Living with a Magical Girl, but a Monster Executive Chapter 22

She could have saved Cong Yu in time.

"Cough, cough, cough, I threw up! Cough, cough, cough..."

Yaochuan Guang: "???"

They Said She Wasn't a Tsundere

Was it just her imagination?

Yaochuan Guang could not help rubbing her eyes, doubting what she had seen... She had clearly watched Cong Yu get swallowed by the explosion.

And the school nurse had been there too...

Yet Cong Yu was now sitting safely on the ground. He had probably been knocked down by the Shockwave and was currently coughing.

Well, calling him "safe" was not quite right either. His body was covered in black soot, leaving him utterly grimy and bedraggled.

But his clothes had not been damaged in the slightest.

Teacher Red was even stranger. She did not even have a speck of dirt on her, nor had she been blown away. She stood perfectly still.

"Cong Yu, do you really need to put on this act..."

What Red had wanted to say was that Cong Yu did not need to pretend this much. His strength was no weaker than hers; an explosion of this level was child's play.

Did he really need to deliberately react like this just to pretend to be an ordinary person and fit into the normal world?

That was what Red thought, but then she noticed Yaochuan Guang beside them.

Yaochuan Guang rushed nervously to Cong Yu's side, fussing over him with concern. This caught Red's interest, and she stopped speaking.

Cong Yu had said that this Yaochuan student was the magical girl living under the same roof as him... No wonder he needed to keep up appearances.

It seemed her standing perfectly still had caused Cong Yu some trouble.

"..." Naturally, Yaochuan Guang had no idea what Teacher Red was thinking. Hesitantly, she began feeling Cong Yu all over. "Are you okay? Do you have internal injuries? Do you feel like coughing up blood? Any last words? What about your inheritance?"

"..." Oh, so you want me dead so you can split my inheritance?

Speechless, Cong Yu slapped Yaochuan Guang's hand away. "Sure, I have an inheritance. It's the one billion in online loans I owe. Help me pay it off after I die..."

Of course, Yaochuan Guang knew he was spouting nonsense. She merely rolled her eyes and did not react with surprise.

Feeling thoroughly bored, Cong Yu brushed the dust from himself and easily stood up. "I know the explosion looked dangerous to you."

After thinking for a moment, Cong Yu casually made up a reasonable explanation for why he and Red had emerged unscathed—

"But honestly, it just felt like someone shoved me hard... We were just lucky that Teacher Red and I happened to be at the edge of the explosion. She was even completely fine."

After glancing at Teacher Red, Yaochuan Guang foolishly believed him.

Still, she might really have seen it wrong... She knew that the spread of black smoke and firelight was not the same thing as the actual blast radius.

"Hehe—haha..."

Red immediately laughed, her face filled with indescribable delight... She had truly never imagined there would come a day when Cong Yu called her "Teacher Red."

But Cong Yu only responded with a contemptuous look.

And Yaochuan Guang was speechless too... Maybe Teacher Red was a neat freak, and she was simply happy that her clothes had not gotten dirty.

"So, Cong Yu, what's going on inside?"

Cong Yu shook his head at Yaochuan Guang's question. "I don't know either. I just got here. I don't know if it has something to do with monsters."

Hearing Cong Yu say that, Yaochuan Guang was startled. Why had he immediately brought up monsters? Wasn't that exposing her identity as a magical girl?

Wait... Haha, it was not actually exposed. Even if I were not a magical girl, it would be normal for Cong Yu to say that. So it's fine.

After all, this world was quite disaster-ridden. Calamities were one thing, but when it came to man-made disasters...

Out of every ten bombing cases, at least six were related to monsters.

However, Cong Yu and Red exchanged looks, wondering whether this had something to do with the Twenty-First Group.

If no one had been watching, the two of them could have strolled inside to see what was going on.

But everyone was here now, and an active magical girl was watching them. It was very inconvenient for them to act.

Soon afterward, under everyone's watchful eyes, fire trucks arrived at the scene. After evacuating the crowd, they began putting out the fire.

Cong Yu and Yaochuan Guang were among those evacuated.

As for Red... Red already knew there would be no results today, so she had returned to the nurse's office.

Since that was the case, Cong Yu did not need to sneak back here tonight.

Because Red would definitely infiltrate the place in the middle of the night to investigate... He could just ask her for the relevant information afterward.

As water crashed against the roaring flames, Cong Yu's face was alternately lit by the fire and swallowed once more by shadow.

It was hard to say what Cong Yu was thinking now.

"Cong Yu, was the teacher who asked you for help before Teacher Red?"

Yaochuan Guang asked this because, when Cong Yu had been making things up earlier, he had casually used the excuse, "You should head back first. A teacher needs my help."

Unexpectedly, it had worked out perfectly now.

"Yeah, she said she wanted me to be a model for health class."

Cong Yu said this, and after Yaochuan Guang let out an "Eh?!!!" upon realizing what that meant, he immediately added, "Just kidding."

Taking the chance, Cong Yu quickly changed the subject. "What about you? That's a club list in your hand, right?"

At Cong Yu's words, Yaochuan Guang's attention shifted back to herself. She nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, it's a list of clubs related to food, but there doesn't seem to be any cooking clubs."

