Chapter 56: A Birthday’s Unexpected Gift

A sharp gasp escaped him.

Su Qingyao solemnly grasped Lu Zhichuan’s hand, then lowered her head and bit down hard.

“Qingyao, I’m still quite curious.”

Lu Zhichuan winced in pain, shaking his hand. “Why do you always express anger by biting?”

Su Qingyao tilted her head.

Her vacant eyes seemed to have never contemplated such a question.

“Forget it. For you, this is actually quite good now.”

Lu Zhichuan sighed inwardly.

“But it’s not good for me,” the girl complained to Lu Zhichuan in a faint, ethereal tone. “That was the very last piece I’d saved.”

While they did indeed keep some emergency supplies for themselves, the vast majority had been contributed. Su Qingyao’s most recent significant acquisition had been a well-preserved box of chocolates.

“Because it’s the best way to make them ‘trust’ us,” Lu Zhichuan explained calmly and patiently. “Ultimately, we need to leverage them to find clues or secure transportation to the next city.”

“To make everyone feel they’ve been treated favorably…”

Su Qingyao added softly.

“Yes, precisely.”

Lu Zhichuan agreed habitually, only to be bitten by Su Qingyao once more.

“But what does that have to do with me wanting to be angry?” Su Qingyao said to Lu Zhichuan, holding the hand now bearing another bite mark, with a hint of childish defiance.

Her snow-white eyes narrowed slyly.

Lu Zhichuan sighed again.

He couldn’t quite grasp why Su Qingyao, before her transformation, had been no different from before, yet after becoming a magical girl, she had grown somewhat capricious.

Of course, this capriciousness was directed solely at him.

Lu Zhichuan confirmed repeatedly that he had certainly not taught Su Qingyao this particular trait. This meant that Su Qingyao had become entirely self-taught in this aspect.

This was a good thing.

Lu Zhichuan’s gaze, hidden beneath his mask, scrutinized Su Qingyao’s transformation with an inscrutable lack of emotion.

This was not to say he was a cold person. Quite the opposite. There was probably no one who cared more deeply for Su Qingyao than Lu Zhichuan.

It was simply his nature.

As he observed Su Qingyao, the girl before him had already shifted her attention to their surroundings. Even with good fortune, and no monsters appearing beyond the range of their magical perception, danger often extended beyond physical threats.

Even a simple breath could potentially turn perilous in the next moment.

While Lu Zhichuan had never suffered any defeats on the offensive front, he had to rely on the all-capable magical girl for all other aspects.

Lu Zhichuan studied Su Qingyao’s serious profile. More precisely, he was searching for the shadow of the girl’s pre-transformation identity, his sole creation, ‘Su Qingyao’.

This had become his most frequent, peculiar form of mental exercise lately.

“Senior?”

It wasn’t until Su Qingyao’s questioning voice broke through his thoughts that Lu Zhichuan realized he had already taken the girl’s hand.

Realizing this, he did not immediately release her.

“I want to observe more closely.”

Lu Zhichuan offered a smile that easily betrayed mischievous intent.

Yet he waited a long time, but no new teeth marks appeared on his hand. Instead, he was met with a gaze akin to staring at refuse, and the girl’s compliant hand.

To his bewilderment, Su Qingyao merely let out a cold snort. “Then look.”

She then turned her head, paying him no further heed.

This highly illogical reaction left Lu Zhichuan stunned. He found himself without an excuse to let go of her hand.

Well, what else could he say?

Lu Zhichuan, somewhat bewildered, found himself holding a girl’s hand for the first time. Even though the girl had been his same-s*x friend before her transformation, his chest still clenched for a moment.

An unfamiliar emotion surged through him, reflecting itself in a manner he couldn’t comprehend at the time.

The girl’s hand was cold, but it gradually warmed under the transfer of Lu Zhichuan’s heat. When the cold finally receded, where their skin met, all that remained for him was a soft texture and a peculiar tickle against his palm.

