“……A mugging?”
“Yeah.”
“No, wait, that’s not it. How can you slander someone’s innocence out of thin air…” Lin Huai hurried after Chu Tianshu as he walked upstairs. “Do I look like the kind of person who would do something like that…”
Chu Tianshu turned his head to look at him.
“Alright.” Lin Huai’s voice dropped. “I kind of do.”
“……Anyway,” Chu Tianshu said, “It’s basically the absurd encounter between a *chūnibyō seventh grader who ran away from home and ended up surviving by mugging people and a first year high schooler who was so bored out of his mind that he spent every day thinking about blowing up toads crawling around the pond with magnesium blocks. The only thing worth celebrating about this whole mess is probably that I was the first mugging target you chose after careful consideration. That way, you didn’t have to spend the next twenty years of your life in juvenile detention, squatting there crying while gluing paper boxes together and wiping your tears with your sleeves…”
“……” Only then did Lin Huai realize that he had already chased Chu Tianshu into the elevator. Seeing that the elevator doors had closed, he gave up any intention of prying them open with his bare hands and instead asked, “…If you put it that way, I should be thanking you but why did I choose you as my target in the first place?”
“How would I know?” Chu Tianshu shrugged. “My peaceful high school life was just ruined by you, wait a second.”
“Huh?”
The phone in his pocket began to vibrate. Chu Tianshu took it out and lowered his head to check the message. His reflection appeared on the elevator doors.
His dark chestnut hair fell naturally and unrestrained, his face slender and sharply contoured, his nose bridge straight, brows thick, the corners of his eyes slightly lifted. His eyelashes were long and curled and under the light, his eyes carried a faint amber sheen.
He was tall and lean, dressed in an off white trench coat and slim black trousers. The collar of the shirt underneath was messily askew. As he read the message on his phone, he wore a mildly bored expression, lips pressed downward, while his other hand rested casually in his pocket. The overall impression was one of ease and languor, like an untended white birch standing alone in the Siberian wilderness…
In short, he was the sort of person who looked easygoing, even someone who might seem a little flirtatious at first glance but who was in fact deeply immersed in his own world.
“When you’re not talking, you actually look like a quiet, handsome guy,” Lin Huai remarked. “Did you look like this back in high school too?”
Chu Tianshu lifted his head from his phone. “Huh? Pretty much, I guess.”
“I get it now,” Lin Huai said. “It was probably because I thought you looked like an easy to bully pretty boy.”
Chu Tianshu: ……
“Oh, right.” The pretty boy looked at him with a serious expression. “Let me tell you one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.”
“Huh?”
“The good news is, I’ve decided to take in a homeless college student like you for the night,” Chu Tianshu said. “The bad news is, there’s only one bed in my place.”
“……Which means…”
“You’ll have to sleep on the couch or in the bathtub,” Chu Tianshu said, patting Lin Huai on the shoulder. “Hahahahahahaha.”
Lin Huai: ……
Watching Chu Tianshu laugh so hard he nearly doubled over, Lin Huai seriously suspected that this was revenge for the “pretty boy” comment.
The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. Chu Tianshu led Lin Huai down the corridor toward a room at the far end, moving ahead with lively, buoyant steps. Lin Huai looked at his back and felt that the handsomeness he had just acknowledged moments ago vanished completely in an instant.
As they reached the door, Chu Tianshu suddenly turned toward Lin Huai and made a gesture for him to keep his voice down.
“There seems to be someone inside,” he said. “You move to the back first.”
As he spoke, he made a protective motion, subtly placing Lin Huai within the range of his vision behind him. Seeing this, Lin Huai couldn’t help saying, “You don’t need to do that…”
Chu Tianshu turned the key in the lock and said gravely, “Even if there’s only a one in ten thousand chance, I still wouldn’t want you to be involved in a confrontation with a thief…”
Lin Huai’s eyes widened.
…Did this count as concern from the other party? he wondered. Clearly, he himself was a powerful vengeful ghost, while the other was merely an ordinary human and yet he still…
“…beat the other person to death,” Chu Tianshu calmly added, finishing the sentence.
Lin Huai: = =#
Chu Tianshu continued, “After all, that’s still a human life…”
Lin Huai: I’m angry!
