Page 28

"Mm." Lu Zhaobei gave Qi Yue a stiff smile. Qi Yue clearly hadn't liked the word "bully." He had deliberately made Da Zhou say something Lu Zhaobei didn't know in front of him. Once he was done, he had lost interest in them. He was bored, so he had decided to say goodbye.

"Good..."

Lu Zhaobei had meant to say "goodbye" in response, but the word that came out was, "Wait."

"?"

Qi Yue cautiously said nothing. He silently watched Lu Zhaobei with a questioning look, waiting for him to speak.

Qi Yue lowered his eyelids slightly as he looked at him, and Lu Zhaobei felt uneasy about Da Zhou's offense. Thinking of what Qi Yue had said not long ago, he wondered if things perhaps shouldn't be like this between them. Lu Zhaobei blurted out, "Can we still..."

Zhou Zifu knew Lu Zhaobei too well. Not wanting Lu Zhaobei to get involved with Qi Yue, he mustered the courage to interrupt him. "Being friends or anything like that is impossible."

Qi Yue was arrogant enough, yet he hadn't refused when the dean introduced Lu Zhaobei to him. He was strong enough to kill Atas in an instant, yet he had precisely controlled the damage and spared his life, allowing him to return to the First Hunter Academy and report back. There were many other things about Qi Yue that they couldn't see through. In short, Qi Yue was... too hard to read, and... too dangerous. That was true for anyone.

Who knew if he was a venomous snake wearing a smiling mask? Just because Zhou Zifu had said "bully," he had changed his expression in an instant and made him admit what he had done to him in front of Zhaobei.

Fri... ends?

Qi Yue: "..."

Did he and the comic's protagonist look like people who could be friends? What was wrong with Zhou Zifu's eyes?

If he remembered correctly, Lu Zhaobei, the comic's protagonist, was in Class A. Behind him stood not only the main cast, but countless Class A students as well. Thus, becoming friends with the comic's protagonist meant exposing himself to the many Class A students with powerful esper abilities. Qi Yue had made up his mind from the start: when he didn't know his own limits, he couldn't blindly set the bar too high. Only by taking things one step at a time could Qi Yue feel his feet on solid ground.

They couldn't become friends.

At least, that was how things stood for now. So Qi Yue thought.

To put it bluntly: how could he, a Class F student at the Seventh Hunter Academy, be worthy of becoming friends with Lu "Comic Protagonist, Surrounded by the Main Cast, Class A Student, Center of Attention, the Dean's Favorite" Zhaobei?

Lu Zhaobei had so many buffs. How could he dare go near him? Did he have a death wish?

But the other party was the comic's protagonist, someone he couldn't afford to offend. The words deciding whether they could be friends shouldn't come from his mouth.

"As for being friends..."

Qi Yue smiled and lightly tossed the answer to that question to the comic's protagonist himself. In other words, he was playing tai chi.

"That naturally depends on what you want, Zhaobei."

Qi Yue hadn't forgotten that the other party had only entered his dorm room with him in the first place out of respect for the dean. He hadn't intended to become friends with him.

Lu Zhaobei: "..."

Sure enough, Qi Yue had close ties to the First Hunter Academy, which was full of nobles. This way of saying things nicely, despite having little interest in him, all to maintain an appearance of civility and harmony. It was exactly like the coldness of those who seemed gentlemanly but achieved their aims through roundabout means.

Sure enough, Beixing was the only person Qi Yue considered a friend. Who said people had to become friends or companions just because they shared the same idea? Presumably, that was what Qi Yue meant too.

Lu Zhaobei smiled in relief and stopped dwelling on it. "What I want is naturally what you want too, Qi Yue." He had spent time at the First Hunter Academy, after all. He knew how to maintain that outward civility too.

By seeing through it without saying so, they wouldn't be too embarrassed the next time they met.

"Well then... let's leave it at that for today. Goodbye, you two." The moment Qi Yue closed the dorm room door, the smile vanished from his face. Dealing with the protagonist was exhausting. Fortunately, the truth behind the twins' hatred +6% had come to light.

Outside Qi Yue's dorm room was clearly not a good place to talk. Lu Zhaobei and Zhou Zifu exchanged a knowing glance and walked away together.

Only when they reached Lu Zhaobei's dorm room did Lu Zhaobei speak.

"Da Zhou." Lu Zhaobei looked at his friend earnestly. "Thank you for caring about me."

Whatever the case, Da Zhou had said those things in front of Qi Yue because he was worried about him.

Thinking of how Lu Zhaobei had apologized to Qi Yue on his behalf, Zhou Zifu said, "...I'm sorry." Lu Zhaobei had always opposed their practice of "selling information." They hadn't expected things to go wrong when they sold information on Qi Yue this time, nor had they expected Qi Yue to become involved with Lu Zhaobei so quickly.

No matter what unfair and cruel treatment he had suffered, Lu Zhaobei was always so upright and kind. That was also why they had opened their hearts to each other. It worried him all the more.

