At three in the afternoon, Yuli pressed the blue call button beside her hospital bed as usual.
At three fifteen, the bearded, rough-looking officer walked into the room right on time.
“Tell me. What is it this time?”
Song Xuanye closed the door, lazily leaning his back against the wall behind it as he faced her. His long legs were crossed at ease, and he had a lollipop between his teeth to help him quit smoking.
Base A07 had been abandoned by the Federation for four years. Tobacco was a rare commodity here, a luxury. Yuli grumbled inwardly. Making a man like that suck on lollipops for four years—what a hardship for him.
In all fairness, Song Xuanye was very handsome, the sort of mature man with a hint of roguishness.
He was simply far too slovenly. Half of his military shirt was untucked, and two or three buttons at the collar had been left undone, fastened as carelessly as possible. Whatever was comfortable went.
The first time she had encountered a leader like this, it had completely shattered Yuli’s stereotypical impression of organizations.
She felt that if this officer were transported to the modern world, he would definitely be a seasoned workplace veteran. He had the dead-inside air of someone steeped in office culture, and if he had time to slack off, he absolutely would not work.
For example, right now, after asking his question, he had already opened his optical computer and tapped into a little game.
He had not even muted it. Yuli could tell from the sounds that it was one of those match-three games.
He was being so blatantly shameless, treating her far too much like one of his own!
Likewise, she treated her officer very much like one of her own. Boldly, she made a move that might make every professional slacker uncomfortable.
Yuli obediently raised her hand and, like every good student in a classroom, eagerly spoke up. “Officer, I think I’ve recovered. I can be discharged and start working.”
Song Xuanye: “…”
The thing he hated most while slacking off was an overachiever getting right in his face.
“Time’s up. You failed to clear Level 998. Please keep trying your best~”
A sweet, mature-woman voice came from Song Xuanye’s optical computer. He had been stuck on this level for three days.
Coincidentally, Yuli had also been transmigrated into this novel for three days.
She had heard the failure effect for Level 998 from the day before yesterday through today, and it gave her a feeling of, Ah, just as expected.
As everyone knew, if you were a man, you had to clear Level 999. Officer, you—
Ahem!
Seeing the girl nod to herself and reveal a subtle little expression that said she understood but would not expose him, Song Xuanye calmly closed his optical computer.
His legs were long, and it took him only a few steps to cross from the doorway to the edge of the hospital bed. His grayish-rust-colored eyes settled on the girl’s face, and the lollipop between his teeth snapped with a crisp crack.
“No. You haven’t recovered. There’s still something wrong with your brain.”
Yuli: “…”
Although what the officer said was true, why did it sound like an insult?
The injury to her brain really had not healed yet.
Or rather, the injury suffered by the original owner of this body had not healed.
Yuli was a transmigrator. The original owner of this body was named Youlier, differing from her own name by only one character. She was a Guide in a Sentinel-Guide world.
One month earlier, the original owner had accompanied a Sentinel squad on a mission. On the return journey after the mission was complete, she had accidentally fallen behind and become separated from the others. She was attacked by a mutated creature along the route, causing damage to her mental perception and sending her into a coma.
For a Guide, damage to one’s mental perception was an extremely serious injury. That was probably why, when Yuli transmigrated into the novel, the original owner’s fragments of memory were so chaotic, jumbled, and incomplete.
Three days had passed, yet she still had not received all of the original owner’s memories. She could only intermittently receive a few scattered fragments from time to time.
These memory fragments had no pattern. One moment, they might be a scene from the original owner’s childhood; the next, some common knowledge about this world; after that, information about someone familiar.
They were far too fragmented, and it frustrated her.
From that perspective, both the original owner and Yuli could indeed be said to have something wrong with their brains—the literal, medical meaning of “something wrong.”
Fortunately, a doctor had vouched for her, saying that damage to the original owner’s mental perception to this degree could indeed result in confused memories. That allowed Yuli, a weak transmigrator who had been plunged into darkness without warning, to muddle through.
Just three days ago, she had been nothing more than a prospective university student who had only just received her admission letter!
But this was not the time for lamentation.
“Although my memories are still rather confused, the external injuries to my body have healed. Not remembering people clearly won’t affect my work, Officer.”
Yuli braced herself and sat up in bed, pulling away the monitoring patches attached to her arms and the two sides of her temples.
The long data cables at the ends of the patches gave off a faint rustling sound. They shimmered with an icy blue, high-tech sheen, intertwining with the girl’s waterfall of black hair in a distinctive collision of machinery and softness.
These patches were mainly used to monitor the body’s various functions. At present, the focus of the examination was her brain.
“Our base is short-staffed. My arms and legs are perfectly intact, so there’s no reason for me to keep lying in bed.” Yuli did her best to straighten her back and meet Song Xuanye’s gaze. “I want to contribute my strength to the base!”
The girl spoke with righteous conviction, her clear voice echoing through the hospital room, her gaze so firm that she looked ready to enlist in the Party.
Song Xuanye remained unmoved and tossed the stick of the chewed-up lollipop into the trash can.
