“What are you doing!!!”
When Ye Xiao Chi slammed the door open with a bang, she saw a scene that filled her with utter despair—
Her childhood friend was entangled with her own father, who had turned into a magical girl!
“Huh? Xiao Chi?!”
Magical Girl Ash clearly hadn’t expected her daughter to burst in so suddenly.
Her petite body trembled in fright.
She scrambled off Xia Che, hurriedly putting distance between herself and the young man.
After a dazed moment, she suddenly remembered something and yanked up the pleated skirt that was still pooled around her ankles.
The young man beside her calmly buttoned his shirt.
His handsome face appeared composed, but internally, he was panicking hard.
“Xiao Chi…”
He had just started to open his mouth to make excuses when Ye Xiao Chi’s brow furrowed fiercely, and she sharply cut him off:
“Shut up!”
Xia Che shut up.
The slender girl’s gaze swept back and forth between the two of them.
The magical girl with long gray hair looked extremely flustered, her hands folded on her knees, head bowed, not even daring to meet her own daughter’s eyes.
Even though she had anticipated seeing something like this, and had charged into the room fueled by rage, when she truly witnessed this absurd scene…
Ye Xiao Chi found herself at a loss.
Was she perhaps still dreaming?
Or maybe…
Her childhood friend and her father weren’t doing that kind of thing; they were just playing chess.
They had stripped down to their underwear because the room was too hot…
What am I even thinking?!
She bit her tongue hard.
The sharp pain snapped the dazed girl back to reality.
She looked as if her soul had been drained, her body swaying unsteadily.
She had to brace herself against the doorframe to keep from falling.
“You two…”
“Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”
Ye Xiao Chi uttered these words, her voice trembling.
Even now, a tiny, pathetic shred of hope still clung to the bottom of her heart.
She looked at Xia Che, the most important person to her.
She looked at his tightly pressed lips.
If you deny it… even if you lie to me… I could force myself to believe you…
But the young man’s gaze filled her with despair:
“Yeah, it’s exactly what you saw. I have nothing to defend myself with.”
“—!”
Those words completely shattered Ye Xiao Chi’s last line of psychological defense.
The corners of her mouth, usually upturned, turned down.
Her beautiful red eyes gradually filled with tears:
“When… when did this start?”
What was the point of asking that now?
Why… why would you do something like this?
Xia Che sighed.
He glanced at the silent Magical Girl Ash beside him and said softly:
“About half a year ago? If we’re being strict about it, maybe…”
He paused, forcing out an ugly smile:
“A year ago?”
“It started from back then—?!”
The girl’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Just then, her gaze met Ash’s, who had been stealing a glance at her.
Those beautiful red eyes, identical to her own, were proof of their blood connection.
Memories of the past, like shattered glass shards, pierced and churned in her mind.
Ye Xiao Chi doubled over in pain, clutching her head tightly.
She turned to Magical Girl Ash—
—the person who had once been her father, and now might also be her mother, named Ye Qianqiu—and shouted:
“I hate magical girls the most!!!”
With that, she turned and fled the room.
Watching Ye Xiao Chi’s retreating back disappear down the hallway, Magical Girl Ash suddenly recalled the night she had pushed open her daughter’s bedroom door.
Just as Xia Che had said, it was about a year ago.
…
January 2049
—Ye Qianqiu was deeply aware that he was an incompetent father.
“Didn’t I tell you not to just barge into my room?”
When he pushed open Ye Xiao Chi’s bedroom door, the girl with shoulder-length hair and a bob cut glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye.
The faint, almost imperceptible smile at the corner of her lips faded.
Her pretty face seemed to freeze over, her tone cold and distant, not even conveying annoyance.
She was holding her phone with both hands, watching a live stream of a superhero battle:
“Wow, Flashpoint is pinned down, chasing might be a bit difficult—Huh? What happened!”
“Magical Girl Rainbow Candy has deployed Wonderland, descending like a god to take on four at once!”
“Wow, this move by Rainbow Candy is really crucial… truly worthy of being the strongest modern magical girl!”
