“Xiaoliu, what are you doing?” Yiwen, in the middle of creating a new account, looked over speechlessly at Mi Xiaoliu sitting beside her.
The kitten had been checked over—perfectly healthy.
The arcade was closed today, so they’d settled for the next best thing and come to an internet café to play together, though the whole atmosphere was completely different.
It might be judging a book by its cover, but looking at Mi Xiaoliu’s thick glasses, Yiwen figured he was probably the type who liked video games.
On weekends the internet cafés near the school were usually packed, hard to find a free machine—but the moment Mi Xiaoliu stood there with that status badge on, people would obligingly log off and move away from her.
Yet not only did Mi Xiaoliu need Yiwen’s guidance just to successfully register a game account, before even logging in she treated Yiwen to a baffling display of incomprehensible behavior: reading the user agreement carefully, word by word.
“You can ignore that, just click ‘I Agree,'” Yiwen said, working the mouse for her.
“Did you memorize your username and password?”
“Mm.” Mi Xiaoliu nodded.
“You really memorized them?” Yiwen sounded doubtful.
“Really.”
At that very moment a certain underperforming little System sprite was frantically memorizing the game account and password on her behalf.
The game Yiwen was showing her was the one half the café was playing—the same one Boss Wei Shi liked—League of Legends.
Mi Xiaoliu didn’t get it: why were all these people cursing while they played?
Weren’t they having fun?
“Xiaoliu, what are you doing now?” Yiwen watched, speechless, as the boy beside her clicked his skills with the mouse.
“There are hotkeys for that—Q, W, E, R.
You don’t just rest one finger there.
Put your fingers like this…”
The crossdressing girl leaned slightly at the waist, moving in close to the other crossdressing girl to teach her hands-on how to play.
Truthfully she hadn’t played much of this game herself—maybe a stretch back in her first year of middle school.
With her bad sense of direction she used to get lost on the map when she first started, and after so many years away, it wasn’t like she counted as a smurf.
“Master, he’s too close!” Sasha yelled.
“Push him away, quick!”
Mi Xiaoliu did as told.
“Uh.” Yiwen stared at her, a little stunned, then turned back somewhat awkwardly to focus on her own screen.
She’d let her guard down for a second—it felt like she’d just been taken advantage of.
Sure, the other party was just a thirteen-year-old boy, but she herself was only fifteen.
Still, right now she looked like a boy too, and normally two boys sitting that close was nothing unusual, right?
She’d have to be more careful from now on.
Yiwen: “Xiaoliu, you’ve got all that gold—why aren’t you buying items?”
Mi Xiaoliu: “Saving it for steamed buns.”
Yiwen: “Xiaoliu, you could’ve hit D just now and gotten away.”
Mi Xiaoliu: “I want to save D for the next match.”
Mi Xiaoliu: “I killed someone.”
Yiwen: “That was a minion…”
It was a painfully difficult match, and Mi Xiaoliu wasn’t the only one making baffling plays—a few of the other teammates and the enemy players were the same way.
Despite the constant reminders, Mi Xiaoliu’s left hand still couldn’t help pecking clumsily at the keyboard with a single finger.
She looked at her hand, a little puzzled—compared to her right, her left felt strangely uncoordinated.
Yiwen took a sip of water and said nothing.
She was the one who’d offered to show someone the ropes—why get angry?
Everyone starts somewhere; even pro players began at zero.
There was no point being mad at the other teammates either.
This was a beginners’ match, after all—what right did she have to expect every teammate to meet her standards?
She turned to look—there was no telling from his face whether this newbie player was enjoying himself.
In fact, since the day they’d met she’d never seen his expression change much, at most a small twitch of the eyebrows to prove his face wasn’t completely frozen.
But Yiwen herself was happy enough, because she had someone to play with.
For a lot of games, the real system requirement isn’t a good graphics card—it’s a friend to play with.
Even if this one was a multiplayer game to begin with.
Selling Mi Xiaoliu out with a Blast Cone in-game and then laughing her head off—that was the whole joy of playing online with a friend.
Seeing they still had time, they started one last match, only this one wasn’t so peaceful, since a beginners’ lobby never lacks for smurfs.
With their team falling behind, a teammate whose attempt at smurfing had failed couldn’t hold back and started cursing Mi Xiaoliu out.
Reading the filthy words dragging her parents into it, Mi Xiaoliu felt very uncomfortable inside.
“People like this are disgusting—smurfing in a beginners’ lobby and then trash-talking on top of it.” Yiwen typed a reply flaming him back on Mi Xiaoliu’s behalf, then added quietly, as if in passing: “If I could join Uphold Justice on Heaven’s Behalf, I’d reach right through the network cable and chop his hands off.”
“Uphold Justice on Heaven’s Behalf?” Mi Xiaoliu asked, puzzled.
It was a phrase she was hearing for the first time.
“You know, that organization that’s blowing up online lately—you haven’t heard of it?” Yiwen looked at Mi Xiaoliu, a little surprised.
Then she remembered that Mi Xiaoliu’s phone was apparently still a button phone, so that reaction was fair enough.
“Let’s go eat.
No sense letting someone like that ruin our mood,” Yiwen decided.
“Mm.” That was the only thing Mi Xiaoliu was here for.
They picked a restaurant at random, one that looked a touch more upscale.
Yiwen didn’t usually linger in this area, so naturally she had no idea which places served good food.
As a girl, she did after all prefer this kind of place—more ornately decorated, and with desserts on the menu.
“You sure?” Yiwen looked at the boy across from her in surprise.
She’d clearly said it was her treat, and she’d even braced herself to get fleeced, yet all he’d ordered was the cheapest vegetable dish.
The kind even Yiwen at her most frugal wouldn’t eat.
