Chapter 4 : People Always Have to Look Forward

The chirping of birds outside the window and the slightly warm but more intensely itchy sunlight woke Bai Ling up.

The girl opened her hazy eyes, trying to block the sunlight squeezing through the gap in the curtains with her hand.

The dust motes floating in the room gave shape to the sunlight through the Tyndall effect.

A slight, itchy sensation pricked her shoulder—it was the tips of her hair brushing against her delicate skin.

‘So it wasn’t a dream…’

The girl stared at the date displayed on her phone in a daze.
August 31st.
She was supposed to leave for Lin’an today.

School starts tomorrow…

Her head swimming, she climbed out of bed, only to misstep and fall flat on her back.

“Hiss… that hurts…”

The girl got up, pressed her head against the side of the bed, and took a deep breath, forcing herself to wake up.

However, the plan to wake herself up with deep breaths failed.
Bai Ling walked into the bathroom in a daze, and was nearly sickened by the stench of the black substance left from last night.

Pinching her nose, she grabbed a mop and cleaned up the black mess before the girl, toothbrush in her mouth, began her daily morning routine.

Looking at herself in the shattered mirror, the girl tried to crack a smile.

“Doesn’t look like me at all…”

The girl in the mirror was so unfamiliar it made her heart pound—long hair cascaded down to her waist like a waterfall, and the slight curve beneath her collarbones glowed with a pearly, cold white in the late summer morning light.

She suddenly felt that her life was a bit surreal.
She had inexplicably turned into a girl, and it had only taken her a few hours to accept it.

Thankfully, she was pretty.
That gave the girl a bit of psychological comfort.

The girl took a pair of scissors and tried to trim her waterfall-like black hair, but after sizing it up for a long time, she finally decided to give up.
As a fan of long, straight black hair, she couldn’t bring herself to touch such perfect locks.

She habitually scrolled through her phone while brushing her teeth.
She didn’t know if it was because of her emotional breakdown last night or simply because she had slept too soundly, but a flood of notifications from various apps bombarded her notification bar the moment she opened her phone.

“As major universities are about to start the school year, new students should pay attention to the following points…”

‘Tch, it’s just bedsheets, quilts, toothpaste, and toothbrushes.’
‘What’s so newsworthy about that?’

“An unexplained explosion occurred last night in Building 4 of the New City Community in Rongcheng. Police are investigating the case, and the number of casualties has not yet been announced…”

‘Probably another gas leak somewhere, right?’

‘Wait!’

The dazed girl suddenly shivered.

‘Building 4 of the New City Community… isn’t that the building across from me?!’

Without even spitting out the foam in her mouth, the girl ran to the window and threw open the curtains.

The dazzling sunlight poured into the room like a waterfall, instantly clearing away the gloom that had been swirling inside.

In the residential building across the street, the outer walls of the 15th and 16th floors were blown out.
Spiderweb-like cracks spread across the entire building.

“I must have slept like a log last night…” the girl muttered to herself, looking at Building 4, which looked as if it had been bombed.

But the shock only lasted for a short while.
After the emotion passed, the girl went about her business as usual.
After all, it wasn’t her who had caused the explosion.

Returning to the bathroom, she picked up her phone and continued to look at the notifications filling her screen.

There wasn’t much to see, really.
Just various apps pushing her useless news.

But as she scrolled to the very bottom, she saw a message that made her freeze.

Blind Xu: “There are no demons in the world. Don’t overthink it!”

The message seemed to explode in the silence.
She slammed her phone face down on the sink as if electrocuted.

Then, her heart began to pound.
A sour taste rushed from her nasal cavity to her eyes.
The girl didn’t know how to describe her current emotions.

Her fingertip traced over the chat box.
Blind Xu’s profile picture blurred into a halo of light in her vision.
She suddenly grabbed the jade pendant and pressed it against her chest.
The cold touch burned her heart.

“Coward…”

The girl in the mirror’s pale lips opened and closed silently.

With trembling hands, she added the account nicknamed ‘Blind Xu’ to her blacklist.

‘Sorry, Blind Xu, I might have to stand you up…’

The girl didn’t want to see Xu Zhi and have him look at her with the eyes of someone seeing a monster.
Perhaps she was even more afraid that Xu Zhi wouldn’t recognize her at all when they met.

So she chose to be an ostrich.
As long as she pretended not to see, nothing would have happened.

The girl washed up with her head down.
She didn’t dare to look up at the mirror again, afraid of seeing that strange self in the mirror, afraid of getting lost in endless糾結.

After washing up came breakfast.
But looking at the sizzling fried egg in the pan, the girl suddenly felt a little nauseous.
This simple breakfast, which usually whetted her appetite, now made her feel a little sick to her stomach.
She seemed to want to eat something cold instead.

Swallowing to suppress the churning nausea, the girl forced herself to finish the breakfast.
The feeling of the egg yolk sliding down her esophagus was like swallowing a piece of red-hot iron.

The metal utensils reflected her side profile.
A few strands of black hair fell from the tips of her ears, making her cheeks look like a green, unripe apple.

“How am I going to tell Mom…”

A bitter taste suddenly spread through her nasal cavity.

‘What should I say?’
‘Make a long-distance call to Mom right now and say, “Hey! Mom! Your son has turned into a girl!”?’

‘She’d go crazy, right?’

The girl held her head in distress.
She still remembered what her mom looked like when she left home five years ago—it was her thirteenth birthday.

That woman, who always wore khaki cargo pants, squatted at the door and wiped the cream from the corner of her mouth with her finger.

“Lingling, be good. I’m going to the desert to find an ancient city this time. I’ll bring you back some Egyptian specialties when I come back.”

