"I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding between us. You must have made a mistake, but don't worry, my lips are completely sealed... I just remembered I left the gas stove on at home, so I'll go back and check on that, haha!"
Originally, Fang Xiaoxia had intended to deliver this entire speech smoothly in one breath... but even as an eight-hundred-word essay scrolled through her mind, not a single word would cross her lips.
*Useless mouth! Speak, you stupid mouth, speak!*
*It's over!* Of all times, her social anxiety had to flare up now, and combined with her sheer terror of this strange, dangerous intruder, her vocal cords had gone completely on strike!
Right now, Fang Xiaoxia wanted nothing more than to crawl into a trash can and hide.
"I—I—I..."
Under Bai Zhou's steady gaze, Fang Xiaoxia's brain completely crashed, and her face flushed crimson.
Fortunately, after much wheezing and sputtering, she finally managed to force some sounds out:
"I, uh, mis—wrong—sure tight-lips... stove back check haha!"
Bai Zhou: "?"
Fang Xiaoxia herself: "?"
*What on earth am I saying?!*
In her mind, Fang Xiaoxia had transformed into the figure from *The Scream*, standing on a bridge with her hands clutching her cheeks. She desperately wished she could knock herself unconscious for spouting such gibberish, yet she was too afraid of the pain to actually hit herself.
To her utter astonishment, however, the expression on the boy's face gradually shifted into one of profound realization.
*No way... he didn't actually understand that, did he...?*
Even Fang Xiaoxia found it hard to believe anyone could decipher her garbled "Fang-speak."
Then, she heard Bai Zhou say:
"Fine verse, fine verse."
"—So, you're a rapper!"
"Rua... huh?" Fang Xiaoxia blinked in bewilderment.
Bai Zhou, however, understood completely.
This phenomenon had also been recorded in the *Eight Thousand Questions of Naughty Black Cat*.
It was likely a unique specialty of Blue Star; he had never seen it back in Wancheng. It seemed to be called... freestyle, improvised rap!
Although he could not fathom what she was trying to express in the slightest, Bai Zhou chose to respect cultural diversity and honor her personal hobby.
Taking Fang Xiaoyan's entrustment into account, he even decided to offer some encouragement:
"Quite an eclectic interest."
"Still... do you mean you don't intend to accept these?"
Bai Zhou pointed again at the gold luxury watches scattered on the floor.
Fang Xiaoxia nodded frantically, her single ponytail bobbing up and down like a bouncing kangaroo.
"Is it not enough, or...?"
Fang Xiaoxia shook her head even faster, moving quicker than a whirlwind this time.
*Quite the backbone! Completely incorruptible, aren't you...* Bai Zhou sighed inwardly.
His gaze shifted as he suddenly recalled the framed memorial photograph of the elderly couple resting on the living room table. Enlightenment seemed to dawn on him:
"This apartment holds special meaning for you, doesn't it?"
Fang Xiaoxia's eyes lit up, and she nodded vigorously. "Mmh, mmh, mmh!"
*Could this vicious bandit actually have a sensitive side?*
"I see... I apologize for intruding."
Understanding settled in Bai Zhou's chest. With a sigh of resignation, he gathered up the gold watches from the floor and stuffed handfuls of them into his coat.
"Since that's how it is, I'll just have to find another way."
Speaking in a low, somber voice, the youth untied his apron and slowly stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and Fang Xiaoxia.
"?"
This movement instantly struck a raw nerve in the frightened girl:
"Y-Y-Y-You... don't come any closer!"
Whipping out her phone, she mustered every ounce of courage she possessed to yell, shrinking trembling into the corner of the wall:
"If you... I-I-I-I... I'll call the police!"
She issued her terrifying warning.
At this moment, Fang Xiaoxia cursed the single-unit-per-floor layout with every fiber of her being. If only she had a neighbor, she wouldn't feel so helpless.
Yet Bai Zhou's steps carried him past her, turning a corner and heading straight toward the window on the far side.
"You-this, me-that... I don't follow, but don't worry."
"I'll see myself out."
*Creak!*
The window swung open. The outside wind blew in, carrying a swirling drizzle that instantly chased away the room's quiet warmth.
Bai Zhou's figure stepped up onto the windowsill.
"?!"
This sudden, inexplicable move made Fang Xiaoxia's heart lurch. She cried out instinctively in a crisp, alarmed voice:
"Hey! What are you doing?!"
*Wait, he wasn't going to do anything to me—is he jumping...?!*
*Why, though? What reason could he possibly have? Just because I wouldn't take your money?!*
*Telling you to go didn't mean to go like that...!*
Most people possessed an instinct to mind their own business, but human beings had an even deeper instinct: a revulsion against watching a life vanish right before their eyes.
A strange panic seized Fang Xiaoxia. She stood up and crept two tentative steps toward Bai Zhou, wanting to talk him down, but words still failed her stammering tongue.
"Me?"
The youth perched on the windowsill looked back, blinking twice at her.
