A Tough Guy's Idea of Romance

Bullets rained down.

Armor-piercing rounds trailed blue flames, while psionic explosive rounds blazed red. A dozen streams of gunfire wove a net across the vault hall, swallowing the tall figure at its center.

"Hahaha! She's a sieve now!"

"Magical Girl, my ass! Against my guns, she's just a moving slab of meat!"

Smoke filled the air. Bits of stone pattered down.

The leader in the gold-rimmed mask grinned and raised a hand, about to send his men forward to check.

A gap opened in the smoke.

The woman with purple-gold hair stood exactly where she had been, without even changing her stance. A thin, pale-gold film of light floated over her Magical Armor. It was spotless, without so much as a speck of dust.

"Impossible!"

"Those bullets can punch through Star Mark-level protective qi!"

The flesh on the leader's face twitched.

Ziwei glanced down at her skirt. A stray bullet had grazed the hem, scorching a short stretch of lace.

"This skirt is bound to me," she said, lifting her eyes. "But repairing it costs my magic."

"Can you afford to pay for that?"

Her gaze made the leader's scalp prickle. He turned and roared toward the corner.

"What are you standing around for? Drag the hostages over and put them in front of us!"

"Let's see if she dares to—"

Two thugs reached for a bank employee crouching at the edge of the group.

Ziwei gave a derisive laugh.

Her dark-gold Great Scythe swept level through empty air.

No incantation. No flash of light. Just a casual swing.

A violent gust sprang up out of nowhere. Spent casings, broken stone, and even the ammunition still inside those dozen guns were swept up and turned around.

Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft—

The metal storm blasted back the way it had come.

The dozen black-clad thugs never even had time to scream. Their own barrage riddled their bodies, splashing blood across the alloy walls.

A foul, bloody rain fell inside the vault.

Only the two men who had reached for the hostages were still alive. The gust had deliberately curved around them, blowing away only their weapons.

They collapsed at the edge of the pool of blood, their pants soaked at the crotch.

"M-Mom..."

"Stay back! Stay away!"

The leader in the gold-rimmed mask turned and ran.

All fifteen hundred units of magic in his body erupted at once. He moved so fast he left an afterimage.

Three meters.

Just three meters stood between him and the maintenance hatch for the drainage pipe.

A purple-gold boot dropped from above.

Crack.

His right leg bent at a grotesque angle below the knee.

"Aaah—!"

The scream had barely left his throat when the second kick landed, snapping his left leg.

Then came his arms.

Four crisp cracks. Clean and quick.

The leader lay facedown in bloody water, all four limbs useless. Only his neck still moved. He stared at the boot before him, teeth chattering.

"You... Magical Girl... the Brotherhood won't let you get away with this..."

"The Brotherhood?"

Ziwei crouched and lifted his chin with the back of her scythe blade.

"Go tell this Brotherhood of yours that Tianhai Savings Bank is under my protection."

"If there's a next time, I'll come to your hideout, pull your bones out one by one, and sell them."

She stood and gave the ruined man no further glance.

In the center of the hall, six silver storage cases sat stacked beside two laser cutters. Their lids were open, revealing valuables cut halfway out of the vault.

Supreme Spirit-Breath Ore was stacked neatly inside, alongside several bags of bundled cash and bearer bonds.

"Well, how thoughtful."

Ziwei walked over and placed her palm on a case.

"You knew I was coming, so you packed everything up for me."

Purple-gold light flashed. All six cases vanished into the Storage Magic Device at her waist.

Kabi floated down through the breach and rubbed his little hands together.

"Master, this batch of ore is excellent quality. On the market, it's worth at least this much."

The plump sprite made a gesture.

"Mm."

Ziwei answered and turned toward the corner.

Lin Guoguo was still huddled there, a few drops of blood spattered across her hoodie. She looked up, the tears in her eyes not yet dry, but they already sparkled with stars.

"Big Sister! You were so cool!"

She spread her arms and started to throw herself forward.

Ziwei remained aloof. With a tap of her toes, she shot upward in a streak of purple-gold light, smashed through the damaged alloy dome overhead, and vanished into the night.

Ten minutes later.

On a shopping street.

Su Bai squatted beside an oden stall on the corner, holding his third paper bowl.

"Boss, two more pieces of daikon and an order of konjac noodles."

"Coming right up!"

The vendor was a man in his fifties. Watching the young man in a hoodie wolf down his food, he couldn't help giving him an extra fish tofu skewer.

"Slow down, kid. Don't choke."

"Thanks, sir."

Su Bai's mouth was stuffed full.

The moment he landed and dropped his transformation, he knew something was wrong. His stomach felt painfully empty, his legs were weak, and stars danced before his eyes.

The Golden Cemetery had drained most of his reserves, and then he had rushed to the vault. He had burned through every last calorie.

Kabi floated beside a lamppost, his little arms folded.

"Master, you eat like a scavenger beast that hasn't had a meal in three months."

"You don't get it." Su Bai swallowed a mouthful of broth. "This is strategic refueling. Besides, staying transformed takes more than magic. Energy matters too. If I can't maintain the transformation and suddenly change back..."

Kabi imagined the scene and shuddered.

"Magical Girl Ziwei's true identity is a teenage boy! You'd die of embarrassment, Master, then catch the first train off the planet that night. Yeah, you'd better keep eating."

Five bowls of oden later, Su Bai finally felt alive again.

He paid and wandered down the shopping street toward home. Happiness Lane was only two stops away, and the street was lively at this hour: students leaving cram school, office workers heading home after overtime, and groups of high school girls on their way back from school.

Su Bai's gaze settled on several girls walking toward him.

Uniform skirts, white knee socks, and a strip of leg showing between sock tops and hemlines.

He looked openly, neither sneaking glances nor leering, just taking in the sight without a hint of shame.

"Master," Kabi said inside his head, "you have been staring at those human females' lower limbs for seventeen seconds."

"Two corrections," Su Bai said without changing expression. "They're high school girls, not 'human females.' Second, I'm not looking at their lower limbs. I'm looking at the absolute territory."

"Absolute territory?"

"The part between the knee socks and the skirt hem." Su Bai adopted an academic tone. "It's a whole field of study. The fabric of the socks, how snug the tops are, the proportion of leg to sock—get any of it slightly wrong and it doesn't work."

"White cotton socks are the classic choice, and pleated skirts are traditional. Switch to black stockings and that's another school entirely. Then there are lace thigh bands. Those are advanced gear; most people can't pull them off."

Kabi listened, dumbfounded.

"Uh... are human mating rituals really this complicated?"

"This isn't about mating," Su Bai corrected him. "It's a manly romantic ideal, an aesthetic pursuit etched into the male genome."