I Think I Have a Brother-in-Law

Eastsea Academy cafeteria, dinnertime.

Tang Wulin carried his tray to a table by the window and sat down. Before he could even pick up his chopsticks, someone appeared across from him. Gu Yue. She set her tray on the table and sat down, her expression still carrying that eternally unchanged coldness.

"Give me whatever you can't finish," Gu Yue said.

"I haven't even started eating."

"I know."

Tang Wulin silently placed the only chicken drumstick on his tray onto her plate. This was a survival rule he had learned through practice.

Gu Yue took a bite of the drumstick. The two ate in silence for a while. The cafeteria buzzed with noise, and the students around them were discussing next week's combat tournament, but their table was exceptionally quiet.

Gu Yue suddenly spoke. "Lu Menge isn't working today."

Tang Wulin looked up. "Huh?"

"She took leave. She didn't come to the academy this afternoon."

"Oh... maybe she went clothes shopping," Tang Wulin recalled. "Last time, she said the weather was getting hot and she needed to replace her white stockings with a new batch."

Gu Yue paused. Shopping for clothes did sound like something Lu Menge would do. But that information was not what made her stop eating—the thing that truly bothered her was something else. Today, she had gone to deliver Di Tian's latest secret letter to Lu Menge. When she reached the office door, she saw through the crack an image that made even her, the Silver Dragon King, pause for a second look.

Lu Menge was leaning against the sofa, with a full-length mirror made from ice element condensation standing before her. She held up two skirts, comparing one on the left, then the one on the right, wearing an expression Gu Yue had never seen before as she muttered to the mirror. Glittering pearl eyeshadow, mascara, and several things she did not recognize but could tell were expensive—humans called them cosmetics. She had looked into them before.

Gu Yue had not opened the door. She turned around and left.

Now, at the dining table, she considered her words for a moment before ultimately choosing a relatively safe opening. "She seemed to be preparing for something—she wore makeup today."

Tang Wulin was stuffing braised pork into his mouth. Hearing that, he looked up with a confused frown. "Makeup? Doesn't Teacher Lu usually wear makeup too?"

"It was different."

"How was it different?"

Gu Yue recalled the contrast. Lu Menge wore makeup normally too, but it was casual, habitual, part of the muscle memory of leaving the house, like straightening her white coat. Today was different. Today, she pursed her lips at the mirror three times, changed at least two skirts, and finally stared blankly into the mirror for a while. The Silver Dragon King had lived for so long—of course she knew what that meant.

"She was happy," Gu Yue said. Then she added three more words. "And nervous too."

Tang Wulin slowed his chewing. Nervous. The more he tried to associate those two words with Lu Menge, the stranger it felt.

"Has Teacher Lu ever been nervous?" he asked.

For once, Gu Yue was stumped.

She had never seen Lu Menge nervous. In the Core Area of the Star Dou Great Forest, facing the ice elemental domain released by the Silver Dragon King, she had stood without moving. When she pinned Gu Yue across her lap in the office and spanked her, her hand had been as steady as if she were dusting off a blanket. Tang Wulin still remembered how Lu Menge had barged into his home and chatted merrily with his parents. Though it was their first meeting, she had somehow made it feel like old friends reuniting after years apart. Would someone like that get nervous? Gu Yue suddenly felt that those few seconds Lu Menge spent staring into the mirror were more worthy of scrutiny than any classified document.

"...You're right," Gu Yue said, setting down her chopsticks. "She wouldn't be nervous."

Tang Wulin thought he had won the debate and contentedly picked up a piece of pork rib.

Then Gu Yue said, "Unless she's going to see Wu Changkong."

The pork rib slipped from between Tang Wulin's chopsticks.

"Teacher Wu?!"

"Mhm."

"You mean Teacher Wu? The one in white? The one with the Heavenfrost Sword? The Wu Changkong who never—never smiles?"

"That's him."

Tang Wulin felt awful all at once.

It was not that he thought Wu Changkong was bad. Teacher Wu was professional and responsible toward him. His teaching was strict but not harsh, and in private, he even asked after Tang Wulin's forging progress. He was a good teacher, cold on the outside but warm within. But the problem was—Wu Changkong and Lu Menge. No matter how Tang Wulin arranged and rearranged the image of those two standing together in his mind, he reached the same conclusion: incompatible.

