Chapter 13: The junior is about to turn evil.

Silver City First Central Hospital, Morgue.

Looking at the already cold Xinghe lying on the slab, Charlotte couldn’t help but cover her face and sigh.

“What on earth am I doing?”

Just a moment ago, she had wanted to return to the other world for a look, only to find that the slapdash cross-world magic she had copied didn’t work.

‘No matter how many times I tried, the expected void rift simply wouldn’t appear.’

Upon realizing she could never return to the other world and would have to live the rest of her life in this one, Charlotte’s head had spun. When she came to her senses, she was already in the hospital morgue, having pulled Xinghe’s corpse out of its refrigerated drawer.

Before, she had felt it was necessary to return to the other world, so she hadn’t resumed her life using Xinghe’s identity.

But now that she couldn’t go back, if she wanted to live in this world, using Xinghe’s identity was obviously more suitable.

However, now that she had calmed down and thought about it carefully, she realized just how childish that idea was.

Bai Shenxinghe had well and truly died in a car accident. There were many witnesses nearby, and the hospital had already registered his death. If she just performed an “Edo Tensei,”¹ how many people’s memories would she have to erase to eliminate the impact of this event?

Besides, she was already used to a girl’s body now. When she had to use the restroom, she would just walk into the women’s room, lift her little skirt, and take care of business. If she switched to a boy’s body, she might inadvertently cause a lot of unnecessary trouble.

In short, switching back to Xinghe’s identity was too much of a hassle. It was better to just be a girl. There was nothing wrong with being a girl.

At this thought, the now-calm Charlotte stuffed Xinghe’s corpse back into the refrigerated drawer.

Speaking of which, something similar seemed to have happened before.

It was when she was a second-year student at the Starsea Magic Academy. A serious mass-coma incident had occurred in the first-year department. In order to become an official witch, she had accepted Instructor Mashiro’s request. After investigating, she found that it was the work of a junior named Yuffie Inola.

Yuffie wanted to resurrect her brother, who had been dead for two years. She used her time at the Starsea Magic Academy to indiscriminately absorb the magical power of other witches, preparing to use a soul-revival spell to call her brother’s soul back from the underworld.

However, to use the soul-revival spell, besides gathering a massive amount of magical power, one also had to pay a price equivalent to the person being resurrected. The price Yuffie intended to pay was herself.

After figuring out the whole story, she and Lillian had rushed to stop this junior from doing something foolish. In the end, thanks to her excellent execution, she successfully shattered Yuffie’s delusion and pulled her back from her fantasy to reality.

But after she resolved the matter, Instructor Mashiro rejected her application to become an official witch on the grounds that she had caused great damage to the school buildings. In the end, all her work had been for nothing.

But honestly, she didn’t even know if the so-called soul-revival spell could truly bring the dead back to life.

‘What would happen if I used it on myself? Would there be two of me in the world?’

‘But my soul is now in this fragrant, soft, and small body; perhaps even my soul will be split in two.’

At this thought, Charlotte shook her head regretfully.

‘Forget it. My past self is already dead. It’s better to let him sleep eternally underground.’

‘Time to go home!’

After Charlotte pushed open the morgue doors and left, the room fell silent once more.

However, a moment later, the morgue doors were opened again.

A girl with long purple hair, wearing the same style of school uniform as Yukina, walked in.

She turned on a flashlight and searched carefully along the refrigerated drawers. When she saw that familiar name, she paused, a look of bewilderment on her face.

With trembling hands, she opened the drawer. When she saw the face of the boy, now cold and no longer smiling, the girl’s eyes instantly welled up with tears.

“Senior…Senior…This…this isn’t real…”

Lying in the drawer was her best friend’s brother.

She had heard from her friend before that this brother of hers was utterly incorrigible, that the very air became foul when you spoke to him, and that she should have nothing to do with him.

However, she still ended up crossing paths with this brother while working part-time at a restaurant.

‘To end up working at the same restaurant, what were the odds?’

At first, she had dutifully followed her friend’s instructions, trying to keep her distance from him. But when she found herself in trouble, this brother had stood up for her and helped her out.

She was instantly won over.

This brother wasn’t as bad as she had imagined. He was actually a very yasashii² person!

After that, she and this brother had exchanged contact information. Whenever she was in trouble, she would seek his help, and their relationship gradually grew closer.

However, just when she was thinking that this kind of daily life was quite nice, she suddenly saw on the news that this brother had died on the spot in a car accident.

In that instant, she suddenly felt that the entire world had lost all its color.

“Why? Why did something like this have to happen? This… this isn’t real…”

Her friend’s brother was gone. She didn’t even get to see him one last time.

Now, she had seen his cold corpse with her own eyes, and the fantasy she had clung to was finally shattered.

Unable to accept reality, she felt a sharp pain in her heart, as if an invisible hand were squeezing it tightly. Her breathing became rapid.

“It hurts… Senior… why does my heart hurt so much? No… no!”

She fell to her knees, letting out a heart-wrenching cry, so loud that it almost woke the other occupants of the morgue.

Normally, after such a loud shout, a security guard would immediately come to patrol the morgue.

However, in reality, no one came.

Because, in the instant the girl clutched her heart and cried out, everyone in the entire hospital felt their own hearts skip a beat, and they all fainted from the pain on the spot, without exception.

The girl lay draped over the boy’s body, crying for a long time, before finally walking out of the hospital, utterly lost.

“Senior… don’t worry. I’ll be coming to find you soon! I won’t let you be alone!”

After muttering this to herself, the corners of the girl’s mouth turned up in a strange, eerie smile.

It was clear that her mental state was on the verge of collapse.

And Charlotte, flying through the night sky on her broomstick, seemed to sense something. She turned her head and looked back in the direction of the hospital.

“Hmm? I thought I heard Xiaoxi’s voice. Was I just imagining it?”

¹ Edo Tensei: This is a direct reference to the popular manga and anime series Naruto. “Edo Tensei” is a forbidden jutsu that binds the soul of a deceased person to a living vessel, resurrecting them to do the caster’s bidding.

² Yasashii:  Used in the original Chinese text is a common trope in anime/manga-influenced stories to describe a male character with a kind heart, often one who seems rough on the outside.