Chapter 60
“LittleSnow, help!!!!”
She burst through the door, Yue Liuyi flying for the couch like a panicked swallow.
Before she stepped out earlier, she’d moved the silver-haired girl onto that inward, quieter couch, a nook like shade under a tree.
“Eh? Little Yue, what’s wrong! Tears already, did someone bully you?” Dixue’s voice lilted like bells, mischief bright as dew.
A domesticated Yue Liuyi threw herself into her arms, and Dixue hugged her tight, smiling like she’d woken in a sweet dream.
“I’m not crying! It was an accident! I ran into our old class rep! But I didn’t tell her...”
Just now, Yue Liuyi had bumped into the old class monitor, and her mind went blank like fog over a lake.
To even talk, she had to say she was Dongfang Chen—yet she wore a pretty little dress like spring petals, hairpins like butterflies, and doll-like shoes.
Every glance said she was a little girl; in this shape, how could the name Dongfang Chen cross her lips like a stone over water?
(Whimper... calling myself Dongfang Chen is way too hard.)
So she’d stayed dazed to the end, then fled like a startled deer, only managing, “I’ll go find Dongfang Chen...”
“You met an old classmate? Isn’t that nice?” Dixue smiled with a fox’s calm. “Invite her in, let’s catch up in the bookstore.”
Her face said puzzled, yet those emerald eyes flashed like sly leaves; LittleSnow was playing dumb, tail hidden but swaying.
“Hey! LittleSnow, you’re awful! Playing dumb now of all times! She’s a girl, and I’m a girl! I’m Yue Liuyi—how do I invite her in!”
“Oh... then that’s troublesome!” Dixue clapped, delight sparkling like frost. “You can’t say you’re the World Tree Maiden either.”
“Then say you went to Tai Star and had surgery! You’re not a boy, but forever a girl~!”
“You’re spouting nonsense!” Yue Liuyi puffed up like a kitten. “I just saw her days ago as a boy! And I’d never go to Tai Star for that!”
“Then it’s a headache,” Dixue sang, fanning the flames like a breeze. “Turning you back into a boy is hard, and you don’t want to bare the truth.”
“Hard... so, LittleSnow, I can still turn back into a boy?”
She caught the thread in LittleSnow’s words, like finding a path under tangled vines.
“Mhm... you can,” Dixue nodded, gaze soft as snow. “But to keep others from probing your change, I need to raise a warding barrier, at great cost.”
“S-Sacrifice... is the spell that hard?”
“The spell’s easy, but the wound to my heart is grave,” she sighed, hand to chest like porcelain cracking. “To change my cute, dozy Little Yue into a nasty, lecherous boy—my heart feels shredded and sick.”
Dixue watched Yue Liuyi with sparkling interest, not a hint of queasiness, eyes laughing like ripples.
“Why are boys disgusting...” Yue Liuyi muttered, cheeks puffing like steamed buns. (She doesn’t hate Lingwei and the others at all... she’s teasing me!)
“So!” Dixue’s tone brightened like sun on snow. “To mend my ravaged heart, for the next three days you’ll be my cuddle pillow.”
“Wherever I hold, no resisting.”
“No resisting is too much!” Yue Liuyi yelped, hopping like a sparrow. “You always tickle me—how do I not resist!”
“Then I’m not helping,” Dixue said, rolling a strand of hair like silver thread. “Go face your classmate just like this~”
“Ugh... fine! I agree—LittleSnow, you’re way too naughty!”
Cornered like a rabbit before a fox, Yue Liuyi signed a devil’s pillow pact with the silver-white demon.
The transformation went on under Dixue’s cover, a bedroom sealed in frost-light, a barrier humming like winter wind.
...
“D-Dongfang Chen...”
“I’m fine. Let’s sit on the first floor,” he said, voice like a tired tide pulling back from shore.
Dongfang Chen exhaled, and even newcomer Zixin could see the weariness on the boy’s face like soot.
(I must’ve misunderstood... right?)
Zixin thought so, her heart easing like clouds thinning; he must’ve spent no small effort soothing that blue-haired little girl.
“I’m sorry...”
“It’s fine. I didn’t think it through,” he answered, pouring calm like warm rain. “So, class rep, what brings you here? If I can help, I will.”
He led her into the bookstore, steam from fresh flower tea curling like faint blossoms in air, and filled two cups.
“Mm... you probably don’t know, Dongfang Chen. I’m now the Speaker’s secretary.”
“Pff—”
He almost spilled the tea; the cup trembled like a leaf.
“Eh?”
“Since when did you learn to joke?” His smile wavered like a lantern in wind.
“I’m not joking. It’s true... I really am the Speaker’s secretary.”
Zixin nodded, serious and a little stubborn, her gaze steady as a drawn line.
“Wait—hold on... isn’t the Winterwood District under lockdown? How did you get in?”
“That’s why I said I’m really the Speaker’s secretary.”
A touch flustered, Zixin pulled out a business card like a clean white blade and set it before him. “I came to ask you one thing.”
“W-What is it?”
“Dongfang Chen, would you be willing to serve as the Chief Administrator of the Winterwood Protected Zone?”