“Has anyone ever told you that your hand feels very nice?” Lu Zhichuan mused, unconsciously stroking his chin.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than his rational mind recognized the impropriety of his comment, and he immediately choked on his own saliva, erupting into a cough.

As expected, another set of teeth marks appeared on his hand. This time it was on the hand he was holding, but perhaps due to the softness of their intertwined fingers, the pain was noticeably less intense than before.

“Has anyone ever told Senior Lu Zhichuan that some of his remarks are rather off-putting?”

What a sharp tongue. He truly missed that somewhat naive Su Qingyao from when they first met. Lu Zhichuan sometimes found himself regretting his ‘tutelage’; the results had been far too remarkable. She had absorbed everything, both what he intended to teach and what he hadn’t.

“No,” Lu Zhichuan answered with complete honesty. Not only in his identity as ‘Lu Zhichuan’, but even the person beneath that identity cared little for the so-called ‘flesh’. The sensation of their fingers entwined was, in fact, a novel experience he had never encountered before.

“Mmm.” She was clearly helpless.

Su Qingyao could only reluctantly concede.

On the way back to their hiding spot, no one turned back to disturb them. Even if someone occasionally noticed the two of them, upon seeing them holding hands, they all sported expressions of ‘understanding’.

Yet neither Su Qingyao, nor Lu Zhichuan, who appeared utterly ‘off-putting’, felt any sense of romantic intimacy. One party’s reluctant compromise, the other’s unwitting misunderstanding.

Besides, such a pragmatic contact shouldn’t give rise to any superfluous feelings, right?

Lu Zhichuan squeezed Su Qingyao’s hand again, feeling the subtle tremor as her tolerance threshold was tested.

*Right?*

Su Qingyao shot Lu Zhichuan a silent glare.

‘Stop fooling around.’

Lu Zhichuan let out a weary sigh. Then he squeezed her hand again.

Perhaps it wasn’t just Su Qingyao; he himself was also being changed as he helped forge this ‘shell’ for his counterpart. Ever since he had met Su Qingyao, a certain unbearable emotion had vanished from the depths of Lu Zhichuan’s heart.

Ah, that was loneliness.

“So… why did you suddenly agree today?”

It wasn’t until they reached the entrance of their hiding spot that Lu Zhichuan casually inquired, feigning indifference. Before this, while Su Qingyao hadn’t been particularly bothered by the concept of ‘gender transformation’ itself, Lu Zhichuan’s previous attempts at contact, explicitly out of curiosity, had been casually dismissed by Su Qingyao with various excuses.

There had still been a reason for her resistance to physical contact, hadn’t there? After the words left his mouth, Su Qingyao seemed to snap back to reality, swiftly withdrew her hand, and, with utter disdain, conjured a ball of water to rinse it repeatedly.

“Are you still joking?”

“Or has Senior Lu truly forgotten completely?” Su Qingyao didn’t look in Lu Zhichuan’s direction, answering as if the importance of the answer held no sway over her. “Isn’t today, Senior Lu Zhichuan, your birthday?”

Lu Zhichuan’s steps faltered. He calculated the passage of time in his mind. It seemed that exactly three hundred and sixty-five days had indeed passed since he had, consciously or unconsciously, hinted at his birthday to Su Qingyao last year.

“So, Happy Birthday.”

“Although the gift I originally prepared was personally given away by you, Senior,” Su Qingyao remarked casually, not noticing the shock and perturbation hidden beneath Lu Zhichuan’s mask.

“Are those words from the mask, or from yourself?”

Lu Zhichuan’s voice suddenly came from behind Su Qingyao. The girl thought for a moment, then replied:

“Both.”

Lu Zhichuan quickened his pace to catch up with the girl. “Then, can I ask for another gift?”

Lu Zhichuan seemed to have reverted to his ‘annoying’ state, prompting the girl to sigh deeply. “Oh—what is it?”

“How about you don’t cancel your transformation today?”

His eyes narrowed. He was seeking a second, special gift from the girl who had given him the first birthday gift of his life.

“Oh, I guess not.”

Despite her words, Su Qingyao still dutifully granted his wish.