Chapter 87: The Girl From Another Family

Night draped over Xinhai City like ink soaked through velvet, smothering both its splendor and its rot.

After a full day of shopping, Lin Yu had made her way to District E.
Just as she had learned beforehand, this wasn’t only the city’s busiest port area—it was also one of its gray zones, a money-burning playground where members of the Akagi Gang frequently prowled.

Neon signs flickered over the entertainment street, their fractured light splashing across the damp pavement.
The air reeked of alcohol, perfume, and a nauseating kind of decadence.

“…Do we really have to do this?”

Lin Yu lowered her voice, whispering into her earpiece in one last attempt to resist.

Thanks to her wonderful little sister, she looked drastically different from how she had earlier that day.

Her eye-catching silver-gray hair was tucked beneath a long black straight wig.
Her heterochromatic eyes were hidden behind black cosmetic contacts.
Even her face had been forcibly covered with light makeup—just enough to dull her otherworldly beauty and give her the approachable, ordinary vibe of a girl next door.

Her JK uniform, however, looked oddly out of place in this filthy environment.

At least the new bra she bought that afternoon was unexpectedly comfortable.
Now that her chest wasn’t being constricted, she could finally breathe properly.

Lin Yu subtly weighed the pair of flesh on her chest.

Is the sizing for “Girl’s Secret” brand just… larger than usual?

“I think it might’ve been a Japanese brand,” she muttered to herself.
“I remember their sizing formula tends to be a bit—”

Her pointless daydreaming was abruptly cut off by a calm voice through the Bluetooth earpiece—Lin Xue.

“What else did you expect?”

The genius little sister was currently seated upstairs in a 24-hour café a few streets away, sipping a latte while monitoring everything through their shared tactical visor—like a director watching her actors on set.

“You don’t want to alert your company brass or Section Zero, right? Then you’ve got no choice but to do it yourself. This area is Akagi Gang turf. The police’s ‘Hundred Days of Clean Sweep’ operation knocked out some of them, but if we stay patient, we should still be able to find a target.”

“I’m not talking about that!”

Lin Yu almost screeched inside the comms channel.

“I’m talking about the plan! Why do I have to pretend to be a runaway JK to lure someone?! This plot is so cliché! It’s exactly like those trashy doujin scenarios!”

“Because it’s logical,”
Lin Xue replied flatly, taking another sip.

“Your disguise right now is that of a soft-looking, ordinary high school girl. A runaway seeking help is the easiest setup to lower a target’s guard. You do realize that once a man’s ‘JK brainworm’ kicks in, his cognitive abilities take a nosedive, right?”

“I—”

Lin Yu tried to defend the male population.

“Target spotted,”
Lin Xue interrupted without mercy.

“Eleven o’clock direction, thirty meters out. Gait analysis shows deep intoxication. Clothing matches Akagi Gang bottom-tier members. Go on, big bro—time to show off your charm.”

Lin Yu took a deep breath and looked.

A middle-aged man staggered out of a bar.
Black vest, hammer tattoo on his arm.
Face flushed, singing off-key, exuding a very obvious “I’m drunk and feeling great” aura.

“Hurry up,” her sister urged through the headset.
“We waited all night for someone usable. If you miss this one, who knows how long the next will take. I’m watching. If anything goes wrong, I’ll call the cops immediately. Relax.”

“…F-Fine…”

Despite her immense reluctance, Lin Yu steeled herself.

She shut her eyes once, and when she opened them again, her watery gaze glimmered with perfectly calibrated fear and helplessness.

Clutching the hem of her skirt, her body trembling slightly, she looked just like a lost kitten stumbling through the cold—exactly the type of prey drunk men liked to “help.”

She staggered forward and “accidentally” bumped into him.

“Ow!”

Her long black hair was in slight disarray, her dark eyes brimming with tears as she gazed up at him like a startled fawn.

“S-Sorry, sir… I didn’t mean to…”

Her voice was soft and thin, tinged with a hint of a sob.

Half of the man’s drunken fog evaporated on the spot.

His murky eyes lit up with raw, greedy instinct.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, little one.”
He put on what he assumed was a gentle smile, his beady eyes blatantly sweeping over the generous curves outlined by her blouse.

“Are you alone? What’s a cute girl like you doing here so late, crying?”

“I…”

Lin Yu lowered her head, shoulders shaking, voice trembling with a mix of grievance and stubbornness.

