This Doesn't Seem Right, Does It?

Lu Menge felt that something was off with Wu Changkong today.

No, to be precise, he was even more off than usual. Ever since she had changed her style of dress—switching to casual clothes, long pants, flat shoes, even changing her lipstick from a man-slaying red to dusty rose—Wu Changkong had looked at her more often, for longer, and with an even stronger air of "normal concern between colleagues" in his gaze.

Her logic when picking out clothes had been simple: Wu Changkong thought she dressed flamboyantly because of an unhappy childhood, so if she dressed more properly, wouldn't he feel reassured? The result was the exact opposite. The more proper she dressed, the more worried he became.

There were no classes that afternoon. Lu Menge was curled up on the office sofa grading homework. More than half the ginkgo leaves outside the window had turned yellow, and sunlight spilled through the gaps between them, warmly spreading across her legs. She had picked up this dark green knit cardigan and beige wide-leg pants at the mall over the weekend. They hung loosely on her, as comfortable as being wrapped in warm fur. She set her thermos on the coffee table, hummed some nameless tune, and marked checkmarks in the exercise books with her red pen.

Someone knocked three times. Neither rushed nor slow, each knock evenly spaced.

"Come in."

Wu Changkong pushed open the door. Lu Menge glanced up at him, but her red pen did not stop moving. Dropping by at this hour was not Wu Changkong's style, but she did not call him out on it. She had learned not to expose him immediately, because it was useless. He would just come up with another excuse to visit again.

"Teacher Wu." She greeted him casually. "Do you need something?"

"There are a few forms that need your signature." Wu Changkong placed a stack of papers at the edge of the coffee table, then sat down at the other end of the sofa.

Lu Menge glanced at the stack and flipped through it with her fingers. Semester Teaching Plan Confirmation Form, Course Evaluation Feedback Summary, Teacher Annual Assessment Registration. She raised her eyes, pulled out the top sheet and skimmed two lines, then signed her name at the bottom.

"Isn't Director Long in charge of these?"

"He's on a business trip. I'm signing in his place."

Lu Menge raised an eyebrow. She did not expose him and continued signing. By the time she reached the third document, she noticed that Wu Changkong had not gotten up to leave. He sat on the sofa, his back as straight as ever, hands resting on his knees, but his gaze was different from usual.

Lu Menge put down her pen and leaned back against the sofa, tilting her head at him. A trace of amusement rippled through her amber fox eyes. She waited for him to speak. He probably needed an opening line.

The opening line came, just as expected. His tone was calm, as though he were asking about tomorrow's weather forecast. "Where did you... live before?"

Lu Menge froze for a moment. That question was beyond her expectations. Wu Changkong rarely pried into other people's private affairs, especially not face-to-face. Yet today, he had not only asked, but had deliberately chosen a moment when she was relaxed and off guard while grading homework.

"Lots of places." She answered casually, tracing circles along the rim of her thermos with a finger. "I've stayed in quite a few places."

Wu Changkong fell silent for a moment. That explained why her records contained no background information—she had drifted from place to place, never settled down, with no official place of residence. A person like that wandered outside, unable to even fill in an address that could be called a hometown or place of origin.

"What about your family?" he asked softly.

Lu Menge's finger stopped circling. Her gaze rose and landed on Wu Changkong's face. His expression remained chilly, revealing little emotion, but deep in his eyes was something she could understand. It was not curiosity, nor gossip. It was a deeper, more cautious inquiry.

Family. She looked away toward the ginkgo tree outside the window, its leaves rustling in the wind. If anyone else had asked that question, she had a hundred ways to brush it aside—smile, say, "Teacher, I'm carefree and all alone," then change the subject. But Wu Changkong was different. His eyes were too earnest. So earnest that she felt brushing him off would be a waste of his sincerity.

To Wu Changkong, her silence became another kind of answer.

"You don't have to force yourself," he quickly added.

