They Already Said She Was a Young Lady

Outside the convenience store.

Beside Hell, the oldest boy gave his friends a helpless look as they squatted in a row, grinding their dailies. He could only steel himself and speak up again.

"Don't worry, little sister. We really aren't bad guys.

"It's just that robbers and thugs have been showing up around the neighborhood a lot lately, so we were a little worried about you. It's dangerous for you to be out here alone."

Hell raised her hand and tossed her coffee into a distant trash can before nodding. "Is that so? Thank you."

"Uh, then I won't bother you anymore."

He went into the convenience store.

Hell returned to her chair and continued waiting for Tang Wenjie. She also took out her phone and downloaded the hottest magical girl mobile game of the moment.

Produced by Colossus Interactive Entertainment, "Magical Girl: World Project!" featured eighty percent of the magical girls on the market.

Its exquisite visuals used cutting-edge modeling technology, and the voice lines were recorded by the magical girls themselves. It was wildly popular in countries around the world.

The game was divided into two modes, PVE and PVP. PVE involved raising magical girls as usual, grinding dungeons, and fighting witches.

Character progression in this mode was extremely expensive. A magical girl wasn't considered complete until players had pulled all six constellations and her signature weapon.

PVP was the ever-popular arena, fondly known among players as the most "fair" and "humane" place in the game.

"You play World Project too?"

The boy had come out of the convenience store and was looking at the game on the gray-haired girl's phone screen in surprise.

"I'm curious."

Hell answered flatly.

She finished registering an account while thinking about what name to use.

Just then, an engine roared, and a dark red Aston Martin slowly pulled up in front of everyone.

It looked expensive.

Tang Wenjie opened the door and got out. His gaze was impassive behind his glasses as he glanced at everyone present, then went expressionlessly to open the passenger door.

"Sorry I'm late, young lady."

He adjusted his glasses and bowed slightly.

The row of boys squatting by the roadside all looked at Hell in shock.

They had guessed from her bearing that she was someone important, but they hadn't expected her to be this rich.

Hell's earlobes instantly turned red. She switched off her phone screen, stood up, and got into the car without a word.

Tang Wenjie had barely gotten back into the car when the girl in the passenger seat asked him in an unfriendly tone, "With all those people watching, did you do that on purpose?"

Tang Wenjie remained expressionless. "I don't see any problem with it, Miss Hell."

It couldn't be helped. Hell's first impression on him had been that of an arrogant young lady from a thousand-year-old family, the sort who responded to a soft approach rather than a hard one.

As an excellent senior executive and superhero agent,

Tang Wenjie didn't mind flattering this pampered young lady before they began working together. He was making money, after all; there was no shame in that.

Hell remembered this and facepalmed inwardly. "Forget it... I forgive you."

Stay in character, stay in character!

On the way to the teahouse, she took out her phone again and started working through the magical girl mobile game's beginner tutorial.

Tang Wenjie heard the familiar cutscene audio. His eyebrows rose slightly behind his glasses as he said,

"Miss Hell, if you're willing to work with Colossus, your first A-rank form can be added to World Project's newcomer banner within a week of your debut.

"However, the game's IP revenue share is relatively low. You can only get ten percent of the banner revenue; the other ninety percent has to be split between the company and the distributors in each region."

"That low?" Hell frowned slightly.

Tang Wenjie tapped his fingertips lightly against the steering wheel. "If you're popular enough to have your own S-rank banner, the share can be negotiated up to thirty percent.

"Take Eclipse, whom you just saw on the banner. She's the most popular magical girl in the world right now. She isn't the strongest, but people are willing to spend money on her."

Hell opened the top-level menu of the gacha screen again. Right before her was the "Summer Swimsuit" banner for the magical girl codenamed Eclipse.

A cute girl with long golden hair wore a dark blue school swimsuit and held the protagonist's hand tightly as she strolled along the beach with him.

"Did you have fun today, Teacher...?"

There was no telling how much pocket money that sweet recorded voice had drawn out of otaku.

The game's player character was the magical girls' magic teacher in a fictional magical world.

Hell stared at the banner, suddenly curious. If she appeared on one, would the cyber fans she gained through the game count toward her prestige?

She figured they would, because when she had designed the game in her previous life, she had defined prestige as admiration, worship, and fear.

If the current system recognized them too, she didn't mind. All she had to do was record some voice lines, and that wouldn't take much time.

Tang Wenjie parked the car. "We're here."

The two went upstairs and entered a private room in the teahouse.

Tang Wenjie got straight to the point. "Which contract are you considering?"

Hell picked up a mung bean cake from the plate and took a bite. "The venture capital contract, of course. I don't want to work for you for nothing."

As she saw it, the exclusive contract was no different from selling herself. The signing fee looked tempting, but she would have to work for the company for the rest of her life.

Tang Wenjie nodded and took a stack of contracts from his briefcase, handing them to her. "Take a look. I'll call two notarizing lawyers over."

"If you don't trust the lawyers on my side, you can use your own."

Hell said, "No need. Yours will do."

Tang Wen was a little surprised. He picked up his tea. "Aren't you afraid I'll hide clauses in the contract to screw you over? You could end up buried in debt, unable to pay it off even after working for the company for a hundred years."

He wasn't just saying that. It had been very common in Taiping Prefecture in the early days, and many naive magical girls had been cheated into selling off their family property and tearfully paying back their debts to unscrupulous companies.

Without looking up, Hell leafed through the contract. "I think you're a good person. That's all."

Tang Wenjie stared at the gray-haired girl across from him. After a moment of silence, he smiled disdainfully.

"There are no good people in the capital market. The good ones are all in their graves.

"Trusting a lapdog for a corporation isn't a wise choice."

The essence of the capital market was monopoly and acquisition, and superhumans were no exception. Good people couldn't survive here; the only difference was the degree of exploitation.

"Whatever."

The gray-haired girl gently closed the first contract and finally raised her head, her crimson eyes turning to Tang Wenjie.

"I trust my judgment. If you're a crooked agent, then I'll just accept that I misjudged you. I'll pay the price for my own decision."

Tang Wenjie said, "..."

The emotion in his eyes was hard to describe. He had a whole speech on the tip of his tongue, but in the end it became a single sentence.

"You really are a naive young lady."

Hell nearly bristled. "Don't treat me like a child," she warned.

"Mm-hmm, all right..."

Tang Wenjie drank his tea and gave her a perfunctory response.

What he didn't know was that Hell trusted her because of the hundred-thousand-dollar check he had written her at White Horse Nightclub that night.

Human intuition was a strange thing.

But at least in Hell's view, Tang Wenjie, this lapdog of capital, still had a tiny bit of a conscience. It wasn't much, but it made him better than his peers.

More importantly, she was also using Colossus Company's resources to complete her own task.

Once she had the strength later on, a contract would be less binding on her than a slice of chocolate cake.

That said, she still carefully read through the first part of the contract.

Her gaze then fell on the signature line in the first part, and she wondered whether she should make up a name on the spot.

Just then, Tang Wenjie suddenly reminded her, "When the notarizing lawyers get here, you only need to sign your codename on every part. Put 'none' for both your address and relatives. From now on, just tell people you're an orphan."

When Tang Wenjie said this, he went against his capitalist nature.

Before signing a magical girl, other agents would do everything they could to investigate her real name and her family background in private, so they could control her.

But if Hell signed only her codename, then even if the company lost all its initial and subsequent investments, there would be little it could do to her.

Hell didn't know he was thinking so much about it. She nodded. "All right."