Farewell, My Peaceful Life

(This chapter is free.)

There was such a place—

Here, countless hungry young men and women were packed together, shoving and jostling with anxious faces as they fought over food that was never plentiful enough and always contained unexpected substances. They crowded before narrow serving windows, looking like the last remaining Human Shelter after the Great Disaster had struck...

That's right, this place was the legendary—cafeteria!

Xu Qianqian, Pandora, and I sat in a relatively empty corner, with meals noticeably more generous than everyone else's laid out before us. Watching the classmates still battling around us, I felt utterly content.

"Lily, you really are my lucky star!" I praised sincerely, reaching out to stroke the little loli's hair beside me. Though she still wore an icy expression, I had become familiar enough with her to tell that she was quite happy right now—for a Shilin Apostle, nothing was more gratifying than praise from an individual with higher authority.

Xu Qianqian snorted and said disdainfully, "You've got some nerve saying that. You actually made your blind little sister squeeze through the crowd to get food—she can't see a thing! If nobody had helped her... weren't you afraid something might happen to her?"

"If it hadn't been for Lily's pity offensive, could you have gotten food so smoothly?"

"...Anyway, you're the one people call the beastly big brother behind your back. I'm just taking advantage of the benefits." Xu Qianqian said without the slightest shame, then transferred the few slices of meat in my bowl into the food container in front of Pandora.

"...Are the two pork ribs in your lunchbox just decorations? Also, aren't you at all worried about getting fat if you eat like that?"

"You know Lily doesn't like pork ribs. As for getting fat—no matter what I look like, you'll still want me, so I don't need to worry."

...Could my taste in women possibly be developing in the same direction as Zhao Hang's?

"Speaking of which, Qianqian," I suddenly became serious. "Are we really a couple?"

A faint blush flashed across Xu Qianqian's face before she said, "Didn't we already establish that? Or is there something about me you're dissatisfied with?"

"Of course not!" I hurriedly denied. "It's just... why does this feel so strange? Everything happened for no reason. I don't even know when exactly it started between us..."

Xu Qianqian looked straight at me, wearing a tenderness I had never seen on her face before. "I don't know either. Maybe it's been this way from the beginning—hey, A Jun, do you know? Sometimes I get this very strange feeling. It's like, if I, Xu Qianqian, were ever going to spend my life with a man, that person could only be you. Even back when we were just two little kids who didn't understand anything, I would take that for granted—isn't that strange?"

"Maybe that's fate. We both just have strange personalities when it comes to this sort of thing."

Pandora's calm analytical voice came from beside us. "Fate... an entirely baseless theory. Though it involves mysticism and divination, it chooses the least substantiated explanation available..."

"Ah..." Xu Qianqian's face suddenly turned red. "Lily is still here! You'll corrupt a child!"

"Then why are you discussing this topic in public?"

"Wasn't it you bastard who brought it up?!" Xu Qianqian complained indignantly.

"Yeah, this guy really is a bastard." A somewhat familiar voice sounded behind us. I turned around and saw a striking figure in bright yellow.

"Lin Xue?" I called out in surprise.

"Yo!" Lin Xue gave me a casual wave in greeting, then plopped down beside me without ceremony and grabbed the unopened loaf of bread I had planned to save for the afternoon. "I haven't eaten yet!"

Xu Qianqian's suspicious gaze moved back and forth between the two of us.

No matter how one looked at it, for friends who had only known each other for a few days, Lin Xue and I appeared far too close. No matter how thick-skinned Xu Qianqian was, there was no way she could not care at a time like this.

"A Jun, I'm really starting to suspect that you and this Lin Xue have some kind of relationship you shouldn't... You'd better tell me the truth!"

I could not help but smile bitterly. This Miss Lin Xue was clearly here to cause trouble. Otherwise, why would she specifically come while Xu Qianqian was here, and act so casually right from the start? It seemed Pandora's punishment last time had left this psychic with quite a grudge against me.

