The door opened. Su Xiaoxiao stood behind it in her pajamas, her hair a mess and half an eraser clutched in her hand.
"Ye Qingqing?" Su Xiaoxiao froze too. "What are you doing here? My brother's out."
"I, I'm looking for..." Ye Qingqing's gaze slipped past her shoulder into the living room.
Starshine...? Then she lost the ability to speak.
On the coffee table, red crayon arrays nested inside one another, spreading from the tabletop down the legs.
An open notebook lay in the center of the array, its pages densely packed with incantations.
She had memorized that incantation. Tens of millions of people online had memorized it.
Starshine's transformation incantation.
And at the end of the notes was a small annotation, the ink still fresh—
"Personally tested by this Saintess. It works."
Personally tested.
It worked.
Ye Qingqing's breathing grew uneven.
She looked up at the girl in pajamas before her, and an utterly ridiculous thought slammed into her mind.
"Xiaoxiao." Her voice sounded faint. "You wouldn't happen to be..."
"I'm not! I didn't! Don't make things up!" Su Xiaoxiao fired off three denials and lunged for the notebook.
Too late.
Ye Qingqing stepped back and raised a hand. Blue-green light lit up the hallway.
The wind swirled, sweeping the peaches on the floor through half a turn. The light dispersed, leaving a girl in a blue-green battle dress standing at the door, a whirlwind mark slowly rotating on her chest.
"What are you doing? The neighbors will see—" Alarmed, Su Xiaoxiao reached to cover her mark. Halfway there, she instinctively pressed two fingers together and slashed them through the air.
Golden light poured from her palm, spreading a thin membrane of light between them.
The hallway fell silent.
Su Xiaoxiao stared at her hand.
Azure Gale stared at