Arknights: It Can't Possibly Be My Fault... Right? — Chapter 40

Chapter 40: Having a Baby?!You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

“Kai. Kai, where did you get this paint?”

A beat of silence. The scratching of graphite against paper.

“Kai. Kai, who are you drawing? They’re quite cute. Wait… is that me?”

A heavy sigh.

“Kai. Kai, are there any more snacks? I already finished all the crispy noodles.”

Kai finally lowered his lining pencil, pinching the bridge of his nose. He shot a sidelong glance at M3. The usually terrifying crystalline summon of Kal’tsit was currently in her human form, sitting far too close, swinging her legs off the edge of his desk and scattering crumbs everywhere.

“I swear, M3,” Kai groaned, “if you’re this bored, you could always go find the others at the bar and play with them.”

“I’m not trying to be annoying,” M3 murmured, her heels kicking gently against the metal desk. “I just don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Then that is the literal definition of being bored. What did you usually do to pass the time when you were with Kal’tsit?” Kai picked up a kneaded eraser, carefully dabbing away a stray, crooked line. Not having a simple ‘Ctrl+Z’ undo button in this world was a daily tragedy.

“Hmm…” M3 tilted her head, tapping her chin. “When I was with Kal’tsit, I was basically sleeping most of the time.” It was true. Before gaining this human shell, whenever she felt a hint of boredom, she would simply revert to her construct state and hibernate.

“Makes sense,” Kai muttered. He pictured the imposing monster simply shrinking down and crawling back into Kal’tsit’s spine the moment she felt a yawn coming on.

“Why don’t you take a nap, then? Rest up.” Kai blew a stray pile of eraser shavings off the desk, watching them flutter into the trash bin. Satisfying. The line art was practically finished anyway; he was absolutely in the zone today.

“Sleep? Um… where?” M3 blinked, her gaze sweeping the sparse operator cabin. The only piece of furniture meant for resting was Kai’s own bed, neatly made in the corner.

“Just use my bed. Don’t tell me you’re suddenly a mattress snob?”

“A snob? I’m not picky about beds.” M3 smiled, hopping down from the desk. “If anything, I’m only picky about Kal’tsit.” She leaned over his shoulder, her warmth pressing slightly against his arm as she inspected the canvas. “Not bad. Not bad at all. You made me look quite beautiful.”

Kai smirked, spinning the pencil between his fingers. “How is it? Is Mommy satisfied?”

A dead silence descended upon the room.

“?! Mo… Mommy?!” M3 stammered, her eyes widening to the size of saucers.

Before Kai could even register the slip of the tongue, a small, flat voice chimed in from the doorway.

“Sister M3 is Kai’s… mother?”

Kai froze. Standing there, clutching her oversized terminal, was Rosmontis. The young Feline’s small face was scrunched up in an expression of deep, innocent confusion.

Crap. An occupational hazard from his past life had just reared its ugly head.

“Wait, hold on, let me explain!” Kai scrambled out of his chair, hands raised in surrender.

M3’s face was already dusted with a light shade of pink. She crossed her arms, deciding to hear him out, though the sheer embarrassment of being called ‘mother’ by a grown man was making her internal temperature spike.

“Uh, it’s like this,” Kai stammered, his mind racing at a million miles an hour. “It’s a saying from my hometown! Artists call their clients ‘Mommy.’It’s a sort of… homophone! Yeah, a homophone. It actually just means’Boss’!”

Rosmontis tilted her head, her feline ears twitching. She tapped a few keys on her terminal, pulling up her careful logs. “But… didn’t Kai say he doesn’t know where his home is?”

M3’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Is that right?” She remembered that detail perfectly. When Kai first joined Rhodes Island, he had explicitly claimed amnesia regarding his origins.

Intense boss battle music started blaring in Kai’s head.

Think fast. His entire reputation was on the line. If a rumor spread through Rhodes Island that he had a bizarre fetish for calling female operators ‘Mother,’ he would have to throw himself off the landship.

“Ah, I indeed don’t remember!” Kai bluffed, sweating bullets. “But it’s just like how you can have amnesia but still remember how to speak! It’s subconscious muscle memory!”

“Oh…” M3 murmured, her expression softening slightly as she reluctantly accepted the flimsy logic.

“Then,” Rosmontis’s harmless, airy voice struck again, dealing critical damage, “was it for the same subconscious reason that Kai called Amiya ‘daughter’ before?”

Kai felt his soul leave his body.

Rosmontis stared at her screen. “I have it recorded in my log from when you first arrived. Some operators were talking about it.”

“There’s even that?” M3 whipped her head back toward Kai, her gaze piercing right through him. How are you going to explain this one, tough guy?

The boss battle music intensified into a frantic crescendo.

“Ah, that… that specific incident…” Kai felt a cold drop of sweat slide down his neck.

“Calling me ‘mother’is one thing,” M3 pouted, stepping closer and glaring up at him, “but is’daughter’ also a convenient homophone?”

“Ah, daughter… daughter is because…”

Screw it. All or nothing.

“It’s because Amiya is just too cute!” Kai practically shouted, throwing his hands up. “Don’t you guys agree?! She’s adorable! I just thought to myself, if I ever have a kid in the future, I want a well-behaved, obedient daughter exactly like Amiya! It just slipped out! Is a guy not allowed to have paternal instincts?!”

