Early the next morning, Bai Xiaoxiao brushed her teeth, ate breakfast, and took a taxi to the idol agency. She’d get to see her big brother that evening.
Truth be told, Bai Xiaoxiao was looking forward to it. He was handsome, and it’d be even better if their personalities clicked. She’d never known what it was like to have an older brother. As an only child in a single-parent family, she’d rarely had her mother around, either. The thought of having someone who could always keep her company was naturally something to look forward to.
Just as her mother had said, Bai Xiaoxiao was a child who didn’t get enough company. That was why Bai Qingxue had asked her daughter to live with Li Xinghe. Spending more time together and growing closer might make Bai Xiaoxiao happier. If she became too isolated, she might struggle to fit in. And most of the people she interacted with were girls. Society was much more open-minded than it used to be, but Bai Qingxue still hoped her daughter would grow up to be like everyone else.
“Morning, Xiaoxiao.”
“Mm-hm! Morning, Mengmeng!”
Full of energy, Bai Xiaoxiao greeted Cai Mengmeng. Mengmeng was every bit as cute as her name suggested—a petite, adorable girl. Though she only looked that young; she was actually even older than Bai Xiaoxiao.
She was dressed in the same pink idol outfit, with her hair tied in a single ponytail and an adorable, childlike face. She was a whole head shorter than Bai Xiaoxiao. Cai Mengmeng’s expression barely changed. Was that just her trademark, or was she simply bad at showing her feelings?
“Hehe~ Gotcha!”
Lu Wanxin suddenly appeared from nowhere and grabbed Bai Xiaoxiao from behind. Xiaoxiao felt Wanxin’s soft embrace against her back, and the close contact made her blush bright red. The whole scene felt way too lovey-dovey.
“Senior Wanxin?! Let go of me!”
Bai Xiaoxiao tried to struggle, but Wanxin gave her no chance. Instead, she kept teasing her, and Xiaoxiao darted around like a startled kitten. In the end, she managed to escape by casting a teleportation spell on herself.
“Cheater! That’s blatant cheating!”
Lu Wanxin shouted in protest as Xiaoxiao suddenly vanished from her grasp. Her fussing drew the attention of the other two girls.
Yan Zi Lan and Yan Zi Xuan were a pair of twin sisters. Like mirror images, they wore opposite versions of the same outfit. Zi Lan was the older sister, and her bangs swept to the left; Zi Xuan’s swept to the right. Their ponytails were the same way: one to the left, the other to the right. They didn’t talk much, and both sisters were rather cool and reserved.
They wore blue dresses with a single white stocking on one leg. Their fair faces showed no expression at all. If you didn’t know them, you might even wonder whether the two of them were robots.
“Th-this couldn’t be helped! Senior Wanxin was being way too sly!”
Bai Xiaoxiao clutched her chest with a look of palpitations, the flesh squeezed out into a perfect curve that would undoubtedly draw the gaze of any boy nearby.
“Heh heh. Cute girls like you are just meant to be spoiled by their seniors. You’d better give up and surrender!”
Senior Lu Wanxin, pouncing like a hungry wolf, was seriously scary...
Before long, it was time to start training again. The girls usually chatted for a bit beforehand, and today was no exception.
“Xiaoxiao, you asked your brother to pick you up yesterday. By the way, I still haven’t met him.”
As she spoke, she unleashed a burst of flames that instantly engulfed the training dummy in front of her. High heat filled the training room. Without changing her expression, Cai Mengmeng cast a barrier to contain the waves of heat, then controlled the energy with her hands and compressed it until it finally dissipated into the air.
“Yeah. We’re supposed to keep watch for that possible monster over the next couple of days, right? I didn’t go to my brother’s place last night. I went straight home instead. I was worried he might already be asleep, so I didn’t want to disturb him.”