“I fought with my family… I ran away… Now I have nowhere to go… and I lost my wallet…”

“Ohh—ran away from home? No no, that won’t do!”

He clicked his tongue in fake righteousness, stepping subtly closer.

“Where do you live? Want uncle to take you home? Just apologize to your parents and everything will be fine.”

“No!”

She jerked her head up violently, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I don’t want to go back! They’ll lock me up! Dad—Dad might kill me!”

“Ohh, I see.”

His grin grew filthier.

“That won’t do either. It’s dangerous for a girl to be out alone at night. How about… uncle helps you?”

“Really?”

Lin Yu lifted her head abruptly, eyes shining with desperate hope.

“Sir, could you… lend me a little money? Or maybe… maybe help me find a place to stay tonight? I… I’ll definitely repay you…”

“Repay?”

He licked his cracked lips. That one word hit the exact wire in his brain.

“Heh heh… sure, sure. Come with me. I know a perfect place—totally safe.”

He reached out, trying to drape an arm over her shoulder.

Lin Yu froze for a split second, resisting with all her might the urge to snap his arm in half.
Still, she allowed herself to be led into a narrow, shadowy alley.

It was deep, dank, and reeking of garbage.

“Heh… little girl, here we are…”

He pushed her into a corner, rubbing his hands together like a wolf about to feast.

“Um? Sir… I thought we were going to get money?”
Lin Yu glanced at the security camera at the alley entrance, confirming it still had visual coverage, and feigned innocence.

“Heh… uncle’s got plenty of money.”

He pulled out a stack of bills and fanned them in her face, the filthy smell wafting off of them.

“But how much you get depends on your performance~”

“I see…”

Lin Yu bowed her head slightly.
Her trembling right hand slipped beneath her skirt.

The man’s face flushed crimson with excitement, breath hitching like he might die from sheer anticipation.

“Umm… sir…”

Her voice was still sweet and soft, but there was a strange calm beneath it.

“You’re… carrying ‘product’, right?”

“Product? What product?”
He blinked, then realized, grinning lecherously.

“Heh heh… don’t worry, uncle’s got plenty of ‘product’. Enough to make you very satisfied.”

“Great.”

Lin Yu nodded.

Then slowly raised her right hand.

The pale, slender hand was now holding a black pistol.

---

Three minutes later, Lin Yu walked out of the alley.

She was wiping her fingers with a disinfectant wipe, as if she had touched something filthier than anything on earth.

“It’s done,” she reported calmly through the headset.

She held up a small evidence pouch for the camera.
Inside was half a packet of grayish crystal powder.

“The amount’s good. Should be enough for ten rounds of testing.”

“And the target?”

“Blunt force trauma to the back of the head. I held back a little. He probably won’t die… right?”
She replayed the movement in her mind, frowning.
“But if he does die, am I gonna—”

“What are you afraid of? The Akagi Gang aren’t exactly model citizens. The police won’t dig too deep.”

“Honestly though, not bad for your first time.”
Lin Xue paused—then her voice rose with uncontainable excitement.

“Hehehe… your acting was amazing! Especially that last line—‘I’ll definitely repay you’—that look, that trembling voice—god! I was getting excited just watching the screen! You made me want to bully you!”

Lin Yu stumbled and almost face-planted.

“Excited my ass!”

“I was this close to vomiting from humiliation, okay?!”

“Are you even paying attention to the mission?!”

“I am, I am!”
Lin Xue sounded like a fox who’d stolen candy.

“I recorded the whole thing. Already uploaded to the encrypted cloud. It’s valuable experiment data… hehe… I’m gonna enjoy watching it later.”

“DELETE IT RIGHT NOW!!”

“Nope~”

Lin Xue refused instantly.

“Alright, alright, stop sulking. Get moving. I’ll meet you at Starbucks.”

“Tch—”

Lin Yu grumbled weakly.

Talking to this little devil was more exhausting than dealing with gang thugs.

She stowed the “fairy dust” and the gun back into the tactical thigh holster beneath her skirt, making sure nothing would fall out, then let out a long, weary breath.

Looking up at the neon-stained violet sky, she felt utterly drained.

Finally over…

Leaning against the cold wall, she couldn’t help mentally screaming:

Goddammit—why did I have to act out a scenario straight from a shitty doujin plot?!

So f*cking gross!

She stomped away in frustration— completely unaware that from a patch of darkness nearby, a pair of eyes had already locked onto her retreating figure.