Early autumn in Tinghai City was always cloaked in an endless drizzle.
Whenever this fickle, overcast season arrived, the citizens' moods inevitably soured. Complaints about the weather were constant, often escalating into outright curses.
Yet this year was different.
A ceaseless string of explosions in Tinghai had stretched every resident's nerves to their absolute breaking point.
Today an explosion rocked the North District; tomorrow, another tore through the West District. No one knew if the next blast would detonate right beside them.
Although the news had issued official rebuttals claiming each incident was merely a biogas leak, the explosions were simply too frequent.
Such unnatural occurrences plunged the entire city into anxiety and dread, fueling a wild proliferation of rumors and gossip.
Some claimed a band of barbarian vagrants had swept in from the Western Federation; others asserted that a deranged, mad scientist from Tinghai University was behind it all; still others swore it was psychic espers locked in fierce beam duels.
There were even those who vowed on their lives that they had seen extraterrestrials—an alien army poised to enslave humanity, intent on inflicting the horrific cruelty of a mandatory five-day workweek, eight hours a day, just to make mankind truly feel the terror of subjugation.
...In short, it seemed those passionately arguing on the internet would rather hammer away at their keyboards peddling absurd conspiracy theories than place any faith in the official statements, no matter how clearly substantiated with evidence.
Was this a form of wisdom, or a kind of sheer stubbornness?
Still, one could hardly blame them; word had it the Senate hotline had been inundated with so many calls that reaching an operator was completely impossible.
In these turbulent, precarious days, everyone lived on edge. Even students walking to and from school were suddenly flanked by escorts of hovering parents.
For a marginalized girl like Fang Xiaoxia, who felt not the slightest sense of belonging anywhere—a loner whom no teacher cared about and who had no friends to walk with—the days felt even more fraught with perpetual panic...
That night, at 23:40, the wind and rain raged.
A rainy night tinged with the briny bite of sea wind steadily corroded the neon-flickering architecture, while darkness swallowed the city's scattered pockets of light one by one.
Under the glare of an incandescent bulb, a girl wearing Paul Frank monkey pajamas curled her slender legs beneath her on a small bed crowded with plush dolls. Beside her lay a half-read, hardcover edition of *Vasilisa the Beautiful*.
The pages were yellowed and the corners worn and faded, proof enough that she had read it countless times.
It was a famous fairy tale about Vasilisa, a young girl mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, who, with the help of a magical doll left behind by her late mother, ventured into the dark forest and embarked on a wondrous adventure that reshaped her destiny.
Along with a certain book about *The Boy Who Lived*, it was Fang Xiaoxia's favorite story, read over and over again.
"Are you done yet?!"
"What are you shouting for?!"
"That wasn't what I meant..."
"..."
A bitter quarrel bled through the poorly insulated walls. First came her mother's nagging, swiftly followed by her father's furious roar.
Here it came again. Shouting, screaming, and before long, someone would be in tears.
People who supposedly loved each other hurling insults and fighting, even over something as trivial as a bottle of soy sauce.
This was the daily reality Fang Xiaoxia knew best.
The shouting rose and fell like ocean waves, dragging her heart through anxious crests and troughs.
Driven to wit's end by the racket, she crept carefully out of her bedroom and paused in the dim living room.
The fierce argument poured from her parents' bedroom. She wanted to push the door open and say something, but in the end, she couldn't summon the courage.
At times she wanted to flee this family, yet most of the time she didn't dare to.
It was a contradiction: occasionally, she felt like she was the only mature adult in the household, the lone thread holding the family together and keeping it from capsizing.
She didn't dare imagine what unsettling disaster might unfold if her parents slipped from her sight for too long.
Yet at the same time, she was merely a child. When the pressure grew unbearable, she zoned out; when confronted with misery, her instinct was to run.
Seeing that this drawn-out argument had only just begun, she quietly slipped back into her room. With a rustle of fabric, she shed her pajamas and changed into the school uniform she was supposed to wear tomorrow.
