7:00 AM.
Zhou Meng was jogging.
At 7:15, Zhou Meng chased down a breakfast stall and bought some food.
It was soup dumplings.
She ate them while jogging.
…………
7:30.
Zhou Meng had only a short stretch left before reaching the school gate, her mind nearly blank, her whole body aching, no matter how much oxygen she inhaled, it never felt like enough.
D-Damn it…
Why does she have to exercise every day?! She hates working out, argh!
Why!
Why can’t muscles just grow on their own?! If she’s just an unnoticed background character, then it should be totally fine for her to gain muscles without any effort, right?!
Light Orb: [Xiao Meng, if you can’t do it, just stop?] She’s so exhausted she’s starting to hallucinate and talk nonsense.
“…Ugh… ugh…” Zhou Meng forced her legs to move, her face twisting along with her pale, defeated complexion: “I-I can… do it…”
If the sky fell, her mouth would hold it up.
She finally dragged her limbs forward like a zombie emerging from its grave for another dozen or so meters, and under the horrified gazes of others, touched the school gate with one hand.
“Slap.”
Haha.
She did it.
Zhou Meng braced her palm against the wall, panting hoarsely from her throat.
“…Hey, are you okay?”
A startled student nearby came over to check on her. Zhou Meng lifted her head, cheeks sunken, a convulsive smile hanging at the corner of her lips:
“I-I’m… fine.”
…She looks anything but fine!!
While the other hesitated, wondering whether to call the infirmary, Zhou Meng propped herself up and stubbornly continued walking forward.
Light Orb drifted beside her: [Are you really okay?]
Zhou Meng covered her mouth: “…Breakfast is about to come back up… ugh, bleh…”
So don’t eat breakfast while jogging!!
It was the first day of school after the holiday ended, and students were streaming toward the school gate in twos and threes.
She wore the khaki Western-style uniform of the manga world, her hair tied back in a ponytail, looking just like all the other students around her, quickly blending into the crowd of youths like a school of fish.
The boys she passed wore the same khaki blazers, glasses, and backpacks—some holding a cup of soy milk, others carrying bread, and a few clutching vocabulary notebooks.
They called out to each other as they headed to class, the air filled with the flavor of youth.
Everyone looks so happy.
The lives of the living are so joyful.
System: […You’re one of them now, aren’t you? Don’t say something so corporate-slave-like…]
“No, no, no, it’s different.”
Wearing a blazer and ponytail now felt exactly like dressing for work at the company. Sitting in class was like sitting at a desk… If she put on glasses and a work badge around her neck, it would be even more despair-inducing.
The time spent being exploited by capitalists has been carved into humanity’s DNA.
Zhou Meng set her backpack down on the desk.
Her seat was by the window.
It was the seat in front of the second-to-last row by the window—the spot reserved for a protagonist.
It wasn’t a very conspicuous place to slack off during class, and she basically never got called on to answer questions.
Mm! Very fitting for a background character.
Except for one problem—
She had just taken her textbook out of her bag and placed it on the desk when she heard footsteps from up front.
Zhou Meng looked up and, sure enough, saw Le Zhile carrying his bag.
The boy was tall and slender, with soft shoulder-length brown hair, a fair and refined face, wearing the same khaki uniform as the rest of the class.
Just by appearance, he looked a bit like a vampire from a manga.
He walked in quietly, holding a slice of toast in one hand, about to take a bite.
Noticing her gaze, Le Zhile paused mid-motion as he brought the toast to his lips, held her gaze, and spoke with gentle courtesy:
“Good morning.”
Mm.
This boy before her, elegant in appearance and impeccably polite, was none other than the protagonist of the fantasy urban manga—the rival of Eden Group, the youth who transformed into a Phantom Thief by night, Le Zhile.
Note: Her classmate.
[When Heigu drew the protagonist’s classmates, he accidentally drew a duplicate hairstyle. We need you to appear as one of the protagonist’s classmates in the background… It won’t affect your other tasks!] That’s what the System said.
That’s what all con artists say.
Zhou Meng felt nothing but contempt for the Light Orb!
A trap! This is a trap to make her work a second job!
Zhou Meng gazed at the boy before her desk and responded with equal restraint: “Good morning, Le Zhile.”
Le Zhile nodded gently, then continued forward and pulled out the chair at the seat behind her.
