This was supposed to be an ordinary, happy Friday night.
At First High School, only the third-year students had weekend study sessions, and Yun You was still a sophomore with more than half a year of complete weekends ahead.
Even though his backpack was stuffed with an overwhelming amount of homework, it was still worth a little celebration.
Yun You felt dizzy from all the homework and decided to clear his mind.
His gaze landed on the whiteboard in front of him, where he had written down several key terms.
On the far left, in bold black ink, were the two characters
“Stone Tablet,” with an arrow extending rightward pointing to “Chimera.”
From Chimera, another arrow pointed right to “Kaos,” but above that arrow was now marked a bright red question mark, with yet another arrow branching off toward a blank space filled with “???.”
If all the Chimeras were released by the people from Xiangyang Elementary School earlier, what exactly was their purpose?
Was it to use the destructive Chimeras to achieve their goals, or… to somehow exploit the Kamen Riders attracted by the Chimeras?
Looking at it this way, the biggest clue still lay with Kaos.
Kaos was likely someone who had contact with the other party.
Was there a chance to catch him?
Yun You’s phone buzzed on the edge of the desk.
He picked it up; the phone was simply covered by a transparent case, but the message came from a social app whose pink tone clashed sharply with his minimalist phone cover, making him pause to think.
The app was called Magic Chat (魔法chat), developed out of boredom by a magical girl from a generation after Lin Zhifeng.
Most magical girls were teenage girls who already had plenty of troubles in life, and the added pressure of fighting monsters often affected their mental health.
But on this app, users were all girls in similar circumstances.
Secrets that couldn’t be openly spoken anywhere else could be shared without restraint.
There would be warmhearted senior magical girls offering advice.
Even if the advice didn’t truly solve the problems, the comforting words like “Hug” and “Baby, you’re doing great” from these girls who might never meet in person helped ease the accumulated emotions.
For example, one magical girl once got caught by her family when she went out fighting monsters, raising suspicions about her identity.
Someone suggested she tell her family she was just going on a date.
Sure enough, from then on, her family stopped worrying about her being a magical girl and only worried about her dating too early.
Before breaking up with a non-existent boyfriend forced by her family, she sighed that early romance was scarier than being a magical girl in her parents’ eyes!
Another post complained about a disgusting monster encountered, comparing it to an American cockroach and struggling not to scream while fighting it.
Right after posting, someone commented,
“Respect, but how much like one can it really be? Don’t believe it—show me?”
“Oh no, American cockroach!”
The post was immediately sealed by an administrator magical girl overnight due to the scare, but the magical girl involved got a flood of comforting replies on the forum.
…Of course, these things couldn’t be casually posted anywhere else; otherwise, the reputation of magical girls might undergo some strange changes.
Thus, this pink-hued social app was born accordingly.
Yun You felt that as a male high school student, he really shouldn’t be lurking in the girls’ conversations. Out of courtesy, he barely looked at their forum and only used Magic Chat to contact Youlan and another magical girl.
The message came from Youlan.
The incident at Xiangyang Elementary earlier had been evacuated very promptly under Youlan’s command and was publicly praised by the city, though the school leadership felt the evacuation speed could improve.
They asked for a report on the event and reflections, to be submitted Monday.
Jiang Lan could only curse the school leadership and the damned Chimera in her heart while tearfully writing a handwritten report.
She just finished her work moments ago, holding a cup of pudding milk tea with seventy percent sugar, and started her new day of self-study.
Not surprisingly, she found a video of Camellia fighting Kaos.
The video was probably shot from some height at a distance, a bit shaky, and not very clear, but it was easy to recognize the identities of the two sides confronting each other.
Youlan shivered and quickly checked on Camellia:
“Camellia, I heard you fought a Chimera today? Are you hurt?”
But the first reply didn’t come from Yun You, who was still doing homework, but from another magical girl.
Daisy:
“What’s a Chimera?”
Oh, right. In the general public’s perception, Kaos was considered a special kind of Chimera.
Youlan, unfamiliar with the Kamen Rider conflict, naturally didn’t know this.
So Yun You first explained Chimera’s definition to Daisy, then replied to Youlan:
“I’m fine, but he got away. Won’t let it happen next time.”
Youlan, just tormented by a Chimera today, immediately admired Camellia.
While she was still thinking about keeping her distance from those Kamen Riders she clashed with, Camellia was already regretting letting Kaos escape and looking forward to catching him next time.
As expected of Camellia, she could do what others couldn’t.
Even among magical girls, there were different fighting styles.