*Creak!*
Her heart pounding as though it might burst from her ribcage, the furtive girl pulled her bedroom door shut, grabbed her keys, and slipped out of the apartment.
Whenever this happened, she felt as though the home didn't belong to her at all, and she longed to escape to a quiet place where she could be completely alone.
Fortunately, she actually possessed such a "secret base"...
Indeed.
Though Fang Xiaoxia's life was a complete failure, she was secretly a "wealthy woman."
Eighteen years old, and a property owner!
Before stepping outside, she cast one last lingering glance at her parents' bedroom, where the shouting still raged.
It was as if merely shutting that door granted them the peace of mind to bellow the vilest words at the top of their lungs, convinced their child couldn't hear a thing.
Still...
"It's fine."
Whispering to herself, Fang Xiaoxia tried to rally her spirits.
It was no big deal. She should have gotten used to it long ago.
Her mother would inevitably lose control of her emotions, her father would invariably shout his rebuttals, and Fang Xiaoxia, practically nonexistent in this home, would look on... but this was simply how their family functioned.
In a few hours, someone would apologize—*I'm sorry, please forgive me*—and affection and familial warmth would rekindle in their eyes, just as it had extinguished and reignited countless times before.
By tomorrow morning, they would laugh heartily over funny gossip about neighbors and coworkers, as if nothing had ever happened.
It was as though they forgot everything, as if not a ripple had disturbed their lives, while only Fang Xiaoxia, constantly jolted awake, remembered every fragile, agonizing midnight.
Yet Fang Xiaoxia didn't hold it against them, because she knew that as long as the family faced their problems together, everything could be resolved.
Arguments were just a way to solve problems, and no problem was insurmountable.
Because of love.
It was all done out of love. Her parents always told her not to worry; because they loved Fang Xiaoxia, this family was unbreakable.
And Fang Xiaoxia, of course, loved her parents.
So, "It's fine."
Saying so, Fang Xiaoxia clenched her small fists, pumping herself up.
By the time she returned, everything would be good again.
Then, with a faint click, the mouse-like girl quietly closed the front door behind her.
...
*Pitter-patter, pitter-patter...*
Holding a bright green umbrella printed with the leek-spinning girl, with fine rain drumming against the canopy, the solitary girl walked down the dark street at one in the morning.
The endless night echoed with the steady dripping of rain. Far off in the distance, neon signs flickered like specks of fire; closer by, puddles on the pavement mirrored their glimmers, while the space between hung in deep, heavy darkness.
The brightest and darkest things flourished unchecked through the long night, sparking both dread and runaway imagination.
*Splash, splash...*
Bored, the girl kicked at puddles, uncaring that the cuffs of her trousers were soaked through.
It felt as though she had never truly grown up, and no one had ever taught her what growing up even meant.
Every day after school, other students were either picked up by their parents or walked together in noisy clusters. Only she swayed along on her own, heading home in solitude.
The only entertainment she could muster for herself was kicking pebbles on sunny days and splashing in puddles on rainy ones. Her classmates envied her carefree silhouette, imagining she was completely free to kick stones wherever her heart desired.
Yet that sort of freedom was actually the greatest lack of freedom. When a person was thoroughly bored, there was nowhere they could go, and nowhere they truly wished to go.
Just like other students' essays about rainy nights, which always featured "Mother carrying me on her back to the hospital through a raging fever."
Fang Xiaoxia's essays, by contrast, were breezy and detached: her rainy nights were nothing but kicking puddles, tossing pebbles, and strolling under an umbrella—less like a student and more like some delinquent street-drifter joyriding on a cheap moped...
And every single one of those essays received a failing grade.
Everyone said, "I'm so jealous of Fang Xiaoxia; her parents don't meddle with her at all." But in truth, Fang Xiaoxia was the one who ought to envy them.
Her parents didn't ignore her; if anything, the opposite was true—they seemed to harbor an abnormal need to control her.