Confronted by Fang Xiaoxia's distress, he found it equally baffling and replied as though it were the most natural thing in the world:
"Going downstairs. What else?"
*Downstairs? Like that?!*
Fang Xiaoxia was utterly dumbfounded.
*Mister, this is the fifth floor!*
*Is there something wrong with your head...?!*
The drizzle of the early morning grew steadily heavier. Though the drops were small, the fine, dense rain was easily swept into the living room by the wind.
The curtains billowed. Raindrops splattered across Fang Xiaoxia's cheeks, their sharp chill reminding her that none of this was a dream—yet somehow, an unexpected detail was hurtling off the rails, veering in a direction far more absurd than any nightmare.
"Oh, right. Someone asked me to pass along a message to you," Bai Zhou suddenly said.
"What?" Fang Xiaoxia was naturally baffled.
*Do I even know you? Who would ask you to pass a message to me?*
*Don't underestimate me! I'm the 'Aloof Xia'—I don't have a single friend, and nobody cares about me at all!*
"It might sound completely random coming from me like this."
Bai Zhou scratched his head as if recalling something, his gaze lowering slightly.
"Still, someone wanted to tell you... the 'All-Powerful Class President' you made up seven years ago while hiding under the blankets and wiping away tears has already won every single battle you were too terrified to fight back then."
The more he spoke, the softer and deeper Bai Zhou's voice became.
"So she hopes you can believe in yourself. She also said: as long as you put your mind to it, there's nothing you can't do!"
The wind fluttered his collar with a faint chill.
Bai Zhou looked back at little Fang, greeted, as expected, by her blank, stupefied expression.
*Here he goes again.*
This mysterious guy always loved spouting incomprehensible, cool-sounding lines.
Yet this time, Fang Xiaoxia froze completely in place, her eyes blinking repeatedly.
"Class President...?"
"Nothing I can't do..."
A long-buried memory finally stirred from the deepest recesses of Fang Xiaoxia's mind.
There really had been something like that... but how did he know about it?!
*Did he really know her? Or was the person who asked him to deliver the message someone close to her?*
*And what did those cryptic words even mean?*
A thousand questions flooded Fang Xiaoxia's heart all at once, and for reasons she could not explain, her chest suddenly twinged with an inexplicable ache.
The last time was during class in the classroom. The exact same thing had happened: she had suddenly felt as if she had lost someone profoundly important, and before she knew it, tears had streamed down her face, terrifying her teacher...
"Who are you? And who is she?"
Fang Xiaoxia pressed urgently, but all she saw was the man on the windowsill raising a single finger to his lips:
"Shh—"
As the whisper fell, a strange, intangible presence seemed to settle over Fang Xiaoxia's head.
She blinked twice, patting herself all over, but could not decipher where that peculiar sensation had come from.
*Was she just being overly sensitive...?*
"Until next time."
Bai Zhou narrowed his eyes and gave her a lingering look.
"This wasn't our first meeting, but I have a feeling it won't be our last, either."
Leaving behind those parting words, Bai Zhou turned around.
The youth's silhouette seemed to merge into the dark, rain-swept night outside. The faint contour of his profile was blurred by the drifting mist as he stood quietly, gazing down at the deserted, silent street below.
Through the frame of his silhouette, a few faint neon lights flickered in the distance. From Fang Xiaoxia's vantage point, those shimmering specks of light looked as though they were balanced squarely upon his shoulders.
His dashing figure radiated an extraordinary mystery, strangely evoking the quiet moonlight of a deep night...
—Provided one ignored his exposed back and thighs.
To be fair, the ragged tear across the back of his outfit revealing a vivid, lifelike wolf tattoo only made Fang Xiaoxia regard the youth's origins with greater awe and wild speculation.
Just moments ago, she had been paralyzed with terror.
Now, watching his back framed against the rainy night on the windowsill, she felt only that he was shrouded in mist—a mist that seemed tied to her by some unknown, mysterious thread.
An intense curiosity and desire to investigate welled up naturally within little Fang, even though she knew full well that probing into this would likely be dangerous and forbidden...
It was a truly bizarre, contradictory feeling.
Yet when all those impressions condensed into a gaze lingering on the figure that seemed ready to drift away with the wind, Fang Xiaoxia suddenly sensed something from him that was deeply familiar, yet subtly distinct.
...Loneliness.
For some reason, the silhouette of the youth standing alone on the rainy windowsill, looking as if he might leap down at any moment, seemed... terribly lonely. Terribly sad.
That sorrow was concealed with meticulous care, yet little Fang was all too acquainted with the feeling. Perhaps kindred spirits were simply more sensitive to it.
He seemed like a child abandoned by the entire world, possessing an exhausted soul weathered by countless storms—homeless, with nowhere to hide, unable to find even a modest sanctuary to lick his wounds.
Recalling how diligently Bai Zhou had swept the room in an apron just minutes ago, Fang Xiaoxia suddenly felt a pang of guilt...
She felt as though she had done something wrong.