Some used cards that unleashed various magical effects; some cards were absurdly powerful, even able to affect rules—Daisy was one of these card-type magical girls.
Then there were the fundamentalist magical girls like Youlan, who used typical staff-type weapons to release magic.
Her magical power and perception were the strongest among the three, practically a human artillery platform.
And of course, there were those like Camellia, who enhanced their physical strength with magic, landing punch after punch.
In terms of attack power, she was on par with Youlan’s magic style, but she was quite clumsy in magic control.
Youlan couldn’t help but feel sorry for those Camellia punched; she sometimes suspected that Camellia without her umbrella was the strongest, and the weapon was her handicap.
Since the daytime event was mentioned, Yun You thought it was a good time to lay his cards on the table:
“Actually, I have an idea about today’s incident. Are you both free now?”
The two who had just been slow to respond suddenly replied instantly, as if afraid he would finish talking before they could answer:
Daisy:
“Actually, I have something to say too.”
Youlan:
“Sorry, I’m out eating. Next time?”
Yun You sighed.
He hadn’t even said what the matter was!
His sudden attacks were so frequent that his opening moves had already been figured out by Youlan and Daisy before he could do anything.
He typed back:
“What’s the matter?”
Youlan immediately rolled out of bed, nervously staring at the screen, afraid Daisy might betray her and suddenly reveal her identity like Camellia sometimes did.
Logically, if one of them showed her true face, the others should reciprocate in kind.
That was the basic courtesy; otherwise, it felt like mistrust among teammates.
…Although Youlan was indeed hiding things, she didn’t mistrust them.
She just wasn’t mentally ready yet.
Most of Jiang Lan’s peers no longer talked about magical girls every day.
Noticing their strange looks whenever she eagerly brought it up, she naturally gave up being the odd one out.
Pretending to be a responsible, slightly rigid teacher wasn’t hard for Jiang Lan.
At least the kids in her class wouldn’t suspect that the confiscated magical girl-themed cards weren’t torn up and thrown away but carefully kept in her drawer, waiting to be returned when they graduated.
She, too, had dreamed of soaring through the sky with Red Maple, fighting monsters with magic when she was young.
Unfortunately, she never had an Owl knocking on her window with messages, wasn’t admitted to New Moon Academy to be trained as a witch, didn’t get picked up by a senior in a helicopter after high school to slay dragons, and never had a cute, strange little creature suddenly talk to her.
By the time she was too old for these stories, Jiang Lan sighed and changed her avatar from Q-version Red Maple to a photo she took of nature, setting her friend circle visibility to just three days.
But fate played a joke on her—at 29, she met a white little creature named Lily and became a magical girl!
Owl—or rather, Lily—you flew for way too long.
You came too late!
Jiang Lan finally became a magical girl, with two adorable companions who made her want to bang her head against the wall every day.
Her childhood dream became reality, and every night before sleep she wished that if this was a dream, it would last a little longer…
Yet, amidst the joy, Jiang Lan couldn’t help but feel a kind of homecoming jitters.
At 29, she was young for a primary school teacher but kind of… strange for a magical girl.
She had checked the forum and found that most others had signed contracts with their little mascots between twelve and eighteen, becoming magical girls.
Even if there were peers, they were mostly semi-retired after ten or more years.
She didn’t care about this.
If anyone else dared to point at her age, she would use her well-honed rhetoric to make them duck for cover.
But… Camellia and Daisy were different.
These two girls seemed to have stepped out of the juvenile Mary Sue novels she wrote in middle school.
She had never looked forward to tomorrow like this before, and she wanted to keep this sweet dream alive.
If even these two showed her strange looks, she would break down completely.
She might never dare to appear as Youlan again!
No, not just transform—she might question her life and flee this heartbreaking city overnight!
…Actually, knowing them, Camellia and Daisy were well-mannered good kids who would never shame her for her age.
But still, some gap caused by the huge age difference was unavoidable.
That had to be avoided!
One day, she would tell them the truth!
Then they could meet her real self.
Whether they accepted her and remained friends or felt betrayed and kept their distance… she could accept any outcome.
But not now—not yet.
She wasn’t ready!
So no matter who tried to expose her identity, she would do everything she could to stop it!
What made Youlan breathe a sigh of relief was that Daisy’s matter was completely unrelated:
“There’s a magical girl only event at the Exhibition Center this Sunday. Are you free? I just got three tickets.”
Jiang Lan’s first reaction was to refuse.
