Chapter 19: Doubts

After thinking for a long time, she still couldn’t remember where she had seen that name, and the topic had already been sidetracked.

“By the way, Kexin, since you came here, you’ve been training all the time and haven’t really had a proper look around Muzhou City, right?”

“Ah, I guess so.”

After all, patrolling the city at night doesn’t really count as sightseeing, and even if she counted her year at Muzhou No.1 High School, she still wouldn’t say she was familiar with the city.

“Then how about going out this weekend?” Nekozaki suggested. Despite being born in the Eastern Administrative District, she had lived in Muzhou City for over ten years because of her parents’ work.

Like Shizuki Usagi, she lived in an apartment because her family home was too far from Crescent Moon Academy to commute conveniently, since Muzhou City is quite large.

“Weekend, huh… I should be free.”

Kexin said almost instinctively. She didn’t have many friends, and her schedule was basically empty, so even a last-minute invitation wouldn’t be a problem. If something were to disrupt her plans, it would only be some unknown anomaly causing trouble.

For now, she agreed. If something came up, nobody would be able to escape anyway.

“Is there anywhere you want to go?” Bai Xihan seemed interested as well.

“Suddenly asking that… I really can’t think of anywhere. If I said a certain place, you probably wouldn’t want to go anyway.”

When thinking of must-visit places in Muzhou City, the first thing Kexin thought of was standing by a certain riverbank, looking at the TV tower on the opposite side and the surrounding area—just like Manhattan in New York of the North American Federation.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one with that idea. That area would be crowded even on weekday nights, let alone weekends.

Going there would probably just be inviting trouble for herself. As for other places, either she hadn’t heard of them or didn’t know if they were fun. If they went and found it boring, it would just make everyone suffer.

Even if nobody said anything, Kexin would feel guilty—everyone’s time is actually quite precious.

“If we really have to go, it’s not impossible.” Usagi tried to make her tone sound natural, but anyone with more than zero social skills could tell she was speaking reluctantly.

As expected, no one was really willing to go. Could it really be considered “expulsion from the household register”?

“It’s fine, it’s fine. There are still two days until the weekend, so we can think about it slowly.”

“Speaking of which, I just realized today is already Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thursday, the day after Friday, and then it’s the weekend.”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

In a relaxed atmosphere, lunch ended, and they returned to the teaching building. Since everyone was in different classes, only Qisi and Kexin returned to the same classroom together.

The classroom was very quiet at this time. The period before afternoon classes was treated as a lunch break, and anyone needing a nap could rest their head on the desk.

Qisi skillfully pulled a small pillow from her drawer, and the moment her head touched it, she fell asleep instantly, not even giving time for complaints.

“Falling asleep that fast?”

Kexin, however, hadn’t developed the habit of napping. This was partly due to her previous school experience—students were expected to voluntarily attend classes on weekends, so leaving time for a nap at noon would have been a waste.

Now that she had a free period, she could nap to make up for lost sleep at night, but Kexin wasn’t even sleepy. She picked up her phone and, whether intentionally or not, immediately opened the Mchat app and tapped into the group chat “Nonsense House.”

The discussion in the group was quite lively.

Kexin scrolled through the chat history.

Most of it was about recently aired anime, fan creations, and various jokes. It seemed that the group didn’t always talk about anomalies.

Somewhat disappointed, Kexin still hoped to glean some information about the group owner from the conversations.

Back when she was in this group before, she rarely saw the owner speak. Usually, a few admins maintained order, and they had even said they didn’t know who the owner was—they had just been invited in.

Kexin hadn’t paid much attention then, but looking back now, forcibly adding people to the group seemed to be the owner’s usual method.

But then, what was the purpose? It didn’t seem like they were organizing some kind of truth-seeking squad. Even when the chat touched on anomalies, it was mostly reminders for others to be careful. No one doubted that anomalies actually existed.

Then why did she join this group in the first place? She hadn’t been forcibly added.

Admin Qun Qianshu: Everyone, listen, hear me out.

The admin enabled full mute—

After scrolling through the history with nothing interesting, Kexin reached the latest messages and saw the admin speaking.

She remembered this admin’s nickname. On the day she got into trouble, she had seen messages in the group about anomalies. However, Xia, who hadn’t taken it seriously, encountered an anomaly on the way home after evening self-study.

Kexin was very curious about what she was going to say this time.

‘Qun Qianshu: A new anomaly has recently appeared, causing a series of attacks, and there is no sign of it stopping. Everyone, please be careful.’

After this message, the full mute was lifted, and everyone’s attention focused on the anomaly.

Kexin’s concern was the phrase “a series.” If she wasn’t mistaken, the admin was talking about the giant scorpion anomaly she had completely obliterated in one strike.

But there was no evidence that this anomaly had caused a series of incidents. It wasn’t even on the Special Investigation Bureau’s magical fluctuation tracking list. Yet the admin said it showed no signs of stopping.

This was stranger. How could an anomaly she had destroyed suddenly start causing trouble again? Anomalies are hard to kill, but they don’t just resurrect randomly.

‘Did the admin get some insider information?’

‘Isn’t this supposed to be handled by the Special Investigation Bureau and the magical girls? Has it not been dealt with yet?’

…

Kexin didn’t even finish reading one message before it was pushed away by the next message. The message frequency was extremely fast.

It made sense. If Kexin were still an ordinary person and believed anomalies existed, she would naturally be very concerned. Without magic or protective tools, even encountering a low-level Beta-class anomaly could be deadly—you avoid what you can’t fight.

Moreover, these people in the chat spoke openly about magical girls, so the secret of magical girls wasn’t strictly kept.

【Qun Qianshu: But don’t worry too much. This anomaly seems to target according to a special pattern, though I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ll let everyone know immediately if there’s any news.】

After that, the chat returned to meaningless messages. Kexin glanced for a while and then left the chat.

She needed to review the investigation materials for this case.