Umbrella

The drizzling rain grew heavier, and the slanting wind never ceased. Though Lin Xiaolu held an umbrella, raindrops were still blown onto her from time to time.

After some time had passed, the crowd at the school gate had already gone past its peak.

Only around ten minutes remained before the parent-teacher conference began. Most parents had already taken their seats, and some were even chatting with one another in the classrooms.

After guiding their parents to the classrooms, the other students made their own choices. Children who usually traveled alone went home as usual, while the rest gathered in the library or gymnasium to wait for the conference to end.

The playground and open spaces outside the school building were deserted. After all, no one wanted to stand in the rain.

The crowd at the entrance grew thinner and thinner. Only two or three students remained, waiting for their parents under umbrellas like Lin Xiaolu. Seeing that there was hardly anyone left, the guard stepped out of the security booth and dutifully closed the main gate, leaving only the side entrance open for pedestrians.

Lin Yun still had not come.

The rain grew even heavier.

Lin Xiaolu took out her phone and looked through their previous messages. His reply, those two words—[Definitely]—stood out glaringly.

She thought of when her mother was still around.

Anya was a freelancer, and her schedule was much more flexible than Lin Yun's, so she had always been the one to attend parent-teacher conferences.

Compared to Lin Yun's strict approach to scheduling, Anya had been far more easygoing. Arriving just on time or late was commonplace, and she always laughed it off. If she truly made Lin Xiaolu angry—such as the time she completely mixed up the date of a parent-teacher conference—she would buy lots of snacks and toys, then take Lin Xiaolu to the amusement park. Once her daughter's displeasure had thoroughly melted away under that sugary barrage, she would ask pitifully, "Lulu is the most sensible, right? Can you forgive Mommy?"

"Don't save all that tacit understanding for things like this."

Memories of the past flashed before her eyes. Lin Xiaolu stared at the torrential curtain of rain and muttered to herself.

She felt that she should not care whether Lin Yun kept his promise.

It was only a parent-teacher conference. No one had attended for the past two years, and she had never felt there was anything wrong with that.

Rather, if she had not told Lin Yun about the conference today, she would have done what she had done in previous years: honestly explain the situation at home to her homeroom teacher, then stop worrying about the conference altogether and go home early.

If she went home early now, she might even catch the afternoon cartoon program. The new Magical Girl anime series had probably reached episode ten already, right?

Come to think of it, ever since she had actually become a Magical Girl, she had had even less time to watch anime.

Did she really need to care this much about a parent-teacher conference?

As for that man, she had long since been disappointed in him and had no trust left in him at all. Whether he came or not could not possibly stir any emotional waves within her.

She was only standing here because she had been the one to bring up the parent-teacher conference. Leaving without checking would seem irresponsible; it was simply an act of responsibility.

Whether he was late or stood her up was his business. It would not affect her.

Once the conference began, if he still had not arrived, she would turn around and leave. As for the class number, she could just send it to him in a text.

Lin Xiaolu thought expressionlessly.

Yet no matter how she tried to think about it, that familiar figure never appeared at the school gate.

Even when she focused on her phone screen and tried to pass the time by refreshing social media, Lin Xiaolu still felt restless, her gaze drifting toward the gate every so often.

The last student waiting there was reunited with his mother. The edges of their two umbrellas met, and mother and son laughed and talked beneath them.

Lin Xiaolu tapped her foot, her heel repeatedly striking the ground and splashing water with a squelching sound.

"He isn't really not coming, is he?"

The moment she said those words, music suddenly rang out, as if to prove something. The melody was pleasant, but through the school broadcast system it boomed like a thunderclap, pulling Lin Xiaolu out of her thoughts and back into reality.

The tune was familiar to every student at Sunset Middle School. It was the class bell.

And with the day's altered schedule, it signaled the beginning of the parent-teacher conference.

Lin Yun ran through the rain.

The outcome of the battle had never been in doubt. Having been able to kill a Pupa on his own, defeating a Looper was not difficult for him.

But because the battle had taken place aboard a high-speed train, the constantly shifting space made it difficult for him to end things quickly with his threads. Rashly using more powerful techniques like Masterpiece might have endangered the other passengers, so in the end, he had no choice but to fall back on basic magic techniques he had become somewhat rusty with.

Under those circumstances, even though he had dealt with the Looper as quickly as possible, he had still been slower than usual.

After the light rail train stopped, perhaps because it was the first time he had fought outside an Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau lockdown, quite a few onlookers had gathered around after the Aberrant Beast was defeated. Driving them away from the creature took more of his time.

Finally, he contacted Hong Siyu to explain the situation to the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau, avoided the crowds continuously taking pictures nearby, and flew through the air directly to the vicinity of Sunset Middle School.

As usual, he found an alley, returned to his normal form, and emerged from it. Then Lin Yun ran toward his destination.

Because he had left in such a hurry, he had left his umbrella on the train. He could only squint through the downpour as he hurried onward.

The wound on his face was still bleeding. It had been cut by glass shards when he smashed through the train window earlier. Exposed to the pouring rain, it stung in an indescribable way.

That pain was nothing to him. What he truly cared about was the time: without question, he was already late.

The time for the parent-teacher conference had passed before he even landed. All he could do now was try to make up for it, selfishly hoping he could get there even a little faster.

Still, deep down, he knew that Lin Xiaolu might not wait for him.

He had been the one who insisted on attending the conference in the first place; Lin Xiaolu herself might not have been all that eager about it. With the weather this terrible, even if he reached the school, it might only be for his own satisfaction.

Then let it be for his own satisfaction.

He consoled himself like that. Through the heavy rain, he caught sight of Sunset Middle School's gates, then quickened his pace once more and passed through the pedestrian entrance at the side.