Her makeup skills were decent but not enough for a full transformation, and such makeup that completely altered her appearance looked exaggerated and suspicious in real life.
But then Daisy quickly added:
“Let’s transform and go! Is that okay?”
After sending this with a cute emoji, Daisy threw her phone watch aside and buried her face in the pillow.
She didn’t even realize she’d mistyped under her nervousness.
She was worried about being rejected but really wanted to go out with Youlan and Camellia.
These were her first true friends she could talk to about everything… except their identities.
Magical Girl Daisy, real name Zhao Chaoxi, nine years old, in fourth grade.
Her best subject is math.
Her parents divorced, and she lives with her mother, a company executive.
After transforming, her body looks like that of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old, hiding her true age.
This once made her think Camellia and Youlan were peers who also gained mature bodies, but past signs showed they were older, and not by just a little.
The simplest example: neither of them used a Little Owl phone watch but real smartphones!
Moreover, they seemed to effortlessly balance studies and magical girl duties, unlike her, who was always running around exhausted.
This earned Daisy’s deep respect.
She had to do homework late every night!
Yet she also felt anxiety.
Surfing online, she often saw people mock immaturity by calling someone a “primary schooler” and lack of culture by labeling “elementary education.”
Clearly, elementary students were at the bottom of the social food chain.
Daisy didn’t want to lose these rare friends who she could fully trust because of her age.
Even if she knew they wouldn’t reject her for the age gap, they might distance themselves, treating her as someone to protect and excluding her from the circle.
She didn’t want that!
Not wanting to reveal her real age but wanting to join their group activities, Daisy racked her brain, pulling out a few strands of hair, and then had a genius idea—what if they all kept their transformed appearances?
Youlan agreed almost immediately, silently praising Daisy’s genius, replying calmly:
“Sure, I’m free Sunday, no problem.”
“Since we’re going, let’s cosplay too, otherwise our transformed looks will stand out. I can lend cosplay clothes and wigs. Camellia, what about you?”
…She thought she sounded calm, but her faster-than-usual reply betrayed her eagerness.
Faced with Daisy’s cautious request and Youlan’s visible anticipation, what could Camellia do?
She had to give in.
He hesitated before knocking on Lin Zhifeng’s entertainment room door.
Lin Zhifeng was sprawled on the couch, watching a show and eating chips, crumbs dropping onto the wool rug and sofa.
Yun You glanced around, used the handheld vacuum to clean up, a task Yun Li would do anyway.
“Yun Li, move, you’re blocking the TV,”
Lin Zhifeng said without looking up, waving a chip-crusted hand.
Yun You took it, wiped her hand with a tissue, and she suddenly realized something was off. Sitting up, she smiled awkwardly,
“Oh, it’s Xiao You. What’s up?”
Her expression changed suddenly.
“Hiss, don’t tell me you have homework you can’t do?”
If it were middle school content, she might help, but high school knowledge she’d handed back to teachers ten years ago.
Yun You wouldn’t be giving her a hard time, right?
“Harder than that.”
Yun You put down the tissue, a heavy, struggling look on his face.
“Mom, could you… help me pick out some clothes?”
Lin Zhifeng looked puzzled and put down her chips.
“Haven’t I always picked your clothes?”
Besides the uniform, all Yun You’s casual clothes were carefully selected and matched by her.
She wouldn’t allow her son to walk around wearing clashing colors.
“No, not those. Uh, girls’ clothes.”
Yun You took a deep breath.
Snap.
The chips fell to the floor.
Seconds later, the entertainment room was flooded with dazzling pink light, and Lin Zhifeng transformed into the magical girl Red Maple right in front of Yun You.
Yun You was stunned.
“Mom… what are you doing?”
“Going to talk to Lily.”
Lin Zhifeng swung one leg over the railing.
If Yun You hadn’t grabbed her, she’d have dashed out at sonic speed.
“Let go, Xiao You! I’m going to have a word with that bastard! I knew there was something wrong with this new transformation device! Even if I skin it alive today, I’ll make it confess! Let go of me!!”
After all, turning her son, who swore he’d never wear girls’ clothes, into a crossdresser wasn’t exactly normal!
Even if she had occasionally tricked Yun You into wearing girls’ clothes when he was little, even called over a few friends to dress him up like a doll, still, wasn’t Lily at fault too?
Yun You:
What does “sacrificing oneself for a gentleman” mean?
This is it.
Daisy paid with the tickets, Youlan with cosplay clothes, and he paid with his own reputation.
Everyone had a bright future ahead.