How Does His Mind Work?

After leaving the underground Training Ground, Kanzaki Rin took Fang Cheng to a barbecue restaurant. Just as they'd agreed, she let him eat his fill.

Fang Cheng ordered a whole table without holding back. Then he noticed Kanzaki Rin secretly feeling her wallet, looking rather pained.

After thinking it over, Fang Cheng silently sent back a plate of sweet-and-sour cucumbers.

Then he ordered three more large plates of barbecue.

Her money troubles had nothing to do with him.

Once they'd eaten their fill, Kanzaki Rin drove Fang Cheng home.

Halfway there, Kanzaki Rin suddenly said, "Masumi is actually a very nice person. I hope you two won't fall out."

Fang Cheng propped his chin on one hand and gazed out the window.

At her words, he suddenly remembered how Takeda Masumi had come to sexually harass him after he'd showered at the underground Training Ground.

Fang Cheng chuckled. "Of course she's a nice person to you. That doesn't mean she's nice to me."

Takeda Masumi hadn't suddenly gone lovestruck and decided to sexually harass Fang Cheng.

If Fang Cheng wasn't mistaken, Takeda Masumi had probably been trying to seduce him to test his character and vet him for Kanzaki Rin.

Takeda Masumi had also gotten the wrong idea about Fang Cheng and Kanzaki Rin's relationship. The two of them were purely allies of convenience; beyond that, they couldn't stand each other.

Kanzaki Rin didn't contradict him. After a pause, she continued, "Starting tomorrow, you'll come with me to search for the other Vampires."

Fang Cheng turned to look at her. "That soon?"

"Yes. I'd planned to buy some more equipment, but your training has been very effective. There's no need to delay any longer."

"What about school? I've already taken three days off."

"You're a Vampire. Why are you so hung up on going to school?"

Kanzaki Rin couldn't help turning to look at Fang Cheng.

Fang Cheng nearly jumped out of the passenger seat in fright. "Watch the road, watch the road! What the hell are you looking at me for? Watch the road!"

Only then did Kanzaki Rin turn her eyes back to the road. She jerked the steering wheel, dodged an oncoming semi, and wove through the dense traffic.

She remained calm throughout, which was a sharp contrast to Fang Cheng, whose face had gone rigid.

"You still haven't answered my question. Why are you so set on going to school?"

Fang Cheng let out a long breath, slowly relaxing his tensed-up arms and legs.

"If I lose my powers one day, I'll still need a diploma to find a job. Rich people like you wouldn't understand that kind of worry."

Kanzaki Rin didn't respond. After a long while, she finally spoke.

"Who doesn't have worries in this life?"

Her voice was so quiet that Fang Cheng wouldn't have heard her if his hearing weren't so sharp.

It wasn't so much an answer as a heartfelt remark.

After dropping Fang Cheng off at home, Kanzaki Rin drove away.

Before leaving, she told Fang Cheng, "I'll take care of the school situation. I guarantee you'll get your diploma. Don't let it distract you in the meantime."

"I'll let you off for abusing your power, since you're helping me out."

"Hmph."

As Fang Cheng watched her taillights disappear, it suddenly struck him that Kanzaki Rin seemed to have quite a story of her own.

She wasn't even an adult yet, but she seemed to have already experienced life's ups and downs. She was mature in thought and adept at handling things, and she got along with a seasoned operator like Fang Cheng without any generation gap at all.

At the same time, though, he couldn't see any of the youthful energy a girl her age ought to have.

Ah, girls were cuter when they were a little more lively.

After returning home, Fang Cheng did his usual three hours of exercise, earning himself one point of Stamina. Then he opened his computer and continued reading about Vampires.

For the past three days, every time he came home, he'd reread the information on Vampires until he had it firmly memorized.

They would be his mortal enemies. He couldn't be too careful.

He was halfway through when Asaka Akie sent him a lot of class notes on LINE.

Knowing Fang Cheng wouldn't be able to attend school for a while, Asaka Akie had taken the initiative to send him her notes every night. They were detailed summaries of the important points she'd written down in class, which she typed up on her computer and sent him in the evening.

