Good. Let’s rake through the intel we can safely air, like combing pebbles in a stream.

Nana Toki stood under the campus trees, dappled shade like fish scales on her sleeves, counting on her fingers.

First off.

On this plane’s personas, it’s a surprise the primary roles—Zixia Chen and Mengmeng Feng—haven’t gone OOC, like kites that didn’t snap in the wind.

The male lead’s collapse has him almost a soulless seeder, a machine rattling across fields; yet the two heroines haven’t suffered his hands. The legit plot-halo beats a cracked one, bright as a full moon compared to a broken lantern.

These female personas are built to charm; if they don’t collapse, as long as Nana doesn’t poke the hornet’s nest, they won’t sting her first. Fewer shadows lurking in the bamboo.

As for Huaiyue Qin, Nana can’t swear her persona broke. In the text, Qin and Qingyu Si were oil and water, and she hit home base with the Protagonist Lord early, like lightning striking before the rain. Whether that’s a collapse is fog on the river. She’ll test the water at the Saturday night gala.

Of course, that’s not the burning coal.

What matters is this: find a wedge, and split the male lead from the two unbroken heroines, like prying apart a knotted branch.

Nothing thrills like breaking a ship; nothing stokes the blood like undoing a red thread. She’s saving strayed girls from fire and flood, stacking virtue points like stones on a shrine.

At the thought of her mountain of karma-debt finally chipping down, Nana’s mood rose like sunlight threading through morning mist.

“Hey, classmate, wait a second.”

She finally spotted Mengmeng Feng about to enter her classroom, and jogged over, skirt swaying like a soft bell.

“W-what is it… Miss Maid?” Mengmeng stared, stunned, as the maid caught up like a breeze catching a kite tail.

A maid? In school? Was this cosplay, like petals pasted onto winter glass? And… she looked familiar.

“Um… could I borrow a bit of your time?” Nana saw Qingyu Si’s startled look from inside the classroom, and gave Mengmeng a slightly awkward smile, like stepping onto thin ice. “I’d like to ask a favor.”

“Me?” Mengmeng waved her friends ahead, then approached Nana with a small crease between her brows, like a paper fan folding. “What is it?”

“So, apologies—I overheard you and your boyfriend just now. Miss, are you going to the commercial street this afternoon?” Nana’s acting was flawless, calm as still water. If the System hadn’t been with her through time, it would’ve sworn she was born genteel.

“And what about it?” Mengmeng’s guard rose like a hedgehog’s spines. She’d heard a new maid café opened near the commercial street. Was this maid trying to drum up business?

“Here’s the thing. I’m a maid escorting my master to school. I’ve just started working in X City, so I don’t know the commercial street well. My master’s birthday is soon. I want to prepare a gift, but I don’t know where to start. So I wanted to ask you.”

“Eh?” Mengmeng blinked, like a deer pausing in snow. “You’re a real maid?”

“Of course. Here’s my maid credential. Please have a look.”

At some unknown moment, Nana produced a paper credential stamped in red, gold edging glinting like sunlight on a sword, and handed it to her.

Mengmeng looked at the flamboyant calligraphy—large characters reading Shutong An Maid Credential—gleaming like dragon-and-phoenix strokes. She believed it at once, like a seed taking water, without a drop of doubt.

“So, may I ask you to help me pick a gift for my master after school?” Nana took back the credential and bowed, a willow bending after rain. “It won’t take long. Please.”

“H-hey, please don’t do that, I’ll get flustered!” With classmates’ odd looks flitting over like sparrows, Mengmeng flushed and hurried to lift Nana up. “I’ll go with you!”

“Really?” Nana lifted her gaze, surprise bright as a firefly.

“M-mhm.” At Nana’s face so close, Mengmeng’s eyes slid aside, like a brook avoiding stones. “I was going to the commercial street for some trinkets anyway. Since you need me, let’s go together. It’s nice to have company.”

“Thank you so much!” Nana moved to bow again, but Mengmeng, swift as a swallow, steadied her.

“N-no need to be that formal! Just call me Mengmeng.” She rubbed her fingers together, shy as a fawn nibbling leaves. “I’m not used to people using honorifics with me.”

“Alright then, Miss Mengmeng.” Nana nodded and offered a friendly smile, warm as tea steam. “In that case, I won’t keep you now. I’ll come find you after school.”

Just as Nana finished, the school bell rang, sharp as a struck chime.

She gestured please, a gracious sweep like opening a screen. Only after watching Mengmeng enter the classroom, smile still pinned like a silk flower, did Nana smooth the expression away.

“Hey, Mengmeng, what did that maid want?” As Nana left, a few girls leaned in, heads ducked like sparrows under eaves.

Behind Mengmeng, Qingyu Si pricked up her ears, quiet as a cat behind a paper door.

