Chapter 7: I Don’t Bother with Small Fry Like You

Magical Girl Flower Weaver, a crisis of unprecedented proportions.

I hate you sharp-witted children the most… Ren Huazhi felt a cold sweat soak her back. This secretly taken photo should be considered illegal evidence, right? It wouldn’t even be admitted in court, right?

“Big·sis·ter, shouldn’t you explain to me properly? About your relationship with brother Ren Huazhi.”

Xu Panpan smiled smugly.

For having exposed the clumsy lie that “Ren Huazhi’s pupils are brown,” the subtle clues and foreshadowing, had produced a pleasure like completing a puzzle game.

And Ren Huazhi’s side was at a disadvantage… or was she?

Ren Huazhi lowered her eyes, revealing a pitifully lost expression. “So I remembered it wrong… he doesn’t even remember that he has a sister overseas. I thought that we could finally reunite after more than ten years, but I didn’t expect that he would… be killed by a nightmare…”

Her words were even on the verge of tears. Her gaze avoided Xu Panpan’s scrutiny, and she looked through the window into her own room.

The area was not much larger than the atrium Ren Huazhi was currently standing in. The bed took up almost all the indoor space, and a one-square-meter independent bathroom had been forcibly partitioned out to raise the rent. She usually showered while standing on the squatting toilet. It was the kind of quirky rental house that, if you filmed a video of it and posted it online, someone would open a window from inside and shout, “President, welcome home.”

“What? By a nightmare?!”

The negotiation tactic—suddenly throwing out a startling argument to make the other party at a loss, and thus be led by the nose!

Xu Panpan was indeed greatly shocked and quickly asked, “Are you serious? Brother Ren… by a nightmare…”

“You two have such a good relationship. You even call him brother.”

After gaining the upper hand, she pursued her victory!

And she also had to create an attitude of “not wanting to talk about that sad topic” to make a normal person with a sense of morality consciously shut up.

“Yes, Brother Ren saved me.”

…Ah?

When? How come I don’t know?

Ren Huazhi was shocked by the startling argument that Xu Panpan had suddenly thrown out and quickly asked, “He’s a shut-in who only has novels in his head. Can he be a hero and act righteously?”

“Anyway, he saved me! But you, since you just came back from abroad, are you so sure he’s dead? Tell me, how did he die? Did they have a funeral?”

Xu Panpan didn’t seem to be a normal person with a sense of morality.

That’s right. She had even secretly taken a picture of Ren Huazhi washing fruit.

“Brother Ren won’t die!” Xu Panpan emphasized again.

Ren Huazhi, who had been inexplicably given a bunch of new settings, was left with no choice but to laugh and cry. When a person is speechless and can’t hold it in, they really want to laugh, but they can’t, which makes it very hard to hold it in.

“What, is he immortal?”

“Maybe! Actually, I’ve long suspected that Brother Ren is a Kamen Rider! That time the nightmare attacked the mall, I saw him rush into the building with my own eyes before I fainted. And a few other times, after the nightmare fell, he would run out of the ruins while waving his hand! From then on, I’ve felt that he must be secretly protecting the city and me.”

Protecting the city is true.

Protecting you? Who are you?

“What’s a Kamen Rider…”

She mentioned the mall. Ren Huazhi did have some impression of it, but it was just one of the dozens of times she had been on duty in the past year. In addition to eliminating nightmares, the Flower Weaver would also play the hero when the situation was right. After all, heroism has always been one of the enduring cores of literary creation. As for who she had saved…

“I know,” Xu Panpan started to think to herself again. “As a Kamen Rider, Brother Ren must have a secret base. As the confrontation with the nightmares intensifies, there will definitely be a mysterious and evil organization that uses the nightmares to do evil. So, in order to avoid the battle affecting me, he had to give up his ordinary life, cover his tears with a mask, and become a lonely hero.”

Ren Huazhi no longer knew how to refute her.

Let it be.

Anyway, the suspicion had already shifted from “who is Ren Huazhi” to “is Ren Huazhi a Kamen Rider.” Just let her be happy.

Usually, this little ancestor would find fault with her in the courtyard all day, and she would often mock her for being a shut-in, short, and writing novels that no one read. She had never expected that this was how she saw her in private, and she had even made up a whole set of chuunibyou settings that sounded quite reasonable…

“Anyway, I’ll be living here from now on. Please take care of me.”

Ren Huazhi opened the door, stood in the atrium and took off her shoes. With one step, she was on the bed from the outside.

She put away her shoes and closed the door. Her head poked out from the window frame.

Although she was sitting on her own bed in her private space, it didn’t seem to be any different from when she was standing outside just now.

“Pfft, pfft, pfft, it’s just like a gatehouse!”

Seeing this performance-art-like process from a VIP seat, Xu Panpan instantly returned to her true nature. “Actually, big sister doesn’t have to wrong herself and live in Brother Ren’s pigsty. I have a two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment over here! Although it’s still a little small~”

“Are you inviting me to move in?”

“Uh-huh~”

The experience of living with a younger girl… hmm, she had none.

Should she gather material? Now? Here?

Identity crisis… social perception… ethics… and other obstacles stood in the way of her primitive thirst for knowledge and creation. Ren Huazhi lay on the windowsill, her head lowered in silence, staring at the dead insects in the window frame’s slide rail, and she was in a state of inner conflict.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe an adolescent girl—although Xu Panpan was a little annoying and a little mentally unstable, she was actually quite cute as long as she didn’t talk or move around. If she could get close to her for a while, it would be very beneficial for describing the subtle expressions and daily small movements of a young girl.

“I’m going, I like (describing) young girls!”

It would be best not to go against the wishes of a 16-year-old woman.

To hell with ethics. Anyone who saw Ren Huazhi would only think that she was a pure young girl of the same age as Xu Panpan, and a literary girl who loved to write!

Having initially tasted the sweetness of her new identity, Ren Huazhi decisively started to pack the luggage she was going to take next door. At the same time, she started to fantasize in her mind: as a boy, there were many places she couldn’t go or had no way to go, and many things she couldn’t experience or had no way to experience. The “other side of the world” that he had once been unable to touch, as if separated by a deep abyss, could now be put on the agenda—

“Hee hee, is big sister really taking it seriously?”

“—Eh?”

Ren Huazhi stopped packing and looked back at Xu Panpan.

She had a mischievous smile on her face, as if her trick had succeeded. She said, “How could I invite someone I’ve just met to live with me? Both sister and brother are clueless! Idiots, idiots!”

She stuck out her tongue, made a face, and retreated into her room, closing the window.

“…”

Ren Huazhi blankly put down the half-folded change of clothes.

She had been tricked.

Although it wasn’t the first time.

In the once again quiet and narrow courtyard, she felt both embarrassed and sad. Was the opportunity to observe a high school girl up close ultimately just a spring dream? Just as many people would punch the air when they were excited, Ren Huazhi sang in an embarrassed and sad voice:

“I called for a spring storm, I cried, my heart is already broken…”