If Asaka Akie hadn't explicitly turned him down before, even Fang Cheng, a seasoned operator, might have mistaken her enthusiasm and thoughtfulness for a crush on him—not to mention the original owner of the body.

Being a pushover was annoying, but Asaka Akie really was a kind and gentle girl.

Fang Cheng didn't make any flirtatious remarks. He saved all the notes she sent him. In just three days, they already added up to tens of thousands of words.

Early the next morning, Kanzaki Rin was already at his door, holding a bag of pig's blood and pressing the doorbell.

Oh, and some glass noodles, too.

Apparently, she liked pig's blood stew with glass noodles much better than yesterday's pig's blood and large intestine, which had been difficult to clean.

After breakfast, their first Vampire-hunting operation finally began.

Fang Cheng sat in the passenger seat, buckling his seat belt as he asked, "It's so hot in Tokyo. Where are you planning to look?"

"How is it hot?"

"Because it's as hot as a passionate romance."

Kanzaki Rin ignored his nonsense and tossed him a map of the Greater Tokyo Area. Then she started the car with practiced ease and sped off.

Fang Cheng endured the sudden force pressing him back into his seat and looked at the map. A route was marked on it, starting in Edogawa Ward and looping around nearly all of Tokyo.

As she drove, Kanzaki Rin explained, "The places I picked have recently had frequent disappearances and reports of mummified bodies. There have to be Vampires active in the area."

Fang Cheng put down the map. "The area's so big. How are we supposed to search once we get there?"

Kanzaki Rin smiled faintly. "We'll rely on your nose, of course. I hope your sense of smell is better than a dog's."

Fang Cheng wasn't offended. Instead, he sniffed the air. "Did you fart in the car before you came to get me?"

When Kanzaki Rin's face went stony, Fang Cheng knew the Advanced Olfaction skill he'd gotten from looting a corpse was pretty effective.

"Judging by what's in your fart, you probably ate—"

"That's enough!"

Kanzaki Rin had no interest in discussing what was in her fart.

They drove all the way to Edogawa Ward. Thanks to Kanzaki Rin's speeding, they finally arrived around noon after setting out in the morning.

Neither of them took a break. They went straight to a cluster of cheap apartment buildings where mummified bodies had once been discovered.

Kanzaki Rin slowed down. Fang Cheng stopped fooling around, too. He rolled down the window and used his sense of smell to search for a needle in a haystack.

According to the information he'd read, the more advanced a Vampire was, the sharper its sense of smell.

A Vampire that hadn't consumed one of its own had a sense of smell with a range of less than five hundred meters.

Fang Cheng had acquired Advanced Olfaction by looting a corpse, which in a way meant he'd also absorbed a Vampire's power. His sense of smell had a range of one thousand meters.

Vampires hated the daytime, but that didn't mean they couldn't come out at all. They could still do so if they took precautions against the sun.

And a thousand-meter range was enough to cover a lot of cheap apartment buildings.

The car wound through narrow streets and alleyways while Fang Cheng filtered through the countless pungent smells that rushed toward him.

Perfume, gasoline, sweat, garbage, and... huh?

Fang Cheng suddenly opened his eyes. "Stop the car!"

Kanzaki Rin slammed on the brakes and turned to look at Fang Cheng. "Did you find one?"

Her voice was tense. She hadn't expected them to find a target so quickly.

Fang Cheng didn't answer. He silently got out of the car.

Kanzaki Rin hurriedly grabbed the equipment and followed close behind him, her eyes darting warily in every direction.

They made their way through the crowd and arrived at a street stall.

Fang Cheng sat down at the counter and said to the owner, "Five skewers of grilled squid, one order of takoyaki, and a bowl of udon, please."

Kanzaki Rin stared at Fang Cheng, her eyes a little unfocused and her mouth slightly open.

At that moment, she really, really wanted to pull out her stun gun, aim it at Fang Cheng's head, and give him a good shock.

She wanted to see what the hell was going on inside his head that he could still feel like eating at a time like this.

The owner's gaze also drifted toward the stunningly beautiful girl.

Kanzaki Rin was fuming with nowhere to vent her anger. When she noticed the owner's gaze, she glared right back at him.

"What are you looking at?"

"Give me a serving, too."

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