“Huh?!”

Li Mengguo almost flipped the tray over Ye Weibai’s head, a metal cloud about to dump rain. Maybe she’d had that urge for a while.

“Yeah. So. The day before yesterday, a middle schooler confessed to me.” Ye Weibai slid aside from the falling tray like a shadow stepping out of sunlight. He watched Li Mengguo scoop it up and sit across from him. “Hey, shouldn’t you be serving the customers?”

“I’m more worried about a senior drowning in his own fantasies.”

“You only call me ‘senior’ when you’re roasting me.”

“So in your daydream, is the middle schooler pretty? Good temper? A cute boy?”

“Why start with ‘daydream’ and ‘boy’?”

“Because it’s your delusion. You usually ship yourself with the manager. Get tired of one flavor, you try another.”

“I don’t even know where to start with that.” Ye Weibai pinched his brow, a quiet line between his eyes. He half-regretted training Mengguo into this terrible personality—never noticing she was his mirror, sharp edges and all.

He sighed. His face went still and serious. “We met at the library.”

…

…

Xue Yutong loved the library.

It felt like a strange garden: full of people’s breath like wind in the leaves, yet calm as a still pond. Friends or strangers, everyone sat together in the same light and read in peace, like confidants so close they didn’t need to speak. That quiet understanding gripped her heart like silk twined round a finger.

Xue Yutong did not like dealing with people.

Books felt kinder than faces. Even the most archaic classic would yield, if you had patience—character by character, line by line, the meaning would rise like dawn from fog.

But people were different. People were a maze. A warm smile on the face and curses behind your back. A “sure” that meant “no.” Expressions, words, eyes, gestures—those “clues” were dead leaves in a whirlwind; arrange them however you liked and you could still be wrong. If a person were a book, then those were all disposable chapters you could tear out and toss.

People were a book so badly printed it couldn’t sell.

[Sorry—]

[I thought—]

[It was my mistake—]

She had said those lines until she was sick of them. Until she was exhausted. Until the words tasted like bile. Until she wanted to throw up.

In that broad library, the only thing that drew her more than the books was—Ye Weibai.

She noticed him early on. He always liked white. Rain or shine, every Sunday afternoon he came to this library, took a book, and sat in the windowed sun until night fell like ink on paper.

He had a quietness that felt… oddly right.

He seemed to match the books—or rather, he felt like a book himself, smelling faintly of good ink.

Xue Yutong loved to describe the world with bookish metaphors. Ye Weibai felt like an essay collection with a gentle pull, light on the tongue yet lingering.

[A person… like a book.]

[I want… to read him.]

Thoughts like that made the middle-school girl’s heart pound like a small drum. But she was timid. Weak. She could only sneak glances during breaks, peeking over a page, then ducking down with a red face. Without a twist of fate, she’d never be the one to speak first.

…

…

“You could tell she was sensitive. If I forced it, she’d hate me. So I waited. Patient, like waiting for a side quest to unlock. One day, it did. Another library closed by accident. This one flooded with people. I came in the afternoon and found my usual seat taken.”

“So you sat beside the little girl?” Li Mengguo’s voice went cold as an iced glass.

“Bingo.”

“Pause. Let me admire your creep factor.” Her tongue was a blade. “From where I sit, it’s a perv’s meticulous plan to get close to a middle schooler.”

“Strip out the insults, and you’re not wrong.” Ye Weibai smiled. “When you see a kid like that, how do you not get involved? A middle schooler, not in school every day, haunting a library, quiet as a fallen feather. Bullying? A hidden illness? Or something else? I wanted to know more.”

“You—” For a moment, words failed Li Mengguo. She should’ve remembered his nature. She’d heard plenty of stories like this. He liked doing this sort of thing. She’d even once put away her poison and said, “You’re a good person, senior.” He’d laughed and said, “Fruit, don’t hand me the ‘good guy’ card. I don’t do this out of pity. I do it because it’s interesting—to pull apart the tangled threads under the surface, to dig for the core of things and feelings. That process pleases me.”

It sounded like he’d dropped morality for curiosity, a little inhuman. And yet she didn’t hate it—probably because she’d once been one of his test subjects.

But because of that, when she heard these stories—the ones with other girls at the center—jealousy rose like a slow flame she barely noticed. It did now. She gathered her tray and stood.

“Do what you want. May you die by a woman’s hand.”

“Hey, you’re not finishing the story?”

“Dear customer, don’t harass me. I’m busy.” She didn’t look back; her voice had thorns.

