Chapter 24: He’s a Good Man

On her way home, she was stopped by Xu Panpan.

Xu Panpan slanted her eyes, feigning indifference as she asked, “You and Brother Ren seem to be on pretty good terms with that old police uncle, huh?”

She said it with a line straight out of a school bullying scene!

Ren Huazhi’s heart skipped a beat. Xu Panpan had never reacted this strongly when Officer Si visited before. Why was she so serious this time?

“He’s not your sugar daddy, is he?” Xu Panpan asked.

“?”

“You know, treating you as a substitute for his dead wife…”

“Damn it, Xu Panpan, what’s with your overactive imagination?! The man is 53 years old, and he’s on the front lines fighting Nightmares with the young guys every day, holding a steel fork. He’s a good public servant, a good helper to the magical girls. Can’t you show a little more respect when you speak!”

After shedding the identity of The Flower Arranger… no, even as The Flower Arranger, Ren Huazhi had a deep respect for the veteran officer. It seemed it was time to teach the impertinent Xu Panpan a lesson. You can eat whatever you want, but you can’t say whatever you want. One day, you’ll know you’re wrong when you get invited for a “cup of tea”!

“Such arrogance and rudeness, you need to be taught a lesson!”

Ren Huazhi roared and lunged at Xu Panpan, grabbing her by the throat of fate.

“Ugh! I can’t breathe! I’m going to die!”

Xu Panpan’s eyes rolled back, and her tongue lolled out of the corner of her mouth, drooling wildly. A drop landed on Ren Huazhi’s face. Disgusted, she let go and stepped back to wash her face in the corner of the courtyard.

“Brother Ren never hit me like that…”

‘Didn’t I?’

Ren Huazhi wracked her brain for a moment. She didn’t seem to recall… no, of course she did. She used to love pulling Xu Panpan’s cheeks, and Xu Panpan would complain that it would make her face chubby. This little brat was betting on the fact that she had “just moved in” and didn’t know!

Seeing through the trick, Ren Huazhi sneered, “Is that so? Do you think Brother Ren is your brother or my brother? Your dear Brother Ren often told me on the phone that when he came home and found you had caused trouble again, he would hang you up from the porch and whip you!”

“What?! Impossible, at most he just pinched my cheeks!”

Realizing she had slipped up, Xu Panpan stopped arguing. Pouting with a very unhappy expression, she muttered:

“This is entrapment, interrogation by torture…”

“You know a lot of big words.”

Ren Huazhi flicked a drop of water from her hand at her, using her blessing to control the liquid’s trajectory so that the largest drop hit Xu Panpan right between the eyebrows.

“Ow.”

“Don’t talk bad about people behind their backs in the future.”

“So I can say it to their face?”

“If you’ve imagined the scene of being alienated or treated with hostility by the other person and feel that you can accept it, then you can say it to their face.”

Xu Panpan shook her head.

She suddenly said, “What should I call you?”

“I’m older than you, you can call me Brother… just call me Big Sis.”

“Clearly, I’m older than you.” Xu Panpan suddenly leaned in, cornering Ren Huazhi by the washbasin, and held her hand up to measure her height. “Didn’t that woman this morning call you ‘little golden furball’?”

“Spare me.”

“Then I’ll call you A-Zhi! Where I’m from, we make nicknames by picking a character from the name and adding an ‘A’ in front.”

Ren Huazhi looked dejected and uneasy. Was she really going to accept this nickname with its overwhelmingly feminine style? She had only changed her name to cover her tracks, and it wasn’t like she would be saying it all the time. But this Xu Panpan girl really would shout it every day.

“A-Zhi, A-Zhi, A-Zhi. Hehe.”

…Yes, just like that.

“What’s with you? You can’t win an argument so you’re suddenly regressing mentally? Are you going to apologize to old Si or not?”

“He didn’t hear it anyway. I just won’t say it again next time.”

“Is that enough?”

Xu Panpan pouted. “Alright, I went too far. I shouldn’t have joked about a girl’s innocence…”

“?”

Ren Huazhi only just realized.

Would a normal girl get angry because rumors were spread about her and an old widower, feeling that her reputation was damaged? Ren Huazhi had subconsciously not seen herself as the person involved and had no emotional fluctuation. But Xu Panpan thought she was angry because of this and had hinted at distancing herself, which was why she had hurriedly apologized to Ren Huazhi…

After figuring this out, it was actually a bit awkward.

The psychology of an adolescent girl was truly complex. Ren Huazhi could understand the writing style of a classic mystery novel, but she couldn’t understand the thoughts of a girl.

In the past, it just meant she couldn’t get material for romance, but now the problem was more serious.

Ren Huazhi might be exposed as a “fake woman who just debuted” because she didn’t understand the heart of a young girl!

She immediately rubbed her face vigorously, trying to make herself blush by promoting blood flow.

“A-Zhi, are you still angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“You’re definitely angry!”

“I’m not!”

Xu Panpan hugged Ren Huazhi’s arm and said pitifully, “After Brother Ren left, you were the only one willing to listen to my strange dreams, who wouldn’t send me for electrotherapy, and could even help me interpret them. I already see you as a big sister. Really.”

‘What is this?’

‘My bratty neighbor can’t be this frank. Has her transformed personality affected her real self? You did a good job, Jingzhe!’

“…Had that kind of dream again?” Ren Huazhi asked.

Xu Panpan nodded.

The girl, who was a year younger but half a head taller than Ren Huazhi, couldn’t imitate the coquettish upward gaze, so she just tilted her head.

The sparkling in her eyes compensated for the lack of killing power from the height difference.

Through the cheap plastic sunglasses, through the slightly transparent golden bangs, her eyes met Ren Huazhi’s dead fish eyes for a brief moment.

“Alright, A-Zhi, don’t be angry with me. As an apology, you can have half of my bed tonight, and I’ll tell you my latest dream.”

“You can tell me the dream, but as for sharing the bed…”

‘Some kind of best friend activity?’

‘A slumber party, common in Japanese school novels?’

But Ren Huazhi didn’t have pajamas. She just wore a tank top to sleep. She had considered whether she needed to buy underwear, but her chest was so flat, with no signs of development, so she had escaped that fate.

She wanted to refuse, but she didn’t know if she should.

Xu Panpan was the person living closest to her. If she became suspicious, it would be the beginning of the collapse of all her lies.

The casually fabricated and the carefully woven,

The ones meant to be exposed and the ones undiscovered,

The ones for shaping a character and the ones for protecting herself…

All the false stories clustered into a flower, and on the outermost layer of the overlapping petals was the promise made to Xu Panpan.

Brother Ren was the Kamen Rider who protected the city and her.

—At least that dream shouldn’t be a nightmare.

Ren Huazhi felt that the face-rubbing from just now was having an effect. Her cheeks were now a little hot, as if blood was rushing to them.

“A-Zhi? Hurry up, hurry up, I’m not teasing you this time. I ordered pineapple pizza delivery, and I also bought snacks for a midnight snack!”

“What’s the rush? I’m coming.”

Ren Huazhi took off her sunglasses and placed them by the washbasin. She cupped a couple of handfuls of water and splashed her face.

Her wet bangs stuck to her forehead in strands. She pushed aside the hair that used to automatically maintain its perfect shape with magical power, revealing her emerald green eyes.

And so, for the first time, she stepped through the anti-theft door that was just a meter away from her own, in a corner she had never visited.