After hanging up the phone, Jiang Zhu placed his phone face-down on the nightstand and lay back on the bed, lost in thought.
He thought he had pushed the art of being obnoxious to the limits of his ability.
There was no reason Lin Ciwei should still have a decent impression of him.
‘Sure enough, affection level is just too high…’
After mulling it over, Jiang Zhu could only attribute it to that.
He turned over, picked up his phone from the nightstand, and tapped the screen a few times to open the messaging app.
The message list was crammed with various group chats and HR contacts he’d added.
He scrolled up and down several times but couldn’t find Lin Ciwei’s name.
In resignation, he opened the contact list, flipped through the “L” group for a while, and finally located her account.
Her profile picture was a Line Dog, grinning blankly.
Jiang Zhu seemed to recall it and tapped to enter the chat.
He remembered that up until around high school, the two of them used to chat frequently on their phones.
Though under pressure from their parents, they mostly had to disguise their conversations as questions about schoolwork, there should have been plenty of interesting content.
But when he entered the chat window, the screen was completely blank.
The chat history was empty, yet those memories vaguely existed.
It was probably either a glitch in the app or he had cleared the chat history when cleaning up storage.
He had been planning to reminisce about the old days, but then again, there was no need to recall any of that.
Jiang Zhu stared blankly at the empty screen for a while, his thumb hovering over it.
He meant to tap the back button, but accidentally hit the input field, causing the keyboard to pop up from the bottom of the screen.
At that moment, Jiang Zhu could have added something to the blank chat history, but how could he send a message now?
Just as he was about to press the lock button, a new message suddenly popped up in the blank chat history.
A text bubble with a cat decoration emerged from the top of the empty screen.
“Haha… after college, we haven’t sent each other a single message, have we? I can’t even find you in my chat history.”
“Hey hey hey, Jiang Zhu, are you there? Are you free this weekend?”
The sudden two lines of text made Jiang Zhu flinch, and his phone dropped onto his face.
Rubbing his nose, he picked up the phone again.
His accidental touch had already typed something in the input box, and Jiang Zhu sent it along.
“Yes.”
“Then how about meeting me on Sunday—the day after tomorrow?”
“Last time we just had a meal together. I felt like we didn’t really get to talk in depth. How about we spend the whole day hanging out this time?”
To be honest, Jiang Zhu wasn’t keen on it.
But letting her keep pining away in unrequited love wasn’t a solution either.
Her impression of him was currently stuck in the dangerous zone of “not bad.”
If he didn’t lower her affection level soon, after his mother and Auntie coaxed them a few more times, the situation would only get more out of hand.
“You pick the place. I’ll come whenever you call.”
“Great! You’d better look forward to it.”
Lin Ciwei immediately followed up with a barrage of emojis.
‘Look forward to what? Look forward to the day you’re completely disillusioned with me?’
Jiang Zhu added in his heart, then tossed his phone next to the pillow.
…
The next day was Saturday.
Magical Girls had no holidays, year-round, around the clock.
Even on statutory holidays, even at three in the morning, they had to come as soon as they received an order.
But weekends did have an unwritten rule: since student Magical Girls were on call during those two days, adult combatants like Feng Ling, who had already graduated, would almost never be assigned duties unless a large demon beast requiring multi-person cooperation appeared.
This wasn’t because the Association had any consideration for Magical Girls like Feng Ling.
It was purely a scheduling preference to prioritize student Magical Girls, ensuring they wouldn’t be disturbed on weekdays and could obediently sit in class and listen.
But weekends weren’t entirely indistinguishable from other days.
At least on weekends, Feng Ling could finally do the side hustle she had been yearning for all week.
Jiang Zhu climbed out of bed, grasped the Star Crystal on his chest, and with a flash of cyan light, Feng Ling appeared in the room.
She didn’t rush out.
Instead, she walked to the wardrobe and pulled open the door.
Inside, besides Jiang Zhu’s everyday clothes, there was a much smaller yellow delivery jacket with the delivery platform’s logo on the back, and a helmet sitting at the bottom of the wardrobe.
Magical Girls were actually the perfect candidates for delivering food.
Irregular working hours, irregular work locations—they could easily float around waiting for demon beasts to spawn while picking up a few delivery orders along the way.
Plus, a Magical Girl’s deliveries were fast, stable, and complaint-proof.
No matter how picky a customer was, it was hard to give a bad review to a delivery person who flew up and handed the order right through the window.
Feng Ling had never received a bad review so far, but she had privately considered that even if she did, it wouldn’t matter.
Given her status as a Magical Girl, if she just screenshotted it and posted online, the bad review would probably turn into a good one.
She had actually done this for a while with great results.
If there were demon beasts, she fought them to fulfill her Magical Girl duties; if not, she delivered food.
She flew fast, took on many orders, delivered on time, and with the built-in buzz of being a Magical Girl, many customers even tipped her when she delivered.
For a time, her monthly income nearly matched the big company offer she had received before graduation, giving her a brief glimpse of financial freedom.
Unfortunately, her road to wealth was quickly blocked by the Magic Girl Association.
The Association strictly forbade Feng Ling from working part-time as a delivery driver on weekdays, citing the rule that “Magical Girls on standby must maintain readiness to deploy at any time and must not engage in commercial activities unrelated to combat.”
Now Feng Ling could only work her side hustle on weekends, when the standby rules weren’t strictly enforced.
She earned much less, but a mosquito’s leg is still meat—she had to do it.
Feng Ling took the yellow delivery jacket from the wardrobe, placed it on the bed, and began shedding her Magical Girl outfit layer by layer.
The dress, ribbons, and a bunch of sparkling gem accessories all turned into cyan specks of light and dissipated into the air within half a minute of leaving her body, as if they had never existed.
Watching the intricate garments peel away one by one, leaving the Magical Girl’s slender form in only her underwear, Feng Ling couldn’t help but sigh: if these clothes didn’t disappear, she could achieve financial freedom just by selling Magical Girl outfits.
She had seen firsthand how much cosplayers were willing to spend to replicate her look.
If she could actually sell the original Magical Girl Feng Ling outfit, the price would be through the roof.
She pulled the oversized delivery jacket over herself, zipped it all the way up, put the helmet on her head, and then canceled the transformation.
This way, when she transformed next time, Feng Ling would appear already wearing the delivery jacket.
Now she just needed to find a rooftop to transform.
Jiang Zhu pushed open the door, walked out, and pressed the elevator button.
However, when the elevator doors opened, a familiar person stood inside.