"It's nothing." Lu Menge leaned against the sofa armrest, tapping the body of her thermos absently. "No parents. I haven't had them since I could remember."

Her tone was very light.

Wu Changkong did not respond. His posture did not shift in the slightest, but his right hand resting on his knee tightened slightly. She had had no parents since the beginning of her memories. She had not used specific terms like "father" or "mother," only the broad word "parents," avoiding even concrete titles. That meant she had no memories of them at all, not even a name she could resent.

Lu Menge did not look at Wu Changkong. Otherwise, she would have discovered that he had interpreted her blunt truth as an entire tragic life story. She was merely stating a fact—Nine-Headed White Tiger had been born at the dawn of creation, conceived from chaos. Where would she get parents? But she could not possibly say that.

"Teacher Lu." Wu Changkong's voice was lower than before.

"Mm?"

"How did you... survive when you were little?"

How had she survived? Lu Menge thought about it—back at the dawn of creation, she had eaten other ferocious beasts. Later, after getting sick of that, she began sunbathing. Once she had gotten enough sun, she went looking for the Dragon God to fight. After fighting for a while, the two became friends. But she could not say any of that either.

"I just got by." Her tone remained casual. "If there was food, I ate. If there was somewhere to sleep, I slept. That was just how life used to be—nothing special."

Wu Changkong lightly tapped his knee with his index finger. She was making light of it. The more someone had suffered, the more they avoided speaking of it. Her childhood had probably been spent in some remote affiliated village, without a stable food source or a fixed place to live. If there was food, she ate—meaning there often was none. If there was somewhere to sleep, she slept—meaning she had no home of her own. She smiled so brightly, yet had faced the world alone from such a young age.

The trainees' chants drifted in from the field outside, distant and blurred by the glass. The air in the office was so quiet it seemed to thicken.

"No family... then what about friends?" Wu Changkong suddenly asked.

Lu Menge's tapping finger stopped in midair. Friends. She held those two words beneath her tongue and did not immediately let them out. After living so long, she could count the people she called friends on one hand. And most of them were no longer here.

"I had some."

Wu Changkong noticed her wording. "Had"—past tense. Not "have," but "had." It was not that they were still in contact, but that they had already been lost. "There were a few. I knew them for a long time—longer than anyone else," Lu Menge said.

Her fingers glided over the smooth surface of the thermos, drawing an invisible circle in the condensation on its lid. She did not look at Wu Changkong. Her gaze rested somewhere very, very far beyond the window, crossing the field, crossing the coastline of East Sea City, crossing this continent, all the way to that horizon no one would ever return to. Her voice quieted, losing some of its laziness and gaining a calmness worn thin by time.

Wu Changkong did not move. He even softened his breathing. He was afraid of interrupting her. That tone, that pause—those were the reactions one had only when touching a memory sealed away for far too long.

"And now, they..."

"They died."

Wu Changkong's heart felt as though an invisible hand had clenched around it. When she said those three words, she did not cry, choke up, or even pause. It was as if she were stating a fact that had happened long ago, one whose edges had been worn smooth by time. Even grief had become resignation.

They were oppressed to death, Lu Menge silently added. That fellow, the Dragon God, had been jointly tried by the God Realm, charged with crimes he had never committed, and publicly executed—if that was not being oppressed to death, what was? And those old companions who had perished with the dragon clan—Titan had fallen, the Dragon Kings had fallen, none of them met a good end. She had lived too long. She had sent off more people than she had known. But who could she tell that to? Tell Wu Changkong? Between the "oppression" he understood and an actual "war with the God Realm" was probably an entire Star Dou Great Forest.

She turned back and looked at Wu Changkong. His expression was still that glacier face, but in his icy blue eyes she caught something more complicated than anger. It was not sympathy—that was what she needed least—but a deeply suppressed, restrained ache. This man was imagining things again.

