Lu Mingfei propped his cheek up with one hand, not taking in a single word of the math teacher's impassioned lecture from the podium.
Ever since that day, the shadowy figure named Chu Ke, who had called himself Lu Mingfei's familiar, had never appeared again. Everything that had happened before felt like a dangerous and mysterious dream.
After that, Lu Mingfei had tried transforming in his room despite the embarrassment, but there had been no response at all.
Yet the cracked stone bricks in the alley and the pendant hanging around his neck constantly reminded Lu Mingfei that it had all been real.
Lu Mingfei remembered that during that transformation, his familiar Chu Ke had said, "Since it's your first time and the situation is urgent, you only need to hold the gemstone and shout 'Transform!'"
In other words, the real transformation incantation was not simply "Transform!" There had to be more detailed steps involved.
Like Spider-Man trying to shoot webs for the first time, Lu Mingfei tried changing the slogans and gestures, quietly brute-forcing potential transformation incantations. He had at least tried every anime on the market with magical girl elements, but none of them worked.
Then Lu Mingfei changed tactics and began searching online for others who had transformed into magical girls like him. His keywords were "Pink Heart," which his familiar had mentioned at the time, and "XX Heart," but he found nothing.
However, when he searched using keywords based on the monster's appearance that day, he somehow got redirected to a university homepage, startling him into thinking his computer had broken.
"Lu Mingfei! What are you daydreaming about? Get up and answer this question!" The math teacher noticed Lu Mingfei spacing out and flicked a piece of chalk at him.
Lu Mingfei sprang to his feet. He had been completely absorbed in thoughts about magical girls and did not even know what the question was. How could he possibly answer it? He could only stammer, "Sorry, teacher, I don't know."
"If you don't know, go stand at the back." The math teacher delivered his final judgment.
The teacher actually knew Lu Mingfei would not be able to answer. He just wanted to make him stand as punishment.
With the college entrance exams fast approaching, Lu Mingfei's grades were rather hard to describe for a student at Shilan High School, a prestigious private school well known throughout the city.
Everyone had their own way of commenting on his grades. His homeroom teacher said, "Lu Mingfei, are you made of lead? Do you know how much you alone have dragged down our class average?" His aunt said to his uncle, "Lu Mingze gets good grades because of our family's genes. Your family's genes are clearly no good!" Only when he logged into a shemale account to tease his cousin did he get a little comfort from Lu Mingze: "Sunset! What are you afraid of just because your grades are bad? I go my own way—that's what people like us should do! Anyway, you're a good girl in my eyes!"
Recently, at his aunt's insistence, Lu Mingfei had been dragged into filling out applications to study abroad. English was the only subject in which his grades were remotely decent, and he had lucked into a pretty good TOEFL score. On top of that, skipping the college entrance exams to go abroad had become popular lately and sounded impressively prestigious, so Lu Mingfei had no choice but to take that path.
It was just that nearly every letter he had received from foreign schools lately had been a polite rejection.
He forced himself through the rest of the school day. Chen Wenwen came over once to comfort him, but for some reason, Lu Mingfei suddenly felt that Chen Wenwen was not as attractive as she used to be.
He had always been the one to seek Chen Wenwen out before, clutching a computer and waiting seven or eight hours just to hear the special notification ding from some messaging app. But now it was Chen Wenwen who felt that Lu Mingfei had been contacting her much less often lately and started asking what had happened.
After school, he picked up the day's mail from the old man at the entrance to the residential complex. He opened it and, sure enough, it was another "polite rejection."
Wait, what was this underneath?
Lu Mingfei looked down and found an invitation letter from a school called Kassel. It actually said, "We believe you meet the admission standards of Kassel Academy." Lu Mingfei burst out laughing.
Someone at my level meets their admission standards? What kind of no-name university is this?
He knew exactly what he was worth, but this university seemed to be serious. It had even included a phone with a professor's number saved in it! After discussing it with his uncle and aunt, Lu Mingfei decided to go take a look at this so-called interview.
That evening, an avatar of a big-faced cat flashed on a chat app. "Want to play a round?" The name was "Nono." Lu Mingfei did not remember when he had added her, and in the past, he definitely would not have refused.
But he was still searching for information on magical girls and monsters. He shared this laptop with Lu Mingze, so he had to finish searching and delete the browser history before Lu Mingze came over to play, or he would die of embarrassment.
"Not playing. I've got something to do. Maybe next time," Lu Mingfei replied.
"Rejected?" On the other end, a girl sat cross-legged before her laptop, gently swaying. The pure silver four-leaf clover earrings on her ears glittered. "Norma, check what he's doing."
The computer emitted a synthesized female voice. "Received. Beginning search. Search results as follows: The target is using a browser to search the keywords [magical girl] [Scaled Golden-Eyed Monster]. [Scaled Golden-Eyed Monster] highly matches the appearance of a Deadpool. It is determined that the target has likely encountered a Deadpool."
"Magical girls? What the hell is he up to?" Nono asked curiously.
Lu Mingfei searching for Deadpools was not beyond her expectations. It was because the school's AI, Norma, had previously detected Lu Mingfei searching for Deadpools online and concluded that this small city might contain Deadpools that the school had moved this interview forward by three months and sent them here.
The Execution Department had also dispatched a team to conduct a carpet search for the supposed Deadpools, but they had not found a single thing.
The school believed that local Hybrids had most likely dealt with them.
"Still awake?" A muscular blond man in shorts passed by Nono's room, noticed the light was still on, and leaned his head in to ask in fluent Mandarin.
Caesar Gattuso, young master of the Gattuso Family, president of the Cassell Student Council, owner of a Rank A Bloodline, and also Nono's boyfriend.
He had been free this time around, and when he heard Nono was going on a mission to her hometown, plus the fact that two originally assigned personnel had been pulled away for diving coordination training, he had applied to come along as well.
"After all, I'm quite curious what this new Rank S is really like," Nono said without turning around.
"We'll see him tomorrow anyway. We'll be the interviewers then." Caesar rubbed his freshly washed hair with a towel. His golden hair gleamed brilliantly beneath the incandescent light. "Did your profiling yield any results?"
To be honest, he was curious too. What would this Rank S, one seen only once in several decades, be like?
"..." The girl known at the academy as the Red-Haired Witch because of her excessively unpredictable personality fell silent for a rare moment.
"My profile says he's a one-hundred-percent purebred otaku loser."
"...This Rank S's counter-surveillance ability surpasses mine." Caesar also fell silent for a moment. "But we'll have to meet him to see his true strength. A true lion king is powerful in every respect."
"Let's hope so."
Nono ignored her boyfriend's chuunibyou remark and continued reading the information Norma had provided.
"I want to take a look around the night market here. I heard on Facebook that you can find a lot of interesting things at night around here." After drying his hair, Caesar changed into another set of clothes and asked, "Want to come with me?"
"No, I'm dieting." Nono politely declined Caesar's invitation.
Caesar looked utterly confused. What did dieting have to do with visiting a night market?
Before you continue