I Will Stand Alone Through Eternity

In the classroom of Class 2-F at Sōbu High School.

After enduring the double baptism of "Miko's frantic offerings" and the "Snow Queen's death stare" that morning, Lin Xiao lay sprawled across his desk like a salted fish that had lost all dreams, staring blankly at the clouds outside the window.

"Ugh, this damned youthful daily life..."

Just as Lin Xiao was lamenting, homeroom teacher Shizuka Hiratsuka strode into the classroom with the attendance register in hand and slapped the podium hard.

"Quiet! Everyone, get back to your seats!" Shizuka Hiratsuka cleared her throat, her gaze sweeping over the class. "Today, we have a new transfer student. Although transferring at this point is rather unusual, I hope everyone gets along well. Come in, Sawamura."

As the sliding door was gently pushed open, the previously boisterous classroom fell into an extraordinarily strange silence the instant everyone saw who had arrived, followed by a burst of irrepressible gasps!

Walking onto the podium was a breathtakingly beautiful girl who seemed to have stepped out of a painting.

She had dazzling golden twin-tails as radiant as sunlight, snow-white skin, and delicate features with the distinct depth of mixed heritage.

Paired with her impeccably neat Sobu High School uniform, she exuded the air of a noble, elegant, yet slightly haughty young lady from a wealthy family.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Eriri Spencer Sawamura. Please take care of me from now on." Eriri wrote her name on the blackboard, then turned around and revealed an elegant smile worthy of a textbook.

The boys in the class instantly erupted, even their breathing growing hurried.

However, Lin Xiao, lying by the window in the back row, froze the instant he heard that name.

He slowly raised his head, his gaze passing over the crowd and meeting that of the golden-haired twin-tailed girl on the podium.

The moment their eyes met, the perfect "elegant young lady" mask on Eriri's face developed an unmistakable crack.

...It really is that bastard?! Eriri roared through gritted teeth, yet beneath those sapphire-blue eyes, an uncontrollable surge of ecstatic joy and grievance at their reunion welled up.

Lin Xiao and Eriri not only knew each other, they were childhood friends with a relationship that could absolutely be called a "twisted fate."

As a transmigrator, Lin Xiao's identity in this world was that of an orphan.

Eriri's mother, Sayuri Sawamura, often brought young Eriri to the orphanage to donate supplies.

Among a group of snot-nosed little brats who only knew how to play in mud, Lin Xiao, whose mind had long since become that of an adult, naturally stood out as utterly out of place.

At the time, he was using a tree branch to work through advanced calculus in the sand.

That kind of "crane among chickens intelligence and melancholy" instantly struck young Eriri's heart.

From then on, whenever the Sawamura Household visited the orphanage, Eriri would cling to Lin Xiao like a little tagalong, even pestering her mother to take Lin Xiao out so they could play together.

In Eriri's heart, Lin Xiao was the smartest person and the person she liked most in her childhood.

Until one day, Lin Xiao dreamed of a red giant. Knowing that monsters might descend upon this anime crossover world, he realized he could no longer spend every day playing house and drawing pictures with a little girl.

One evening at sunset, eight-year-old Lin Xiao stood atop the orphanage slide with his back to the red-eyed Eriri and delivered an utterly explosive declaration:

"Sorry, Eriri. A great calamity is approaching, and I'm going into the deep mountains to train my body. From today onward, I will stand alone through eternity. I don't have time to play house with you anymore. Don't miss me."

With that, young Lin Xiao ran into the woods behind the orphanage without looking back and began his hardcore training regimen of one hundred push-ups and one hundred sit-ups every day.

Leaving Eriri alone in the wind, before she finally ran home crying.

"Sawamura? Sawamura?" Shizuka Hiratsuka's voice pulled Eriri back from her teeth-gritting memories. "There's an empty seat in the second-to-last row by the window. You can sit there for now."

That empty seat happened to be right beside Lin Xiao.

"Yes, sensei." Eriri took a deep breath, suppressing her wildly pounding heart. With proud steps, she walked straight to Lin Xiao's side under the jealous and envious gazes of the boys.

As she set down her schoolbag, she paused.

Eriri looked down at Lin Xiao, who was using a book to cover half his face in an attempt to play dead.

The girl's signature golden twin-tails traced an extremely tsundere arc through the air, even carrying a fragrant breeze as they smacked directly onto Lin Xiao's desk.

"Hmph!"

A tsundere snort filled with resentment, delight, and "I finally caught you, you bastard" escaped from Eriri's nose.

"Long time no see, Lin Xiao. Looking at you now, after cultivating in the mountains for all these years..."

"Did you successfully stand alone through eternity??"

Hearing that childhood embarrassment being publicly executed, Lin Xiao closed his eyes in despair, so awkward that he wanted to transform directly into Gaia and melt a three-bedroom apartment into the floor with a Photon Ice Blade so he could crawl inside.

What a sin! Back then, in order to shake off the little girl and focus on martial arts training, he had casually borrowed a line from an online novel from his past life. In Eriri's eyes at the time, he had definitely been a hopeless, terminal-stage chuunibyou patient!

Lin Xiao lowered his book and forced out a dry smile uglier than crying. "Um... Eriri, if I told you I really did go save the world, and that last night I even punched a demigod named Heracles to death, would you believe me?"

"Believe my ass! You dead chuunibyou who's good for nothing except having a pretty face!"

Eriri angrily stomped hard on Lin Xiao's foot beneath the desk. Yet when she saw Lin Ye's profile, filled with helplessness but still as familiar as she remembered, the corners of her lips could not help but curl upward.

That idiot had abandoned her back then and run off to go crazy. But... seeing him again was really wonderful.

However, Eriri's emotionally charged "hmph," along with their completely undisguised, secret interaction of "we know each other really well," instantly caused a magnitude-twelve earthquake throughout the classroom!

The boys in the front rows nearly had their eyes pop out. What was going on?!

This golden-haired heiress from a wealthy conglomerate, who had just transferred in, actually knew Lin Xiao?! And judging by her adorable huffing and teeth-gritting expression, this was clearly the script of an abandoned childhood friend coming to confront him!

"Why him? Isn't that guy just a little better-looking and a little warmer than others..."

Meanwhile.

In the corridor outside the Class 2-F classroom.

Yukino Yukinoshita, who had originally been attending class in Class 2-J, was passing by while carrying several student council documents.

As she passed the rear door of Class F, her steps slowed slightly.

Through the glass window along the corridor.

Yukino's cool eyes precisely caught sight of Lin Xiao sitting in the second-to-last row, as well as the golden-haired twin-tailed girl leaning close to whisper into his ear and even kicking at his shoes beneath the desk.

Yukino came to a complete stop.

"First, there was a transfer student who could see supernatural phenomena, directly coming over to offer large quantities of high-grade tributes..."

Yukino's gaze swept over the golden-haired girl, whose beauty did not lose to her own in the slightest, and the temperature in her eyes began to plummet at a visible rate.

"And now, there's a childhood friend with deep emotional entanglements."

The air in the corridor seemed to freeze under the low pressure of this "Ice Queen."

"The planetary will that saves the world? I think he's more like a 'harem king' who flirts with girls everywhere."