“Mm.”
“Order something else,” Yiwen said.
Mi Xiaoliu shook her head.
She was afraid Yiwen would run off and leave her to pay.
Still, her eyes kept drifting toward the boiled spicy pork slices and the ice cream.
Hayato had taken her to eat the one; the other just looked so pretty.
Yiwen of course couldn’t read her mind.
She stared at Mi Xiaoliu’s face in silence for a while, then took it upon herself to order the boiled spicy pork slices and an ice cream for her anyway.
As a Self-Healing Esper, Xiaoliu probably didn’t have to worry about wrecking her stomach.
When the food came out, the waitress looked at Mi Xiaoliu with some difficulty.
“Sir, could the two of you finish up and leave quickly?
It’s mainly that…” Her eyes went to Mi Xiaoliu’s status badge.
Because of Mi Xiaoliu, the restaurant had stopped getting customers.
Though it left a bad taste, Yiwen agreed on Mi Xiaoliu’s behalf.
Compared to everyone else they’d run into today, this waiter had actually been quite polite.
“You don’t like it?” Mi Xiaoliu looked, puzzled, at Yiwen, who hadn’t touched the boiled spicy pork slices at all.
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Last time, Hayato had been the same way.
“Too spicy,” Yiwen said, shaking her head.
“You can’t eat spicy food?” The crossdressing girl’s brow twitched.
She rather liked the flavor.
Yiwen shook her head again.
“No—eat too much chili and you can get overheated inside, and then you break out… it does a lot of damage.
I’m not really a fan.”
Breaking out was a nightmare for a girl—the more a girl cared about her looks, the more she dreaded pimples—and besides, these past few days she really couldn’t handle spicy food.
Hearing this, Sasha immediately explained inside Mi Xiaoliu’s head: “Master won’t break out, because Master’s appearance is already fixed—no risk of pimples, no risk of your figure going out of shape.
As for the internal heat, I’m not sure about that, but it’s a minor issue to begin with, and even if it happened, with Master’s ability it’d clear up fast…”
Her self-healing was only weak against illness and poison; a small thing like a bit of internal heat was no problem.
Reassured, Mi Xiaoliu pushed the ice cream over.
“You have it.”
Yiwen stared at the ice cream, already several spoonfuls gone, and said nothing.
Was this guy just easygoing about the little things, or were boys such close friends that they could bite into the exact same spot on an apple?
“No thanks.
I haven’t been feeling well lately—can’t eat cold things,” she declined again.
Every girl of a certain age has those few days each month when she can’t get chilled or eat spicy food, and when her temper turns short—and right now Yiwen was in exactly that special stretch.
Failing to catch the real Night Demon that day, and getting one of her arms broken on top of it, had left her so frustrated she wanted to smash something.
If she didn’t have to fear breakouts, a ruined figure, or a disrupted cycle, she’d love to eat chili and ice cream as recklessly as Mi Xiaoliu did.
They didn’t chat much more after the meal—couldn’t make trouble for the restaurant.
Yiwen quietly walked Mi Xiaoliu home, watching passersby deliberately give the two of them a wide berth.
She didn’t understand why, even after being glared at everywhere they went, Mi Xiaoliu still wouldn’t just complete the make-up fitness test.
Smack—something struck the boy beside her in the back.
A raw egg.
Clearly no adult had done it—grown-ups wouldn’t be so bored as to pull something like this, nor would they dare provoke a Danger Level C who could lose control at any moment.
A young-looking boy threw it and then ran off laughing with his little friends.
To him, Mi Xiaoliu was exactly the kind of person his mom kept telling him to stay away from—in other words, a bad guy.
Heroic as he was, not only did he not fear this villain—he’d even dared to grab something and launch an attack.
He was a hero, at least within his own circle of little friends.
He’d dared to do what even adults wouldn’t, and that alone cemented his “badass” status among the kids.
Yiwen gave no reaction to any of it, turning instead to watch how Mi Xiaoliu would respond.
No anger—instead she reached back and touched her back, curious about the unidentified liquid that had come from inside the raw eggshell.
Never mind chasing the kid—she didn’t even curse once.
After a day together, no matter how she looked at it, this boy didn’t seem like the type who could kill anyone.
He was utterly innocent.
Having seen him home, Yiwen walked back alone along the little path.
The distance really wasn’t far, but for Yiwen it was destined to be a long journey.
“How’d it go?” came Officer Chen’s voice in her earpiece.
“It was fun.”
It had been a long time since she’d gone out to have fun with anyone.
Apart from colleagues and people from her club, it seemed she didn’t really have any friends.
Yiwen’s steps gradually slowed.
Once, she’d had plenty of friends.
Once, she’d been a pretty girl with long flowing hair—and there had been non-powered friends who didn’t drift away even after they saw her ability awaken, friends who answered her warmth with warmth, just like the boy today who’d tried to give her his ice cream.
In certain ways, she wasn’t as strong as she imagined herself to be.
“Do you think there’s something off about him?” Officer Chen asked.
“Personality-wise, nothing about him seems like a killer.”
“That’s good.”
“What’s good about it?
Where are we supposed to look for the killer now?”
“Isn’t it a good thing when your friend turns out not to be a criminal?” Officer Chen wondered.
“He’s not a friend,” Yiwen corrected.
“But didn’t you have fun?” Officer Chen mused.
“For a boy, spending a whole happy day gaming together basically makes you friends already.”
“I’m not a boy.”
At a bend in an alley, Yiwen stopped.
She spotted some kids crouched under someone’s building, mooching off the Wi-Fi to play games.
Yiwen bought some eggs at the supermarket next door, took one out, walked over, and coldly cracked it against one of the boys’ heads, then rubbed it around in his hair for good measure.