Luo Ling took out the campus card he'd received that morning, tapped it on the gate with a beep, and smoothly entered the library.

The library had a hollow central structure. From the first floor, you could see all the way up to the roof, making the space feel especially open the moment you walked in.

“A space like this... really makes you want to fly straight up there...” Luo Ling looked up at the library ceiling and muttered under his breath.

During the first half of the month, when Ling Luo had been running all over the place getting people to sign contracts, she sometimes traveled by flying. It saved both time and money, though in a sense, those two were basically the same thing. And somewhere along the way, she seemed to have gotten addicted to flying. If she could fly, she rarely walked, unless her magic power was running low, or she simply didn't feel like going out that day. Once you got used to it, after all, the feeling of air brushing past your body was honestly pretty great.

Of course, Luo Ling had no intention of actually flying here. There were people around, and there were cameras too. Better to keep his feet on the ground and investigate properly.

The entire library had seven floors in total: one underground level and six above ground.

The basement level held archives and documents and the like. Luo Ling wasn't interested, so he didn't go down. The six floors above were neatly divided by category, holding all kinds of books. There were even journals and magazines. Strangely enough, you could find light novels here too. Still, Luo Ling was a bit more interested in science fiction, so he picked up one or two books and flipped through them along the way.

Before he knew it, Luo Ling had reached the top floor.

There were basically no people on the sixth floor. As for why, he wasn't really sure. It was his first time here, after all, and he wasn't familiar with the place.

“Let's see if I can get to the roof.”

Luo Ling followed the stairs upward, only to find a tightly shut iron door. There was dust on it, but there were also signs that it had been opened before. Luckily, it wasn't locked. It was only latched.

Even though he was already being careful, the door still made a sound when he opened it. Fortunately, it wasn't very loud, so it probably wouldn't alert anyone else.

As the door was pulled open, the dazzling afternoon sunlight stabbed into Luo Ling's eyes, making him unable to open them for a moment. Only after he adjusted did he step outside.

“Man, there's basically nothing up here...”

Luo Ling walked around the rooftop once. Aside from a few water-cooling towers for the central air-conditioning system, there was nothing much else. He also noticed there were barely any signs of people moving around here. Probably only maintenance workers came up to inspect the equipment, and fix it when something broke.

But that was perfect. A place nobody came to was the most suitable. No matter how you looked at it, this was an urban legend, not some influencer hotspot. Why would he need a crowd gathering for fun?

With the library rooftop chosen as the place to stir things up, today's task was basically complete.

Luo Ling took out his phone and checked the time. It was four in the afternoon. Not dinner time yet, but not exactly early either. It was stuck in that awkward in-between slot that made people feel a little uncomfortable.

If he went back to the dorm now, his chair probably wouldn't even be warm before he'd have to run back out to the cafeteria for dinner. No matter what, he was still a lazybones. He couldn't take that kind of hassle. On a related note, Luo Ling didn't really know much about food delivery either. Back at home, he was already the family cook. His mom was often away, and since he didn't know about delivery, he could only cook for himself whenever it was time to eat. The ingredients at home were usually well stocked anyway. So he either ate at the cafeteria or cooked for himself. It had already become a habit.

After thinking it over, Luo Ling decided not to go back just yet. But today's task was already done, and there wasn't really anything to do here. On top of that, he wasn't the type who liked taking walks, so the idea of wandering around somewhere else had been rejected from the very start. That left him in a bit of a bind.

“What am I supposed to do to kill time? Go back downstairs and keep reading? Wait a second!”

Luo Ling suddenly remembered the thing his mom had given him before she left. It was still in his backpack. Wasn't now the perfect time to take it out and look at it? Nobody was going to come up here anyway.

So he took out the thin little booklet wrapped in paper and started unwrapping it.

But when he'd only gotten halfway through, he froze in shock—

“Mom, you're messing with me again!”

————

The girl who called herself Xiao You, after parting ways with the girl she'd mistaken for “Xiao Luo,” went alone to a nearby plaza and found a bench to sit on.

Even though she knew she had probably mistaken the person, her mood was still heavy with melancholy. Thinking you'd finally met a friend you hadn't seen in ages, only for it to turn out to be nothing at all—no one would feel good after something like that, much less a somewhat withdrawn girl like her.

Ever since she was very young, Xiao You would occasionally see strange things. Winged eyeballs, blood-red bats, even furry beastfolk, and so on. They were all the kinds of beings that only appeared in fantasy works. When she told other people about what she'd seen, they all thought she was hallucinating and talking nonsense. Over time, people even gave her a label: “the girl who says weird things.” Because of that, she had basically had no friends all these years, and she gradually became more and more withdrawn.

As she grew older, she slowly came to realize that the world she saw seemed to be different from everyone else's. But almost everyone believed what she saw was just hallucinations, or that there was something wrong with her head. She couldn't find anyone to confide in, so she could only bear it all in silence by herself. Even her parents told her not to say those strange things anymore, and to act normal.

And yet after silently enduring all this for so many years, her mind had never been crushed. A large part of that was because of the encouragement that “Xiao Luo,” the person she always talked about, had once given her.

Thinking of that, Xiao You lowered her head and sank into her memories—

It happened when she was seven or eight, during a trip to Blue Tide City with her parents.

She vaguely remembered that at the time, she had been chasing a winged eyeball with bat wings all over the place. It wasn't until she lost track of it that she realized she'd gotten separated from her parents.

She was in a completely unfamiliar place, and after running around blindly, she had no idea where she even was. She was only a little girl of seven or eight back then, so she quickly squatted down where she was and started crying.

But she hadn't cried for long when someone suddenly poked her head with a finger.

She looked up and saw a girl around her age. She had a cute face and was looking at her with a bright grin.

“Why are you crying? Come on, smile a little.”

“Uwah... my mom and dad are gone...”

“Yeah, that's pretty bad. Don't be scared. I'll help you find them!”

That girl reached out a hand, pulled her to her feet, and got ready to help her look for her parents.

“Thank you... My name is Shi Wuyou. Mom and Dad both call me Xiao You.”

“Your name is Xiao You? That's such a pretty name!”

“Mhm, then you can call me Xiao You too. Oh right, what's your name?”

“Uh, me? Mm... you can just call me Xiao Luo!” the girl replied with a smile.