When you possess the power to heal yourself, would you be willing to sacrifice yourself to shove aside a girl about to be hit by a car?
This was precisely the question Mi Xiaoliu now faced.
After getting money, she’d meant to buy a schoolbag as Sasha instructed, but the moment she stepped into the shop she was driven out.
She clearly had thirty thousand Mila on her, yet all she’d managed to buy that morning was two meat buns.
The bun seller was an old granny with poor eyesight who hadn’t noticed the badge on her chest.
Then came the situation before her now.
The red-haired girl Mi Xiaoliu had sent sprawling the day before came rushing along again, biting into her bread, cutting it close as she dashed across the road on the orange light—with the result that she now faced a car speeding toward her with failed brakes.
At that speed, if she didn’t go flying a good ten meters, she’d be an insult to universal gravitation.
At this moment, the only one who could save her was Mi Xiaoliu, panting as she ran along behind her, likewise about to be late from buying things.
But Mi Xiaoliu did not.
“You can’t cross the road when there’s a car coming”—this was a piece of common knowledge she’d just drawn with money the night before, and she would keep it firmly in mind.
And so, during this peak hour, the passersby could only watch helplessly as this poor red-haired girl…
pulled off fifty backflips into a textbook white-crane-spreads-its-wings pose, successfully avoiding the tragic fate of being knocked flying ten meters.
Bravo, bravo.
As the meat bun entered her mouth, the fresh, tender oils burst across her tongue, and Mi Xiaoliu’s taste buds fed a report of satisfaction back to the center of her brain.
Far better than plain steamed buns with pickled vegetables.
“What is this?”
“Master, there’s meat inside.
In most people’s tastes, meat is generally more delicious than vegetarian food.
The meats people commonly eat include pork and chicken, and there are others too, all taken from other animals.
Human flesh may not be eaten…” Sasha rattled off all sorts of information about meat for her master, one line at a time.
“Because these animals are farm-raised, neither the historic meteor impact nor the LV5 Mass Extinction Event managed to wipe them out.
After a century of continuous breeding, they’ve finally been brought back down to common-folk prices.”
“How much money does eating take?” Mi Xiaoliu asked inwardly.
“If we go by a month, the most frugal case in this city would still run about six hundred Mila, but I’d suggest Master keep at least a thousand Mila at minimum—after all, eating isn’t only to fill the stomach, but also to enjoy the flavor.”
“Okay.”
Mi Xiaoliu tapped the ten-pull again and again.
Most were memories of no particular significance—like the time she’d sat on a bus… and then nothing.
Just waiting for the bus, no special event, and yet even boring, useless recollections like that got drawn, with a single pull costing a hundred Mila and no pity-timer guarantee.
Even so, it could grant her hollow heart that little sliver of fullness.
Compared to these memories, the ones she’d drawn before and drawn again as duplicates were the truly meaningless ones—they wouldn’t even replay the footage anew in her mind.
Another draw.
This time, in the memory she was in a pitch-black, sealed space, her whole body bound by ropes like so many safety belts, unable to move.
She couldn’t move, and no one brought her any food.
She just lay there quietly, for who knows how long.
At first, there was no strength anywhere in her body; she was thirsty and hungry.
As the time slowly passed, her mind began to grow muddled, but though she wanted to sleep, she couldn’t.
So thirsty… so hungry…
Then her parched mouth made her subconsciously forget the hunger, and her only desire was to replenish water.
In the end, she’d already begun to lose track of reality—a white blur, images of herself drinking water flashing before her from time to time, but the very next second the assault of a dry mouth and empty stomach would remind her what reality was.
Then came a sudden coldness in her body, and her consciousness finally sank into darkness…
The memory ended.
Mi Xiaoliu hugged her arms and sat stunned for a good long while.
Mi Xiaoliu did not stop; she kept drawing.
Even though she’d just tasted what it felt like to starve to death without money.
“Mas—” Sasha seemed to want to stop her, but the words hung at the edge of her mouth and halted again.
By the time only a thousand Mila was left, she hesitated, then tapped a single pull once more.
A duplicate memory.
“Master, stop, quick!” Sasha blocked her anxiously.
She didn’t stop.
Another single pull.
She drew the piece of common knowledge “an umbrella suddenly flips inside out because it’s blown by the wind,” and only then did she stop, satisfied—it seemed this was exactly what she’d wanted to draw.
Thirty thousand Mila, drawn down to a bare eight hundred.
Only then did Sasha let out a breath and explain to her, “Master, when you experience certain things, there’s a high chance of drawing memories related to that event on the same day.”
It had already been several hours past midnight by the time Mi Xiaoliu grew curious about the umbrella, so it counted as the same day.
Because she’d slept so late the night before, she was already in a bit of a mood when Sasha woke her in the morning.
During first period her head kept nodding, and she wanted to just lie flat on her desk.
The one on her left, Yiwen, was likewise drowsy, yawning very conspicuously.
“Little Six.” Yiwen called to her softly.
Mi Xiaoliu turned her head.
“My pen’s out of ink.
Can I borrow one?” Yiwen made a half-megaphone shape with one hand held before his mouth.
Without answering, Mi Xiaoliu quietly rummaged through the plastic pencil case she’d had since before losing her memory, and handed over a pencil.
Because she’d pressed too hard using the pencil the day before and snapped the lead—but she didn’t know how to sharpen it.
“A pencil’s really only good for drawing…” Yiwen reached over helplessly and took one himself.
“I’ll just use this.”
What he took was an ordinary gel pen.
Mi Xiaoliu went to take the pencil back but somehow couldn’t keep hold of it.
Yiwen, quick-eyed and quick-handed once again, caught it for her.
“Handle things gently, okay?”
Mi Xiaoliu studied her left hand in confusion.
She felt her left hand wasn’t quite so usable, and that when it held something together with her right, the two weren’t so coordinated.
To others, this action looked like a bad case of chuunibyou.
While Mi Xiaoliu was “having her episode,” Yiwen secretly observed the red-barreled black-ink pen lying quietly in her pencil case, and said nothing.
Of course he hadn’t forgotten to bring a pen—he just wanted to confirm whether the red-barreled black-ink pen was still in Mi Xiaoliu’s possession, yet didn’t dare tip his hand by reaching straight for that pen.
Maybe it was just a coincidence—nearly every student had, at some point, fit a black ink cartridge into a red pen casing, and nearly every student had, at some point, snapped off the clip on a pen cap.
Mi Xiaoliu had spent the whole of yesterday morning lying on her desk looking very weak—possibly from having taken N1202.
N1202, an illegal banned drug.
After using it, even an ordinary person can wield an ability for anywhere from three to twenty-four hours.
Its principle isn’t to awaken the ability within a person’s body, but to forcibly implant one.
For instance, N1202: Physical Enhancement Type—whoever uses this dose can, for three hours, wield the power of physical enhancement, and even if the person already possesses an ability of their own, they’ll gain an extra physical-enhancement ability for those three hours.