"Then… are we still friends?"
Faced with Chen Hui-jie's question, Su Yi replied, "If you want to be my girlfriend, I'm not exactly opposed."
"In your dreams!" Chen Hui-jie shot him a look. Seeing that everything that needed doing was done, she stood and paid the bill.
Before leaving, she said, "From now on, I won't try to poach you into the Guard Department. But when I need you—will you come help me?"
"Of course," Su Yi said.
With the answer she wanted, Chen Hui-jie left the dumpling shop, satisfied.
"Will a single order of dumplings fill you up?" the owner sidled over, making conversation.
"Of course… not," Su Yi admitted. "But Hui-jie donates all her money to poor kids. I'd feel bad ordering more."
Ten pan-fried dumplings could pad his stomach, sure, but he'd be starving again once he got home.
"I'll give you a bowl of ramen too," the owner said generously. "The ingredients get tossed if they sit overnight anyway."
"Thanks, boss. Wishing you booming business, immortality, and eternal life—never dying, ever!" Su Yi tossed out auspicious words like a professional.
"Come to think of it," the owner said while kneading dough, "this might be the first time Little Chen has ever brought a guy here to eat."
Su Yi laughed. "She could eat somewhere else and you wouldn't even know."
The owner shook his head. "Not the same. Since elementary school, she's eaten here—right up to now. Aside from those years she studied in Victoria, she never stopped coming. Over a decade. You're the first."
"Oh?" Su Yi hadn't expected Chen Hui-jie to be so attached to this old, shabby dumpling place.
"Yeah—and I can tell, too," the owner urged. "She's got that kind of interest in you. Kid, you'd better seize the chance. In Lungmen, single high-quality women like her aren't common."
"I'm still young," Su Yi declined politely. "I want to have fun for a couple more years. Not thinking about that yet."
"No harm in seeing each other more," the owner said.
He brought over the ramen. The meat piled so high it nearly formed a mound—enough for certain instant noodle companies to stretch for a whole year.
…
…
Elsewhere.
Chen Hui-jie drove to the place Su Yi's marker had struck.
It was a nightclub—legitimate on the surface, paying taxes in full—but once the Guard Department opened a major investigation, they discovered it was running forced prostitution, organized sex trafficking, and selling hallucinogenic drugs under the table.
So when Chen Hui-jie arrived, her Special Inspector Unit had already sealed off the entire building and rescued all the women trapped inside.
An officer approached, saluted, and reported, "Commander Chen—searched the place. Nothing found."
"Search again," Chen Hui-jie ordered. "It won't be as simple as it looks."
After two encounters, she'd learned how slippery their opponent was. The nightclub might just be bait—a decoy set out to absorb the Guard Department's attention.
She had her people keep sweeping, but she didn't sit idle. She decided to start with the rescued women and see if any of them could give her a new angle.
"Miss Snow Finch? Why are you here?" Chen Hui-jie spotted a red-and-white Liberi girl in the crowd, and her profile immediately surfaced in her mind.
Snow Finch. Lungmen native. Poor background. Had once gone to Columbia to work in research. Later returned to Lungmen through a talent recruitment program due to financial difficulties.
She had even submitted a resume to the Guard Department before—her patched-up clothing had left a strong impression on the Chen Hui-jie who'd conducted that interview.
"I—I don't know," Snow Finch said, timid and unsettled. "They said they'd give me a job and I'd be able to eat my fill, so I came."
"A job? What job?" Chen Hui-jie asked.
What kind of job could a nightclub offer a researcher?
"Something in biotech, I think… I don't really understand it," Snow Finch said. Her eyes shone with a clear, guileless stupidity—and a grain of rice still clung to the corner of her mouth. "But I can fix instruments, so they brought me in."
Chen Hui-jie was speechless.
Someone offers you a job and you don't even check the background? Thank goodness the Guard Department got here in time, otherwise tonight you would've—
Wait. Biotech?!
There it was.
A breakthrough.
…
…
After finishing his ramen in blissful satisfaction, Su Yi drove home, the owner's earlier words drifting back into his head.
Superintendent Chen likes me?
For real?
They'd only known each other a few days… but the feeling wasn't bad at all. Fresh. Delicious, even.
After all, in his previous life—as a civil engineering upperclassman—Su Yi had never once been liked by anyone.
Sure, Hui-jie kept trying to drag him into the Guard Department to be a "nuclear-powered donkey," and her temper could be explosive, but she was undeniably pretty, with a great figure—no worse than Texas.
If something could develop between them, Su Yi had no reason to refuse.
Now: fantasy time.JPG
Just as he was imagining the future, a machete suddenly flew out from an alley on the roadside.
"Again," Su Yi muttered.
He slammed the brakes, grabbed his revolver, jumped out, and sprinted straight for the alley.
"You're not worthy of being a Siracusan, Texas!"
"Aah—!"
"Together—move! You flank from behind, I'll suppress from the front!"
"No—can't win at all! We should retreat!"
In Siracusa, there were families still searching and waiting for Texas… and families who wanted her bloodline erased forever.
Her past chased her like a shadow, tangling around her—but she'd never told her Penguin Logistics coworkers.
If she could, she wanted it to be like this every time: go out alone and eliminate every problem herself.
The alley quickly fell silent.
Only the pained groans of Siracusans remained.
Texas stood rigid, twin swords in hand. For a moment, that slaughterous, cold-blooded female assassin—whose name once terrified countless Siracusans—seemed to return.
"How long are you going to watch?" she asked.
She reached into her pocket. The Pocky box was empty, and she felt a little irritated.
"Haha… I meant to help," Su Yi said awkwardly as he walked in, looking at the Lupus sprawled across the ground. "But I just got here and you'd already finished. Want someone to clean this up? I can contact Superintendent Chen."
"Do whatever you want," Texas said.
She tossed out the two words and turned to leave.
Suddenly—
A Siracusan lying on the ground, waiting for an opening, seized his chance. He pulled a concealed blade from his sleeve and stabbed for Texas's back.
"Die!"
Su Yi charged in with a brutal shoulder-check, driving him off-balance. Then he flicked off the safety and fired twice.
"Next time you come into my room," Su Yi said, shifting one step without drawing attention, "don't bring receipts in with you."
"Hm?" Texas tilted her head.
"Because without a receipt, you can't 'reimburse' a hug."
It was an accountant pun. Texas didn't get it. She turned and walked out of the alley.
"Hah…"
Su Yi let out a long breath. The smile faded from his face, replaced by a heavy, grim look.
He moved his foot away and stared.
On the ground lay a small knife—sharpened from Originium fragments.
And on the back of his hand, a shallow cut was slowly, steadily oozing bright red blood.
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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