The setting sun stretched the shadows of this city long.
At this moment, what was happening here was a classic scene, so standard that it could almost be written into textbooks for low-quality television dramas.
“No—! Help!”
The young girl’s shrill cry pierced the silence of the dim alley.
A young girl wearing an exquisite white summer dress was pressed tightly against the corner, trembling.
She had a slim figure and a beautiful face, with her black, smooth, long straight hair scattered somewhat messily over her shoulders.
The three hooligan-like men surrounding her stared with wide, fixated eyes.
“Tsk tsk, what great luck.”
The scar-faced leader’s gaze greedily swept back and forth over the smooth legs of the girl named Hailey Morgan, “I only wanted to get some money for internet, I didn’t expect to run into such a top-tier beauty. This is just my type; these legs are enough for me to play with for a year.”
Beside him, a thug with tattoos covering his arms swallowed hard and rubbed his hands impatiently, “Boss, look, there’s no surveillance here, and it’s secluded. Even if she screams until her throat breaks, no one will answer…”
He wore a lewd smile, “How about we have some fun first?”
Hailey Morgan clutched her schoolbag tightly, staring at them in terror, seemingly too scared to move.
Step.
Step.
Just then, a steady, unhurried sound of footsteps came from the entrance of the alley.
The three men turned their heads sharply, looking over with hostile expressions.
Against the dim light, a robust figure was walking slowly toward them.
It was a tall and thin youth, just over one meter eighty, with black hair and eyes and cold, sharp features.
The Levia summer student uniform was notoriously thin; at this moment, it was slightly dampened by sweat and clung to his body, outlining the firm, lean lines of his physique underneath.
However, this cold aura was half-ruined by what he held in his hands—his left hand carried a schoolbag slung across his body, while his right hand held a white plastic bag full of domestic vibes, inside which a carton of discounted eggs and a few green onions were vaguely visible.
“Where did this brat come from?” The tattooed man weighed the wooden stick in his hand, looking fierce, “What are you looking at? If you don’t want to die, get lost!”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard, his footsteps not pausing in the slightest, his expression calm and indifferent, like a deaf and blind disabled person.
But his steady, approaching pace clearly gave a negative answer.
This feeling of being completely ignored made the thug leader instantly furious, “Trying to be a hero saving a damsel? You refuse a toast only to drink a forfeit! Kill him!”
The three adult men surrounded him in a triangle formation.
Their steps were steady and their builds solid; they were clearly not the type of small-time hooligans who only knew how to bluff.
Thud!
Thud!
Slap!
“Ahhhh!!”
After a few extremely fast muffled sounds, the three burly men who were just arrogant and domineering were now curled up on the ground like dead dogs, wailing in pain, without even the strength to stand up.
The youth expressionlessly flicked his wrist, retracting the black telescopic baton in his hand, and skillfully stuffed it back into his schoolbag.
His breathing didn’t even falter by a single beat; he simply lifted the eggs he was holding a bit higher to avoid breaking them.
“Wuwuwu… Classmate Alex Morgan, you saved me again…”
Hailey Morgan threw herself at him with teary eyes, holding his arm with extreme familiarity, “You always save me at the most critical moment. I can’t even remember which time this is—the ninetieth, or the hundredth? This is all fate’s arrangement; I can only repay you by giving myself to you…”
Facing the beautiful girl’s active advances, the youth named Alex Morgan couldn’t be bothered to respond.
He calmly pulled his arm away, placed the bag of eggs on the ground, and took a small notebook out of his pocket.
Seeing this, Hailey Morgan leaned her little head over to take a peek at the notebook.
On the yellowed pages, names were densely written like an account book.
Behind the names were phone numbers, and behind those were one or two lonely strokes.
Only behind the name and phone number of “Hailey Morgan” was the gray-black handwriting shocking to the eye—eight neatly arranged “just” characters occupied two lines like a brick wall, as if silently accusing this young girl of her outrageous frequency of getting into trouble.
Alex Morgan held the pen and added the second stroke to the ninth “just” character.
“Tch, so it’s only the 42nd time.”
Hailey Morgan’s originally pitiful expression vanished instantly, replaced by a sly, little-devil-like smile.
She reached out to cover her mouth, emitting a “kuku” mischievous laugh, and actually lifted the hem of her skirt slightly right in front of Alex Morgan, revealing her dazzlingly white, delicate thighs, her eyes looking as if they were melting: “Instead of writing it in the notebook, I’d prefer you to leave a mark on me~”
Alex Morgan didn’t even lift an eyelid, closed the notebook, and held out his open palm directly to the girl.
