclusive kimchi recipe, hoping to tempt his son with food.

The representative of the clown approach: Lighthouse Country.

Mad, a former circus clown from Lighthouse Country, was frantically acting like a clown to get his daughter's attention.

In short, anything went as long as it stopped the kids from playing video games!!

[Hey, I'm a bit touched after reading this bit..]

[How so?]

[When I was a kid, I wasn't really addicted to video games, for real. My favorite thing was to ride on my dad's motorcycle.]

[Wow, are you spying on me, person above?]

[Hahaha, only those who have been taken for rides everywhere by their dad's motorcycle know how much fun it is!]

[Yeah, exactly, my dad too. Whenever it came to going for drives, he loved to tell stories from his childhood and brag about his glamorous youth.]

[Seriously, I love listening to it. I'm 28 this year, and I still enjoy the stories my father tells over meals...]

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"Uh, could it be that we have the same dad?"

"I'm different, I love going fishing with my dad! You wouldn't understand the joy of Fishing Man (personally female)."

"I love going bird's nest raiding with my dad, he's super fast at climbing trees, and I love catching cicada larvae with him in summer!"

"Cicada larvae are the real deal! By the way, do you prefer to explore their little holes and then dig them out, or do you like to shine a flashlight on the trees at night when they're climbing up?"

"Uh... my dad would time it just right, carry a shovel and take me out to the field, and dig a circle around the tree roots..."

"Cicada larvae: Is your dad polite?"

"Damn! Your dad is hardcore! But is there really any fun in digging directly like that?"

"It's okay, it's just turning that fake little hole into a big one, I'm still the one doing the digging, and I can even sell them for money. It was like 2012, prices were very low, cicada larvae sold for one yuan each!"

"Every sentence avoids childhood, yet every sentence is about childhood...."

"Poignant...strikes right to the heart...."

Watching all those incredibly humble dads in the live stream, many men felt bitter.

Finally, someone brought up what everyone wanted to say but were reluctant to.

"Actually, my son often begs me to take him out like Meichuan Neiku does, but... I only have the chance during long holidays, there's just too much pressure from work."

"Bro, I get you, it's all for making a living, but... the fatherly love our generation of kids gets really isn't as much as the previous one."

"Yeah, the standard of living has improved, but at the cost of virtually all our free time."

"Isn't that the truth? Working overtime every day, a so-called nine-to-six job ends up being eight-to-nine, where's the time to spend with your child?"

"Exactly, now my son has a far better quality of life and more toys than I ever did, but I don't think he's as happy as I was back then."

At that moment, a man with the ID 'Hard Work Pays Off' began to share his story.

Hard Work Pays Off: "Haha, right, I remembered something, my daughter saved her pocket money to buy a pack of hard-pack Daqianmen, worth 7 yuan, and wanted me to spend the night playing with her, uh. She's in the small class of kindergarten, only gets fifty cents a day for pocket money, I don't know how long she saved up..."

"And then?"

Hard Work Pays Off: "Then... I told her daddy's really busy right now, the company's proposal needs to be submitted tomorrow, I'll definitely next time, besides, dad smokes dozens of yuan-a-pack Zhonghua Soft."

"Bro, what you did there... sigh, forget it, it's all for a living, I can understand."

"For making a living, some things just have to be sacrificed, it's not your fault. Make sure to spend good quality time with your daughter when you can."

Hard Work Pays Off: "You don't understand, my head was so scrambled by the proposal at the time, I even snapped at her."

People began to comfort Hard Work Pays Off as he said this.

"It's okay, bro, words spoken in anger are just that, don't beat yourself up over it, everyone loses their temper sometimes."

"Right, when my wife is in a bad mood, the whole family suffers, we don't even dare to breathe too loudly at dinner."

"Yeah, whose child hasn't been scolded for no reason? To err is human."

Hard Work Pays Off went on talking about his experience.

Hard Work Pays Off: "Hey, you don't understand... but what I said really wasn't okay."

Hard Work Pays Off: "I rejected my daughter, but her little hands were still clutching that pack of Daqianmen, because to her, it might have taken half a month or even longer to save up for."

Hard Work Pays Off: "I..I told her at the time, such cigarettes, even if they fell on the ground dad wouldn't pick them up."

Hard Work Pays Off: "I asked her if she knew what kind of cigarettes dad smoked when socializing outside? Zhonghua Soft, dozens of yuan a pack!"

Hard Work Pays Off: "She didn't understand what I meant and asked how much 'soft Zhonghua' cost, I told her one pack could exchange for ten of what she had in her hand..."

Hard Work Pays Off: "I'm sorry, I can't forget the look in her eyes at the time, shocked... panicked, uneasy, and some insecurity, her subconscious movement to hide the Daqianmen behind her... I... I..."

Hard Work Pays Off: "I'm sorry, truly sorry, I want to apologize but don't know what to say, I've pretended to forget this incident countless times, but it always comes back to me unwittingly, I'm really sorry... to her."

Barrage: ...

After a silence, countless fathers took up their keyboards...

"Hard Work Pays Off I'm so freaking mad at you! You deserve to die! Go apologize to your daughter right now!"

"I understand you, but at the same time, I despise you!"

"God, how could you bear to do that to such a lovely daughter?"

"It's because you can't let go of that damned pride as a father! You just don't want to formally apologize to your own daughter!"

"Hard Work Pays Off, if this story is fake, if you made it up, then I'll just take it as a reminder to all the fathers in the live stream."

"If it's true, please apologize! A formal apology! Don't try to brush it off with jokes or condescending attitudes to your daughter, because it's really just fooling yourself! Oh, and one more thing, judging from this incident, as a father, you're not very qualified!"

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