Kamen Rider L leaped high into the air, then swooped down.
The shattered projection fragments gathered at his right foot, like a spinning drill, and pointed straight at that pitch-black giant beast!
He cut a sharp arc through the air and collided head-on with the giant claw Zhan Che blasted out!
The two terrifying energies collided, bursting out with blinding light.
Black and blue intertwined into a chaotic sphere that easily carved a deep pit in the ground.
However, the standoff between the two did not last long.
Soon, the pale blue part gained the upper hand!
Immediately after, Kamen Rider L burst out from the sphere, fell toward the ground like a meteor, and made a standard “superhero landing.”
Behind him, the violent energy inside the sphere had already reached its limit and rapidly collapsed amid distortion.
Then, it suddenly exploded!
Amid brilliant fireworks, Zhan Che’s scream lasted only an instant before being swallowed by flames.
The remaining pale blue energy gathered in midair and formed a giant
“L” symbol behind Kamen Rider L.
After all that, Kamen Rider L did not turn back.
He struck a pose at the camera–raising his gun to aim, then firing–and said:
“Mission complete.”
Only after saying that did he turn back to look at Hui Jin, who was watching from the VIP spectator seats.
The girl stared for a moment into the crude compound eyes on his helmet, and suddenly had a thought:
‘This guy… is he expecting my evaluation?’
She put one hand on her hip, turned her head away so she would not look at him, and said in a slightly nasty tone:
“So… lame.”
After saying that, she secretly studied the person before her from the corner of her eye, and saw Kamen Rider L hang his head, looking quite dejected.
‘Are you some child waiting for an adult to praise you?!’
But seeing him like this, for some reason, Hui Jin felt a little unable to bear it.
So she twitched the corner of her mouth, softened her tone a little, and said awkwardly:
“Mmm… it’s not that lame. I-I suppose it’s a little… cool.”
Kamen Rider L still said nothing, but his head tilted high already betrayed his thoughts.
He turned and left, leaving the girl with his receding back, and did not forget to raise an arm horizontally and give a thumbs-up as he walked.
‘He’s still so lame after all!’
‘Could this guy have watched too many tokusatsu shows and let his chuunibyou get the better of him?’
The tiny drones all around descended one after another and returned to storage pods throughout the city.
“Hah… what on earth is going on…”
Hui Jin pressed her somewhat sore nose bridge, dragged her tired body along, and unconsciously looked for a nearby place suitable for canceling her transformation.
‘Ah… I can’t cancel it anymore, can I.’
She belatedly remembered, and her mood, which had just improved a little, turned bad again.
The fact that her mood had worsened made the girl’s emotions sink even lower.
She had clearly not been this kind of person before.
Ye Qianqiu should have been a rational person with indifferent, numb emotions, but Hui Jin’s emotions were much more abundant than Ye Qianqiu’s.
Thinking this, she walked into an empty convenience store, took a bottle of beer from inside, went to the front counter, scanned the code and paid five yuan, then sat on a high stool by the window.
Gazing at the mess outside the window, the girl’s two fair little feet dangled in the air and swung gently.
She pulled the pull-tab of the beer and gulped down several mouthfuls impatiently.
“Glug, glug, glug…”
The girl’s throat moved as she swallowed, and her pretty eyebrows gradually furrowed.
‘So bitter!!!’
She stuck out her tongue and looked at the beer in her hand with some suspicion.
‘It’s clearly the brand I usually drink, isn’t it? Did the manufacturer change the recipe?’
Hui Jin refused to give up, jumped down from the high stool again, went to the freezer and picked several bottles of alcohol, and after paying, tried them one bottle at a time.
After tasting the last bottle, her expression became even uglier.
The girl finally reached a conclusion she was unwilling to face:
Whether strong liquor or low-alcohol beer, she found all of it unpalatable.
In other words, the girl named Hui Jin did not like drinking alcohol!
“Guh…”
‘What kind of joke is this? Not only can I not smoke, I can’t even drink alcohol… isn’t this life just too hopeless?!’
Hui Jin let out a low whimper, crushed the beer cans with popping sounds, and hung her little head low.
With a table full of beer cans of all sizes and kinds in front of her, she looked exactly like an underage troubled girl who had rushed into a bar to drown her sorrows.
–When Xia Che walked into the convenience store, this was the scene he saw.
He blurted it out instinctively:
“Did you get dumped?”
The answer was a beer can hurled at him like a baseball, and he quickly ducked his head.
Thunk!
The beer can embedded itself in the wall behind the bar counter.
The girl hugged the beer with both hands, her eyes red-rimmed, and looked up at him pleadingly, looking quite aggrieved.
“…What on earth happened?”
Xia Che said with a sigh.
“How did you find this place?”
Hui Jin answered off-topic.
“I don’t think I told you my location, did I?”
Xia Che came to her side, pulled out a chair and sat down, and said naturally:
“This is where the monster appeared, right? You didn’t go far, so I just looked around a bit and saw you.”
“Why were you looking for me?”
The girl asked again, her tone like a wife interrogating a husband who had come home late.
“Hui Jin.”
Xia Che suddenly said.
Having her name called seriously, the gray-haired girl moved her deep crimson eyes over and stared at him fixedly.
“Are you really okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m doing great.”
Hui Jin withdrew her gaze.
Although it was brief, Xia Che still caught a flash of disappointment in her eyes, so he slapped the table and stood up:
“All right, let’s go have fun!”
“Huh?”
Hui Jin looked at him as if he were an idiot:
“Who are you talking to? Me?”
“Of course.”
Xia Che slightly raised the corner of his mouth and showed a faint smile.
‘Damn, he’s so handsome.’
Hui Jin’s breathing stopped for an instant.
She quickly shifted her eyes away and said quietly:
“No, I still have work…”
“No. I am Miss Hui Jin’s manager, and I believe your current mental state is unsuitable for work. You need rest.”
Xia Che’s tone was very firm.
“I said no, and that means no.”
Hui Jin jumped off the chair and was about to leave.
Seeing this, Xia Che reached out and somewhat forcefully grabbed the girl’s hand.
Noticing the girl’s body instantly stiffen and her eyes widen, he realized he had gone too far, so he moved his hand up and instead grabbed her wrist.
“…Mr. Xia Che, please let go. Don’t you think this action is a little too much?”
Hui Jin said coldly.
“Our relationship is only ‘hero and manager,’ right? We shouldn’t be close enough for this, should we?”
Being countered with the words he had once said himself, Xia Che twitched the corner of his mouth.
Even so, he still did not let go, and said somewhat helplessly:
“If you promise me you won’t run when I let go, then I’ll let go.”
“Okay, okay, I promise. Let go.”
Hui Jin said impatiently.
Xia Che was silent for a moment, then slowly let go.
The instant she felt the restraining force on her wrist disappear, the girl tried to repeat her old trick from that night and made to run, but the ever-prepared Xia Che caught her again with his merciless iron grip.
Xia Che smiled:
“You clearly agreed, but you immediately went back on it, Miss Hui Jin. Could it be that all adults are like you?”
Not only had she been predicted, but she had also been mocked.
The girl’s little face immediately turned red:
“S-So what?! Didn’t you betray me too? If we’re talking about lying, we’re both the same!”
The two looked each other in the eye, neither willing to yield, and in the end Xia Che decided to use a roundabout tactic:
“Mm, sorry, Hui Jin.”
Saying that, he let go and bowed deeply to Hui Jin.