He hung his backpack on one side of the desk, settled into his seat, and began flipping through a book while eating his bread, looking somewhat relaxed—no different from any ordinary student.
But if you looked closely, the khaki blazer he wore traced the elegant lines of his figure, a clean strip of shirt visible at the collar, his fair cheeks framed beneath caramel-colored hair…
He was clearly good-looking, yet his aura was unremarkable. Perhaps it was his plain attire, giving him an easygoing air of blending in… but if you observed carefully, you’d sense that subtle, unmistakable feeling that this person was special.
If you glanced around the classroom, you wouldn’t notice her at first, but once your eyes happened to land on her, it was easy to be drawn in.
Zhou Meng withdrew her gaze, wrote her name on the practice sheet, and when she set down her pen, she happened to hand the workbook to the group leader.
The bespectacled group leader said nothing, hugging a stack of workbooks as he passed her desk and continued toward the back.
Before long, Zhou Meng heard conversation from behind:
“Le Zhile, it’s time to turn in homework now. Yours…?”
Le Zhile: “…”
A rustling sound of rummaging through a backpack followed.
Le Zhile: “Hmm… it’s gone.”
Normally, an excuse like that would most likely be taken as a pretext for not doing the homework…
— However, this person also had the setting of being a top student.
“Huh? Did you forget to bring it? Then what about the teacher…”
Le Zhile thought for a moment, then set down his pen: “It’s fine, I’ll go explain. Sorry for the trouble.”
The other person was instead a bit flattered: “No need, no need. I’ll just tell the teacher. You keep reading.”
Silence returned behind her.
“Such good treatment… but after all, it’s Le Zhile. The teacher must think he wouldn’t lie either.”
Her deskmate leaned over and whispered teasingly.
“Who knows.”
Zhou Meng shook her head, quietly maintaining the passerby persona of a “black-haired female classmate,” sitting as still as a mountain in her seat as she flipped a page of her comic book.
According to the comic’s setting, the protagonist Le Zhile was a very “sharp” person.
That sharpness wasn’t just in physical ability, but also in behavioral patterns. Although he was a justice-driven protagonist, he wasn’t a rigid character. His mind was quite flexible, and when necessary, he would skillfully use rhetoric, intimidate enemies… He seemed like the type of character who understood psychological games.
Zhou Meng figured Le Zhile probably hadn’t done the homework.
The assignments the teacher gave now held no meaning for him.
On normal days, he might have gone through the motions, but during this period of the comic, he had just encountered an accident and met his Electronic Partner, “J1″… In order to end the secret research that could trigger global violence, Le Zhile would join an organization called the “Jacob Foundation” and carry out a series of operations with J1.
When something like that was happening, he wouldn’t even think about mundane practice problems.
“Now let’s begin review. …DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the primary carrier of genetic information in living organisms…”
During class, the teacher’s voice came through the little microphone, carrying a faint electronic crackle. Zhou Meng kept her head down, blending into the students in the classroom. After propping up her textbook, she spread open a book she’d found at a used bookstore over the weekend on her desk.
“DNA has?”
“A double helix structure…”
The students’ voices rose together in the classroom. That feeling of many people, as if by unspoken agreement, saying the same answer and flipping to the same page—it was something hard to experience again after entering the workforce.
Her deskmate passed over a small note.
[Can you lend me last time’s test paper?]
Zhou Meng glanced at it, then replied with a gel pen:
[Sure]
Even though she’d been through 8 cycles, and both working for the boss and dance practice were exhausting… she didn’t dislike this kind of campus life.
Zhou Meng propped her cheek on one hand, gazing at the neatly arranged desks and the classmates in identical uniforms, feeling a dreamlike, safe sense of relaxation.
…
At noon during lunch break, some people left the classroom the moment the bell rang, while others dawdled packing up their books. The classroom filled with noisy, lively sounds.
Zhou Meng stood up, bent down, and whispered into the ear of the short-haired female classmate who was still buried in her notes:
“The cafeteria has shrimp fried rice today.”
“!”
The short-haired deskmate jerked her head up, but before she could reply, Zhou Meng’s figure was already gone.
“Whoosh—” Behind her came the sound of Le Zhile standing up from his chair. The brown-haired youth gracefully wove around the crowd and strode quickly toward the cafeteria through the back door.
