“What do you take me for, the head of a daycare?”
Wei Shi took an expressionless sip of hot water steeped with goji berries.
“Look at me now—reduced to babysitting other people’s kids.”
“That little girl looks pretty cute, though.
I pinched her cheeks and she didn’t even fight back.” The purple-haired woman smiled as she opened her phone to look up information on Mi Xiaoliu, but aside from the records dated after her enrollment, she couldn’t dig up a single thing.
“Even I’m a woman, and I think she’s good-looking.
And here you are turning your nose up at her.”
It was just that the girl’s frame was too frail.
Her height was fine, but those thin arms and thin legs gave the impression that no one at home ever fed her any meat—it made you want to pity her.
“So what, later on I’m supposed to specially assign her seduce-the-lolicon missions?” Wei Shi shot her a cold sideways glance.
“Actually, a child this age already counts as a young lady.” The purple-haired woman blinked, set down her phone, and went back to tidying the house.
“Isn’t a raising sim fun?
And yet you went and stuck her with some new-hire assessment.
That’s the kid your first love asked you to look after, you know.”
“If your ex-boyfriend dumped some kid on you out of nowhere and told you to raise it, would you greet it with a smile?” Wei Shi flipped through the letter Mi Xiaoliu had brought a couple of times.
“That stupid bastard even changed my contact name to ‘Wei Shit’ after we broke up.”
“Then finish her off?” The purple-haired woman walked over smiling and squeezed his shoulders, her voice sliding into a coax.
“Don’t, come on.
I quite like her—such a pretty little girl.
Keep her around as a mascot.”
“Fine, keep her.
Just quit being so revolting.” Wei Shi slapped her hand away and tossed the letter Mi Xiaoliu had brought off to one side.
The game was about to respawn him.
The letter held Mi Xiaoliu’s personal information.
No addresses or relationships or anything like that, but it was precise all the same.
Precise right down to the cellular level.
“Yay!
(＾▽＾)／”
She let out a happy cry.
Curious, the purple-haired woman picked the letter up, and her pupils contracted slightly.
What it held wasn’t any kind of introduction letter—it was experimental record after experimental record on test subjects, each one named “Mi.”
“Burn it once you’ve read it, flush the ashes down the toilet.
Then ask whether they’ve arrived yet.”
Wei Shi lit a cigarette.
By now the color had finally bled back into his game as well.
He hurried back to his seat, rejoined the match online, and then watched with his own eyes as his teammate “Graves, the Outlaw” unloaded a full dqwrf combo onto the minion wave.
Just so Wei Shi could witness his minions meet their untimely end firsthand, the guy had even deliberately held the minions back, waiting for Wei Shi to return before last-hitting them.
While Wei Shi sat there stunned, a box was planted right in front of him.
“Son of a—!”
What followed was a friendly exchange between outlaws.
In reality Wei Shi was an outlaw; his opponent, meanwhile, was the Outlaw in the game.
The two met like long-lost friends, shared a common language, and for a while their friendly exchange filled the entire chat box.
Once the match ended, the two, still getting along famously and reluctant to part, even added each other as friends and talked the progress bar up to a tenth of its length.
In the end the other guy even warmly invited him to meet up in person.
Truly, this world still had more kind, warm-hearted people than not.
“Find me his location.” Wei Shi pulled out another cigarette, clamped it between his lips, and gave the order to the purple-haired woman.
He sat there in a daze with the cigarette dangling, then put it back, grabbed an umbrella, and walked out.
“I’m going to buy a lighter.”
“If you want to see the situation on their end, my ability would do just fine, wouldn’t it?” The purple-haired woman watched his retreating back with a smile.
No reply came.
She shrugged helplessly and gave Ishine Hayato a call.
“Hey, have you two reached the place?”
“That’s harsh, senior.
If I happened to be tailing the target right now, one call from you could blow my cover.” Hayato whistled.
“But since you’re so pretty, I’ll forgive you.”
Speaking of pretty…
Hayato turned to look at Mi Xiaoliu, a fellow newcomer like himself.
Black hair, tied into two thin little pigtails, one long and one short.
On her they didn’t look the least bit affected.
Her features and the shape of her face were flawless; having left her “little lolita” phase behind, she now carried the fresh, pure air of someone stepping into her youth.
Her blue eyes seemed almost to glow at night.
Was that a black trench coat she was wearing, or some kind of long robe?
Hayato couldn’t tell.
With the zipper pulled up, the garment wrapped Mi Xiaoliu’s small frame tightly from top to bottom.
The outfit looked a little odd, yet it suited her unexpectedly well, without the faintest sense of clash.
In a world where you could see every kind of strange getup imaginable, wearing this out the door wasn’t all that out of line.