One was a glacier. One was a volcano. One treasured words as if they were gold, while the other could never keep her mouth still. Teacher Wu seemed like the sort of person who hated being disturbed most of all, while Teacher Lu happened to take delight in disturbing people. If those two stayed alone in the same room for more than ten minutes—Tang Wulin reasonably concluded that either Teacher Wu would freeze Teacher Lu's mouth shut, or Teacher Lu would force Teacher Wu to draw his sword.

"What does Teacher Lu wearing makeup have to do with Teacher Wu..." Tang Wulin asked with difficulty.

Gu Yue looked at him, with the faintest trace of disappointment in her eyes.

"Do you remember anything different about Wu Changkong lately?"

Tang Wulin tried hard to think back. Teacher Wu really had been a little different recently. The training intensity had not changed, his teaching methods had not changed, and that cold face was still the same cold face—but perhaps, just perhaps, every time Lu Menge appeared, Teacher Wu would make a slight adjustment to his posture. It was extremely subtle, something most people would not notice, but Tang Wulin was frequently given extra training by Wu Changkong and had observed him up close many times. He vaguely felt that Teacher Wu was a tiny bit more uneasy around Teacher Lu than around others. He had not understood that uneasiness before, but after hearing Gu Yue's words—he thought he understood a little now.

"Recently... he's brought up Teacher Lu a lot on his own," Tang Wulin recalled. "He asked whether I knew Teacher Lu's schedule, then asked when Teacher Lu had last come to teach—oh, right, a few days ago, he asked me a particularly strange question."

"What?"

"...What fruit Teacher Lu usually likes to eat."

Gu Yue fell silent for several seconds, finished gnawing the chicken drumstick clean, then commented, "Wu Changkong, someone who never cares about other people—is asking about what she likes."

Neither of them spoke. They both lowered their heads and continued eating. After a long while, Tang Wulin suddenly looked up as if he had thought of something earth-shattering. He set down his chopsticks, his expression incomparably serious.

"Gu Yue, do you think Teacher Wu might want to invite Teacher Lu to dinner?"

Gu Yue lifted her gaze to look at him. His perception of human emotions was still within the range of improvement. He was merely slow, not beyond saving.

"He went to find you at the training field this afternoon. What did he ask?"

"He just asked about my forging—"

"And then?"

Tang Wulin froze. "And then" meant after that topic had ended. At the time, Teacher Wu had walked around the edge of the training field with him. After they finished discussing forging and the training plan, he had not left immediately. After a moment of silence, he had asked in a very strange tone whether Tang Wulin had seen what Teacher Lu had been busy with these past few days. Tang Wulin had not thought much of it then and answered honestly—he said Teacher Lu had often been smiling at her phone in the office lately.

After hearing that, Wu Changkong said nothing. He simply stood there for several seconds, then patted Tang Wulin on the shoulder and left. Tang Wulin had not thought anything of that silence at the time, but now that he recalled it—the Teacher Wu within that silence had not looked as cold as usual.

Tang Wulin slowly put down his chopsticks, leaned back in his chair, and stared blankly ahead. "...It seems like it's true."

Gu Yue lowered her head and drank her soup. She could not taste much in it either.

"When did Teacher Lu meet Teacher Wu?" Tang Wulin asked.

"She said it was when she first came to Eastsea Academy."

"That wasn't too long ago, then—didn't Teacher Lu teach somewhere else before?"

Gu Yue did not answer immediately. She knew no more about Lu Menge's past than Tang Wulin did. Though that woman enthusiastically called her "little cousin" all day long, she never mentioned her origins in front of anyone. It was as if her past were a blank deliberately erased away, and she herself was the person who had erased everything.

But Gu Yue remembered one thing. That night, beneath the crooked ancient tree in the Star Dou Great Forest, Lu Menge had said—it wasn't to help you. If not to help her, then for what? Gu Yue had a guess, but she did not want to say it in the cafeteria.

"She isn't an ordinary person," Gu Yue said.

Tang Wulin nodded deeply. He absolutely agreed with that.

"Teacher Wu has always thought Teacher Lu was only in her twenties," Tang Wulin suddenly recalled. "Last time after school, I asked when he would demonstrate the eighth soul skill of the Heavenfrost Sword for us. He said his cultivation was not high enough yet—I casually asked what level Teacher Lu had reached, and he was silent for a long time. Then he said, 'Don't use combat strength as the measure for every colleague.' Then he turned to look in Teacher Lu's direction and added, 'She hasn't had it easy.'"

Gu Yue stopped moving her chopsticks around the chicken bone.

"Wu Changkong said... she hasn't had it easy?"

Tang Wulin nodded.