Stopping at the school gate, he panted heavily and looked around the flowerbeds, futilely searching for the figure he imagined. In the end, he found nothing.

There was no one here. Naturally, Lin Xiaolu was not here either.

Looking at the empty flowerbeds, Lin Yun's heart gradually sank. Even though he had prepared himself, actually facing this scene still made him sad.

His breath scattered into the rain, unable to carry away the heaviness in his heart. He did not want to make excuses. Failing to arrive on time was an undeniable fact.

But when he thought of his daughter's face, of the expression she might wear because he had broken his promise, guilt washed over him.

He had messed it up again.

Thinking that, he stood there in utter disarray, momentarily at a loss. He knew that if he entered the school building now, he could still catch the conference, but the greatest meaning of this trip had already come to nothing.

After a while, Lin Yun silently reached for his phone, his soaked fingertips touching it through his pocket. At the very least, he had to ask which classroom she was in.

"Why are you such a mess?"

A somewhat familiar voice suddenly came from behind Lin Yun. His hand froze in midair.

He turned around and saw Lin Xiaolu holding an umbrella, leaning against a pillar beside the gate, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

"Lulu..." he began, only to find that his voice was somewhat hoarse.

"You came too late. You're ten minutes late."

Lin Xiaolu lowered her eyelids and raised her glowing phone screen. The digital clock in the center displayed the time. "It's already four forty."

Lin Yun could not answer. He tried to pull a smile onto his face to express his apology, but his rusty command of facial expressions was not enough for something so subtle. In the end, he could only awkwardly twitch the corners of his mouth upward.

Lin Xiaolu ignored Lin Yun's string of strange movements. Instead, she looked at his bedraggled state, pointed at his still-bleeding face, and repeated her question. "Why are you such a mess?"

"On the way here, something happened to the light rail train. It suddenly stopped halfway..." Lin Yun explained.

"An Aberrant Beast?" Lin Xiaolu rendered him speechless with a single question.

"Ahem, no."

He did not want Lin Xiaolu to realize that he and Larkspur had been in the same place at the time, so he coughed twice stiffly. "Why would you jump to that conclusion? Aberrant Beasts are dangerous."

"Because the Luoming Line was attacked by an Aberrant Beast. That's... what the news said." Lin Xiaolu paused, then pointed at her phone. "You took that light rail train here, didn't you?"

"No, I fell off my bike on the way."

Lin Yun tried his best to sound casual. "The train stopped running, so I could only grab a shared bicycle from the roadside."

"Stop it with the clumsy lies." Lin Xiaolu said sullenly.

The stiff smile forced onto the man's face gradually overlapped with the playful smile her mother used to wear when she was occasionally late.

When she had run away from home before, he had come looking for her at a classmate's house. His haggard, exhausted state then had been the most disheveled she had ever seen him. Yet today he looked even worse. Not only was his usually neat suit thoroughly soaked, but his normally well-combed hair clung to his forehead like a pot lid. The small wounds on his face made him look especially miserable.

Seeing the man who usually looked like a workplace elite reduced to this state, Lin Xiaolu felt that she should have wanted to laugh. But for some reason, her nose only stung. She suddenly realized that adults were often not as composed as they seemed.

Looking at this man, so familiar and yet so distant to her, she felt for the first time that a crack had formed in his rigid, silent shell, allowing her to glimpse something more real inside.

It was something she had once desperately wanted, and something she had never expected now. It seemed that she truly understood him a little better because of it.

So the tension in her heart eased. Her furrowed brow relaxed, and she raised her arm.

"Take it."

She held out the umbrella in her hand.

"Hm?"

Lin Yun was slightly startled. He stared blankly at the umbrella Lin Xiaolu was offering, then hesitantly accepted it. "Does this mean...?"

"I stood at the school gate holding it for half an hour."

Lin Xiaolu turned her face away, avoiding Lin Yun's gaze. "Hold it for me. My arm is tired."

Just like that, she handed over the umbrella and naturally stepped beside Lin Yun, ducking beneath it. She stretched her sore arm and shook the rain-soaked sleeve at her wrist.

After a moment, seeing that Lin Yun still had not moved, she raised her head with some dissatisfaction. "Why are you still standing here? Aren't you here for the parent-teacher conference?"

"The parent-teacher conference. Right, the parent-teacher conference."

In that instant, Lin Yun felt as though a warm current had flowed into his heart, bringing joy and a touch of relief. He gripped the umbrella tightly and followed Lin Xiaolu toward the school building.

Father and daughter walked toward the classroom through the rain, sharing one umbrella.

The black umbrella swayed slightly beneath the pounding rain, preserving the small space beneath its shelter as it slowly vanished into the rain curtain.

Thunder rumbled in the sky, and rain swept down in gusts of wind.

Ripples spread across the waterlogged road. A snail had been submerged in a puddle. Too slow to escape, it could only helplessly withdraw into its shell and wait for death to come soon after.

Just then, a hand reached out from beneath the nearby eaves, gently lifted the snail from the water, and placed it on the ground beside the puddle.

After doing that, the hand's owner took several steps back, returning to where the rain could not reach.

Xia Liang crouched there alone.

A somewhat gratified smile rested on her face as she quietly watched Lin Xiaolu and Lin Yun disappear into the distance. But once their figures were gone, a trace of loneliness appeared on her face.

She stared blankly as the snail extended its antennae from its shell again and slowly crawled away. For no reason at all, she thought of the night she had pretended to run away from home and stayed at Lin Xiaolu's house.

Or rather, she thought of the words she had spoken after taking the initiative to start a conversation, then listening to Lin Xiaolu's confession and being moved by it.

They were words she had said aloud, yet had not dared to say loudly, afraid of exposing her true feelings.

"I really... envy you."

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