At the moment the door swung open, Lin Huai, blocked behind Chu Tianshu, couldn’t clearly see the inside of the room. Instead, he heard a cold female voice speak first.
“So you still know how to come back.”
Her voice was clear and bright. One could easily imagine that under normal circumstances, it would be a rather gentle and pleasant sounding female voice yet this very voice stirred up stormy waves deep within Lin Huai’s heart.
At that instant, the barrage of thoughts drifting through his mind included but was not limited to:
“I was clearly the one who came first, so why did it turn out like this…”
“For the first time, I had a friend I wanted to entrust everything to. For the first time, I came to a friend’s home. These two joyful things intertwined together and those two joys should have brought me countless more joys. I should have obtained this dreamlike happiness. So why… did it become like this now…”
“Even if I die, nailed into a coffin, I will still shout with a decayed voice, ”
“Sis-” he heard Chu Tianshu’s voice suddenly lose all strength, “Why… Why did you come here?”
“What else?” the young woman inside replied coldly. “You really think you’ve grown wings now, don’t you? You ran away from home without a word, then heard I was coming and ran here without a word to rent a place… huh? Is that huge villa not big enough for you to live in? Are you really that afraid of seeing me?”
Her voice carried intense resentment. Lin Huai lay against Chu Tianshu’s shoulder and secretly peeked inside, feeling as though he were listening to some grand saga of aristocratic grudges, forbidden sibling dynamics, love and hatred worthy of a melodramatic drama…
Then he heard Chu Tianshu speak.
“Please don’t drag me back to inherit the family property, sis.” Chu Tianshu held the door with one hand, while with the other he reached behind him and pushed Lin Huai’s head back in as it popped out. He spoke with a troubled expression. “It’s the twenty first century now. Men and women are equal. As members of the Chu family, we should enjoy equal inheritance rights. You, as the eldest daughter of the Chu family, are even more the rightful heir…”
“You think I want to inherit the family business?!” The woman’s expression instantly changed as she roared. “If you hadn’t run away from home first, I would’ve already entered the entertainment industry, won the Grand Slam of the Hundred Flowers and Golden Rooster Awards, gone abroad to Hollywood and even acted alongside ○ Kun, Chen ○ Ming and Zhang ○ Yu, fulfilling my childhood dreams! If you wanted to run, couldn’t you at least have told me first? Do you know how tightly they controlled me after you left? Even going to the airport to pick up my idol, I had an entire team following me to prevent me from escaping…”
“Well, if you want to wear the crown, you have to bear its weight, sis and if you enter the entertainment industry, you might even have to film kissing scenes with Huang ○ Ming,” Chu Tianshu said, once again pressing Lin Huai’s head back when he tried to pop out from the other side. “I just remembered I left something in the car. I’ll go down for a moment…”
“Don’t even think about running!” the young woman shouted angrily. “Chu Tianshu, you, ”
“Sis- ”
“Wait.” The young woman’s voice carried a trace of doubt. “What’s that thing behind you?”
“Huh?” Chu Tianshu quickly turned his head, then turned back again and looked at her with an innocent expression. “There’s nothing there.”
“I definitely saw something,” the young woman frowned. “There was something moving… what did you bring back home this time?”
“This…”
“You, you didn’t bring someone else’s kid home again, did you?!” the young woman shrieked. “Chu Tianshu, that’s illegal! You’re already in your twenties! You don’t have immunity like before!”
“Sis, really, it’s not-”
“Could it be a woman?” The young woman thought for a moment, her eyes lighting up.
“Quick, bring her over for me to see. What kind of girl could possibly tolerate you? Let me tell you, you can’t judge men by their looks alone. This person might look decent on the outside but he’s actually scattered, lazy and withdrawn. If you’re with him, you won’t be able to get a word out of him even after beating him with eight sticks and he’ll still look down on you all day for having a low IQ…”
“It’s not that either…”
“Then is it a man?” The young woman showed a “tsk” expression. “…Fine, as long as someone can like you at all. Bring him over for me to see too. Let me tell you, you two should be careful about safety measures. Don’t pull any of that ‘rich old man running off with a baby’ nonsense, it affects public appearances. If there is a child, bring them back to the main family and raise them as the next generation of heir. I’ll still have time to enter the entertainment industry and shoot a film called Ximen Wuhen…”
…At this point, there was really nothing left to say. Standing behind Chu Tianshu, Lin Huai’s mouth twitched. He leaned in close to Chu Tianshu’s ear and whispered, “You and your sister… really are from the same family.”