Yet they never picked her up or dropped her off at school, never checked her homework, and certainly never took her out to the movies on weekends like other parents did.
Lunch and dinner were handled at school, while for breakfast they handed her pocket money to buy food on her own, claiming it granted her freedom.
Yet a "lifestyle" of freedom and an autonomous "life" were not the same thing.
Whether it was schooling, moving houses, or anything of significance, her parents invariably made high-handed decisions for her at crucial junctures. Only when it crossed their minds would they casually ask about her grades, nag for half an hour, and leave once their lecture was spent.
It was as if fulfilling those superficial motions satisfied their parental obligations, and whatever Fang Xiaoxia became thereafter was entirely her own fault.
Meddling with her life in the name of love, abandoning her daily living in the name of freedom—her parents acted like superheroes forever busy saving the world, and thus neglected to care for Fang Xiaoxia.
Yet they had to love her. Fang Xiaoxia was certain of that.
After all, they never stopped repeating it, and they could hardly bear to utter a single harsh word to her face.
As slack and invisible as Fang Xiaoxia was at school, she was twice as mature at home, whether washing dishes or obediently yielding to her parents' wishes.
So Fang Xiaoxia didn't actually harbor deep resentment toward her family or her parents. She had long grown accustomed to the way things had been for over a decade. An adolescent girl simply...
She simply had plenty of petty grievances she yearned to share.
Just like right now, Fang Xiaoxia desperately wished a friend would make a dazzling entrance, embrace her, and listen to her pour her heart out.
Even just a single friend would do. Fang Xiaoxia would gladly hold out her piggy bank with both hands and offer up every cent of pocket money she had scraped together since childhood to this "Lord Friend."
Regrettably, she didn't have even that one friend.
Actually, she might have had one once—a pitiful, adorable little black kitten. When she had found the injured stray huddled alone behind a dumpster, she felt as if she were looking at herself hiding in the trash.
But she had lost the little black cat.
Maybe she shouldn't have fallen asleep that night, and certainly shouldn't have slept with the window open... An injured kitten in an unfamiliar environment was bound to be skittish; how could she have forgotten that?
It was all her fault!
Whenever she thought of this, Fang Xiaoxia still felt a pang of dejection, even now.
If the kitten were still around, she wouldn't have had to come out at all. She could have just bundled up beneath the blankets, held the cat close, and whispered her secrets into its fur.
Still... what could she have said?
She was clearly used to all of this, so why had she felt so inexplicably anxious lately?
It was like walking across the center of a frozen lake in early winter, hearing the faint cracking beneath her boots from time to time—wanting to run, yet having no idea which way to go, left only to wait for the ice to collapse at any moment.
Or like a house perched on a fragile hillside: once the soil grew heavy with rainwater, a landslide would inevitably sweep the entire structure into a bottomless abyss.
Where did this phantom dread and unease come from?
Was it the arguments at home, or the pervasive dread cast over the city by the unexplained bombings?
Just like a few afternoons ago, during the final class of the day: a sudden, hollow ache of loss had struck her, as though she had lost a family member. The gaping void in her chest had driven her to sprint home faster than she ever had in her life.
In the end, the girl had chalked it all up to the wild daydreams of adolescence.
Just as she often fantasized that the stray black cat she had taken in would be like the pet owl of the Boy Who Lived, bringing her an acceptance letter to a magic academy in its beak and declaring that she was the chosen savior.
She also fantasized that her Paul Frank monkey doll would suddenly start talking, leading her away like Vasilisa or Dorothy into a fantastical realm beyond the grasp of dull adults, launching an incredible adventure that would transform her life.
Everyone had fantasies like that, right? Fang Xiaoxia had even fleshed out every detail of hers.
She dreamed that one day, a horde of black-clad warriors would burst in to capture her, but at the critical moment, Superman would drop from the sky, declare that the world was facing an apocalypse, and she would reluctantly follow her boy on an epic quest to save the world.
