“Huh? Weren’t we going to eat?” Her question fluttered like a startled sparrow.

It was five-thirty, the hour like warm honey sliding down the sky. Ye Weibai and Ruan Lin left the internet café, rode the subway for half an hour, and finally surfaced into open air.

“Why an amusement park?” Her doubt rose like a small wave against the pier.

Summer stretched long as a sunlit river; dusk hovered but didn’t bite. Streetlights and the park’s neon flowers hadn’t fully bloomed yet, and only bright music drifted from the plaza speakers like a stream.

They stood at the gates of Jiahui Amusement Park, an arch like a rainbow made of bulbs. Around them, people poured out after a day’s play, faces still glowing like embers, voices crackling with leftover excitement.

Jiahui was famous in G City, its grounds broad as a small sea and rides as many as stars. By day it swarmed like a hive, but by night only a few rides blinked awake, and the crowd thinned like mist.

“Come on, we’ll buy tickets first, then eat.” His voice landed lightly, like a pebble in a pond.

“Ah? Ah—?” The little girl tilted her head, slow as a curious fawn, and peered up at Ye Weibai. “A-aren’t we going back to run a dungeon?”

“No.” Ye Weibai shook his head, the motion like a leaf refusing the wind.

“Hey, hey! Today’s battleground quest needs one more step! There’s battleground gear!” Her urgency buzzed like a trapped bee.

“Battleground, my foot.” Ye Weibai shot her a glare, sharp as a blade of ice, raised his hand like a karate-chop, and feinted downward.

A veteran of a hundred mock wars, the girl flinched by instinct, hands flying up to guard her forehead like a turtle pulling in.

But the expected sting didn’t land; instead, warmth brushed her hair like a small campfire.

Ruan Lin cracked her eyes open and saw Ye Weibai smiling, his palm resting on her head like a steadying sky.

Just then, the sun sank without a splash, and Nightfall unfurled like velvet. Streetlamps and the park’s lights blossomed together, a sudden garden of glass.

The lively daytime tune slipped away with the light, and a soft piano melted out, gentle as snow on water.

Ruan Lin stared at Ye Weibai, her eyes clear as a spring, reflecting his lone figure like a quiet moon in a well.

A black-haired boy in white stood beneath Nightfall, the park’s seven-colored lights blooming behind him like a thousand flowers, their glow wrapping him in a soft halo.

The wind skimmed past with the music, lifting his hair like reeds stirred by a slow river.

He smiled, as always, warm as winter sun.

Ruan Lin’s chest tightened, a sudden thorn under the ribs, and she held her breath like a diver under ice.

She had never seen that smile.

She was just in grade school; words felt small as pebbles, and none fit. But a vast unease spread over her like evening chill, and her skin prickled with cold.

She clutched the hand on her head, grip tight as a knot.

“Xiaobai—!”

“What is it?” His voice was a lantern in fog.

“Y-you won’t leave, right?” Her fear shivered like a candle flame.

Ye Weibai paused, a faint loneliness skimming his eyes like cloud over a lake. Then it softened into warmth, a hearth opening. “Of course. We’ll eat, then come back and play till we drop.”

He ruffled her head hard, like shaking a peach tree, until her eyes spun and she begged mercy. Then he slipped in one last hand-chop, a clean, critical strike. He chuckled. “A mere knight without a shield dares block a rogue’s Eviscerate?”

“Ow, ow, ow!” Pain burst like sparks, scattering her strange dread. She clutched her steaming-feeling head, eyes glossy. “I—I’ll buy one when we get back!”

“Oh? Then I’ll need a ten-times attack potion next time.” His grin tilted like a fox’s.

“S-sorry! I won’t buy it, I won’t!” Her surrender fluttered like a white flag.

...

...

Ye Weibai met Ruan Lin in an internet café.

But the day he met the “other” Ruan Lin—the day their story truly began—arrived half a year later, like a second shadow stepping out.

About a year ago, on the street, Ye Weibai ran into a senior from his club, Shen Yanyan, who’d graduated a year earlier and now taught at an elementary school. She appeared like a familiar song on the wind.