"Come on, Miss, can you stop messing with me...? Why aren't you at your fancy aristocratic school? What are you doing here?" I said to Lin Xue with a miserable face. By then, quite a few classmates had noticed us. Xu Qianqian was already a very cute girl who drew plenty of attention, and now Lin Xue, a beauty just as eye-catching as Xu Qianqian, had joined us. Worse still, it looked as though these two beauties were about to start a war in the name of love over an utterly ordinary-looking guy?

Thus, the classmates' gossiping spirits blazed fiercely. Some especially observant ones also noticed the little loli sitting between Xu Qianqian and me, whose presence was extremely faint but who was exceptionally adorable. An even more explosive theory surfaced: could this universally beloved little loli have also fallen victim to him? Was this man the legendary supreme scumbag, the fusion of all scumbags into one?

Perhaps realizing that causing me trouble like this was not particularly interesting, Lin Xue wolfed down the last bite of bread and said, "I never went to that school full of idiots for the sake of studying. I came to see you today because I have serious business—Xu Qianqian, right? Don't worry about me stealing your boyfriend. I don't have the kind of relationship with him that you think I do. Hmm, Lily can testify."

"I can testify." Pandora nodded, quietly finished her food, then stood up.

"If you're still worried," Lin Xue said, tapping her forehead with a finger, "you can come with us."

Xu Qianqian looked curiously between Lin Xue and me. "Come with you... Hey, where are you going?"

"Just follow us. It's not like I'm going to harm you."

Ten minutes later, we were sitting in a black sedan headed for the outskirts of the city.

Inside the car, Xu Qianqian said uneasily, "Hey, Lin Xue, where are you taking us? We still have class this afternoon!"

"Afternoon classes... I already got you leave. And it's a long leave, too."

"Y-you... what exactly are you trying to do?!" Xu Qianqian finally became a little frightened. Though she was usually carefree, she was still just an ordinary girl. In this situation, how could she possibly match Lin Xue, who had struggled through life-and-death missions for years? As she spoke nervously, she gripped my hand tightly, as though that could make her feel safer.

"Relax, I'm not a bad person. It's just that the place you're going is a little special—hmm, why do I keep feeling like someone is watching us? Xiao Feng, drive faster."

Hearing Lin Xue's words, I curiously looked out the window. A square-faced uncle dressed entirely in black, looking like a soldier from the future as he squatted at a street corner selling pirated discs, flashed past my sight.

Thinking back carefully, it seemed I had encountered quite a few similarly familiar faces along the way.

"Our people have been following this car ever since we left the school," Pandora said through the mental link. "We have taken care to conceal our intentions and continuously rotated the surveillance personnel. We even had Keaos activate low-level Mind Interference to hide the thought-wave fluctuations of the observers. Yet this Carbon-Based Lifeform called Lin Xue can still sense our surveillance through intuition. This greatly exceeds our expectations. If my analysis is correct, Lin Xue's psychic ability should rely on extremely powerful intuition for reconnaissance. It is an auxiliary information-gathering ability."

"Lin Xue, you can tell me what you're planning now, can't you?" Though Pandora was here, and the ever-present Shilin Commanders were protecting us, I still asked Lin Xue. I mainly wanted to put Xu Qianqian at ease, so she would stop pinching my arm every three seconds.

"Do you remember what you promised me a few days ago?" Lin Xue did not answer directly, instead asking me that question.

A few days ago? That was when Lin Xue had shown up uninvited, supposedly to apologize, and tried to persuade Pandora and me to join their organization. Ah, I remembered. Back then, I had even saved the world from a four-foot-tall little war maniac.

"Didn't you say that if you ran into trouble, Pandora and I could help?"

"So you've run into trouble... Wait, are you planning to drag Xu Qianqian into this?!" I suddenly realized that Lin Xue had most likely come to seek the help of Pandora's and my "superpowers," but she had actually brought Xu Qianqian along?

"How should I put it? It doesn't really count as dragging her in," Lin Xue said. "This matter has quite a lot to do with Xu Qianqian as well—even more than that, if we want to resolve this incident, we'll need Xu Qianqian's help."