Bai Xiaoxiao didn’t know what hours the others kept. She’d just thought that if she got home around ten, he might already be asleep, and waking him up to come get her wouldn’t be very nice. So she’d decided to spend one last night at her place in the city center.
That monster had to be blamed for it, staying up in the middle of the night. It had gone out to play in the sea at nine-thirty! Otherwise, Bai Xiaoxiao would’ve loved to head over early and see what kind of person her brother was.
“Ooh~~~ You care about him that much? I guess you still haven’t felt the depth of my love for you! Sigh, I suppose I spoiled you too much and gave you too much freedom~”
Hearing the joking confession, Bai Xiaoxiao immediately made a face that said, “I’m not interested.” Her tastes were still pretty conventional, after all. If she actually got together with this senior, she’d never get past her mom.
“Hehehe, actually, I think Senior Lu Wanxin and Xiaoxiao make a pretty good match.”
Cai Mengmeng let out a strange laugh and looked at the two of them with a dreamy, lovestruck expression, as if she’d already imagined a whole scene in her head.
Stripped down to nothing but her underwear, Bai Xiaoxiao lay on the bed with a shy, coy expression, while Senior Lu Wanxin, a rose between her lips, walked step by step toward the beauty on the bed.
“My darling, tonight you’re in for a treat~”
Lu Wanxin suddenly planted one hand beside Bai Xiaoxiao, leaning over her with the captivating confidence of a mature woman. Their faces drew close, like a romantic scene from a movie.
Their dark hair fell loose as they leaned toward each other in an increasingly awkwardly intimate atmosphere. Just as their lips were about to meet, someone’s shriek interrupted them.
“Mengmeng, please leave me alone! I’m just a poor, adorable little girl!”
What the heck? Just when her fantasy had reached the best part, Bai Xiaoxiao’s sudden protest interrupted Cai Mengmeng’s daydream and wiped out the rest of the scene.
“Tch. Getting interrupted just when things are getting good feels as awful as being desperate to pee and having to hold it in at the last second.”
The mischievous grin vanished from Cai Mengmeng’s face, leaving her usual blank expression. She formed a ball of light in her hand and hurled it at a fast-moving dummy. An explosion rang out, and the dummy, made of special metal, scattered across the far end of the room. Then its pieces slowly began to repair themselves and fuse back together.
“How do you even come up with comparisons like that?!”
Bai Xiaoxiao couldn’t help but complain. Cai Mengmeng looked like a pure and innocent little girl on the outside, but underneath, she was a total veteran at this kind of thing. It didn’t fit her appearance at all!
Xiaoxiao knew Mengmeng liked making weird comparisons, but they still got to her every time.
“Pfft—hahahaha! Xiaomeng, quit teasing her. Our Xiaoxiao’s absolutely charming; it’s just a shame she doesn’t like girls. But you can secretly tell me what happened next in that little fantasy of yours. I’ll pay to hear it!”
“Is being single for too long making you lose your mind and go after girls now, Senior? I’m afraid I’ll have to firmly refuse!”
There were so many things she could’ve said. Just how desperate did someone have to be to go after a cute girl of the same sex?
And seriously, was she actually offering to pay to hear the rest of the story? This kind of girls-love plot was supposed to exist only in novels. Xiaoxiao was still too young to handle anything this wild.
The time flew by as the girls joked around. They improved their combat skills with simulated training and got closer to one another at the same time. If she could, Bai Xiaoxiao would’ve wanted to live like this forever.
At dinner, Captain Qu Mengting made everyone a delicious meal. Even the usually quiet Yan Zi Lan and Yan Zi Xuan praised her cooking several times.
“All right, it’s seven forty now. Be careful on your way home tonight, everyone.”
Outside the idol agency, Bai Xiaoxiao waited for her brother to arrive, handbag in hand.
Cai Mengmeng and Lu Wanxin had already left. But there was no doubt they were hiding somewhere nearby, ready to sneak a peek at her first meeting with her brother. They were just as nosy as she was.