Gu Yue truly had the urge to immediately pull out Di Tian's secret letter and add a line to it: "Lord Beast God need not worry about Senior Lu any longer. Someone is developing a cross-species protective instinct toward Senior Lu through an incredibly bizarre train of thought."

Of course, she did not say it aloud. She merely took a deep breath and suppressed that impulse deep within her sea of consciousness. Wu Changkong's strength was decent among humans, but unfortunately, there was more water in his head than ice frozen by his entire Heavenfrost Sword. A being who had experienced the God Realm war and personally witnessed the rise and fall of the dragon clan had actually been mistaken by him for some pitiful person who had never seen a movie.

Gu Yue suddenly recalled the image of Wu Changkong picking Lu Menge up beneath the streetlamp that day. Lu Menge had emerged from the building, and Wu Changkong had looked at her without speaking, only turning his gaze away. Now that she thought about it, that motion of looking away meant something else in the language of human social interaction.

"Did Wu Changkong misunderstand something?" Gu Yue suddenly said.

What sort of person did he think Lu Menge was? An ordinary person who needed to be invited to dinner and taken to the movies? Was he asking Lu Menge to watch a movie because he pitied her?

She suddenly felt uncomfortable. Not because of the judgment itself—Wu Changkong's judgment had never ranked highly with her—but because Lu Menge had not denied it. She had not denied her soul power level, nor had she denied Wu Changkong's self-righteous assumptions. With Lu Menge's personality of taking every advantage without ever suffering a loss, why would she allow Wu Changkong to see her as weak?

"Why did you stop eating?" Tang Wulin's voice pulled her back.

Gu Yue looked down and discovered that her chopsticks were pressed against a chicken bone that had already been picked clean, circling it around her plate. Expressionlessly, she tossed the bone into the trash and wiped her fingers clean.

"She's fishing."

"...Fishing for what?"

Fishing for people, Gu Yue said inwardly. The phrase was too accurate, so accurate that it could not be spoken aloud.

"Tang Wulin," she called his full name, something she rarely did, "what do you think Teacher Wu is like toward Teacher Lu?"

Tang Wulin scratched the back of his head and tried to organize his thoughts. "Teacher Wu treats her... differently from everyone else. He's cold toward others, but with Teacher Lu, it feels like he's pretending to be cold—the sort where he clearly doesn't dislike her but insists on keeping a straight face. And although he says she's noisy, he's never interrupted her while she talks. Sometimes, when Teacher Lu enters the office, Teacher Wu turns pages half a beat slower. A few times, I saw him watching Teacher Lu supervise exercises in the corridor. He just stood there watching, with a very complicated expression—I can't really explain it. But it definitely wasn't the way ordinary colleagues would stand."

By the time he mentioned "complicated," Gu Yue had already assembled the complete picture in her mind.

Lu Menge was also indulging this "difference." She had always loved teasing people, and when she encountered an upright blockhead like Wu Changkong, she had probably listed him as a premium hunting target from the first day. At the same time, she knew her true identity better than anyone—Nine-Headed White Tiger, ancient sacred beast—she knew that Wu Changkong's self-directed protective instinct was built entirely upon a mistaken understanding from beginning to end. Yet she indulged him anyway. She wanted a human who was countless tens of thousands of years younger than her to keep believing that she was fragile, lonely, and needed to be cared for, then accept all his tenderness with a smile.

What was that called? That was bad.

Gu Yue suddenly recalled what Lu Menge had said in her first class at Eastsea Academy—"My hobby is giving cute students extra tutoring after class." Thinking back now, the implication beneath that smiling face probably had not been aimed solely at students.

"Teacher Lu is doing it on purpose," she concluded.

"Doing what on purpose?"

Deliberately making Wu Changkong misunderstand. Deliberately explaining nothing. Deliberately enjoying Wu Changkong's clumsy attempts to learn how to care for someone. Tang Wulin gave an uncertain "Oh." Then he fell silent for a few seconds.

"If Teacher Wu thinks Teacher Lu hasn't had it easy, why is he still so cold to her—no, he's cold outside and warm inside..."

He rambled on for a while before suddenly raising his head and asking a truly shocking question.

"Could Teacher Wu like Teacher Lu?"

Gu Yue raised her eyes. Her gaze said that he had finally caught on.

"...Why aren't you saying anything?"

Gu Yue stood up and held her empty tray in her hands.

"The next time Di Tian sends another secret letter," she said as she turned away, "I can send him a movie review in reply."