A reckless impulse running entirely counter to reason rose within her, nearly driving her to say that he could stay after all, and that they could discuss the rent later...
Before she could untangle the conflict in her heart, however, the figure facing away waved a hand at her without looking back.
"I'm off," he said.
Then, bending his knees slightly, the youth leapt down from the fifth-floor window.
"Hey! Don't—!"
The girl cried out in utter horror.
All thought evaporated; Fang Xiaoxia's sole instinct was to save him.
Scrambling and stumbling, she dashed over to the window and thrust out her hands, awkwardly trying to grab hold of something.
Yet, like monkeys scooping at the moon's reflection in water, her reaching fingers grasped only empty air—
When her vision cleared, the girl's pupils contracted violently, and she even forgot to breathe.
*Pitter-patter...*
Outside, the rain fell in a steady whisper; inside, dead silence reigned.
The fine drizzle soaked Fang Xiaoxia's head as she leaned desperately out the window, but she seemed completely numb to it.
Her mind was a blank void; her ears could register no sound.
For as she stared down at the street below, the dim yellow streetlights illuminated an entirely empty pavement.
The night was deep, the surroundings dead silent. Slanted sheets of dense drizzle pierced through the light, sending ripples across the wet ground.
—The man who had leapt from the fifth floor had vanished without a trace.
"...Where did he go?!"
Leaning against the window frame and staring down, heedless of the windowsill's grime staining the front of her school uniform, the wide-eyed girl murmured blankly.
*Thump-thump! Thump-thump!*
Her brain had ceased to function, but her heart pounded relentlessly.
*Who on earth... was that man?*
Turning back in a daze, the girl surveyed the clean, tidy interior.
The floor that had gathered dust for years was spotless, while every piece of furniture remained in its original place.
Only the broom leaning in the corner and the folded apron proved that the bizarre scene from moments ago had not been a dream.
*Did he break in here just to wait for me, only to deliver those strange, meaningful words?*
He seemed connected to her somehow. The way he looked at her was as if he were seeing an old acquaintance, yet at times Fang Xiaoxia felt he was looking truly at her...
And yet, she didn't even know his name.
Lost in thought, Fang Xiaoxia could not help but remember the "All-Powerful Class President" he had mentioned.
That really had been a discarded childhood dream of hers, a kindergarten assignment she had never managed to hand in to the teacher...
*!*
As the thoughts churned, that familiar ache gripped her heart once more.
In a trance, a wave of warmth seemed to envelop her, as though someone were gently embracing her from behind.
The warmth was so wonderful, so precious, that Fang Xiaoxia—having never experienced anything like it—felt an overwhelming longing, wishing it would never end.
Yet the sensation vanished as abruptly as it had arrived, disappearing into nothingness without leaving the faintest trace behind.
"What was that?"
"It felt like someone truly important... but why would I forget?"
Clutching her chest, the girl looked even more bewildered.
Could that boy, who appeared and vanished like a ghost, really be someone dear to her whom she had forgotten?
Was that even possible?
"...Huh?"
Uttering a soft gasp, Fang Xiaoxia raised a hand to touch her cheek.
A glistening drop of water rested on her pale fingertip—yet it was not rain.
"Why...?"
Without her realizing, silently and inexplicably, tears were streaming down her face.
***
A wounded black cat walked alone down the desolate, long street.
*I need to find somewhere to get out of the rain fast and make the most of my time recovering from these injuries.*
With his grand plan to rent a place dashed, Bai Zhou muttered quietly to himself.
*There's a mountain of things to do tomorrow. If I don't rest up and get into peak condition, I'll be in trouble.*
The Major's nightly pursuit at 23:00 had already become routine, a minor inconvenience.
By contrast, tomorrow night at 24:00 in the Reflected Ruin Realm—the collective assault by numerous Extraordinaries on Yuanmeng Middle School—that would be the real spectacle.
Bai Zhou, the wanted criminal who was both an unknown phantom and a household name—
Was about to make his public debut for the very first time.
Just then, the black ribbon atop the black cat's head slipped free, spiraling up into the rainy night air.
Her toes sending ripples through the empty air, Crow appeared above Bai Zhou, her trench coat billowing and her expression solemn:
"That girl you just met... there seems to be something off about her!"
"She's an ordinary person, true, but I sensed the influence of mysticism on her."
"An Extraordinary might be keeping tabs on her!"
Faced with Crow's warning, Bai Zhou nodded calmly, as if he had anticipated it all along.
"Yeah. Just as I thought."
Bai Zhou had suspected as much long before Crow had.
After all, between the dying words on the graduation photograph and Fang Xiaoyan's very existence, the signs had pointed to it long ago.
"Didn't you see me set up a ritual on her?"
Reverting to human form in the shadowy alley, the rain-soaked Bai Zhou crouched on the wall at the end of the lane, turning his head to gaze toward the fifth-floor window of the distant apartment building, where the light remained stubbornly on.
Then, he whispered softly in answer to Crow's question:
"I have a feeling."
"Our next meeting with her won't be too far off."
Chapter 113