"I had just gotten the list and hadn't even started looking around when I heard the explosion. Then I rushed over and saw you get blown away, Cong Yu. You scared me half to death."

As Yaochuan Guang spoke, she handed Cong Yu the list in her hand.

The first things that caught his eye were membership-only restaurants and the like...

Cong Yu's mouth twitched as he scanned it. Sure enough... Basically none of them were clubs that cooked.

Even the more serious clubs were about tasting and evaluating food rather than making dishes themselves.

Though there did seem to be one...

Cong Yu pointed at a line on the list. "What about this Gourmet Club? It only has one current member, but the name sounds like a pretty good club, right?"

Yaochuan Guang was doubtful. "It does sound good, but there's only one person... There has to be a reason nobody else joined, right?"

That was true.

Every anomaly had a reason for existing. Even "having no reason" was itself a kind of reason.

So did a reason exist or not?

If there was one... Well, the important thing was that there might be one.

"I don't know if there's something strange about that club, which is why no one joined... It's getting late. We can think about clubs tomorrow."

As she spoke, Yaochuan Guang stretched lazily and complained cutely, "Mm—when I saw you get blown up earlier, Cong Yu, I broke out in a cold sweat."

"I thought that if I transformed and came over, I definitely could have saved you easily... My heart is still pounding."

Yaochuan Guang pressed a hand to her chest to indicate the thumping, then pouted at Cong Yu in complaint.

"..."

"Sorry for making you worry."

Yaochuan Guang immediately looked astonished at Cong Yu's apology.

Cong Yu wordlessly turned his head away... He did not understand what that expression meant. It was not like he was someone who would never apologize.

Yaochuan Guang: "Tsundere!"

Cong Yu, annoyed: "Get lost!"

Parents Approaching.jpg

A sense of immorality... It was the feeling brought by betraying morality and violating the ethics of the world, a kind of guilt.

Of course, seeing those three words usually meant that things had developed in a rather peculiar direction.

For example, um... Messing around with someone else's wife while they were away from home?

"Nothing here either."

Though Lantian Zhu spoke in the form of a question, her tone was extremely calm as she carefully opened the drawer in Cong Yu's room.

First, she carefully memorized how everything was arranged. Then she searched through it, and after finding nothing she wanted, she slowly put everything back exactly where it had been.

It was exactly two in the afternoon.

Both Cong Yu and Yaochuan Guang were at school, and they probably would not be coming home anytime soon. This was an excellent opportunity for her.

How should she put it?

That morning and at noon, she had spent a long time sitting in on meetings between the Wind City Magical Girl Agency and the previous agency. Afterward, when she had some free time, she ate the rice balls Yaochuan Guang had left behind.

Then it suddenly occurred to her that while neither of them was home, she could go into Cong Yu's room and look for that notebook.

The one in which Cong Yu had recorded so much information about monsters.

For magical girls, that thing was a very valuable treasure. Although the information inside, such as monster weaknesses and monster prototypes, might mostly be speculation.

Even so, that information alone was enough, and besides...

Lantian Zhu had a clear purpose: she was looking for information on a particular monster. So although she felt terribly sorry for Cong Yu, she had a reason she had no choice but to seek out that truth.

"Hmm..."

Lantian Zhu pondered as she shifted her gaze toward Cong Yu's bed... Could it be under the bed? A lot of books were kept under beds.

Though by the thought process of an ordinary teenager, things kept under the bed would not be notebooks, but rather more special books.

Cong Yu did not seem like an ordinary teenager, but he probably had needs in that regard too... right?

Still, even if she found a pile of special books, Lantian Zhu would not be embarrassed or anything, so she crouched down and looked underneath.

Just as expected, there was nothing under the bed.

After dusting off her knees and standing back up, Lantian Zhu carefully smoothed over the dust on the floor while observing the room.

The wardrobe, computer desk, bed... and everywhere else.

She had searched every place where a notebook could be stored, but there was undoubtedly nothing there... Perhaps he had taken it with him.

Lantian Zhu regretfully came to that conclusion.

That was not strange either. After all, many high school and middle school students had the habit of casually doodling in their notebooks during class.

Cong Yu had probably brought it to school with him.

Lantian Zhu sighed. After confirming that she had not left too many traces in the room, she prepared to leave.

Her heart pounded as she snuck about.

Though she had lived for a very long time, she had not done much sneaking around like this... Especially when the target of her underhanded actions was someone she knew.

Feeling somewhat guilty, she carefully pulled the door shut. Once back on the sofa, she noticed something Cong Yu had left on the coffee table.

It was somewhat similar to a notebook—except it had two extra words.

Cong Yu's laptop had always been kept on the coffee table in front of the sofa... Could there be information about monsters in there?

Lantian Zhu swallowed nervously without changing expression. She turned on the laptop, then immediately froze.

Before her was an entire desktop full of icons.

Besides things like "Browser," "My Computer," "Recycle Bin," and "Stexm."

The entire desktop was densely packed with folders.

Some folders had been renamed, with names like "January 17, First Draft," while many more were named things like [New Folder (27)].

Finding specific information among them would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.