Departure

Hearing Yu Sheng's muttering, Baili Qing's expression turned somewhat odd for a moment, but she said nothing, only continuing to observe the "man" across from her with a trace of curiosity. Whether it was answering a few questions or helping to sort out some small troubles, these were all secondary. The most important thing today was the "contact" itself. She had encountered a great many entities, all kinds of them. She had killed them and banished them. She had conversed with those strange beings that possessed reason, and even worked with them. She had deceived them, and had been deceived by them in turn—but never had any entity, no matter how human it looked, ever sat and talked with her about such things, in a situation like this. This "person" sitting before her even seemed rather interested in becoming a spirit realm detective or an investigator. Setting the thoughts in her mind aside for the moment, Baili Qing broke the silence. "So, you want to..." "Can I register a team?" Yu Sheng looked at Baili Qing with a bit of expectation. "I'm not going it alone over here—there are two others with me." "You mean that doll named Irene, and the 'fox spirit' you brought out of a foreign domain?" At this, Baili Qing suddenly frowned. "But they still don't have legal identities in the boundary zone." "Then how about getting them ID cards first?" Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then immediately blurted out, "Ah—getting them ID cards won't require having a job first, will it? Because then registering a job would need an ID card first, and we'd just be stuck, wouldn't we?" This time Baili Qing was clearly taken aback. "Of course not. Why would you worry about that?" "Oh, that's good, then," Yu Sheng smiled sheepishly. "I was overthinking it." "I'll go arrange it," Baili Qing said, without dwelling on it. She only silently added another entry to the observation report on "Yu Sheng" in her heart—"possesses a certain degree of humor"—then raised her wrist and glanced at her watch. "It's about time." "Ah, you're leaving?" Yu Sheng rose instinctively. "Then my..." "Someone will come to find you soon to handle the necessary registration procedures for you and your two friends," Baili Qing said, standing up. "You'll just need to fill out a few forms. Keep your phone reachable these next couple of days." Yu Sheng: "Oh... oh." Baili Qing nodded, but just before leaving, she seemed to suddenly recall something. "Right, there's one more thing." "What?" "About Nightfall Valley—that foreign domain you encountered before. Have you gone back to check on its situation since?" Yu Sheng looked a little puzzled. "That valley? I haven't been back since... Has something happened to it?" "Precisely because its 'situation is unclear,'" Baili Qing said, shaking her head. "So if your 'door' can still lead there, you might as well go take a look." From Baili Qing's expression, Yu Sheng couldn't read anything useful, but he vaguely felt that... this matter didn't seem to be as casually dismissed as this Director made it out to be. Her deliberately raising it right before leaving seemed more like she was emphasizing something. After a brief moment of confusion and thought, Yu Sheng gave a light nod. He actually didn't want to go back to that eerie valley at all, nor did he have any interest in dealing with "Hunger" again, but from Baili Qing's attitude he realized the valley might have run into trouble beyond just "Entity-Hunger." And in that blink of an eye, the café, stretching endlessly forward and back, quietly collapsed before his gaze. Baili Qing's figure vanished into the ceaselessly crumbling backdrop. In an instant the café returned to its normal appearance, and the various sounds of the real world came back to his ears. Everything seemed like nothing more than a bizarre dream—only the faint trace of perfume lingering in the air could prove that someone really had been here just now. Yu Sheng dazed for a moment, then looked around and found that no one seemed to have noticed anything unusual over here. Little Red Riding Hood's thick stack of test papers still lay quietly spread on the table, waiting for him to keep working. "She really does come and go just as she pleases..." Yu Sheng shook his head and muttered to himself, then sat back down, ready to go on doing homework for the high schooler. But this time, he simply couldn't settle his mind. The many things from that conversation with the "Special Affairs Bureau Director" spun round and round in his head like an uncontrollable whirlpool. A great deal of brand-new knowledge about this world churned restlessly, and mixed in among it were all sorts of hopes and imaginings about the future and the distant lands. He felt he hadn't felt this way—heart full of anticipation, yet a little nervous about tomorrow—in many, many years. On top of that, there was the matter Baili Qing had deliberately raised before leaving—Nightfall Valley. What had happened to that valley? Just then, a voice suddenly came from not far away, cutting off Yu Sheng's thoughts. "We're back!" Little Red Riding Hood's voice sounded very cheerful. "Yu Sheng, how much have you written?" Yu Sheng immediately looked up at the voice, and the first thing he saw was the black-haired