Wu Changkong could not help imagining things. He recalled the enthusiasm she had put on before, trying to earn a little attention from her colleagues. He recalled the excessively practiced way she had sought to please others when she first arrived at Eastsea Academy. It was not merely poverty. The "oppression" she spoke of was not a metaphor. The people around her, her few friends, had all been taken from her by some force stronger than herself. That was why she had wandered alone from city to city, afraid to remain anywhere for too long. That was why she treated Tang Wulin and Gu Yue so well. In them, she saw what she had lost. Or perhaps she simply did not want those two children to walk the same lonely road she had. To become like her.

Wu Changkong stood. Lu Menge turned toward him. He walked to a spot two steps away from the sofa and stopped. She suddenly realized what he might want to do—he was hesitating over whether to come closer. The restraint in his nature was stopping him. She smiled.

"It's fine. It was all a very, very long time ago."

Wu Changkong looked at her smile and said nothing. She did not elaborate on loss. He understood. Given her nature, she must have long forgiven those who had wronged her. He lowered his eyes. He knew his strength was far too insignificant compared to this woman's past. But there was at least one thing he could do for her.

"Teacher Lu."

"Mm?"

"If anyone bullies you in the future—tell me."

He spoke very softly, but every word seemed carved from frozen earth.

Lu Menge was stunned. She looked at Wu Changkong's face. The look in his eyes was not like the one she understood from television, the look of wanting to beat up the villain one more time. He was serious. A human, a human who would not even live to a fraction of her age in her eyes, was earnestly promising to protect her.

She could not help asking a question that even she found unnecessary, her voice softer than she was used to. "...Aren't you going to ask why they were oppressed?"

"It doesn't matter."

Wu Changkong's voice was steady.

"You said before—you were alone."

Lu Menge blinked. She remembered saying that—she had casually mentioned during an earlier office chat that Tang Wulin had had it much better than she did as a child, at least he had parents to cook for him.

"That needs to change now," Wu Changkong said.

Lu Menge remained leaned against the sofa armrest, unmoving. Her fox eyes were half-lidded, and the corners of her lips curved slightly upward. She looked as lazy and unconcerned as usual. Only the hand resting on her leg—beside the thermos—slowly curled its fingers inward. She did not leave those words hanging in the air. "All right, I'll remember that, Teacher." Smiling, she lifted her thermos. "If anything happens, you'll be the first person I come to."

Wu Changkong nodded and turned toward the door. His steps paused for a beat at the doorway, and he looked back at her. Lu Menge smiled and waved at him—not her usual teasing wave, but a gentle, slow one, as though saying, "It's fine now, hurry up and go." The door closed. His steady footsteps sounded in the corridor.

Lu Menge sat alone on the sofa. Slowly, she picked up the red pen and spun it twice. She thought that if Wu Changkong had said one more word just now, she might have been unable to stop herself from laughing. Not mockingly. It was the kind of laugh that came from something colliding with her heart, something she had not felt for many, many years.

What had he imagined her "oppression" to be? Probably local thugs and landlords, or some group of petty officials in a remote city, with an oppressed undocumented girl rising up in resistance. She could not explain it. She could hardly say, "Oh, the poor person you imagined once got into a group brawl with the God Realm." But there was one thing she was certain of—every word Wu Changkong had said was not mere politeness. He was genuinely afraid she would be bullied again. Afraid she would bear everything alone. Afraid that after smiling in front of everyone, she would close the door and cry in secret. He would never know that no one in this world had ever told her, "You're not alone."

Little White Tiger poked its fluffy head out from the edge of the windowsill. It had watched the entire cross-species mutual-assumption spectacle and was now staring at her with a look that said, "Were you almost emotionally wrecked by him just now?"

Lu Menge set her thermos on the coffee table. Her ring finger tapped the cup twice, as though counting a beat.

"...Fuck."

Little White Tiger gave a howl and nudged its tiny head into her palm.