Chu Tianshu replied, “Eh, you’ll get used to it.”
“You two…” The young woman stood up from the sofa and pushed Chu Tianshu aside. The moment she saw Lin Huai, her eyes widened.
“Hello.”
Lin Huai stood in the corridor and replied politely. His features were exceptionally delicate, his hair soft and well behaved, his eyes large and pitch black. He was dressed in a white pullover hoodie and jeans.
Aside from an aura that was slightly chilly, he looked exactly like a courteous, well mannered honor student.
However, the moment the young woman saw him, her entire expression turned cold.
“You…”
With her left hand, she forcefully shoved Chu Tianshu backward. Then, with her right hand, she made a simple grasping motion toward empty space. Instantly, a silver white longsword appeared in her grip.
“You, you actually… brought a ghost home?!!”
Even as she shouted, she had already assumed a combat stance. Her looks were extremely striking, her pupils a pale amber, the corners of her eyes lifted sharply upward.
That resemblance alone was enough to prove that she and Chu Tianshu were indeed biological siblings.
Her movements exerted tremendous pressure on Lin Huai. Standing beneath the light, he narrowed his eyes yet he did not take up an attacking posture.
Because she, was Chu Tianshu’s sister.
Chu Tianshu was flung into the room by his sister but with great effort, he squeezed himself back out through the gap. Standing between the two of them, shielding Lin Huai, he said, “Sis, this is-”
“There’s no need to introduce him to me!” the young woman said, grief stricken and furious. “I know he’s a ghost and he and you are clearly entangled with each other! Single for over twenty years and now you’re so desperate that you’d even sleep with a ghost…”
Lin Huai: …What kind of ferocious, unhinged statement was this?
Chu Tianshu: “…How can you slander someone’s innocence out of thin air? Sis, he already-”
“Chu Tianshu!” the young woman shouted angrily. “Are you going to draw your sword against me for a man, no, for a male ghost? Even if he’s carrying your child-”
“Sis, if you kill him, I won’t go on living either!” Chu Tianshu retorted passionately. Then his expression immediately slackened into a lifeless, dead fish look. “Stop reciting TV drama lines already. You even got the genders wrong. Just stop.”
Young woman: “Oh, okay.”
After saying that, she returned to her calm demeanor, withdrew the longsword in her hand and then said to the two of them, “Come in, then, my foolish little brother.”
Lin Huai: “?”
He looked at the young woman’s retreating back, then at Chu Tianshu shrugging his shoulders and revealed an expression of utter disbelief.
“This is my sister,” Chu Tianshu said. “Her dream is to become a movie queen. You don’t need to mind her.”
Lin Huai: ……
Twenty minutes later, the three parties seated on the sofa for a three way discussion finally sorted out each other’s identities.
This young woman turned out to be Chu Tianshu’s biological older sister, Chu Tianyu. Her current identity was the eldest daughter of the main Chu family line, a lineage of celestial masters, as well as the designated next heir.
During this period, she had come to S City as a representative of the Chu family to attend an academic exchange conference with other celestial master families such as the Zhangs and the Zhous.
As for Chu Tianshu, he was her full blooded younger brother, one who never practiced spells and always preferred crooked paths and unconventional methods.
“…It’s not crooked paths, it’s science,” Chu Tianshu said, lying on the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “I hate feudal superstition…”
“And then you went and found a ghost to date.” Chu Tianyu said coldly.
“I already said it’s not dating…”
“Then what is it? Two grown men going out together late at night, then one of them showing up at the other’s place in the middle of the night and this place only has one bedroom and one bed. What do you expect me to think?” Chu Tianyu said.
“There’s also the sofa and the bathtub.”
“Wow, I almost forgot… your tastes are really heavy. Ugh.”
…Lin Huai sat to the side, watching the siblings trade verbal blows, his eyes narrowing.