“You really did learn my worst habits.”

“Hmph.” She smiled, not coy but proud.

She didn’t catch it: the way his mouth tipped into a bitter smile. He murmured, “Die by a woman’s hand, huh? Pretty precise—right, Xiao Hei?”

“…”

—I don’t want to talk to you.

—I’m not a woman.

—I’m a Deity.

…

…

The World is fair. You know the saying: when one door shuts, a window swings open. Whether the person inside is willing—that’s another story.

Xue Yutong lifted her eyes to the glass curtain wall and met her own reflection. With light makeup, her face was still tender and cute, but now there was a hint of allure that didn’t fit twelve years old—a forbidden edge like a red ribbon tied to a sapling.

Today she wore a slightly bold pink off-shoulder top. Not the kind that bares both shoulders and the whole collarbone in one stroke. She had hesitated; that style was too much thunder for her age. After blushing and trying it in the mirror, she gave up in a huff and chose one with a collar that still left round, smooth shoulders and pale arms in the light. The rest was covered.

To look older, she let down her usual ponytail. Her black hair fell to just below her shoulders, making those shoulders brighter, like a strip of moon on dark water.

Her face went hot. She darted a look around. No one seemed to notice. Facing the glass, she let out a long breath. Then she narrowed her eyes, stuck out the tip of her red tongue, and slowly licked her glossed upper lip—a clumsy, sultry move, the kind you see on TV, now performed by a child on the cusp of the storm.

It was awkward, yes. It was naive. But the mix of green and ripening had a dangerous pull.

“This… should be okay.”

“Like this… I could pass for a high schooler.”

High schooler… not so different from a college student, right? A d-date… should be fine.

Thinking of the person she was about to see, Xue Yutong’s mouth curved. Joy rose in her like a kite tugging at its string.

But the next stretch of the shopping street wasn’t easy.

As she walked, the crowd thickened like a river after rain. Her face went pale. She could feel eyes—on her bare shoulders, on the straight legs under her white skirt, on her child-bright face. She’d never been looked at like that. Her heart stumbled. Curious, heated, even disgusted stares pricked her skin like sleet.

The old her would never take this street. Not in a thousand lives.

But now was different. After so many “practice” runs with Xiaobai by her side, she could step through it.

“I… it’s okay.”

She took a long breath. Curled her small fists.

“Treat it like the library. Like Xiaobai said—pretend they’re books. Walking books.” She told herself that, and in her sight the bustling crowd went pop-pop-pop into volumes with legs, covers jostling, spines wobbling.

The image was silly. It tugged her lips up into a light smile.

But that wasn’t enough.

“Next, pick one book…” She searched, and her gaze landed on a woman just ahead on her right, lugging a swollen bag.

She began her daily “reading.”

“She just switched the bag from left to right. That means she’s tired… She’s been carrying it for a while. But this direction is only the start of the shopping street. So she didn’t buy this stuff here…”

The girl bit her lip and sorted the clues in her head, pushing toward a likely identity and backstory—the method Ye Weibai had taught her for dealing with strangers. Read them. Treat them as books, good or bad, and read.

“She bought it at another shopping area nearby and followed the commercial axis this way. Did she fail to find what she wanted there and come here to look? Or—”

“Ah!” The sound slipped out. The woman smiled and waved at a clothing store owner, went in, dropped the bag in the storage room, then came out and swapped shifts with the cashier at the counter.

So she worked there. Not a customer at all.

“Wrong, wrong.” Yutong winced. “I should’ve caught that. This early, she wouldn’t be shopping. The bag didn’t even look like a shopper’s bag.”

“Today’s reading—failed!”

She puffed her cheeks in mild frustration, then pulled a palm-sized notebook from her silver crossbody bag. On the first line of the latest page, she drew a big X.

“Failed again. I’ll detail the process when I get back.” A moment later, she was smiling. “Figures… I still can’t do without Xiaobai.”

“Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve gone out with him for real. A-a date—this counts as a date, right?”

“And that text I sent… I said we’d talk business… He agreed, right? If he meant to refuse, he wouldn’t have asked me out. I won’t ‘misread’ this. I’ve read so many romance novels.”

When she thought of Xiaobai, her face bloomed bright as noon. Her steps quickened.

“Still… I can’t stop the jitters. This feeling in my chest, like syrup about to burst… tight and sweet and not painful—is this what they call love?” She couldn’t help cupping her burning cheeks.

“Cat House, Cat House… Cat House Café—ah, there it is.”

…