Yuli: “…Really, Officer. I feel terrible lying here for so long. Besides, staying cooped up in a hospital room won’t help a mental injury. Maybe going outside for a walk… would help my perception recover?”
Song Xuanye looked surprised. “You didn’t seem to feel terrible when you called the nurses to prepare midnight snacks for you the past two nights.”
Yuli: “…”
Could she say that she had been afraid the male leads would come as a group to kill her at night, and she wanted to die with a full stomach?
She had felt terribly guilty troubling the nurse as well! But what could she do when she had transmigrated as a short-lived, vicious female supporting character? QAQ.
As a miserable transmigrator without a system, she at least had the general outline of the novel in her head.
This Sentinel-Guide romance novel was set in a future world where contamination had erupted and living creatures had mutated. People no longer lived under separate nations but survived together in bases, with the Federation established in the Central District.
During the evolution of the natural environment, humanity awakened two special types of people: Sentinels and Guides. [Note 1]
Sentinels possessed highly developed five senses and formidable combat ability. They were known as humanoid weapons, the vanguard soldiers who explored contaminated zones, and the principal fighting force of this era. At the same time, their keen senses made them prone to sensory overload, allowing contaminated zones to contaminate them in return and cause mutation.
Guides were the only beings capable of purifying Sentinel contamination. During battle, a Guide could construct a mental barrier for a Sentinel. Afterward, they could soothe the Sentinel’s emotions and treat them.
If Sentinels were sharp blades, then Guides were gentle, accommodating sheaths. The two were the perfect partners.
In the Central District, the Federation had established a military institution called the White Tower, specifically responsible for the unified management of Sentinels and Guides.
When each awakened Sentinel and Guide reached the age of sixteen, they had to be led by an officer dispatched by the White Tower to enter the Tower for unified training. Afterward, they would take orders directly from the White Tower.
Song Xuanye had been one of the officers leading such groups back then.
Four years ago, a massive contamination event that had gone undetected by the White Tower erupted unexpectedly, sweeping across the entire A District.
When the disaster occurred, Song Xuanye’s recruitment team had just arrived in the A07 region. He had barely led the youths he had brought from the previous few districts through the base gates when the massive contamination erupted.
The young Sentinels and Guides present at the time—including the male leads—had an average age of no more than sixteen. They had not yet formally entered the Tower for training and were forced to remain here, taking up the mantle.
Fortunately, several S-rank Sentinels among the male leads possessed top-tier combat ability, allowing Base A07 to survive the massive contamination.
Now, four years after the disaster, the five S-rank Sentinel male leads had grown from boys into young men. They were finally about to meet their female Guide lead and begin the main storyline!
Yes, you had not misread that. The long four years after the disaster at Base A07 were merely glossed over in a few strokes in the novel, serving only as preliminary buildup.
The later main story was covered in a dense mass of mosaic censoring, making it perfectly clear to Yuli that, as a vicious female supporting character who had been killed before ever entering the main plot, she was not worthy of seeing any of it.
At present, Yuli only knew that the original owner was a native of A07, the beloved daughter of a noble family who had been spoiled from childhood and possessed a haughty princess’s temper.
Not long after the disaster, the original owner had suddenly awakened. Overnight, she had gone from an ordinary person to the highest-ranked Guide in the base: an A-rank Guide.
Since the base had no S-rank Guide and no one else available, she had been matched across ranks and become the male leads’ exclusive Guide.
This honor transformed the original owner’s mentality. She began treating the male leads as her possessions, attempting to control and possess them. If she could not have them, she wanted to destroy them.
In the treatment room, the original owner frequently took advantage of her work to make things difficult for and humiliate the male leads, who were hard-headed and difficult to deal with.
After four years, A07 still had no Guide ranked higher than the original owner. She became increasingly brazen, convinced that she was the chosen heroine of the world.
But she did not know that the male leads had tolerated her for a very long time. Once the male and female leads officially met and formed a perfect all-S-rank team, the first thing awaiting her would be for the male leads, whose pent-up resentment had erupted, to throw her into a contaminated zone to feed the monsters.
Essentially, this was a Mary Sue redemption story. The original owner was responsible for becoming the male leads’ dark history, while the female lead was responsible for redeeming them.
Yuli understood that modern readers no longer liked watching the male leads get pestered by a vicious female supporting character. She did not like watching it either.
The male leads wanted to leave a good impression on the female lead, so they took care of their dark history themselves first thing. Yuli understood that too. If it were her, she would have found it distasteful as well.
But now that the person who was going to be killed had become her, Yuli felt that the world was not very wonderful after all.
She was a beautiful high school girl who had only just graduated. What had she ever done to anyone?
She had finally gotten lucky enough to perform exceptionally well on her exams and get into a good university. How easy had that been? And yet no one had even bothered to give her warning before she was suddenly transmigrated into a novel?
“Shocking: A Bright and Cheerful Prospective University Student Suddenly Has Only Three Months Left to Live. Is This the Distortion of Humanity or the Decline of Morality?”
Oh, no. Subtracting the month the original owner had spent on her mission, Yuli now had only two months left.
Time was pressing. She could not keep lying in the hospital room!
