Magical Girl Forum

"Work hard, and the organization won't treat you poorly."

"Thank you for trusting us, boss! We'll give it our all, do our jobs well, and live up to your and the organization's expectations."

Ye Qing greeted the subordinates who had arrived early at the office and received their formulaic flattering replies.

After going through the motions and exchanging pleasantries, Ye Qing stopped responding and slipped into his private office.

The moment the door closed, he danced his way over to his desk.

Work~ work~

He took out his charger and plugged in his phone, whose battery was in the red. The first thing he did upon arriving at work: steal some electricity!

Then he pressed the switch on his power bank. Its charge remained full.

No need to steal electricity for this one.

He pressed the computer's power button and untied the plastic bag holding his breakfast while it booted up.

As he savored his still-warm breakfast, he logged into the classic Farm game and secretly stole some crops. Life could not have been more leisurely.

Once he finished breakfast, Ye Qing quickly cleaned up the trash, wiped his mouth with a tissue, and sat back down at his desk.

Time to officially start work!

He operated his computer and expertly opened Qiandu Tieba.

Now that I'm at my desk, whether it's inherent personal problems, a cold war with your partner, your child's performance, estrangement from relatives, gossip about colleagues, regrettable stories, class gaps, local news, military strategy, great-power rivalry, the evolution of life, the end of the universe, unknown abysses, or melodramatic plots—anything except work, come chat with me.

Weekdays only, from 9:00 to 16:58. Leave two minutes to pack up and go home.

Adults had to learn how to arrange their time reasonably according to their own circumstances and surroundings.

Ye Qing was excellent at that. Anything he could slack off on during work hours, he would never waste time doing in advance!

After all, if he read one more piece of celebrity gossip during his holiday, he would read one less news story at work, resulting in several extra pointless minutes of actual work.

"Let's see whether magical girls have pulled off anything interesting lately." Ye Qing clicked into the Magical Girl forum.

He said he wanted to see what magical girls had been up to lately.

But what he actually wanted was to search for himself and see whether anyone was discussing Qingyin.

Feeling slightly uneasy, he had only appeared in public once. Surely he would not suddenly become famous and blow up.

People feared fame as pigs feared getting fat. He did not want to become an idol.

[Forum: Does anyone know this magical girl's name? She's pretty strong, and that rare cold-faced type too. Pictures and video included! The location is Bailan City. Please, experts, help me out.

Comments: 0]

Since he had plenty of time during work hours, Ye Qing clicked in out of curiosity when he saw the words "cold-faced."

Sure enough, the pictures and video showed his magical girl self!

"Thank goodness, thank goodness. She didn't say anything and only showed that deadpan face. There's no way she could get popular." Ye Qing patted his chest and breathed a sigh of relief.

In his previous life, he had seen a certain Pretty Cu○e girl explode in popularity the moment a picture was released. There was no character setting, no voice, nothing but her face, yet hype had flooded everywhere. It had been genuinely terrifying.

Thankfully, he did not have that sort of crowd-drawing appeal. That girl had at least been a loli; he was just an utterly ordinary magical girl with the appearance of an ordinary young girl.

[Forum: Bailan City has produced the strongest new-generation magical girl! Selfless, breathtakingly beautiful with a cold face, and I bet none of you even know her name. It's unbelievable! Debate me if you disagree! Comments: 99+]

"No... no way, right?" Ye Qing's heart skipped a beat as he hesitantly clicked into it.

His suspended heart finally died.

It died with a clean, crisp snap.

It was the same poster, with the same video and pictures. Only the title had been changed.

[Netizen 1: She just beat a mech and beastman that looked weak at a glance. That qualifies as strongest? What's so amazing about that?]

[Netizen 2: The amazing part is after "original."]

[Netizen 3: Holy crap, you should've said so earlier!]

[Netizen 4: 2333, we've gone off-topic. Even my magical-girl-fan friend says she's never seen this unfamiliar new-generation girl before. Does anyone know her name?]

[Netizen 5: +3.]

[Netizen 6: No idea.]

[Netizen 7: To be fair, a newcomer from the new generation took on three opponents alone and dealt with them cleanly in the video. She really is pretty strong. Calling her the strongest is a bit bait-y, though.]

[Original poster reply: Would you have clicked if I hadn't said it like that?]

[Netizen 8 reply: Such deep scheming. Good-bad.]

[Netizen 9 reply: Good means good, bad means bad. What does good-bad mean? [Tangyuan].]

[Netizen 10: Thank you, and sorry.]

[Netizen 11: Only human.]

[Netizen 12: Stop making goddamn meme jokes, the thread's gone off the rails.]

The later comments became increasingly off-topic.

It was exactly like the forums Ye Qing had seen while browsing the internet across both lives.

This was the flavor it needed. If it did not have this flavor, it was not worth reading.

But he could not enjoy it as he once had, because he himself was the subject of discussion!

The netizens all talked about their own things—some tossed around memes and idly bumped the thread, some seriously discussed and analyzed things, some argued with logic and evidence, and some kept apologizing in a depressed tone.

Once they found the right crowd, they went wild and started throwing shit everywhere.

They had turned an ordinary forum post that had only been up for one day into one with more than eight hundred comments.

How did Ye Qing know? He read them all.

Silence.

A long silence.

He had to admit that this post had given Qingyin some decent exposure and draped her in a veil of mystery.

Even netizens looking to argue would go follow Qingyin.

Going viral...

"Impossible, impossible. There's no need to care too much. Going viral isn't something that happens just because people say it will." Ye Qing consoled himself before casually muttering to himself,

"So I was just scaring myself."

Once that initial rush of novelty faded, Ye Qing stopped worrying about it.

There was no point obsessing over whether he was famous or not.

It was not something he could decide.

He would just let nature take its course.

Qingyin and Ye Qing looked like two parallel lines that could never possibly intersect.

A magical girl and an evil executive being the same person? Who would believe that? Netizens would never connect the two.

As long as it did not affect his daily life, anything was fine.

After sorting out his thoughts, he closed the thread.

Eating his own gossip was nowhere near as satisfying as eating someone else's, so he decisively continued browsing through the fresh news that had happened during his two days off.

[What did she do wrong? Feiyan, a rising magical girl star, was brutally demoted?]

[The contents of the stage play performed by the Magical Girl Detective Squad in Bailan City were leaked from within?]

[The beloved national magical girl idol will choose District 33 as the location of her next performance. Lucky you.]

[The sequel to the deserted-island variety show funded by a big boss is looking for magical girls to participate and promote products. Guess who'll be there this time?]

[A magical girl's identity in District 9 has been exposed...]

[A magical girl in District 21...]

Whether the posts were true, mere rumors, or official leaks, Ye Qing caught up on everything he had missed over the two days of his vacation.

After looking through it all, there was no major magical-girl news.

It was all information that had already been hinted at through rumors before.

Since his buddy was an even more hardcore magical-girl fan than he was, Ye Qing usually learned most recent magical-girl news just from their occasional chats.

Ye Qing glanced at the tiny clock in the bottom-right corner of his computer screen. It was now 11:47.

He leaned back against his chair and gave a huge stretch.

"Good job making it through another half-day of work. Next comes lunch break."

Eat while getting paid, steal some electricity, browse the forums, and half the day would be gone again.

Then he could beautifully oversleep through lunch break, get paid to hide in the bathroom for a while, and the day would be nearly over.

Ye Qing could not help sighing. Time really flew.