Mei-Mei received the welcome package that the system sent to a storage space which was a part of the virtual screen.
She received all of the pills first, intending to swallow the skin nourishing pill and hair growth pill. It was then that she recalled one more pill which she had skipped over.
"Hold on a moment, lets forget the C4 explosives. Why have you given me a poison purification pill? Am I poisoned?"
Her heart clenched tightly as she waited for the answer which she was certain to a degree would break her heart even more than it already was.
"Do I need to call you stupid again?" C4 replied.
Mei-Mei picked up the pillow on the bed and threw it on the ground. "That beast, that bastard!!! If he wanted a divorce, all he had to do was ask. Why poison me?"
"Host you have been eating the poison for six years now. It is the reason why you look sickly no matter how you take care of your health and also why you keep losing weight. The poison was administered in small doses. It cannot be detected easily by ordinary doctors and machines in hospitals because it was extracted from a creature from another planet."
She could guess where it had come from, Space M had a lab where everything from outer space was examined upon return to earth.
If she had guess why she had been poisoned, it was probably because Mo Liang wanted to make her just sick enough for the Jun family to come back into her life. He had encouraged her many times to reach out to them six years ago and she refused.
'It is a matter of pride,' she would say. 'I will prove to them that my decision my right.' she would add. She had told herself so many lies back then, believing that they were the truth.
After sometime, Mo Liang stopped telling her to reach out to her family and she started falling ill. Then he brought it up again, claiming her parents would want to know if she was badly ill. He had said that they would be devastated if she died and they never got a chance to make things right.
He had even taken it upon himself to give her twin brother Mengzhi a call and tell him about the sickness. When Mengzhi showed up, Mei-Mei had not gone out to see him. She had been too proud and ashamed, so she locked herself in the bedroom.
Mengzhi never returned after that and the unknown sickness never healed. Now, at least a cause had been found. Mo Liang had been gone for five years, it was impossible for him to be the culprit behind the poisoning during these years. It was likely that Mrs. Sun had picked up where her son had left off.
"What a good mother-in-law I have." she whispered to herself in a sarcastic tone.
While Mo Liang was gone, Mei-Mei had been playing the role of the dutiful wife, raising their daughter, taking care of his mother and funding all the expenses at their home on her own. She had also been running around securing contracts for the company and helping out behind the scenes.
As she had been suffering for them, they had been poisoning her, cheating on her and mocking her.
"Why, Mo Liang, why?" she whispered.
Mei-Mei did not even have the strength to cry, of what use was it now? She got the poison purification pill and swallowed it in one gulp.
"System, can I swallow the rest of the pills or should I wait a moment?"
"Wait for an hour but before then, find the nearest toilet. Host, run."
Her stomach startled to grumble and intense pain swept through her stomach. It was if she was suffering from indigestion, a running stomach, cramps and every other illness at the same time. She leaped off the bed and run into the bathroom.
For the next one hour, screams of untold pain echoed in the room and the smell wafting inside was not pleasant.
When Mei-Mei stepped out of the bathroom finally, her legs were trembling and she felt completely drained. her strength had been enough to enable her take a bath. Because she was struggling to walk, a room assigned robot butler that tended to patients that was standing in the corner was activated.
It was quick in approaching her and carried her up, placing her back on the bed carefully.
"Hello, I am nurse aide H40, if you need anything, I am at your beck and call." It said.
"Can I get something to eat?" she asked.
It walked out of the room to bring her food. Its movements were so natural that it appeared human. Beneath the human skin however was a body of steel. Mei-Mei was not new to robot butlers, they were her mother's invention.
They had been all the hype initially but ten years ago, one man had managed to reprogram two and used them to attack and kill his wife and the man she was having an affair with. It had sparked off the debate on smart robots and many groups had come out to speak on the dangers, warning of a robot uprising incited by dangerous individuals.
After that attack, they were deemed to dangerous to be owned by civilians. All smart AI operated personal robot butlers had been banned all over the world. Their use was now restricted to hospitals, army bases and other government assigned places.
While waiting for the robot butler to return, Mei-Mei swallowed the beauty pills and thought about her life. As things stood now, divorce was inevitable and she had no plans to stop it.
Her main task was to protect Mingzhu and either take back Space M or take it down. The company had been started with her money and efforts. She could not allow Mo Liang to swallow it all.
It was also time to break free and restart her life and when it came to that, she had no idea where to begin because she had literally blown it up when she chose to follow Mo Liang.
"System, where should I begin?"
"It depends on what you want host. Do you want to go back and be the CEO of Phoenix group?"