So Chu Tianshu really did come from that mysterious celestial master family, the Chu family. It was just that he himself…
“A bit rebellious, a bit wild,” Chu Tianyu commented, looking at Chu Tianshu sprawled on the sofa like a dead fish. “Not cultivating, not inheriting the family business, fooling around with all sorts of strange things all day and even dating a ghost…”
“I already said it’s not, Sis, when are you leaving?” Chu Tianshu said weakly, hugging a sofa cushion.
“You brat, are you trying to kick me out onto the streets in the middle of the night to drink the northwest wind?”
“Then please say a little less.”
The two of them continued arguing. Watching them, Lin Huai felt his head starting to ache. After Chu Tianyu finished arguing with Chu Tianshu, she turned her gaze to Lin Huai and evaluated him. “Good looking and very strong. Little brother, you have good taste. When did the two of you meet?”
“…I think I’d better go back to the dormitory first,” Lin Huai said with half lidded eyes. He felt completely unable to cope with a scene whose intensity far exceeded two Chu Tianshus combined. “I’ll head out first.”
“I’ll walk you,” Chu Tianshu immediately stood up, suddenly full of energy.
He grabbed Lin Huai by the arm and quickly slipped out of the apartment. When the two of them reached the roadside, Lin Huai was still shaken. “Celestial masters are really terrifying.”
“Yeah,” Chu Tianshu agreed.
Having witnessed true terror, Lin Huai shook his head. After a long while, he spoke again. “So you really are from a celestial master family? Why don’t you cultivate spells?”
“Because I think their cultivation methods lean toward empiricism and aren’t scientific-” Chu Tianshu replied.
Lin Huai: “…That’s quite a unique way of thinking.”
Chu Tianshu shrugged.
After quite some time, he spoke again. “Lin Huai.”
Lin Huai turned his head. “Mm?”
“Don’t be mad. I didn’t deliberately hide the fact that I’m a rich second generation heir,” Chu Tianshu said seriously. “I just wanted to be an ordinary person and have an ordinary friendship. I didn’t want people approaching me because of my good looks or my prominent family background. I told a lot of lies before but afterward…”
“……”
Lin Huai looked at him with sympathy. “Crouch down.”
Chu Tianshu: “Oh.”
He obediently squatted. Lin Huai bent down and pressed his forehead against Chu Tianshu’s. After keeping contact for half a minute, he said, “So hot. As expected, you’ve got a fever.”
Chu Tianshu: “…With your body temperature, anyone you touch would feel hot.”
“Alright, alright, let’s keep walking… hey, why is your face so red?”
Chu Tianshu ignored him and strode ahead with exaggerated confidence. After a while, he turned his head back and said, “I wasn’t finished with what I said earlier.”
“Huh?”
“I told you a lot of lies before but in the future…”
In the pitch black night, Chu Tianshu’s eyes looked like stars.
“I’ll probably keep lying to you anyway, heh.” Chu Tianshu laughed with a shameless grin.
Lin Huai: “…You’re really not afraid I’ll hit you.”
Chu Tianshu: “That’s because we’re good friends, hehe.”
They entered the campus and soon arrived downstairs at Lin Huai’s dormitory.
Lin Huai hesitated for a long time. At last, choosing his words carefully, he laid out in full detail the “loss of control” he had experienced in the greenhouse to Chu Tianshu.
“At that time… I don’t know what happened,” he said, making an effort to use phrasing that wouldn’t be censored by the system as he hinted at the incident. “I felt like I lost control. It was like I heard a voice, it made me feel… disappointed, angry, despairing, hateful… I don’t understand.”
He gave a self mocking smile. “At that moment, I felt like I stopped being myself. It was like standing at the edge of an abyss. Do you understand? One misstep and it’s eternal damnation and yet I couldn’t stop myself from… falling. I really don’t know what that thing was.”
“Maybe it’s an aftereffect of opening the door,” Chu Tianshu said after frowning and thinking for a while. “Before this, we always suspected that the ‘door’ was the source of the virus, the origin of all ghost entities and you are the only one who entered the door, left it and was reborn. Actually, I have a hypothesis.”
“What hypothesis?” Lin Huai asked. “By the way… why did I enter the ‘door’ in the first place?”
