“Aiyah?!”
Ningning was eating snacks when she suddenly felt something light and floaty hit her head and bounce off.
She froze for a moment, then looked down at the thing that had rolled to her feet and discovered it was a paper ball.
Who was this rude?
She turned her head angrily and found that not far away, Boss Yumiko and her followers were staring straight at her while continuously waving her over.
What the heck?
Did these people want to eat the snacks in her hands that badly?
Ningning lowered her head and looked at the more-than-half bag of potato chips remaining in her hands.
Her ears drooped a little in reluctance, but this was Boss Yumiko’s order after all, so she had no choice but to obey.
Crunch crunch.
Like a hamster preparing for winter, she stuffed her cheeks as full as possible at the fastest speed, then crouched low and sneakily infiltrated toward the little group.
“Mm-mm, mm. (Boss, here.)”
With her mouth full of snacks, she mumbled as she offered the bag.
Slap.
Yumiko did not even glance at the bag of chips. She raised a hand and slapped it away. The bag flipped twice in the air and landed by Huacai’s feet, spilling a few crumbs.
Huacai let out an “Eek!” and used the tip of her shoe to push the bag aside, as if handling some wet garbage.
“Who wants your lousy snacks.”
Yumiko crossed her legs and pointed her chin toward Yukina’s direction.
“You and that shorty over there are friends, right?”
“Mm-mm, mm-mm-mm…”
“Swallow it before you talk.”
“(Gulp), ah, yeah, Boss is right. Little Yukina and I are friends as close as glue!”
Ningning forced the chips in her mouth down, raised a thumbs-up, and put on a strangely proud expression.
“Is that so?”
Yumiko switched the leg she was crossing and lightly tapped her fingers twice on her knee.
“Then you should know what happened to her yesterday, right?”
“What is Boss referring to?”
“Did you see that baffling getup of hers? And what’s been going on with her lately? Why has her personality changed so much? Tell me everything you know.”
“Uh…”
Ningning was instantly stumped by the question.
Of course she knew Yukina had been off lately, and she had even probed around the edges several times, but every time Yukina had muddled her way past it, leaving her only half-understanding in the end.
But the big talk had already been spoken.
Boss Yumiko and the others were all staring at her with eyes shining as brightly as cats catching mice at night.
If she dared say a single “I don’t know” now, she would probably be swallowed alive on the spot.
“What, can’t say it?”
Huacai leaned out half her body from behind Yumiko, snake eyes curving into crescents.
“And you still claimed to be friends as close as glue. So it turns out… you don’t understand your friend at all.”
“Wh-who said that? My relationship with Little Yukina is great!”
Ningning stiffened her neck, clenched her fists, and her tail had already exploded into a furry ball.
“It’s just that I’m a person of righteousness and don’t like selling out my friends!”
“Oh~ so great.”
Huacai clapped her hands, her expression exaggerated as if rewarding a kindergarten child.
Ningning got anxious.
“Fine! No choice then. To prove the true friendship between me and Little Yukina, I’ll reluctantly reveal a tiny bit of insider information to you today.”
She leaned forward a little, lowered her voice, and pressed her tanuki ears tightly against her head, as if about to announce some earth-shattering secret.
The little group unconsciously leaned closer as well and pricked up their ears to listen.
“Actually…”
Ningning paused, then did her best to activate her imagination and string together all the intelligence she knew.
In the end, the conclusion she reached was…
“Little Yukina—she has Awakened!”
The air froze for two seconds. Several followers instantly widened their eyes and simultaneously sucked in a cold breath.
“Awakened?” Yumiko furrowed her brows.
“What does that mean? Explain it clearly to me.”
“I already asked her!”
Ningning lowered her voice further and began half-truthfully recounting the story she had just made up.
“This morning I also asked her how she became like this, and then she personally admitted to me that yesterday she was hit and sent flying by a heavy truck!”
“Hit and sent flying by a truck!!”
One follower almost shouted it out and was abruptly covered by the person beside her.
Everyone’s gazes turned uniformly toward Yukina. That tiny pink-and-white figure was sitting upright beside Mashiro cutting a carrot, her two legs lightly swinging as they dangled from the chair.