“Gu, you really don’t understand romance…” Hailey Morgan puffed out her cheeks, showing a disappointed expression.
She pulled out a white and green wallet with a green onion cartoon icon printed on it from her small bag, and skillfully counted out a few bills—six red hundred-yuan notes, four blue ten-yuan notes, and eight green one-yuan notes.
Hailey Morgan didn’t know why the youth in front of her always wanted exactly this amount of money, down to the last digit.
She rolled her eyes, “Here, here, here, you money-grubber!”
With a “slap,” the bills were slapped into Alex Morgan’s palm.
Alex Morgan skillfully clamped the middle of the bills with his thumb, rubbed them slightly, and swept his fingertips across the edges of the banknotes.
After confirming the thickness was correct, he quickly folded them and tucked them into his bosom.
The movement was fluid, even more efficient than when he was fighting just a moment ago, and then he turned and walked away.
“Hey!
You’re just leaving like that?” Hailey Morgan shouted from behind him, her tone carrying a hint of disbelief, “Leaving a weak, beautiful girl in a place like this?”
Alex Morgan didn’t turn back, his footsteps remaining steady.
After all, this was all Hailey Morgan’s self-directed performance.
Ever since Alex Morgan saved her once during an accident a year ago…
This rich Young Miss seemed to have triggered some strange switch and completely latched onto him.
At first, she only had people stuff supermarket discount flyers into the crack of Alex Morgan’s door, then, timing it with when Alex Morgan went out for groceries, she would deliberately wander around in secluded, empty alleys, and send him a text message like “I’m so scared” or “I’m lost” right on time, attaching her location for fear that he wouldn’t find her.
It wasn’t that Hailey Morgan was small-busted and small-brained, completely defenseless against this; in fact, Alex Morgan had long ago caught a glimpse of a high-voltage stun gun and powerful tear gas spray in her unzipped bag.
Moreover, it was said she was the daughter of the chairman of some large financial group, and it was highly probable that she had bodyguards following her nearby.
However, Alex Morgan didn’t have much interest in her identity.
Later on, perhaps because Hailey Morgan found that wild hooligans weren’t enough and doing this was still a bit dangerous, she simply started paying her own bodyguards to act—the “kidnappers” lying on the ground, even though they carefully applied makeup each time and even specifically applied fake tattoos, were still recognized by Alex Morgan at a glance.
They were veteran actors.
Although he saw through all of this, since this Young Miss was happy to throw money around, he couldn’t be bothered to care.
At most, he would go easier on these familiar, miserable bodyguards when hitting them, ensuring they could still jump around the next day, without any bruises or aftereffects.
It’s normal for rich people to have all sorts of eccentricities; it was already good enough that Hailey Morgan only had this kidnapping eccentricity, at least she wasn’t harming others.
Moreover, this wasn’t the country from his past life, but a super-large city called Riverton in a country called Levia.
The area of this city was quite large, and coupled with an environment where even surveillance wasn’t widespread…
even though technology wasn’t backward, public security was a bit worrying, even worse than the environment around the year 2000 in his past life, and there were quite a few chaotic and active social groups.
…
Although, it was precisely because of this that he could get along like a fish in water.
“Hey! Wait for me!”
Hailey Morgan followed him, unwilling to give up, blocking Alex Morgan’s path, lifting her head like a swan: “Why are you always so perfunctory!”
Alex Morgan stopped, his gaze glancing down at her chest, a look of genuine disgust flashing in his eyes:
“I am a man who is going to save the world; women are just a nuisance.”
After speaking, Alex Morgan walked around the somewhat petrified girl and strode forward.
Hailey Morgan stood in place, the corner of her mouth twitching.
This guy had already rejected her confession with this sentence for the twenty-fifth time.
Whose quote was it anyway!
She had never even heard of it!
Even though she had specially crammed knowledge about the ACG and gaming circles just to pursue Alex Morgan, she really couldn’t understand this guy’s thought process.
Could this be the legendary chuunibyou?
But everyone was already in their third year of high school; they were adults.
“How did I fall for such a brain-damaged guy…”
She sighed while holding her forehead, but immediately revealed a genuinely interested expression from the bottom of her heart.
If she wasn’t also brain-damaged, she wouldn’t be this interested!
Hailey Morgan skipped after the youth in front.
“Hey! Alex Morgan! I want to go to your house and see!”
Alex Morgan seemed too lazy to refuse verbally, so Hailey Morgan took it as him agreeing.
The two walked one after the other, exiting the complex alley.
What came into view was a huge windmill in the distance.