There had to be witnesses, of course. Then, before the crowd, she would buckle on her transformation belt, dissolve into light, and as a magical girl wielding the Plasma Spark, transform before the terrified school to save the world!
Just imagine: wouldn't the eyes of all those students who never spoke to her pop right out of their heads?
...Yet she knew all too well that in reality, dolls didn't speak, stray cats didn't carry letters of acceptance to magic academies, and no masked magical prince would sweep her off to a wonderland.
Blue Star had never possessed such a world. There were no Supermen, no magic, and certainly no grand adventures—only ordinary wage-slave mortals grinding from nine to nine, battling daily life.
Even if such wonders truly existed, they had nothing to do with her. Wake up: you were never the protagonist, and as a background extra, you didn't even deserve a name.
"..."
Sighing, she collapsed her umbrella, shook off the raindrops with a brisk rustle, and entered the stairwell to climb the stairs.
The fifth floor held an apartment left to her—not her parents—by her grandparents. It had later become Fang Xiaoxia's secret base.
Though it contained no television, no computer, and barely any furniture, it was her personal sanctuary, a refuge where she could escape all the clamor of the world.
Heaven only knew how much effort Fang Xiaoxia had expended to prevent the place from being rented out. It was the only time in her entire life she had summoned the courage to rebel.
Whenever the anxieties of school and the petty squabbles of home choked the breath from her lungs, she fled here.
Here, all her emotions could run wild. She could sprawl out on the floor and zone out without a care in the world, flail her limbs to music playing from the speakers, or weep and laugh as loudly as she pleased without minding anyone's judgment.
Her parents insisted that the outside world was full of peril and human hearts were far too complex. Well, fine then—Fang Xiaoxia's greatest talent was "closing doors."
As long as she shut the door of her secret base, she could shut out every bit of noise from the outside world, just like burying her ears at school let her sleep in peace.
—Right up until the Chinese literature textbook she used as a shield failed her, the math teacher called her name, and in a daze, she stood up and began reciting the *Memorial on Deploying the Army*...
*Click!*
Lost in thought, Fang Xiaoxia unlocked the door.
She reached out and flipped the light switch, and the familiar layout of the apartment greeted her eyes.
In the middle of the living room sat a lopsided, secondhand beanbag sofa she had scoured online, while a few taped photos decorated the wall—all arranged by her own hands.
If she opened the bedroom, she would find an old guitar, half a box of vintage manga she hadn't had the heart to throw away, and scratch paper covered in messy sketches... those were all the dreams she had abandoned along the way.
Writing novels, drawing manga, forming a band, playing guitar, traveling the world... all the dreams that would draw mockery if spoken aloud were safely stored away here.
The air still faintly held the aged, musty scent unique to old apartments, giving her the fleeting illusion that her grandparents were still around. She could almost picture her grandfather, hunched in his loose pajamas, shuffling out to ask why she had come so late and whether she had been wronged.
Then her grandmother would carry a steaming bowl of sweet soup from the kitchen, saying gently, *Take your time, child. You don't have to talk if you don't want to.*
Here, she was neither her parents' daughter nor a student at school. She didn't need to rack her brains trying to make friends, nor worry sick about keeping a family together...
Here, she was simply Fang Xiaoxia, shedding every defense, retreating into her shell, and returning to her purest self.
Escapism might be shameful, but it was truly useful...
"W-Wait?"
Mid-thought, as Fang Xiaoxia took in the room, she froze in her tracks.
Her doe-like eyes flew wide. She raised a trembling finger toward the only unfamiliar, uninvited intruder in her familiar apartment—a mysterious figure seemingly clad in nothing but an apron—and choked on her words, unable to speak.
Who in the world is this?!
"What are you doing in my house?!"
A burglar? A robber? I'm done for, done for, done for!
Yet a beat later, he struck her as instantly familiar.
Isn't this... the mysterious, hitman-like trench coat guy I awkwardly bumped into outside the men's restroom at the restaurant?!
