Chapter 7: Post-Incident Countermeasures

“Beep beep beep beep—beep beep beep beep—”

As the alarm blared louder and louder, Ke Xin slowly opened her eyes. Still half-asleep, she reached toward the source of the noise. But after fumbling around for a while, she still couldn’t find the annoying phone.

She expanded her search area… and ended up grabbing something soft and springy?

Suddenly realizing something was wrong, Ke Xin’s eyes snapped open, and she shot upright in bed, staring in horror at the other half of her mattress.

A girl with short, reddish-brown hair was sleeping soundly next to her. The alarm was coming from her phone.

As memories from the night before slowly returned, Ke Xin’s panic began to settle.

After she instantly eliminated that anomaly last night, nearly every magical girl living in the apartment building had shown up. As someone who had only recently become a magical girl, Ke Xin was the rookie among them all.

From the first day she arrived, she had been overwhelmed by their “warmth.”

Still, that anomaly hadn’t posed much of a threat to her. The real issue was that the normal girl — Zhang Ruolin — had fainted before they could use a memory-suppression spell on her.

After contacting her parents via the Special Investigation Bureau and confirming no one was home recently, they decided to bring her back to the magical girls’ dorm.

The apartment was officially designated for magical girls attending Crescent Academy. While it could theoretically house dozens of people, there were never more than ten living there at any given time.

Everyone worked together to quickly cast memory spells on Ruolin so that when she woke up, she’d forget about the anomaly entirely — and not remember anything about magical girls either.

Sometimes Ke Xin felt like she wasn’t a magical girl, but a member of Men in Black.

With the others’ help, they washed Ruolin up and changed her clothes. Though there were other empty rooms, they lacked spare bedsheets — so Ruolin ended up sharing a bed with Ke Xin.

“What a hassle.”

Thinking back to last night’s chaos, Ke Xin couldn’t help but sigh. At that moment, her own phone started ringing, though she reached out and silenced it before it could make a full sound.

She was wide awake now anyway.

Perhaps disturbed by all the movement, or maybe just waking up naturally, Ruolin rubbed her eyes with one hand and pushed herself up with the other.

Her glasses were still on the bedside table along with her phone, giving Ke Xin the first clear look at her face without them.

Honestly, if it weren’t for that messy hair and outdated glasses, she’d easily be considered a pretty girl.

“Mm?”

Still groggy, Ruolin sat cross-legged in bed. Her surroundings didn’t look familiar at all — and there was someone standing in front of her, staring.

“Hmm!?”

“You’re awake?”

“Did the surgery go well?” Ruolin mumbled instinctively, brain still half-asleep.

“What surgery? Are you hungry? You can cook here if you want.”

“Huh?” Ruolin blinked, confused. Then, she slowly started piecing things together.
“Why is Ke Xin in my room? Am I hallucinating? Still dreaming? That must be it. There’s no way something this good would happen otherwise.”

With that, she flopped back down to sleep again — but it didn’t work.

Because… this wasn’t her pillow.

“Ah!” After a moment of silence, Ruolin clutched the pillow, hiding behind it with only one eye peeking out.
“So I’m in Ke Xin’s room…?”

She frantically tried to recall what had happened. Nothing. She couldn’t remember why she was here. The last thing she recalled was having dinner with Violet, then staking out Ke Xin… and then nothing.

Was I drugged and kidnapped?! And my clothes have been changed — someone else’s pajamas?!

Does that mean…?

Her face turned bright red. Her life was over.

“Yup.” Ke Xin couldn’t help teasing as she watched Ruolin’s face turn crimson.
“You move around a lot in your sleep, Ruolin.”

“Eh? Really? Then… will you take responsibility, Ke Xin?”

“…Take responsibility?”

Take responsibility for what?

Ke Xin processed the words slowly… and then finally got it.

Damn.
This girl looked so innocent, but apparently her thoughts were anything but.

Also, Ke Xin was a girl herself! Girls don’t—wait.

Her thoughts stopped short. A slightly scary possibility popped into her head. She looked at Ruolin again.

