Su Yuqing found it truly difficult to bring up the matter of that kiss, so she simply chose to gloss over it for now.
“At least Xiao Ying doesn’t look at you now with that complicated expression of ‘seeing a perverted manager coercing an innocent girl’! This ‘pervert’ label has been firmly pinned on me by you!”
Remembering the chaos of that day and the way Xiao Ying had looked at her afterwards, Su Yuqing felt a wave of powerlessness and frustration.
Her meticulously maintained professional image, built over years, was on the verge of being utterly destroyed.
Bai Wanxue listened quietly, her face still showing no ripples of emotion.
She gently slid off the swivel chair, walked over to Su Yuqing’s desk, placed her hands neatly in front of her, and then, facing Su Yuqing, bowed with a perfectly measured depth.
When she raised her head, her pale red eyes held a kind of almost programmed seriousness.
“In that case, Wanxue will take this opportunity to formally apologize to you, Master, for that day’s reckless behavior!”
Her tone was sincere, even bordering on obedient.
“I’m sorry. Meow.”
However, this apology did nothing to lessen Su Yuqing’s irritation.
Instead, it felt like punching cotton.
She waved her hand dismissively, her tone impatient and probing on a deeper level.
“Forget it. The main issue right now isn’t something a simple apology can solve.”
She leaned forward, elbows on the desk, her gaze sharp as she scrutinized Bai Wanxue, as if trying to pierce through that perfect exterior to see the essence beneath.
“What I’m more curious about now is something else—how exactly did you do it?”
“Hmm?”
Bai Wanxue tilted her head slightly, indicating confusion.
“Your identity. The identity of ‘Bai Wanxue’.”
Su Yuqing tapped her finger on the thick stack of personal history and background documents that had just been signed.
“All of this… flawless documentation. Identity card, household register, school records from childhood, even a certificate of good conduct from the community… How did you ‘create’ all of it in such a short amount of time?”
Her voice unconsciously dropped, carrying a tremor she hadn’t even noticed herself.
“From that night… when you were thrown off the balcony,”
She forced out the words, observing Bai Wanxue’s reaction.
The other party merely listened quietly, as if hearing a story unrelated to herself.
“Until you reappeared like a ghost yesterday, at most, only a little over half a month has passed. And you? In this short span of over half a month, you managed to create for yourself in this world… a past history spanning about sixteen years, with almost no flaws to be found.”
The more Su Yuqing spoke, the more alarmed she felt, a chill slowly creeping up her spine.
“From birth hospital records, to kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school graduation photos and report cards… to now, this contract that will officially make you a new idol at the Xiaozhua Agency. Honestly.”
She took a deep breath, her gaze locked onto Bai Wanxue’s inhuman eyes.
“I’m finding it harder and harder to believe… that you really were ‘Mantou’… transformed.”
She almost whispered the name, the name that belonged only to the little white kitten in her memories.
A brief silence fell in the office.
Only the distant city noise outside existed as a fuzzy background hum.
Bai Wanxue quietly met her gaze for a few seconds, then slowly shook her head, her tone calm yet carrying an undeniable certainty.
“That’s not right, Master. Your way of putting it is not right.”
She leaned forward slightly.
Her pale red eyes, under the sunlight, took on a strange translucency, clearly reflecting Su Yuqing’s somewhat pale face.
“Mantou, is Wanxue. Wanxue, is Mantou.”
She enunciated each word clearly.
“There is no logic of one ‘turning into’ the other. We have always been the same existence. Just… in different forms. Meow.”
This explanation, far from dispelling Su Yuqing’s doubts, only confused her more.
The same existence?
Different forms?
It sounded more like some philosophical or sci-fi concept than reality.
“No, I think you might have misunderstood the focus of my earlier words.”
Su Yuqing rubbed her temples, trying to sort out her thoughts.
“What I’m questioning is not your ‘essence,’ but the process and speed of your ‘existence’ within human society!”
She tried to explain with a more concrete example.
“Take Xiaozhi… that is, Kasahana Chiai. She and I were separated for a full three years. I have reason to believe that during those three years, she used almost every possible means to gradually, carefully, establish the identity of ‘Kasahana Chiai’ within the vast information network of human society, plugging all sorts of possible logical loopholes.”
Thinking of Zhi Ai’s obsessive personality and powerful drive, Su Yuqing believed she was fully capable of it.
Those three years, Zhi Ai hadn’t simply disappeared; she had been secretly weaving a perfect disguise that would allow her to walk openly in the world as a “human.”
“But you? Bai Wanxue.”
Su Yuqing’s gaze sharpened again, filled with scrutiny and disbelief.
“Sorry, but forgive my bluntness… my utterly ordinary, impoverished human brain truly cannot imagine—how exactly did you, in the mere span of half a month, rush to complete a workload that another… uh, ‘cat,’ might have struggled for a full three years to barely finish?”
“This isn’t a question of efficiency anymore. This is almost… like magic, or a miracle.”
Her tone carried a hint of self-deprecation and a trace of fear she couldn’t quite hide.
This ability that transcended cognition made her uneasy.
Faced with Su Yuqing’s rapid-fire questioning and the almost overflowing fear, Bai Wanxue didn’t show any sign of being offended or flustered.
Instead, she tilted her head slightly, as if pondering an interesting question.
A few seconds later, an extremely faint, almost sly glint flashed in her pale red eyes.
Then, in a light, airy tone as if discussing the weather, she tossed out an even more subversive counter-question:
“But, Master, have you considered another possibility?”
She tilted her head again, her silver-gray hair sliding across her cheek.
“Perhaps—the time and effort required to patch up these so-called ‘loopholes’ and allow an existence to reasonably integrate into human society… isn’t as tiring or difficult as you imagine? Meow.”
Su Yuqing was stunned, completely stunned.
Her mouth agape, she stared at Bai Wanxue’s pure, flawless face that seemed to comprehend everything.
Her brain temporarily couldn’t process the complex information contained within this overly simple answer.
“You… what kind of logic is that…?”
Su Yuqing almost subconsciously murmured the words.
She felt as if she were standing at the edge of a huge mystery, and Bai Wanxue’s words were like a key, gently turning, about to open a door to an unknown world.
What lay behind the door?
A deeper truth, or a more suffocating darkness?
She didn’t know, but a strong premonition told her that the “reality” she had always known might, from this moment on, be completely overturned.