“Alright, see you tomorrow. I’ll keep an eye on Aurora’s side.”
After hanging up the phone, Jiang Yao let out a long sigh.
Lin Yu needed to register a new Magical Girl identity and record her magic type, so Xiaobai was going to help her with the testing.
This was all something Jiang Yao had experienced herself before.
Qi Shi had already gone to inspect the site. When he left, he looked like he was about to die, shouting, “You promised to fix just one street! Now you want me to repair the entire city? There’s not enough mana—no way it’s enough!”
Though he complained loudly, his body obediently went to help.
As she put it, “I have no choice. Since I have this ability, I might as well do more. The sooner I finish, the sooner everyone can return to normal life.”
Everyone else trusted her regarding Aurora, so they weren’t looking for her for the time being. They only told her to report immediately if she found any news.
With things temporarily settled, except for Xiaobai, which seemed to have been somehow triggered, whenever it faced her, it kept hesitating as if it wanted to say something but held back.
Jiang Yao could tell Xiaobai had something to say.
—In theory, this should have been talked about a long time ago, but who knew how many things had delayed it.
“Sigh.”
The girl sighed. For now, it seemed Xiaobai’s matter would have to be postponed.
Jiang Yao’s mind was a complete mess.
That person, without a doubt, was Dad. There was no mistake.
He even winked at her when he was holding Aurora and walking away.
Even after all these years apart, Jiang Yao could still read the message in that glance: “Wait for me to come back.”
That gave the girl a lot of reassurance. Though Dad looked a bit scruffy, with his beard and hair grown out, at least he was still Dad.
Before, she understood nothing, but now that she was a Magical Girl herself, she understood magic a lot better. She vaguely sensed that Dad’s situation was probably not that simple.
For example, that black armor he wore had existed since she was little.
—Long before the Dark Catastrophe broke out.
Or rather, until that day when Dad left a letter and entrusted her to the kind neighbor grandma from her childhood, he already knew how to use magic.
Dark mana was no good, Jiang Yao knew that clearly.
Even she herself would lose reason and act recklessly because of the dark surges.
But in his memories, Dad had never been affected.
Whether at home, living daily life with Mom at that time, or out and about, he never lost his temper.
But this lack of temper wasn’t the cold, emotionless kind of no temper like a robot, it was truly his nature in front of his family.
Dad was a gentle and magnanimous man, and he and Mom, who was also kind and gentle, could be said to be like-minded.
The reason she recognized that armor was because long ago, when little Jiang Yao couldn’t sleep in her room upstairs and rubbed her eyes to go downstairs, she saw Dad come home wearing that armor, and Mom was kindly talking to him.
Both their faces held hope for the future.
Even though she was too young to understand what it meant back then, she was deeply impressed.
Because just a few days later, Mom fell into a coma and never woke up.
When Dad picked her up from kindergarten, he sat in the car, gloomy, but after seeing her, he quickly pulled himself together and told her everything, promising that Mom would get better.
After that, he disappeared too.
Along with him went everything of his in the world, except for her memories and the hospital bed left for Mom at the sanatorium. It was as if Dad had never existed.
Sometimes Jiang Yao even thought she was crazy—that maybe because she didn’t have a Dad growing up and Mom had fallen into a coma, she had imagined him into existence.
Only after surviving the catastrophe and discovering the existence of magic did she have new thoughts.
Walking to the door, Jiang Yao checked the crystal she had buried here earlier.
No movement. The bright mana contained inside showed no fluctuations.
Just as she thought, the dark’s claws hadn’t harmed her home.
Taking out the key, she opened the door and cautiously called out a few times:
“Mom?”
Naturally, no one answered.
“Hm…”
Entering the house, taking off her shoes, the girl sat heavily on the sofa, fingers twisted nervously as the silhouette of the pink Magical Girl floated through her mind.
When Dad took—no, carried Aurora away, she seemed to have heard him say something.
She hadn’t misheard, right? It should have been a confession.
That gave her a bold guess in her heart.
Yet, even with this guess, she couldn’t connect Mom to that person no matter what.
It felt very strange, but unfortunately, as Aurora the Magical Girl, she rarely had the chance to experience such ordinary human feelings.
Maybe Lin Yu would be more familiar with this kind of feeling.
Yes, it was the filter between Magical Girls and ordinary people.
The same one that existed one-sidedly between her and Jiang Lingwei; otherwise, she would have known who “Aurora” was the moment she first saw her.
Even though Aurora looked younger and completely undeveloped, the two girls’ appearances were basically the same.
For Jiang Yao, who often visited the sanatorium to see Mom, it was impossible not to recognize her.
At this moment, this filter had become a shackle that muddled her thoughts, always feeling close to the truth but never quite reaching it.
While Jiang Yao remained silent, a “knock knock knock” sounded from outside the door.
“Who is it?”
She cautiously asked, inching toward the door.
At the same time, some feeling—or rather, some guess—made her heartbeat involuntarily quicken.
“It’s me…”
“Click!”
Without hesitation, the girl opened the door.
There stood Jiang Cheng, his face slightly tidied up, his beard trimmed a bit, looking nervous.
Someone had managed to prepare him a casual, refreshing outfit—a trendy white short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants—clearly aiming to make him look younger.
Despite that, his aura was still somewhat like an old soldier just off the battlefield, or a monster hunter looking for someone to play Gwent with.
Without the armor to hide him, some indelible scars were imprinted on his muscular, well-defined body, becoming more visible.
At this moment, the tall man spoke nervously:
“Um… Yao Yao, I…”
“Dad!”
The girl didn’t say anything else, just bounced over in two steps and threw herself into his arms.
Without needing to think much, Jiang Cheng embraced the petite figure of Jiang Yao.
“Sorry.”
He whispered softly in his daughter’s ear. His eyes reddened slightly, but he forced it back.
All the worries and anxieties before truly facing his daughter were completely erased by those simple two words from the child.
“Sorry… sorry… Dad was so bad…”
Muttering softly, Jiang Cheng’s back carried Jiang Lingwei’s voice:
“So it really is him.”
The adult-form Jiang Lingwei stood behind, gently speaking to Jiang Yao:
“Since Dad really has come back, how about the three of us go inside and talk first?”
“Mm… mm…”
The girl sobbed and agreed.
Her eyes were full of tears, but she refused to blink or even reach out to wipe them away.
In her blurry vision, she saw the two shadows standing together, just like when she was a child, as if they had never left.
At this moment, Jiang Yao understood.
She had a home again.
…