“This livestream is exclusively sponsored by Night Sword Brand Rainbow Candy, endorsed by Magical Girl Rainbow Candy. Encounter the rainbow…”
The commentator’s passionate voice echoed in the room, where the temperature had dropped to freezing.
Ye Qianqiu was long used to this.
After all, the culprit who had caused his relationship with his daughter to deteriorate so badly was probably himself.
He simply held up his phone, showing Ye Xiao Chi the news page about a monster sighting, and said:
“Line 2 is suspended. I’ll drive you to school.”
“Okay.”
For seven years, since An Wan passed away, this had basically been the mode of communication between father and daughter.
In the car, the two remained silent as usual, with only the faint hum of the electric car’s motor to be heard.
Ye Xiao Chi sat in the back seat, propping her cheek with her hand, tilting her head to watch the green belts whizzing past outside the window.
Suddenly remembering something, her clear, gem-like red eyes flicked toward Ye Qianqiu, who was driving in silence:
“We have a class meeting this afternoon. Will you come?”
Ye Qianqiu adjusted the rearview mirror, looking at his daughter in the back seat through the glass:
“Yes.”
Ye Xiao Chi blinked, then tilted her head back to its previous position.
After a moment, she murmured in a voice almost like she was talking to herself:
“…Would it kill you to say one more word?”
“Okay.”
As soon as Ye Qianqiu said this, he saw the girl in the rearview mirror roll her eyes dramatically.
The conversation between father and daughter had unusually exceeded three sentences.
After that, silence fell over the car once more.
Bang!
At the school gate, Ye Xiao Chi slammed the car door shut.
Judging by the force of the slam, the girl’s mood might not have been as bad as it seemed.
Ye Xiao Chi was probably looking forward to him attending her class meeting.
In that case, he should finish work early and ask his boss for permission to leave work ahead of time…
The car drove smoothly.
Ye Qianqiu tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, making plans in his heart.
…And then he saw the red holographic police line barricading the elevated highway.
This meant a monster or aberrant had appeared, and the entire area ahead was being sealed off .
For any office worker, this was an absolute nightmare.
“…”
“This is the seventh time you’ve been late this month! Ye Qianqiu!”
His boss roared at him, the fat on his face trembling like a red-faced Shar-Pei.
“Manager Xu, I encountered a monster on the way…”
“This is also the seventh time you’ve used that excuse!”
Manager Xu pointed at Ye Qianqiu’s nose, cutting him off:
“Monster, monster… how come others never encounter monsters, but you run into them every single day!?”
“Maybe I’m just unlucky.”
Ye Qianqiu wiped the spit off his face with a tissue, expressionless.
“I don’t care what your reason is! Your performance bonus this month is cut in half! One more time and it’s gone completely!”
As he spoke, Manager Xu started banging on the computer screen, so even the screen couldn’t escape the spray of saliva:
“These images… you’re not leaving until you’ve finished retouching them!”
Now he understood.
So this was about using the lateness as an excuse to make him do more work.
He nodded silently, watching the fat pig squeeze himself out of the office.
His fingers instinctively started tapping the keyboard, his eyes scanning the images one by one, numbly.
Like a rusty automatic working machine.
After all, he had no right to argue.
Ye Qianqiu was forty years old now.
If he got fired, finding a new job would be next to impossible.
He needed this job to support Ye Xiao Chi.
—But Ye Qianqiu also knew he probably wasn’t a qualified employee either.
Four in the afternoon, and there were still several images left to retouch.
Ye Qianqiu left his workstation, pretending to go for a smoke, but actually slipped out of the company via the fire escape.
He drove toward Yu Cheng First Middle School.
The sky was overcast, and soon a light rain began to fall.
There was still half an hour until the parent-teacher meeting started.
If there was no traffic, he should make it.
If there was no traffic…
By four-thirty, Ye Qianqiu’s car was stuck right in the middle of the road, surrounded by a continuous symphony of honking and drivers cursing.
“Ha…”
The man let out a weary sigh, slumping over the steering wheel.
Through the windshield, he looked at the office building not far away:
Amidst the smoke and dust, a tall figure could vaguely be seen.