After a brief moment of stunned disbelief, the reality seemed to dawn on Fang Xiaoxia, and sheer terror flooded her gaze.
So he's a stalker?! Seriously?! Someone like me could actually be targeted by a stalker?! And what does waiting for me in that getup even mean?!
A flurry of wild assumptions flashed through her mind in an instant. The girl whirled around, trembling, ready to bolt through the door and run for her life.
Yet before she could take a step, the other party raised a broom and barked a stern, righteous interrogation first:
"This is clearly my home! That's my question to you! What are your intentions, barging into my house in the middle of the night?!"
*What?!*
So this was someone else's house?!
The stern, self-righteous shout sent a shiver through the perpetually insecure Fang Xiaoxia, immediately causing her to doubt herself.
That actually made sense. If it wasn't his house, why would he be doing chores? Clearly, she was the one who had walked into the wrong apartment!
I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead!
The girl covered her face in complete mortification, blushing bright red like a cooked shrimp, and bowed repeatedly in frantic apology:
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I went to the wrong door and took the liberty of unlocking your apartment with my key..."
*Took the liberty of unlocking your apartment with my key...*
*Wait?*
Wasn't something slightly off about that?
The girl felt her brain short-circuit; she needed to think this through carefully.
—Wait a second, how could my key open your front door?!
Fang Xiaoxia's eyes snapped wide, and she looked up to scan the room.
No matter how she looked at it, this layout belonged to her apartment! Just who are you?!
I knew it—you're a bad guy in disguise, aren't you?!
"Uh, this... that is..."
Her mind screamed with protests, but out loud, Fang Xiaoxia didn't dare make a peep, stammering timidly without end.
Cold sweat poured down her back.
Her feet shuffled backward, itching to run the second he let his guard down.
Just then, the apron-clad youth tilted his head as if listening intently, his brow furrowing in deep contemplation.
It was as though something invisible in the empty air beside the sofa was speaking to him.
Oh no... is this guy schizophrenic too...?
Fang Xiaoxia's heart pounded with dread.
She was even more terrified now.
Fleeing down the stairwell didn't seem like a winning gamble; he was covered in scars and looked intensely athletic, while she was a total physical weakling.
What to do, what to do, what to do?! How could she placate him? Maybe she should just play along with whatever he said...
Her mind raced through a thousand frantic calculations, yet in reality she couldn't squeak out a single syllable, her face turning crimson from holding her breath.
"Hahaha!"
Then, she watched as the youth scratched his head with an embarrassed, sudden realization, letting out a laugh:
"Ah, sorry about that, my mistake, totally my mistake!"
"So you're... the landlord here, right?"
When uttering the word "landlord," the youth seemed unaccustomed to it, as if encountering the concept for the first time in his life.
He even gave Fang Xiaoxia a nod of solemn respect:
"Quite accomplished for your age. Becoming a landlord so young."
Fang Xiaoxia: "?"
Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about me and the concept of a landlord?
It sounded plausible on the surface, but why did she feel like she couldn't quite follow what he was talking about?
Back outside the French restaurant, the way he spoke had been a little strange in that regard too.
Besides, is this really an issue of landlord and tenant right now?! You're illegally trespassing with malicious intent!
Before Fang Xiaoxia had any more time to complain in her head, however...
Bearing an expression that clearly said *I get what you mean*, he suddenly reached into his clothes and pulled out...
A long, hefty gold chain—24k solid gold—its blinding, pristine brilliance nearly dazzling Fang Xiaoxia's eyes.
Followed by two solid gold bricks.
And then about a dozen... wristwatches strung together, every single one bearing the Patek Philippe logo on its face?!
"?"
What is this guy doing?!
Fang Xiaoxia's pupils dilated, her breath catching in her throat as she stared dumbly at Bai Zhou "displaying his armory," feeling as though she were watching a cannibal from some primitive tribe showing off a necklace strung with human skulls.