By the time others squeezed into the cafeteria, Zhou Meng was already quietly seated with her tray, eating in a low-key manner.
“Hey.”
Her deskmate finally came over with her tray just as Zhou Meng was about to finish, looking at her with a curious gaze:
“Xiao Meng, when did you get to the front? I left right after you reminded me…”
Zhou Meng held the bowl with one hand and used chopsticks to send the last clump of rice into her mouth with the other, chewing calmly as she said:
“Teleportation.”
Deskmate: “Oh—wait, what is that!”
“It can cross time and space,” Zhou Meng set down her chopsticks. “Flashing from here to there in an instant.”
“That’s not what I meant by asking…” the short-haired girl said with a wry smile.
“Because Lili’s expression would be fun.”
“Hey!”
Zhou Meng smiled, no longer occupying the seat. She picked up her tray and stood: “I’m heading off now.”
“Mm, bye~”
She walked to the tray return area, placed her tray inside, and as she turned around, someone else in line happened to be standing right behind her.
It was Le Zhile.
…The protagonist’s ability to snatch food from the cafeteria was on par with hers…!
As expected of a Phantom Thief…
Le Zhile glanced at the several plates stacked up on her tray.
He must be envious of her appetite.
Zhou Meng was quite confident in this regard.
The tall youth didn’t notice her silent grumbling. His expression was gentle, and his slightly striking eyes beneath his brown hair quietly looked at Zhou Meng as he took the initiative to nod:
“Zhou Meng.”
Zhou Meng politely hummed in acknowledgment, then stepped aside to make room for him. “See you this afternoon, Le Zhile.”
Unlike his somewhat reserved way of speaking, Le Zhile’s voice was very magnetic, unexpectedly leaving a sweet impression on people.
He gave a faint smile. “Sure.”
Zhou Meng nodded at him, then followed the flow of the crowd out of the cafeteria and walked along the tree-lined path on campus.
She took out her phone from her pocket and glanced at the message.
【…The National Sports Dance Summer Championships are expected to release the competition regulations in June…】
A competition, huh.
July is when the Orchid Nation hosts the National Sports Dance Summer Championships.
Following that, in September, the WDF Latin Dance World Cup will be held.
[It’s about time to start preparing for the competition, isn’t it? Want me to have the company help you contact a club?] The Light Orb also saw the message and floated over to offer a suggestion.
Competitions like this don’t accept individual registrations—entries are made through provinces, cities, associations, clubs, school institutions, and the like*.
When the school doesn’t have recommendation slots, the boss and Eden prove to be quite reliable… Previously, the company had mostly helped contact clubs, saving a lot of time.
“Hmm… no, let’s skip it this time…”
Zhou Meng tugged at a strand of hair by her temple and swiped the message away.
The Light Orb was surprised: [You’re not participating in this year’s competition?!]
“Forget it.” Zhou Meng held her phone in one hand and opened the chat history. “Just within the Orchid Nation, I’ve taken second place nine times, and last time it was third… I’m sick of it.”
That so-called “expressiveness” in dance—if she couldn’t figure that out, then continuing to compete would just yield the same results.
She switched back to the chat interface on her phone and saw a new message.
The person who sent it had a kitten as their profile picture.
[Meow meow meow meow meow: Heyyy~]
Ah, it’s Sun Zhen.
What’s with that nickname? It feels so noisy.
Zhou Meng decisively changed his note to “Sun Zhen.”
[Sun Zhen: Even though you worked overtime yesterday and should be resting today… there’s a new task, with a bonus. Interested?]
[Xiao Meng: Sounds like a hassle…]
[Sun Zhen: Triple the pay?]
[Xiao Meng: I’m in.]
Heh, this is purely for her own benefit.
Eden’s salary was more than enough to cover her daily expenses, but if she wanted to compete intensively later on, there would be various training camps, and the costs of food, lodging, and travel to different places would be steep.
Zhou Meng also had a few ideas about her own training.
[Sun Zhen: Haha. You reply that fast at times like this.]
[Xiao Meng: Is that a problem?]
[Sun Zhen: I think it’s great~]
[Sun Zhen: I’ll come pick you up in a bit.]
Zhou Meng replied with an “okay” and turned off her phone.