This woman was always flying all over the world.
One moment she was excavating Mayan ruins in South America, the next she was off to North Africa in search of a pharaoh’s lost treasure…

Seven years had passed.
The person had yet to return, but she had accumulated a drawer full of postcards from various countries.

The girl’s head drooped lower and lower as she thought.
She wasn’t paying attention and suddenly bumped her head on the table.

“Thump!”

“Hiss… that hurts!”

But despite the struggle, time and events wouldn’t wait for her.

The girl could only drag her packed suitcase, call a ride-sharing service, and rush to the airport.

At the airport, the blue light from the electronic screens stung her eyes.
The wheels of her suitcase rumbled with a tremor on the tiled floor.

For the umpteenth time, she checked the boarding pass in her hand.
The clearly written gate number seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with her now; she couldn’t find it anywhere.

“So what if it’s an international hub…”

She muttered to the air.
The steel frame of the airport’s dome crisscrossed overhead.
The roar of planes taking off and landing thundered outside the glass curtain wall.

The girl’s hunched figure was reflected on the glass.
A black hoodie enveloped her slender shoulder blades, and her tight thighs stretched her jeans taut.

Not far away, two staff members were looking at her, whispering to each other.
They were probably guessing whether this girl, who exuded nervousness, was a problem child who had run away from home.

“Did this designer have a grudge against the waiting hall or something?”

Lu Qingtian tugged at his collar, panting.
His sneakers squeaked loudly on the tiled floor.

He had just turned his head while dragging his suitcase, and his teammates had disappeared into the sea of people.
He had rushed and rushed, finally finding Xu Zhi’s back in the labyrinthine waiting hall.

“Instead of complaining about this, you should be thinking about how to write your self-criticism when you get back. Twenty thousand words, you know!”

Xu Zhi patted the back of the young man’s neck.
There was still a dried bloodstain hidden under his collar.

He was a Demon Suppression Envoy from the Lin’an Demon Suppression Division.
Logically, they shouldn’t have been in Rongcheng.

But half a month ago, an urgent request for help from the Rongcheng Demon Suppression Division had arrived in Lin’an.
The commander had no choice but to activate a cross-district support operation.

The ace of the Rongcheng Demon Suppression Division, Lin Jiuge, had desperately dealt with a level-seven great demon half a month ago.
Now, she had lost half her life and was lying in the intensive care unit, wrapped in bandages and drainage tubes.

Like a butterfly caught in a spiderweb.

After she fell, the Rongcheng Demon Suppression Division had difficulty dealing with the remaining demon lairs, so they had no choice but to request support.

Even with reinforcements sent from several cities’ Demon Suppression Divisions, it had still taken a full half-month to clean up the mess left by the great demon.

If not for the recovery bulletin from Lin Jiuge this morning, Xu Zhi would have missed the start of the school year, and also his appointment with a certain someone.

Fortunately, there was still time.

As Xu Zhi thought this, he suddenly smelled a sweet, cloying scent.
It was the scent of osmanthus.
It wafted through the waiting hall, which was filled with the smell of disinfectant and coffee, and precisely drilled into Xu Zhi’s nasal cavity.

He abruptly looked up, but saw a flash of black hair just dissolving into the crowd.

“Great Demon Suppression Envoy Xu?”

Lu Qingyu lightly tapped his shoulder with her fingertip.

“My eyes were playing tricks on me.”

Xu Zhi pressed down on his throbbing temples.

That hair was too long, so long that it fell to the waist.
Its owner was clearly a young girl in her prime.

‘Was I too tired?’

‘Why would I mistake a young girl for my childhood friend?’

It was just a similar gait.
That guy hated trouble the most.
He would never keep such long hair that required meticulous care.

The black hair in the crowd suddenly disappeared.
Xu Zhi closed his eyes for a moment.

In his memory, Bai Ling always had spiky hair like a hedgehog.
The stubble was so hard it pricked his hand, like an untamable wildcat rubbing against his palm.

But the back of that person in the crowd, her black hair cascaded like a waterfall, rippling with every step.

That kid should be at home catching up on sleep right now, his T-shirt collar always askew, a stubborn cowlick sticking up, not with waist-length hair at the airport, wrapped in a slim-fit hoodie, with even the line of his nape exuding an unfamiliar suppleness.

Until he boarded the plane, he was still thinking about his childhood friend, that little guy named Bai Ling.

Dusk quietly crept up the porthole window.
In a daze, the river breeze from six years ago seemed to blow through time and hit him in the face.

A thin figure was curled up under the bridge pier.
Bai Ling was counting the specks of gold on the river’s surface, one by one.
The setting sun had dyed that tear mole the color of amber candy, casting a warm glow on his side profile.

He suddenly chuckled.
Bai Ling had sent him a message at 3:02 last night, asking him if there were demons in the world.

That kid probably got scared watching a horror movie in the middle of the night.

He could even imagine the scene: that kid, wrapped in a blanket, huddled in front of the computer, his cheeks pale in the eerie glow of the screen.

That kid was probably catching up on sleep right now, right?

They had promised when they parted ways that they would meet again at Lin’an University.
He hadn’t expected that kid to actually get in.

The night the acceptance letter arrived, countless emoticons had popped up in the chat box.

Xu Zhi could see that kid jumping on the sofa and waving the acceptance letter, like a crazy child, even through the screen.

That kid was always like that.
He couldn’t hide any of his emotions.

The porthole window hummed and vibrated.
The pressure of takeoff pinned him to his seat.
Xu Zhi closed his eyes, letting the Bai Ling from his memories poke him in the side from across six years of time: “Blind Xu, why are you wearing a mask and pretending to be a hero?”