With that small frame, if she got hit by a truck even once, she should have been flattened into a paper person, right?
“That’s way too fake, isn’t it? She got sent flying by a big truck and can still come to school?”
“Exactly. A normal person would have been crushed flat long ago…”
“That’s why I said she Awakened!”
Ningning leaned even closer, raised one finger, and her tail drew a mysterious arc behind her.
“I speculate that the impact from that moment stimulated the sleeping power inside her body, which is why she became like this.”
“In other words, those bandages are…”
A underling wearing glasses covered her mouth, eyes widened into perfect circles.
“Seals used to suppress the rampaging power inside her body?”
“It matches, it matches, everything matches! I’ve seen this kind of situation in so many anime.” Another underling excitedly agreed.
“Nonsense.”
Yumiko clicked her tongue and put on an impatient expression, her gaze sweeping across everyone’s throats like a knife.
“This isn’t some shut-in manga. Getting hit by a car once and you can awaken power? If such a good thing existed, why are there so many people lying in hospitals!”
“But, Boss…” One follower hesitated for a moment before still speaking up.
“I remember that when that bloodsucker made a move against you earlier, everyone was present. But at that time only Yukina alone reacted, and she even loudly called that bloodsucker’s name, as if… she knew in advance that something was going to happen.”
“Right right right, I saw it too!” Another underling nodded in agreement.
“Indeed.”
Lingsha rarely spoke. As the combat power of the team, she said in a low voice,
“That white-haired bloodsucker’s movements were very fast. Even I couldn’t react in time. For her to detect the danger in advance from that distance is indeed not simple.”
Yumiko did not reply.
She recalled the experience from that time. Her right eye felt as if something had lightly pricked it.
The image of the pen tip hanging in front of her pupil flashed by, and she subconsciously blinked.
Then the little group’s discussion topics began veering in an outrageous direction.
“Actually, I also have intelligence. This morning I saw Yukina standing at the school gate, raising the bandages on her hands and shouting something under the shade of a tree, like she was casting a curse technique!”
“I also have intelligence! I heard from a friend in the neighboring class that the third-year bear-clan senior, the ace of the track team, immediately lowered her head and apologized after being bumped into by a pink-haired loli today, and almost got scared to tears!”
“That’s nothing. There’s something even more exaggerated! Over by the shoe lockers today, a little kid hugged her thigh and called her Mom. I saw it with my own eyes, just that there was some distance so I couldn’t see clearly who it was. I speculate that Yukina’s age is much older than she looks, and she’s already a child’s mother!”
“Awakened One,” “Strongest Modern Curse User,” “No. 24 Elbow-Strike Athlete,” “Divorced Single Mother”… all sorts of titles were pinned onto Yukina.
“Hey, you lot…”
Yumiko’s expression grew uglier and uglier. Any one of these titles casually pulled out seemed far more imposing than her identity as “the young lady of Feilin Corporation.”
It’s over. Could her status really be in danger of not being preserved?
She turned her head to glance at Huacai beside her. Huacai only listened silently, a meaningful smile on her face:
“Listening to it like this, the people ‘above’ should like that little shorty named Yukina more, don’t you think… ‘Boss Yumiko’?”
Yumiko bit her lip. A bead of sweat seeped out from her temple.
“Um, actually…”
Looking equally ugly was Ningning, who could not insert herself into the conversation beside them.
She had never expected that the tiny spark she had casually lit would burn to this degree.
Yukina was about to be turned into a world-destroying demon king from their mouths.
What should she do?
…
Forget it.
Just leave it like this.
Letting it develop this way didn’t seem bad either.
Ningning emptied her mind, closed her eyes, and calmly chose to give up.
If it’s Little Yukina, she’ll definitely forgive me, right?
She pressed her palms together and silently prayed for Yukina.
And at this very moment, Yukina…
“Achoo.”
While cutting the carrot, she could not help letting out a somewhat fierce sneeze.
She always felt a cold chill at her back, as if someone was speaking ill of her.