An A-rank Guide, even in the Central White Tower, belonged among the ranks of high-level Guides. After all, not everyone was like the protagonist group, with every single one of them being S-rank.
At present, the entire Base A07 had only three A-rank Guides, including Yuli, and the original owner was even known to possess the strongest talent.
Yuli felt that her plan to work hard to save her life was entirely feasible!
She had to prove her value to her leaders, work hard, and create treatment results for Base A07.
The male leads had been able to tolerate the original owner for four years for the sake of the base’s future. Hopefully, they would be strong enough to keep looking at the bigger picture when they wanted to kill her, continuing to tolerate her again and again.
Give her a little time. She would make them understand that although the original owner had done every bad thing imaginable, Yuli herself would absolutely become a useful talent for the organization in the future!
Perhaps the aura of her desperate will to survive had burst forth too powerfully and moved the heavens, because Officer Song Xuanye did not reject her outright today.
He stared at Yuli for a long while, then turned his gaze away, apparently thinking about something. Afterward, he raised his chin and nodded toward the head of the bed, indicating that she should press the button.
Yuli’s thoughts stirred. Realizing what he meant, her eyes brightened slightly, and she quickly reached out to press the red call button.
Two days ago, she had just suggested being discharged when this officer had stopped her without even looking up, played a little game in her hospital room for five minutes, and then left without mercy.
Today, there seemed to be a chance?
There were two buttons beside the bed in this hospital room. The blue one connected directly to the officer’s office, while the red one connected to the medical service desk.
Before long, a male doctor in a white coat and silver-rimmed glasses entered the room. He had the air of a scholar.
After entering, he did not salute Song Xuanye right away. Instead, he first glanced at the large monitoring apparatus connected to the girl’s body-data readings. Only then did he say to the two of them, “Officer, Guide Lier, good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, Doctor Shao.” Yuli had a natural respect for the medical profession.
This doctor was named Shao Hua, and he was her attending physician.
Song Xuanye pointed at the monitoring apparatus and said bluntly, “Confirm whether there are any problems with the rest of her body aside from her brain.”
“Yes, Officer. Guide Lier’s vital signs have all returned to normal.” Doctor Shao did not relax at that. “In fact, the injuries that can be detected had already healed three days ago, but the monitoring data for her mental value has shown no signs of fluctuation.”
In other words, the shell of this body had recovered, but he did not know what condition the inside of her brain region—where the instruments could not examine—was in.
He could not accurately determine how severe Guide Lier’s injuries were, how much she had recovered, whether she was recovering at all, or whether she could recover.
Guide Lier’s condition was extremely rare. Guides had fragile physical constitutions and generally lacked the ability to fight independently. He had never heard of a Guide below S-rank surviving an attack by a mutated creature while facing it alone.
That made not only her survival after being separated from the others a miracle, but also the injuries she had suffered one of a kind.
The answer was as Song Xuanye had expected. He clicked his tongue softly and said to the pitiful girl on the hospital bed, who was looking at him with a face full of hope, “You can be discharged.”
“Really?!”
Yuli’s eyes instantly became bright and sparkling.
“Officer, this…” Shao Hua tried to stop him. It was against regulations. In terms of mental perception, Guide Lier was still a seriously ill patient.
“You said yourself that there hasn’t been the slightest movement these past two days. Lying around won’t make her mental value grow back on its own.” Song Xuanye waved his hand, indicating that he need not say anything more. “Her legs aren’t broken, so let her go outside for a walk. Maybe once her memories fall into place, her mental perception will improve too.”
The reasoning was crude, but not wrong. Shao Hua thought about it and decided that the officer had a point.
Their medical standards were what they were, and Base A07 was currently nothing more than a fledgling, ramshackle operation. What else could they do? They might as well treat a dead horse as if it were alive and try.
He walked over to help Yuli remove the monitoring patches.
Song Xuanye had already strode to the hospital-room door. His lazy voice drifted from the doorway to Yuli’s ears.
“I’ll give you three days off to wander around the base. After three days, report to the treatment room and start working with your name on the roster.”
The treatment room he referred to was not the hospital’s treatment room, but the silent treatment room in the Guide sector—the work area where the original owner had performed her duties.
“Yes, Officer!” Work was exactly what Yuli had been asking for.
Song Xuanye had already left the hospital room. But after taking only a few steps, he suddenly turned back.
The rough-looking officer leaned lazily against the doorframe and asked in an extremely irritating tone, “I heard that when you first woke up, you attacked Heiying’s chest?”
Yuli: “?”
What did he mean, she had attacked Heiying’s chest? She had not! She would never!
Heiying was an S-rank Sentinel, one of the male leads in the novel. She had been trying to stay as far away from him as possible.
Song Xuanye said, “You two are old acquaintances. How about I arrange for him to be your first client?”
“…” How was that supposed to be okay?!
How was she supposed to know that, upon opening her eyes after transmigrating into the novel, her hand had been inside someone else’s collar? If anyone had done that, it had been the original owner. It had nothing to do with her, an innocent high school girl!
“No, Officer, please listen to me—”
Song Xuanye had not actually intended to hear her explanation. “Excellent. Then it’s settled.”
Yuli: “…”
Please, sir. Just act like a human being.