Silence. The kind of absolute, suffocating silence that follows a localized Catastrophe.and support the real translator.Read at elysianreads.com This is a stolen translation. You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

After the massive outburst came an endless void.

“So,” Rosmontis began slowly, piecing the puzzle together with terrifying toddler logic, “Kai wants to have an Ami—”

“Mmph!” Kai lunged forward, clapping a hand over the Feline’s mouth, but the damage was already done.

Rosmontis blinked her massive, innocent eyes at him over his hand. If Kai didn’t know the girl’s pure nature, he would have seriously suspected her of being a two-faced manipulator.

“With Kai… have…” M3 whispered, repeating the fragmented sentence.

The light completely vanished from M3’s eyes. A furious, boiling blush erupted across her cheeks, spreading down to her neck. Kai could practically see literal steam whistling out of her ears.

Yep. It’s over. Kai sighed in defeat, dropping his hand from Rosmontis’s face. “Rosmontis, please. We can’t say such… weird things out loud in the future, okay?”

Rosmontis blinked again. She didn’t understand what was so weird. Didn’t Kai just establish the facts? M3 is Mommy, and he wants a daughter like Amiya. Therefore, Mommy M3 and Kai are making an Amiya. It was simple math. Still, seeing Kai’s exhausted expression, she obediently nodded.

Seeing her agree, Kai finally exhaled. If anyone else had walked in on this conversation, he would have been thrown into the brig.

“Um… M3?” Kai ventured.

No reaction. The girl was frozen like a statue.

“M3? Earth to M3! Snap out of it!” Kai raised his voice, waving a hand in front of her face.

“Ah?! What?!” M3 jolted violently, stumbling backward. “No way! I’m not ready for that yet! Having a baby and all… I mean, even if it’s with Kai… besides, Kal’tsit never taught me how to do that! I know the biological theory, but practical application is absolutely out of the question!”

She fired off the words like a runaway machine gun.

“Uh… M3?” Kai gently reached out and patted her shoulder.

The physical contact seemed to reboot her brain. M3 suddenly realized exactly what she had just screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Th-that’s not— Kai, I didn’t mean I dislike you!” M3 waved her hands frantically, her voice pitching up an octave. “I just—”

“It’s okay, I get it,” Kai chuckled weakly, offering a reassuring smile. “Rosmontis was just joking around. Kids say the darndest things. Don’t take it to heart.”

Despite his calm facade, Kai was dying inside. The awkwardness in the room was so thick you could cut it with a Mon3tr claw. If he weren’t wearing boots, his toes would have curled hard enough to excavate a new sublevel in the landship.

Rosmontis opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t joking and certainly wasn’t a child, but the suffocating tension between the two adults made her wisely snap her jaw shut.

“Oh. Oh… right… yeah. Joking.” M3 swallowed hard, her eyes darting everywhere except at Kai.

The scene remained agonizingly awkward for a long moment.

M3 abruptly scratched the back of her head. “Well, I… I’m going to sleep now!”

Without another word, she spun on her heel and practically sprinted across the room, diving face-first into Kai’s bed and pulling the blanket over her head.

Kai stood there, staring at the trembling lump under his sheets.

Beside him, Rosmontis tugged at his sleeve. “Is Sister M3 angry?”

“No,” Kai sighed, reaching down to gently ruffle the Feline’s silver hair. “She’s just shy.”

“Shy?” Rosmontis leaned into his touch, nuzzling against his palm like a stray kitten. “Does Sister M3 like Kai?”

“Hmm? What makes you say that?” Kai raised an eyebrow. He certainly didn’t interpret M3’s nuclear meltdown as a confession of love, nor did he harbor any delusions about his own charm winning over Kal’tsit’s spine-demon.

“Because…” Rosmontis murmured, “don’t people only get shy when they like someone?”

“It’s not quite that simple. Liking someone is a very complicated concept. You’ll understand when you’re older, Rosmontis.”

“When I’m older? But I feel like I like Kai very much right now.”

Kai couldn’t help but laugh at her earnest declaration. He knelt down slightly to meet her eye level. “There are different kinds of ‘liking.’The way you like me is different from the kind of’liking’ that makes people shy.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Your liking for me is like how you like small animals, or your favorite snacks, or drawing. But the ‘liking’ you were just talking about is more like… well, like Brother Collins and Sister Linna.” Kai explained patiently, referencing a well-known pair of bickering operators on the ship—a Caprine and a Sarkaz whose obvious chemistry was shipped by half of Rhodes Island, Kai included.

“So complicated…” Rosmontis muttered, her ears drooping as her brain struggled to process the romantic nuances.

Deciding she’d had enough thinking for one day, she dragged a nearby chair right next to Kai. Under his completely bewildered gaze, she leaned forward, opened her mouth, and gently bit down on his forearm.

“Uh… what is this?” Kai asked, staring at the girl attached to his arm. She wasn’t biting hard at all; her small teeth just left a faint, ticklish pressure against his skin.

Rosmontis released him, licking her lips and tilting her head innocently. “Dr. Kal’tsit said this is how Felines play around.”

[Rhodes’s Note: In Chinese internet culture, freelance artists often refer to their paying clients as “Mommy” or “Daddy” (金主妈妈 / 金主爸爸) as a form of playful flattery to the person funding them. Kai’s past-life habit of calling his client “Mommy” naturally leads to a massive misunderstanding in Terra.]You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.