“Mom? Who exactly is that girl? It seems like Yaoyao knows her too?”
While the people downstairs were talking, in the private space on the third floor, Lin Yu—who had already finished her homework, previewed tomorrow’s lessons, and reviewed her notes several times—was curiously watching Wen Yanquan fidgeting with a large set of surveillance equipment.
“Ah… if only I had installed cameras inside the private room earlier… Ah, whatever, maybe it’s better not to hear anything… yeah, better…”
Wen Yanquan seemed to ignore her words, muttering softly as she moved the mouse: “This angle doesn’t work, that one doesn’t work either…”
Like the protagonist from the Toy Bear’s Midnight Harem, she flipped through several surveillance angles back and forth but still couldn’t spot Jiang Lingwei, who had already entered the private room. She finally gave up helplessly.
“Mom!”
Lin Yu knew her mother had slipped into some sort of state again, so she patted her shoulder and raised her voice a little: “Dad just asked if you’re coming back for dinner, and also, who is that girl?”
“Oh… who?”
Wen Yanquan turned around, surprised and delighted: “Ah! Isn’t this my dearest little Yu? What are you doing here!”
“…” Lin Yu lost it for a moment: “I’ve been here from the start.”
“Really… I was too busy with your classmates… so whose kid is she?”
“Mom!”
“Alright, alright.”
Wen Yanquan sighed, wiping away imaginary tears: “Waaah, my daughter’s grown up, I can’t even tease you anymore.”
“If only you could put more effort into acting… maybe squeeze out some tears. Want me to buy you some onions?”
“What nonsense.”
Wen Yanquan threw in the towel: “You used to fall for it all when you were little. Honestly, the older you get, the harder you are to fool.”
Hearing this, Lin Yu crossed her arms:
“What do you mean ‘hard to fool’? It’s more like you, Mom, tricking the innocent me into doing those things… Wait, almost let you dodge again! Spill it! What’s really going on?”
“Alright, alright~”
Wen Yanquan shook her head, rubbing Lin Yu’s head with mock frustration:
“Look, doesn’t the new poster girl I recruited look a lot like your classmate?”
“Does she…?”
Ignoring her daughter’s skeptical tone, Wen Yanquan waved her hand:
“The answer is relatives! Those two have got to be related.”
“But last time you said she was your friend.”
“That doesn’t matter. Listen, that poster girl really is my friend. Back in the day, we killed a few magic dragons the size of twin towers together. Though I mostly helped out with support and intelligence gathering. Oh, and there was the max-level undead warrior, the terrifying hellhound, and a tentacle demon who created some seriously NSFW tentacle caves… We even nearly saved the world together…”
Being hugged by Wen Yanquan and listening to her obviously game-related nonsense, Lin Yu could only extract the barely useful information that “they met through gaming.”
(I shouldn’t expect much from Mom—she’s always talking about unrealistic stuff.)
Lin Yu sighed inwardly:
(I’ll ask Yaoyao about it later.)
At that moment, inside the private room, after a brief flustered moment caused by awkwardness, Jiang Lingwei clutched her cat-ear hairpin tightly to prevent it from falling off. She didn’t want to let it drop or bend down to pick it up, so she pretended to be calm and said:
“Mm… You did really well the last few times, you’re amazing, [Crystal].”
“Not at all.”
Jiang Yao said sincerely: “I know these two times were only successful because you acted just in time. Without you…”
“Don’t think like that, Crystal.”
What was originally just polite words, Jiang Lingwei interrupted her:
“You’re the real magical girl protecting everyone. I just happened to land those sneak attacks at the last moment twice. Compared to the truly important job of protecting this city that you do, what I do is really nothing.”
“Huh?”
Jiang Yao didn’t expect her to say that and felt a bit embarrassed.
For her, fighting those bugs wasn’t really much trouble, and the biggest hassle she’d caused was mostly selfish.
Being praised like this made her feel undeserving.
“Aurora, I actually have something to ask you.”
Jiang Yao pushed those thoughts aside, leaned forward, and asked the question she had been meaning to ask for a while:
“Have you ever heard of a magical girl who can banish a person from this world?”
“I… hmm?”
Now it was Jiang Lingwei’s turn to be surprised.
“Sorry.”
She nodded slightly, paused, then said:
“I don’t quite understand your question.”
“I mean,” Jiang Yao repeated, looking directly into Jiang Lingwei’s eyes, which gave her a strange sense of familiarity:
“Whether it’s a magical girl, a demon, a monster, some kind of artifact or weapon—have you ever heard of anything that can completely erase a human being, wipe out their name, erase everything related to them, making it so that from the past to the present, they almost never existed?”
“This…”
Looking at the serious expression on the girl’s face, Jiang Lingwei felt a sudden chill run down her spine, making her shudder slightly.
To completely remove a person from this world is one of the most terrifying things imaginable.
No one notices the victim’s existence, no one knows that such a person ever existed.
This was far scarier than the memory-erasing magic she knew.
Memory-erasing magic at least leaves traces and can potentially be undone.
What chilled Jiang Lingwei to the core was the feeling that, to this world, wasn’t she already in a similar situation? Some kind of fearful, lost sensation welled up from her heart, stirring her thoughts into confusion.
Feeling her heart suddenly beat faster, Jiang Lingwei cautiously answered:
“No, I’ve never heard of such a thing, and I don’t know of any related magic.”
“Magic?”
Jiang Yao recalled that every time she saw Aurora, she was holding that staff-like magical weapon, and her eyes lit up:
“Are you the mage-type magical girl?”
“Mage… type…”
Jiang Lingwei remembered what Wen Yanquan said earlier about the differences between modern magical girls and those in the past. She didn’t answer Jiang Yao’s question directly but asked:
“Does not being a mage-type mean you can’t use magic?”
“What kind of question is that?” Jiang Yao shook her head. “Is your fairy unreliable too? Or haven’t you checked the information at the Bureau?”
“It’s still pretty reliable… I guess…”
Jiang Lingwei thought of the old man’s expression. At the very least, that white-bearded ball was dependable in critical moments.
Just before Jiang Yao could speak her next sentence, Jiang Lingwei stood up, placing her hands firmly on the table:
“Kid, why are you asking about such things?”
Jiang Yao’s gaze turned strange. She looked up at the girl before her:
“Kid?”
“Ah, that, that, that… slip of the tongue! Just a slip of the tongue!” Jiang Lingwei’s momentum immediately faltered, and she instinctively grabbed a corner of her skirt, forcing herself to reaffirm:
“That’s not important!”
“Come on, tell me! Why are you asking about such terrifying magic?!”