“Freedom,” Chu Tianshu said, looking straight at him, enunciating each word clearly. “The freedom to not be controlled by anyone. The freedom to choose your own life.”
“What you did after entering the door, we can no longer know but you said it yourself, you seemed to have made some kind of wager with a will that existed beyond the door. So… perhaps that black shadow is something you brought back from beyond the door?” Chu Tianshu reasoned.
“It’s highly likely that it’s connected to that wager. Because of this, you carried it with you, were reborn as a vengeful ghost and once again opened the game.”
Lin Huai felt somewhat lost. “But… why would I open the game again? Are you saying that black shadow is still residing inside my body?”
“Or perhaps it’s a kind of seal… In your daily life, has it affected you at all?” Chu Tianshu continued to think aloud.
After pondering for a moment, Lin Huai shook his head.
“Never,” he said. “The only time was in the Civilized World. I suspect it has something to do with me awakening memories from ‘inside the door.’ It was my awakening of those memories that woke it up.”
“Maybe I need to further awaken my own memories and learn the contents of that wager,” Lin Huai suddenly said. “Once I know what the wager was about, maybe I can-”
“That’s too dangerous,” Chu Tianshu interrupted coldly. “Just like you said, when you awakened a crucial memory, one of the chains on the iron door snapped. Then I have every reason to believe that once you awaken all of your memories, the iron door will open completely and whatever is behind it will be released.”
“I-”
“Before we investigate this thoroughly, you must never try to enter that door and you must not disturb it again,” Chu Tianshu warned. “And don’t try to awaken your memories either. My intuition tells me this won’t be a good thing.”
“……”
Lin Huai fell silent. After a long while, Chu Tianshu spoke again. “Honestly, the fact that you were able to come back from the door at all is already enough to make me feel grateful, so…”
“This time, let me be the one to save the world,” he said, ruffling Lin Huai’s hair. “As for you, just enjoy your college life. Eat your ramen, attend your classes and enjoy your happy, peaceful everyday life…”
“But I don’t remember anything,” Lin Huai said dryly. “I don’t even understand…”
I don’t understand why you’re being so good to me.
The words lingered on his tongue for a moment before he swallowed them back down. He felt that, given his current identity, saying something like that would be a little too gay.
“Do you feel like the distance between us isn’t quite appropriate?” Chu Tianshu suddenly asked. “Or do you think we’re a bit too close?”
“Hey, bringing up something like that out of nowhere…” Lin Huai laughed helplessly but when he realized that Chu Tianshu was actually serious, he could only lower his voice and say, “I think… it feels pretty normal? Were we very good friends before?”
Chu Tianshu: ……
“…Generally speaking, something like childhood friends, separated for years, loving and hating each other, understanding each other and then you scammed me out of two million,” he thought for a moment before giving an objectively relevant answer. “Anyway, until the moment you disappeared, I always thought we were friends…”
“…That sounds pretty complicated,” Lin Huai commented dryly. “So after that, I became your enemy, right?”
“Yeah,” Chu Tianshu replied lazily. “The kind of enemy whose name I think about every night before going to sleep…”
Lin Huai: “…So earlier, you were actually trying to collect a debt?”
“Mm… more or less. Anyway, it’s a very long story and hard to explain in just a few words but right now, I think what you need most is sleep.” Chu Tianshu looked at Lin Huai, who was yawning nonstop and said seriously.
“…Come to think of it, I do seem to get tired pretty easily lately.” Lin Huai yawned again. “That’s really strange…”
“That means your soul is further integrating with this body in the real world. That’s a good thing. Excessive use of your abilities in reality would shorten your lifespan.” Chu Tianshu pushed him toward the water pipe. “If you don’t want to climb the pipe, you can go back to my place…”
Lin Huai: “…This is the first time I’ve heard that. I’ll climb the pipe instead.”
“Just climb up without worry.” Chu Tianshu stood at the base of the pipe with his arms spread wide. “I’ll catch you.”
“…I feel like you’d definitely dodge if I fell.” Lin Huai complained as he climbed upward. “That was definitely another lie, wasn’t it?”
His movements were light and nimble and he quickly reached the third floor. After he jumped onto the balcony, Chu Tianshu said, “Don’t we look like Romeo and Juliet?”