No, wait—where did you pull all of that out from?!
How could you possibly hide so much stuff in your clothes?! Are you Doraemon?!
And those luxury watches... why do they have dried blood on them?! That's blood, right? It's definitely blood!
Isn't this literally stolen loot?! Mister, are you really not a hitman?!
Then, as the girl verged on tears, she watched the mysterious hitman youth—still wearing an apron—solemnly arrange this glittering array of gold and jewels onto the floor:
"Renting a place requires rent, right?"
"If I want to stay for a while, or maybe just buy the place outright..."
Bai Zhou looked sincerely into Fang Xiaoxia's eyes, recalling the entrustment Fang Xiaoyan had given him.
If she had "money," maybe Fang Xiaoxia would gain confidence and turn her life around, right?
Killing two birds with one stone, mutually beneficial.
Clinging to such a simple thought, Bai Zhou laid out an insignificant fraction of the loot he had scavenged from corpses in the past, and solemnly asked Fang Xiaoxia:
"Look, is this enough?"
"?"
Fang Xiaoxia's mind went entirely blank.
Enough for what?!
Enough to buy my life?!
At this moment, Bai Zhou's grave, low words sounded completely different to Fang Xiaoxia's ears.
With Fang Xiaoxia's razor-sharp intuition, she understood his underlying meaning with absolute clarity.
He certainly wasn't asking if this was enough for rent.
He was asking...
*Is this enough to keep your mouth shut?*
*—If you don't know what's good for you, I'll have to silence you permanently, you know!*
I knew it... He really is a hitman, isn't he?!
He's mysterious because he's a hitman, injured because he's a hitman, and quietly hiding out here because of it.
Fang Xiaoxia's heart pounded violently, as if it were about to leap out of her chest.
There was fear, but... there was also a jolt of thrill and curiosity.
The sensation was hard to describe. Blood surged through the girl's veins, setting her cheeks blazing hot.
Fang Xiaoxia had long resigned herself to her invisible, failed life of achieving nothing, an ordinary girl fated to drift along with the current through a predictable, dead-end future.
Like a tiny dark cloud drifting across the world on ocean winds, until one day it dissolved into tears of rain and evaporated, never knowing the light of day in her world.
Or so she had believed.
Yet people always harbored fantasies—fantasizing that one day, someone would storm into their world like a whirlwind, shattering the stagnant, placid mediocrity of their lives and whisking them away to behold breathtaking landscapes unlike anything they had ever known.
And so the dark clouds were shattered by lightning, and the gloomy night sky was torn wide open by sudden radiance at this peculiar juncture.
On this rain-drenched night of pervasive dread, a melancholy girl living like life's perennial loser encountered the dazzling, utterly unanticipated entrance of a mysterious youth.
He stood there imposing and fierce; the way he wielded that broom looked as though he had spent years brandishing deadly blades; his body was covered in scars and his clothes in tatters, bearing witness to extraordinary experiences that completely contradicted his age.
Who was he? What had he been through?
This fog-shrouded figure seemed to slowly align with the blurry silhouette she had dreamed of so many times—the one descending from the heavens to carry her far, far away.
Except—
The girl stared at Bai Zhou as if looking at a ghost, swallowing hard as she eyed the glittering heap of gold and wristwatches laid out across the floor like cheap market wares.
Except this guy couldn't be a gold-heist bandit and a luxury-watch robber, could he?!
A super-dangerous criminal! And suspected of being schizophrenic to boot!
The girl's expression looked on the verge of tears, her legs trembling helplessly, looking utterly pitiful.
How come when other people's dark clouds parted, it was all handsome, gorgeous heroes with superpowers arriving in style...?
Yet her life's thrilling turning point was a mentally unhinged gold robber, wearing only an apron while dangling a massive gold chain, who had illegally broken into her apartment, stormed into her home, and solemnly brandished stolen loot demanding to rent her place?!
Isn't this opening...
Way too bizarre, hey?!!!
Chapter 112