Back in the club, his harmless face and quiet, calm aura drew seniors like moths to a lamp, and he’d received plenty of care, including from Senior Yan.

They bumped into each other; she learned he was just wandering, and tugged him into a nearby café to “catch up.” Steam curled up like lazy dragons.

Catching up, in truth, meant Ye Weibai listened while Senior Yan poured out workplace complaints, her words tumbling like dice.

The vice principal’s gaze feels sleazy, she grumbled, like oil on water. Waking up early every day is torture, like hauling stones. Those boys are so mischievous, like sparrows in a market.

Finally, she mentioned—Ruan Lin.

She used one word most for Ruan Lin: “weird.” The syllable sat like a pebble in the cup.

“She’s a very strange little girl. She’s focused in class, never whispers, and answers questions with real energy.”

“Bad with classmates?” His question slid out cool, like the edge of a coin.

Senior Yan’s eyes turned odd; she shook her head. “No, the opposite. She gets along with everyone just right.”

“‘Just right’... huh?” Ye Weibai rolled the words on his tongue like seeds.

“You know,” she said, grinning sheepishly, “even after leaving the psychology club, I still poke at what hides behind behavior. Habit’s a weed.”

Ye Weibai smiled and nodded; he shared that soil.

“When I say ‘just right,’ I mean she does it deliberately. Is she trying to look like the perfect student in front of teachers?” His voice was steady, like a line drawn with ink.

“Yes... and no.” Senior Yan frowned, searching for threads. “She’s careful everywhere, ticks every box in the student handbook. But... she doesn’t seem to enjoy it. Yet it’s not exactly forced... it feels like something’s behind her...”

“Pulling the strings.”

Ye Weibai dropped the words cold, like three stones into deep water.

“Yes, that!” She brightened, then froze as she saw his face: winter-cold, terrifyingly still.

“Xiaobai...” Her concern hovered like a hand not yet touching.

“Sorry.” He flinched, then shook his head with a bitter smile, like someone tasting over-steeped tea. “I remembered some bad things.”

“You... sound like you already know Ruan Lin?” She pivoted quick, a swallow cutting air.

He nodded. “Yeah. I know her.”

Senior Yan gaped. “You really do? A relative?”

“No—” He paused, and smiled. “She’s my girlfriend.”

“...Huh?”

...

...

No question about it.

After learning there was a Ruan Lin at school completely different from the one at the internet café, Ye Weibai stepped in without hesitation, like a diver breaking a mirror-still lake.

He had reasons—she was his girlfriend, and his own curiosity was a restless cat. But beneath those, quieter and darker, lay another reason he wouldn’t name, a thorn under silk.

If the foolish, over-the-top hero act at the internet café was Ruan Lin’s true nature, then the diligent, beloved class angel at school was a counterfeit skin.

Unlike Ye Fei, who’d lost every shackle and turned into pure emptiness, Ye Fei was the Void—BLANK.

Ruan Lin was the counterfeit—FAKE.

In her body, other “impurities” and “oddness” lived, filling the hours she spent at school like dye saturating cloth.

She spent far more time at school than in the café; so in practice, the lively, hyper little gremlin at the café was the “sub-personality,” and the too-perfect schoolgirl was the “main.”

But—that was false.

Even then, before he’d seen her school smile, Ye Weibai was sure: the grin she flashed at the café, the rage when her gear got ninja’d, the glee when a mob clobbered him—those were the real thing.

So, without doubt, Ye Weibai went to her school, his resolve a blade sheathed in calm, to find proof with his own eyes.

There, in Class 3–2, through cold glass like a thin lake in winter, he saw Ruan Lin in study mode, and he saw a girl pinned in place by unseen iron.

She was wrapped in countless invisible strands of spider silk, coiling her arms, her legs, her fingers, her eyes—her whole self, a cocoon without a seam.

She sat straight in class like a spear planted in earth, answered questions with not a grain off, smiled warm with classmates, cleaned on time and cleanly. Teachers liked her; classmates adored her—applause without dust.

She wasn’t the café girl at all.

It was perfect to the extreme, like a statue polished to a mirror.

And it was wretched to the extreme, like a bird singing in a gilded cage.

...