“……” On the balcony, Lin Huai turned around and shot him a disdainful glare.
He turned and went inside. Down below, out of his sight, Chu Tianshu watched his retreating figure and at last, a faint smile appeared on his face again.
“This idiot.”
After a long while, he hummed softly, flicked his coat over his shoulder and disappeared into the night.
__________
*Chūnibyō (中二病), or “eighth-grader syndrome,” is a Japanese slang term for early teens experiencing delusions of grandeur, believing they have secret powers, hidden knowledge, or are special, often acting out fantastical roles from anime/manga, leading to pretentious or edgy behavior that fades as they mature
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Cresvynia
[Translator]
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← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 111 · Although the author really didn’t want to writeChapter 112 · An explanation of the main storylineChapter 113 · Lin Huai’s QuestionChapter 114 · Hello classmateChapter 115 · Let me introduce the protagonist’s family backgroundChapter 116 · The innocent and naive Lin XiaohuaiChapter 117 · The Trisolarans ArriveChapter 118 · He Isn’t Fighting AloneChapter 119 · Why Here?Chapter 120 · A World Where Everyone Is Sculpted in ClayChapter 121 · How Could It Be YouChapter 122 · I want to sell my carChapter 123 · The Mysterious Transfer StudentsChapter 124 · Gu BeichenChapter 125 · The Male Lead of This StoryChapter 126 · A Voice Never Heard BeforeChapter 127 · You’re Tomie, aren’t you?Chapter 128 · I’ll give youChapter 129 · I just want to be with youChapter 130 · The Principal’s OfficeChapter 131 · Chu: I Disbanded Your Hate GroupsChapter 132 · Speak ProperlyChapter 133 · A Trisolaran Enters the Grand View GardenChapter 134 · Ji FengjianChapter 135 · About Me and YouChapter 136 · Kayako Likes ItChapter 137 · YouChapter 138 · I’ll Beat MyselfChapter 139 · I Want to See MyselfChapter 140 · The Trisolarans’ First Experience of Love and SexChapter 141 · The Trisolarans Try Romance Once MoreChapter 142 · The Trisolarans Try Romance for the Third TimeChapter 143 · It’s All This Buff’s FaultChapter 144 · The Way You Straight Men TalkChapter 145 · Why are you taking it so seriously?Chapter 146 · Chu Tianshu Shows Off His MusclesChapter 147 · Enter the DreamChapter 148 · Leave a little secretChapter 149 · Shadow StreamerChapter 150 · Don’t Look at MeChapter 151 · The Trisolarans betrayed StalinChapter 152 · Then I WillChapter 153 · The Trisolarans rewrite the Book of Life and DeathChapter 154 · What Career Could Be More Important Than Your Wife?Chapter 155 · Aren’t We Already Together?Chapter 156 · MVP of the Entire FieldChapter 157 · Meeting the FamilyChapter 158 · A Phone Call Across Time and SpaceChapter 159 · Lu Jin, You’re So MiserableChapter 160 · The Lands Of DaughtersChapter 161 · The So Called Pregnancy StreamChapter 162 · The Street Where Only the Two of Us ExistChapter 163 · No bare faceChapter 164 · Question 1: Do you have hair loss?Chapter 165 · LaxativesChapter 166 · Where Exactly Do You Exist?Chapter 167 · Seven ZeroChapter 168 · The issue of 0 and 1Chapter 169 · Wind ChimeChapter 170 · Visa and Wind ChimesChapter 171 · Continue to persecute Lu JinChapter 172 · Examiner: I’ve fallen in love with himChapter 173 · Lin Huai intimidates scalpersChapter 174 · Night of EvilChapter 175 · Congratulations to the Male Guests on Successfully Finding Their PartnersChapter 176 · Before ThisChapter 177 · The gong says he is terrifiedChapter 178 · The Tasker CampChapter 179 · I’m So ScaredChapter 180 · The Final Transitional ChapterChapter 181 · Four Beauties Among the FlowersChapter 182 · Plum FragranceChapter 183 · Dry Weather and Flammable ThingsChapter 184 · The Heartless Sword ManualChapter 185 · Only MeChapter 186 · The North PoleChapter 187 · Let Brother Lin Learn to Meow Like a CatChapter 188 · Good Night