"You have nothing to apologize to me for," Lu Zhaobei emphasized. "On the contrary, I should thank you for caring about me."

Zhou Zifu explained, "I rushed to find you because of what happened to Atas..."

Although Old Man Li had told them to keep it secret, this was Lu Zhaobei, and he had to explain, so there was nothing he couldn't say. Besides, Lu Zhaobei wouldn't tell anyone. He was the best at keeping secrets.

"When it came to an exchange student, and one from the Sixth... no, to be precise, the First Hunter Academy—Atas, the second son of the Flint Family, an exchange student in name but actually there to secretly investigate the truth behind the Esper Ability Crystal Ball's explosion..."

Others might not have known, but that information hadn't escaped the red-haired twins.

Lu Zhaobei said nothing, and Zhou Zifu continued his explanation.

"Although we really hate the First Hunter Academy, and it's true we felt a secret thrill when Qi Yue attacked, still... even when facing Atas, who has such a powerful background, Qi Yue was that... arrogant. What's more, to help Qi Yue conceal that his purpose in dealing with Atas was to stop the First Hunter Academy from learning the truth about the crystal ball's explosion, Old Man Li personally had the Dean of Studies talk to us brothers. He even deliberately separated the two of us so we wouldn't notice him taking you to Qi Yue's dorm room."

"Obviously, we thought Old Man Li had sided with Qi Yue rather than you, Zhaobei. And Old Man Li left partway through."

How could that not worry him?

"So, working on my own, I belatedly caught that information from the wind and immediately rushed over and called you. But you just wouldn't answer."

"I was really worried. Because whenever Qi Yue enters his dorm room, or is alone, or during certain periods, even if A-Yao and I join forces, we can't detect any information about Qi Yue."

"Especially... after Old Man Li left, when I found I couldn't detect anything happening between you and Qi Yue in the dorm room no matter what I did, I grew even more worried. The feeling of 'isolation' around Qi Yue was as though he didn't belong to the world we can learn about through the wind—that is, the world we're in now."

That kind of unknown was frightening.

"But... that's impossible. Right, Zhaobei?"

"Indeed... that's right." It was an indisputable fact, and Lu Zhaobei had to admit it.

"The only explanation is—"

Zhou Zifu said with certainty, "Qi Yue can freely control whether A-Yao and I can detect information about him." In that case, Qi Yue's warning to him and A-Yao when he had first transferred, appearing before them without either of them noticing, made sense.

He had warned them from the start not to try to find out information about him. Unless he wanted people to know.

Otherwise, they could expect retaliation. Just like today: the consequence of ignoring his warning was being forced to admit what they had done in front of Lu Zhaobei. It was a warning from Qi Yue, and an attempt to drive a wedge between them.

Zhou Zifu had explained the whole sequence of events. Just as Lu Zhaobei had expected, Zhou Zifu had only been worried about him.

But...

"Qi Yue really didn't do anything to me."

Although Qi Yue was hard to figure out, there was no need to assume he was "evil."

"Don't tell me... you really want to be friends with Qi Yue?!" Zhou Zifu was horrified. Otherwise, he couldn't understand why Zhaobei would speak up for Qi Yue.

That was Qi Yue, whose motives were unclear and who had many secrets. With their extraordinary control over information, the red-haired twins habitually treated people they "couldn't see through" as dangerous. Especially when the dangerous person had come into contact with Lu Zhaobei, the person they cared about most.

Zhou Zifu thought he had to make Lu Zhaobei give up the idea.

"Zhaobei, don't you think it's terrifying? Qi Yue's esper ability is clearly similar to Beixing's, but Beixing can't freely control his esper ability, while Qi Yue can. And then there's A-Yao and me. The two of us have to join forces to detect the information carried by the wind, yet Qi Yue can freely control and block our ability to detect things through it."

"That means Qi Yue might have more than one esper ability."

"But even S-rank natural Esper Ability Users only have one esper ability. The only one who had two..."

At that point, Zhou Zifu stopped and stared fixedly at Lu Zhaobei.

Lu Zhaobei went rigid. He finished Zhou Zifu's sentence in a murmur. "Was an artificial esper."

"And as far as I know, there was one, and only one: Number 8792."

Every artificial esper carried certain... things from the previous failed specimen. They could be limbs, organs, genes... In short, whatever was optimal. The number alone showed that every number before Number 8792 represented a bloody human life.

After numerous experiments, Number 8792 acquired two esper abilities and lived briefly as a human for another month. After that, abnormalities occurred frequently, and in the end... the YR Research Institute, which was responsible for Number 8792, became a hell on earth.

To be precise, whether Artificial Esper or natural Esper Ability Users, it was simply impossible for an esper with two esper abilities to exist in the world.

It was also at that time that he escaped. After many twists and turns, he was retrieved by the First Hunter Academy. Later, an accident occurred during an assessment mission, leaving him stranded outside. He met and befriended Da Zhou and the others, and Dean Li brought him back to the Seventh Hunter Academy.