“It was nothing,” Mengmeng said, keeping her tone light as foam. “She just wanted me to explain the school layout.” She couldn’t tell the truth; otherwise her friends would tag along, and the scene would turn into a crowded market stall.

“Really, Mengmeng~?” Her friends clearly didn’t buy it, voices teasing like willow branches. “Then answer with your body!”

One girl attacked while Mengmeng wasn’t looking—fingers darting like minnows.

“Ah!” For a moment, before the teacher arrived, laughter burst like firecrackers in a cluster of girls.

Elsewhere, as a seasoned film queen, Nana slipped out of the school and, with the first breath of free air, began digging into Huaiyue Qin’s spending records, fingers tapping like rain on bamboo.

After hours—time unrolling like a long scroll—she found a hotel reservation and a matching transaction under Qin’s company account.

“Heh-heh, just as I guessed.” The smile at Nana’s lips was hard to hide, a crescent moon peeking from cloud.

Given the Saturday gala, Huaiyue Qin would bring the Protagonist Lord. Qin loved picking fights with Qingyu Si; she wouldn’t waste that chance.

The Protagonist Lord had just refused Mengmeng’s invitation. That meant he had plans after school, his road bending like a river toward Huaiyue Qin.

Where else would he go but to the rich patron who kept him? With the receipts in hand, the ink was dry.

System: “…”

Wait, Host, where did you pull that laptop from, like a rabbit out of a hat?

And where did you learn those computer tricks, like weaving silk in the dark?!

If the System had a face, it’d be pure shock, like a carp leaping at thunder. After so many planes, this was the first time it learned its Host could wrangle code.

It’s just basic computer stuff. Why the earthquake? It’s point-and-click, like snapping twigs.

Nana rolled her eyes at the laptop, as if it were the trashy System itself, a lump of clay pretending to be jade.

Can you act like a proper System? Don’t get shocked every time I take something out, like a hen seeing a kite.

System: “…” This is not “just use your hands” territory!

Host, how many secrets are you hiding in your sleeves…?

Heh-heh, take a guess~

“…”

Now that she knew the Protagonist Lord would meet Huaiyue Qin at a hotel on the commercial street after school, Nana began drafting an afternoon ship-breaking plan, lines sketching like ink on rice paper.

By the time she returned to school for Mengmeng after classes, the plan was set, taut as a drawn bow.

“Sister An!”

Nana had barely reached the gate—class bell’s echo still ringing like ripples—when Mengmeng burst out first, a spearhead leading a charge.

Nana: “…” Since when are campus belles this eager to bolt at the bell?

“Miss Mengmeng, you—”

She saw the crowd she’d left in the dust, a whole tide of students, and felt her mouth twitch like a tugged thread. Words slipped like fish.

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s hit the commercial street first.” Mengmeng laughed, warm as sun on plum blossoms, and pulled Nana’s hand, running toward the shops.

She couldn’t say a swarm of classmates always waited to walk her home. Too embarrassing, like a red kite snagged in a tree.

Far behind, Qingyu Si watched her own maid get whisked away by the girl in the front row. Her calm face showed rare threads of doubt, like hairline cracks in ice.

Then, from nowhere, a tight, breathless vexation sprouted in her chest, a thorn vine wrapping her ribs.

What’s wrong with me?

Only when Nana and Mengmeng’s figures slipped from her sight, like swallows into cloud, did Qingyu’s breathing ease.

“…”

“Uncle Chen, sorry to trouble you to pick me up again today.” At the gate, after staring a while like a stone lantern in drizzle, Qingyu took out her phone and called.

Nana, dragged streetward by Mengmeng, knew none of this.

After several turns, like threading alleys in a maze, Nana finally stopped and pointed ahead. “Miss Mengmeng, let’s start with that shop.”

“Okay.”

Mengmeng looked at the small trinket shop she’d pointed to and nodded with a smile, bright as a bell. “Let’s take a look!”

Of course.

Shopping was smoke and mirrors. Nana had steered Mengmeng here to break the ship, like leading a fish into a net.

As for buying a gift for her so-called master, she could pick something later, a leaf to float down the stream.

“Sister An, how about this?” Mengmeng cupped a pair of teardrop earrings in her hands, eyes sparkling like dew. “Aren’t they cute?”

“They are. The shape’s sweet, like little raindrops.”

“What about this?” Mengmeng held up a pair of chibi hair clips, round as mochi.

“Surprisingly nice, like cherries on a ribbon.”

“This one?”

“A lovely crystal orb, clear as winter ice.”

…

Mengmeng unearthed all sorts of dazzling little pieces, lining them up like treasures on a lacquer tray for Nana’s verdict.

Nana kept one eye on the street, watching currents like a fisherman on a bridge, and one eye on the gleam of metal and glass.

She glanced at the pile Mengmeng had found, then at her own thin wallet, light as a cicada shell.

Mm… buying a little, like sprinkling rain on dry soil, wouldn’t hurt.