“In short, that’s how it was. The situation was urgent—if I hadn’t unraveled the Aphrodisiac Poison An Wanwan used on you in time, you’d have gone berserk, your mind would be consumed by poison, and your body would explode within fifteen minutes!”
“I really had no other choice. If it hadn’t been so urgent, why would I take advantage of you… It’s all An Wanwan’s fault, so if you want to blame someone, blame her, okay?”
Ye Xinglan summarized yesterday’s events in a concise yet greatly exaggerated way, leaving Xiaoxi utterly dumbfounded.
She seriously suspected that Ye Xinglan had been reading some weird wuxia novels lately.
“Wait, are you sure a single Aphrodisiac Poison could be that powerful? Powerful enough that you couldn’t even get me to The Association in time?”
“Who knows? I’m just an ordinary person; I don’t get all this stuff,” Ye Xinglan spread her hands. “Maybe you’re just too weak, your resistance is lower. After all, you’re only a D-Rank Magical Girl, right?”
“I…”
Xiaoxi felt as if she couldn’t get a word in edgewise. From the moment Ye Xinglan mentioned Aphrodisiac Poison, she knew she was lying.
She, the mighty Eternal Star, if she could be killed by a minor succubus’s poison, she might as well smash her own head against the wall!
But the problem was, if she argued, she’d have to reveal that she wasn’t a D-Rank Magical Girl.
If she didn’t argue, she’d have to eat this dumb loss in silence. No matter which way she turned, she was in a bind.
Ye Xinglan teasingly twirled Xiaoxi’s hair with her finger, blowing into her ear.
“It’s not a big deal, is it? After all, we’ve already done everything else that can be done, so this is hardly a big deal, right? When you were delirious yesterday, you even said you wanted to spend your whole life with me. Was that a lie?”
Xiaoxi sighed. “Xinglan, that’s not the point… Wait, no!”
Ignoring the soreness in her body, Xiaoxi suddenly sat bolt upright, startling Ye Xinglan, who hurried to catch up behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been unconscious from yesterday until now. That means I didn’t update yesterday—I missed a chapter!”
Ye Xinglan: “……”
Ye Xinglan punched the [Eternal Star] Pillow twice in frustration.
She had imagined every possible reaction from Xiaoxi after waking up: embarrassment, falling for her and wanting to go again, even anger. Angry Xiaoxi was cute too…
In any case, the first conversation after a first time should have been intimate and ambiguous, right?
But Ye Xinglan never expected that Xiaoxi’s first thought after waking up would be whether her dumb novel had updated! Straight to the grave with that boring job of yours!
But then Ye Xinglan thought—if Muxingge heard about last night, she might even feel vindicated, right?
After all, Xiaoxi always wrote about tentacle monsters in her stories, and now she’d been pressed down by actual tentacles for a whole night—serves her right.
Xiaoxi hurried to return to her room to turn on her computer and catch up on updates, and maybe apologize for missing a chapter, but as soon as she opened the door, she was dumbstruck by an even more shocking sight.
“Xinglan, this—this… what happened?”
Seeing the broken bed leg and the half-collapsed bed, for a split second, Xiaoxi thought she was still dreaming.
Ye Xinglan looked away guiltily. “It’s fine, I’ve already called someone to bring a new bed soon…”
“Don’t change the subject! Just tell me—was the bed broken by what we did last night?”
No wonder she woke up in Ye Xinglan’s room today; after all, she’d been sleeping in her own room every night lately. Turns out last night they even managed to wreck the bed!
Ye Xinglan was nervous—she’d just been too excited last night, and she accidentally broke the bed leg with her Touch. There was no way she could let Xiaoxi find out about that!
“It was just shoddy quality, nothing to do with us… Seriously! We were pretty gentle,” Ye Xinglan probed, “so you really don’t remember anything from last night, Xiaoxi?”
Xiaoxi rubbed her forehead and silently shook her head.
Ye Xinglan quietly let out a sigh of relief. Actually, that bit of Aphrodisiac Poison from An Wanwan wasn’t nearly enough for her.
By the middle of the night, it had already worn off, so to keep things going, she’d used her Touch to fiddle with Xiaoxi a little more, making sure Xiaoxi wouldn’t remember the details of last night.
Ye Xinglan’s touch this time wasn’t as rough as with An Wanwan.
To avoid hurting Xiaoxi, she was very, very gentle, and such a light degree of consciousness alteration would only work on a D-Rank Magical Girl—of course, Ye Xinglan figured it was more than enough for Xiaoxi.
“Xinglan, this is a one-time exception. We really shouldn’t do this kind of thing again—it’s too soon…”
“Oh come on! Don’t act like you hated it!” Ye Xinglan pouted. “That wasn’t your attitude last night. Who was the one crying and begging me not to stop?”
“D-Don’t say it!”
“Why not? And who was it hugging my neck and saying she liked me? And also, last night you…”
Moments later, after teasing Xiaoxi to her heart’s content, Ye Xinglan left the room with a satisfied smile, leaving Xiaoxi standing there, face burning, clutching her face.
There’s no way she’d say something like that last night! Ye Xinglan must be lying.
But those once-muddled, gooey memories were gradually becoming clearer in Xiaoxi’s mind. Ye Xinglan’s slight consciousness rewriting hadn’t fully worked on her.
Xiaoxi slumped into a chair, staring at the half-collapsed bed in a daze. She’d intended to remember how the bed ended up like this, but as she thought, she felt something off.
The images in her memory were still blurry, but the sensations at the time felt so real. Xiaoxi counted silently.
Once she reached double digits, she frowned slightly… There’s a saying: not every stab in the back is a knife, but Ye Xinglan definitely didn’t have that many fingers. So what were those extra things?
Xiaoxi fell deep into thought. It really felt like she had said those things last night… Wait, no! Last night, at the very beginning, Ye Xinglan had whispered something in her ear. She said she was… what was it?
The more she remembered, the more Xiaoxi felt something was wrong.
First, she admitted Ye Xinglan hadn’t lied to her just now, but second, all these details seemed to point to one answer—Ye Xinglan was a Monster!
Those Touches were clearly a Monster’s trait. Plus, that strange appearance she’d seen in Old Town, and Ye Xinglan mentioning she was hiding something from her……
Suddenly, all those scattered clues strung themselves into a single line.
So Ye Xinglan is a Monster? Was this the thing she was hiding from her?
Thinking this, Xiaoxi’s first reaction wasn’t anger at being deceived, but a helpless little laugh.
So what if she’s a Monster? It’s not like I’m prejudiced against Monsters. Why would Ye Xinglan need to hide this from me?