Dressed sharp, and pretty on top of it—at the very least, Hayato had never seen a girl this good-looking among those her own age.
It was just that she wore that blank expression the whole time and hadn’t said a word.
If he were a few years younger, he’d probably have thrown caution to the wind and chased after her.
Too bad he was already eighteen… Actually, the age gap was no big deal—he was already an outlaw anyway.
Too bad his tastes now ran to the mature big-sister type.
Compared to a little girl who needed him to look after her, a big sister who could look after him was more to his liking.
And this cold little girl in front of him didn’t seem all that bright.
Mi Xiaoliu was standing in the rain, trying to work out why the umbrella in her hand had suddenly flipped inside out.
Her so-called “common knowledge” didn’t include this particular entry.
A silly girl like this—Hayato figured just about anyone could dangle a small favor in front of her and coax her into bed.
“That hood on your back can keep the rain off too, you know,” Hayato reminded her, on account of her good looks.
Mi Xiaoliu nodded and put the hood on.
The water pooled in the hood poured out over her head with a splash.
She turned a questioning look on Hayato, as though she’d been immensely deceived.
“…”
This outfit was, of course, not simply the best-looking set she’d rummaged out of her wardrobe.
[Novice Combat Suit]
Though it was an outfit rolled from the beginner’s gift pack, that all-stat-boost function of it seemed pretty strong.
Mi Xiaoliu, who would normally be panting after a couple of steps, had gone on foot all the way from the south side of the city to the north without getting the least bit tired—and she was fast, too, with a good deal more strength.
The two of them were in the middle of a little onboarding assessment.
Naturally, it wasn’t a matter of filling out answers to a bunch of strange questions, nor of being handed a target to practice their marksmanship on.
With no briefing whatsoever, they’d been handed an assassination target and detailed information in the most offhand way, with a deadline to finish before daybreak.
Nor had anyone said what would happen if they failed.
“How old are you, girl?
You been to school?” Hayato bared his teeth in an ill-intentioned grin.
“A girl your age has never pulled an all-nighter, right?”
“Thirteen.”
“Just started middle school, then.
Heh… Not even an onboarding orientation, and they treat us like this.
Truly awful.”
“Heh.
If you weren’t a desperado, who’d want to join an outlaw outfit like ours?” The voice on the other end of the line was still as maddeningly captivating as a fox spirit that had cultivated for ten thousand years.
“What if we get into a fight and someone sees us?” Hayato asked.
“Then naturally you silence the witnesses.
It only counts as an assassination when there are no witnesses.”
“Then why not just kill anyone we lay eyes on—no witnesses at all,” Hayato said, digging at his ear.
“Relax.
The target’s just an ordinary man without the strength to truss a chicken.
He doesn’t even have a gun on him—taking him out will be as easy as snapping off a turd.
Oh, right—the client wants us to get our hands on the documents he’s holding… And of course, the cleanup you two have to handle yourselves.
If you carelessly leave behind a fingerprint or something… heh heh.”
It did sound simple, but for green newcomers with no experience whatsoever, there was no shortage of complications buried in it.
Things like the exact location of the documents, the cleanup, and the important one: the nerve to kill.
If you don’t even dare take a kill mission, then why would we want you?
Or rather—who knows what you came to us thinking; are you looking to be a mole?
“The documents the target’s holding aren’t in the same place as where he lives.
I suggest you split up—you take the killing, and leave the support work like finding the documents to the little lady.
Looking after an underage girl and all.
I’ll send the two locations over in a bit.
He usually stays at the shop where he works, and the documents should be hidden in an old house in the Old Town district.”
“How conscientious of you,” Hayato said, glancing at the phone that had already hung up.
Of course, if they’d been willing to issue a newcomer like him a gun, now that would be true conscience.
The phone wasn’t the one he normally used—he was a wanted man, so how would he dare register a SIM card under his own name?
It was a handset the organization had issued.
But he was the only one who’d come in through the proper channels of the recruitment department, so he had a phone and Mi Xiaoliu didn’t.
Hayato didn’t tell Mi Xiaoliu what the purple-haired big sister had said on the phone.
He let out a soft laugh and pointed at the marked locations on the phone’s map to show her.
“Two places.
One is to retrieve the documents, the other to eliminate the target.
Take your pick.
She didn’t tell me which of these two spots is which, by the way.”
“Master, he’s trying to screw you over!”
“Hm?” Mi Xiaoliu tilted her head.
Seeing how adorable she looked, Hayato almost lost his nerve.
“Looks like you’ve got trouble making decisions too, girl, same as me.
Then I’ll just make a little sacrifice and choose for us.”
He picked the one for retrieving the documents.