…Actually, it wasn’t entirely impossible.

It was the 21st century. People were more open-minded these days.

“Tch—never mind. Stop teasing.
You fainted near here last night, and I just happened to be passing by with some roommates, so we brought you back.”

If she kept joking, this could spiral into a much bigger misunderstanding. Ke Xin decided to stick to the pre-agreed script.

It wasn’t even a lie — Ruolin really had fainted. She just left out the parts that weren’t appropriate for normal people to know.

“I see…”

Wait, why did she sound disappointed?

It’s not like I did anything! Ke Xin couldn’t begin to guess what was going on inside this girl’s head.

“The bathroom’s just outside the room,” Ke Xin explained.
“Towels and toothbrushes are new — help yourself. Or you can use the bigger shared bathroom outside.”

“Thanks.”

After giving the heads-up, Ke Xin stepped outside and gently closed the door — only to be greeted by several pairs of eyes staring straight at her.

Normally, these lazy girls didn’t wake up until after she finished making breakfast. But today, they were all up already.

“Morning, everyone.”

The moment she greeted them, Ke Xin was dragged into the living room.

This apartment had a simple layout:

• First floor: Shared living space and staff quarters.

• From the second floor up: Each floor had two large duplex rooms, each with six individual bedrooms (4 on the lower level, 2 upstairs).

Each resident had a room card, and some cards could access other rooms too.

“How’s that girl from Class A doing?”
“Ke Xin, you didn’t already do something to her, did you?”
“No way — Ke Xin’s the aggressive type?”
…

Why are they talking like this?!
Is this really how magical girls should behave? Ke Xin really wanted to tape their mouths shut.

“Cut it out, you guys!”

She finally got them to quiet down by threatening their meals for the next few weeks. They sat obediently at the table while she dug through the fridge for breakfast ingredients.

A few minutes later, Zhang Ruolin came out in her school uniform.

That day’s breakfast at the “Magical Girl Dorm” was underway. Cooking for one more person wasn’t a big deal — just add a little more.

“Wait, Qisi lives here too?”

Ruolin immediately spotted the girl with orange hair — Lu Qisi, a second-year in Class A at Crescent Academy, and the one who sat right behind Ruolin.

Compared to someone like Ruolin, who barely had a presence in class and whose name people often forgot, Qisi was a star.

Though her grades were average-to-good, she excelled in sports. She was the PE monitor, participated in multiple clubs, and was a key player in competitions.

“Morning, Ruolin! My house is far from school, so I applied to live here,” Qisi said cheerfully, following their pre-discussed story.
“But I didn’t expect you to faint on the side of the road!”

Honestly, her story wasn’t fake either.
If she took public transit home, it’d take 90 minutes one way. Living here saved her 3 hours a day. Plus, she liked living with other magical girls — it was more lively.

“Oh, I see… I still don’t know why I fainted.”

If she’d really collapsed on the street with no one around, who knows what might’ve happened? She was lucky it had been classmates who found her.

“Have you heard? There’ve been a lot of people fainting on the streets lately. They all react like you did. Some say it’s the work of evil spirits.”

“Really? Who said that? If we’re talking evil spirits, then it must be anomalies… anomalies…”

Ruolin suddenly looked serious. Her subconscious seemed to be nudging her — trying to remind her of something important related to anomalies.

The others began to panic. Memory-suppression spells weren’t true memory erasure. If something triggered it, Ruolin could remember everything.

They quickly shot warning glances at Qisi.

“Uh, don’t worry about it. Anomalies and all that aren’t real. We have to believe in science, right?”

“Yeah… you’re right…”
Ruolin gripped her glass of milk, feeling the coldness seep into her hands.

After breakfast, everyone changed into their uniforms and headed out. The walk from the dorm to school was only about 20 minutes at a relaxed pace.

Walking at the back, Ke Xin noticed that while the others chatted away, Ruolin kept her head down, deep in thought.

Sigh… what a troublesome girl.
This situation definitely wasn’t going to be so easy to brush off.