Its mouth was wide open, letting out a deafening roar:
“I f*cking don’t want to work overtime anymore!!!”
This was the cause of the traffic jam.
A terrifying shockwave sent pedestrians flying like bowling pins.
The honking and cursing turned into screams of terror.
A monster/aberrant.
Ye Qianqiu sat motionless in the car.
If nothing unexpected happened, a hero would arrive soon.
At the fastest, in five minutes; at the latest, fifteen.
Then the road would be cleared.
Things like this happened in this city every single moment.
The man was long accustomed to it.
It’s just…
He frowned slightly.
Judging by the momentum, it was clearly heading straight for the school.
If that happened, the students would be affected, including Ye Xiao Chi.
He had to intercept the weirdo before it reached the school.
“Hoo…”
Ye Qianqiu took a deep breath, pulled a golden lighter from the car’s storage compartment, pushed the car door open, and stepped out.
The rain was getting heavier.
Raindrops hit his leather jacket with crisp pat pat sounds.
His long hair was quickly soaked, clinging to his temples and his somewhat pale cheeks.
A fierce wind whipped his clothes, sweeping up building debris hundreds of meters high before slamming it back to the ground.
The thin, middle-aged man moved against the flow of people, weaving between the gaps in the cars, brushing past those fleeing the disaster.
A woman holding a crying child, a young man supporting a woman, a terrified middle school student…
He walked unwaveringly toward the direction of the strange people, as if none of these people’s fear concerned him.
Finally, he arrived at a dark, narrow alleyway.
—Ye Qianqiu was deeply aware that he was an incompetent father, an unqualified employee, and had made a complete mess of his own life.
Right now, he looked like just another commonplace, ordinary and lousy middle-aged man suffering a midlife crisis.
However, he differed from them in one respect.
Ye Qianqiu took the lighter from his pocket and flicked the cap open with his thumb.
Click!
The lighter’s striker hit the sounding plate, producing a crisp sound.
Too bad the rain was too heavy to smoke.
After all, doing this kind of thing always took a toll on his spirit.
He needed a cigarette to calm down.
“Forget it…”
Ye Qianqiu looked straight ahead, raised his right hand holding the lighter level, then turned his wrist, pointing the lighter toward the ground.
He then let go.
The lighter fell toward the ground.
“Transform.”
—He was a magical girl.
The falling rain seemed to slow down.
This phrase, as if possessing a spirit, instantly ignited the lighter into a ball of flame.
This fireball slammed into the ground.
In an instant, the sky-filling raindrops began to burn as if they had met gasoline!
The man was instantly engulfed by vast, overwhelming flames.
Within the deep red flames, the man’s 1.8-meter frame began to shrink.
Vaguely, a very petite figure appeared, perhaps only a little over 1.4 meters tall.
The next moment, that figure shot up into the sky, trailing sparks, and finally hovered high in the air.
Gray hair cascaded down to her waist.
A pair of bright red, gem-like eyes were dull and lifeless.
Her face was delicate and cute, but her expression was cold and weary.
She wore a pure white dress and knee-high socks, but the clothing was almost everywhere torn and snagged, revealing snow-white, smooth skin beneath.
The only ribbon around her waist also had a distinct black scorch mark.
This battle-damaged attire made her look like a little girl who had just escaped from a refugee camp but had gotten separated from her mother.
The petite young girlgazed coldly into the distance at the charging toward the school gate.
She raised her hand slightly, and a huge black cloak appeared behind her, its hood almost covering her entire head.
Then she used magic to condense a white mask, covering her entire face.
After doing all this, she finally gave a slight nod and said in a cold yet soft and sticky tone:
“Magical Girl Ash, engaging the enemy.”
The magical girl named Ash summoned magic power again.
A broken sword covered in cracks appeared in her hand.
She was about to move forward when she suddenly saw, at the school gate, a familiar figure charging straight toward the strange person.
Such behavior was no different from suicide!
A bad premonition surfaced in her heart.
She focused her gaze and finally clearly saw the person’s face:
“Ye Xiao Chi!?”