girl standing beside Little Red Riding Hood. It was Hu Li, in her new clothes. The weather had turned cool, so Little Red Riding Hood had simply bought her an outfit—a warm white coat and a cotton dress. The clothes themselves were actually quite plain, yet they suited Hu Li unexpectedly well. The plush fabric at the collar of the top, which served both as decoration and as a windbreak, even called to mind Hu Li's own furry ears and tail—all of the same silver-white color, elegant with just a touch of softness. The fox girl stood there a little stiffly, her expression somewhat blank. She seemed not yet used to the feeling of wearing well-fitting clothes, or perhaps she had wandered for so long in a place full of strangers and still hadn't quite recovered. It was only when Yu Sheng waved at her that she blinked as if startled awake and hurried over with several large shopping bags in hand. "Thank you... Yu Sheng," Hu Li stood nervously on the other side of the table, at least remembering to call Yu Sheng by his name in a place with so many strangers. "New clothes. Very fitting." "Yeah, they look great," Yu Sheng said with a smile. He could tell the girl was happy, but his gaze fell to her skirt. "It's cooled down these past couple of days. Aren't you cold in that outfit?" "I've got long johns on underneath," Little Red Riding Hood said, sitting down right beside Yu Sheng and craning over to look at the table. "Let me see how much you've written... uh, doesn't look like much, does it?" "Something unexpected came up earlier and held me up for a good while," Yu Sheng said, rubbing his nose a bit awkwardly, then immediately looked at Hu Li and Little Red Riding Hood in curiosity. "Wait—where's Irene?" "Oh, right here!" Hu Li caught on at once, reaching down to lift a large shopping bag off the floor and show him. "We bought too much stuff in the middle, so I couldn't hold her anymore. I just put her in the bag." Yu Sheng leaned in and saw the little doll lying inside the shopping bag—Irene lay on a pile of clothes, her eyes having lost their highlight, and the whole bag was filled with the doll's resentment. The resentment was so thick the tote bag was practically turning into a cursed object. "Are you okay?" Yu Sheng craned his head over and asked in his heart. The little doll: "As if I'm okay! Get me out of here! I stared at the ceiling the whole way through the mall, and now that I'm out I'm still staring at the ceiling! Little Red Riding Hood's leftover drink got dumped in the bag too! The snacks they bought got dumped in the bag too! At one point I even fell all the way to the bottom and they didn't notice! I've been protesting the whole way, and this silly fox got so dizzy from shopping she wouldn't pay me any attention!" Yu Sheng quickly reached out and plucked the furiously resentful little miss doll out of the shopping bag, setting her on a nearby chair and soothing her at length in his heart. Little Red Riding Hood, meanwhile, casually flipped through her homework and turned her head to look at Yu Sheng with some curiosity. "What accident did you run into?" Yu Sheng didn't hide it, only lowering his voice. "A woman suddenly came looking for me. She said her name is Baili Qing, and that she's the director of the Special Affairs Bureau." Little Red Riding Hood, who was flipping through the math test papers, froze on the spot, and only after two or three seconds did she stiffly turn her head. "...Huh?" Yu Sheng glanced around and whispered to her. "Is that really so surprising?" "The Director! Baili Qing! That big shot!" Even Little Red Riding Hood's voice had gone a little off, though she didn't dare speak loudly for fear of drawing attention. "No, I mean—why would she suddenly come out and come find you in person?! She..." Little Red Riding Hood paused, her expression suddenly turning a bit nervous. "She doesn't think you're a dangerous element and came to deal with you herself, does she?" Probably because she'd spent a good half-day wandering the mall with Hu Li, she now seemed much more familiar with Yu Sheng when she spoke, unlike the obvious nervousness and caution she'd shown when they first met. Yu Sheng didn't pay any mind to this shift in her attitude. He just recalled the course of his conversation with Baili Qing and shook his head. "Not that. She just came to check in with me on the situation. She asked me a few questions, and I asked her a whole pile of questions—I feel like she's actually pretty easy to talk to." Little Red Riding Hood's face went blank, and she half doubted her own hearing— Baili Qing? Easy to talk to? The way those two words went together was really novel. At the headquarters of the Special Affairs Bureau, in a certain office, a pale humanoid outline abruptly appeared behind the desk amid a collapse and distortion of light and shadow. Then the pale outline swiftly took shape and was given a faint wash of color, becoming the figure of Baili Qing. She sat quietly behind the desk, motionless for a long while, as if sunk in thought. After who knew how long, she suddenly raised her head and reached out to press a button on the desk. "Notify Song Cheng of the Second Division, and Luo Zheng of the Confidential Affairs Management Office. Come to my office at once."