At first, Jiecheng Yuan thought the rooftop might be a little quieter—a place where she could escape the headaches of dealing with other people for a while, and find her soul a little harbor to rest in.

But when she actually made it up there, she discovered that rooftop rehearsals, rooftop dates, rooftop confessions—all those empty rooftops in anime, reserved for the protagonists—were a complete fantasy.

The real rooftop was packed with students taking a break during lunch. It was basically an extrovert hangout designed to take down introverts!

She hadn’t gotten a moment alone, either. Quanshan Baqi had stuck to her like a little shadow and refused to be shaken off. Of course, to everyone else, the two of them showing up together seemed perfectly natural.

With no hot meal to eat, Jiecheng Yuan took out her frustration by sinking her teeth into a huge bite of the yakisoba bread she’d bought at the convenience store.

She’d bought it for lunch simply because going back to the cafeteria would’ve been inconvenient. She’d only ever seen this bizarre carb-on-carb combo in anime, and she’d always wanted to try it. As it turned out, it was surprisingly good.

After swallowing everything in her mouth, Jiecheng Yuan folded her hands on the rooftop railing and looked down at the streams of people coming and going around the school. Her voice dropped, her expression grave.

“Listen. We need to keep our distance at school, or we risk blowing our cover. Got it?”

Yuehai Middle School was an all-girls’ school. As Jiecheng Yuan watched all these perfectly legitimate schoolgirls cross the grounds, sometimes laughing and playfully getting a little too close, the gravity on her face quickly melted away. She felt like her body and soul were being healed.

This place was practically heaven.

“Mm. Got it.” Baqi leaned against the railing, sipping boxed juice through a straw. She turned her head and stared intently at Jiecheng Yuan’s profile, dragging her back down to reality.

The reality was that Jiecheng Yuan still had to take the risk of figuring out how to advance her redemption plan. She did intend to follow Xiwei Li’s script, but after poring over it in her mind for ages, she finally read between the lines—every single page was written with just two words: “lewd.”

Mana replenishment, defeat, or even simple emotional bonding—none of these could avoid getting lewd. Never mind that Jiecheng Yuan didn’t want to do it; even if she were truly willing, if the mood were just right and she’d climbed into bed and lifted her skirt only to reveal a Black Magic Mark, could she really say: “This isn’t a Black Magic Mark, and I haven’t fallen to darkness either—this is an X-mark, and I’m actually a succubus”?

She’d just have to take things one step at a time. Since she couldn’t move forward with Xiwei Li the way she would in a game, following Xiwei Li’s script had a much better chance of working than fumbling around on her own.

“I mean, we should try not to be seen together.” Jiecheng Yuan put her jumble of thoughts aside and quietly explained.

Now that she’d sorted out her goal, two problems stood in front of her. First: she had Xiwei Li’s script, but who had Jiecheng Yuan’s? A lot of the original story’s events needed Jiecheng Yuan—the heroine in the spotlight—to move them forward.

And then there was Quanshan Baqi. She couldn’t tell Baqi that Tenrai Herika was a Magical Girl, and she still hadn’t figured out whether she could completely trust her. After the rumors that had spread, and the two of them being seen together in the cafeteria, shaking Baqi off wouldn’t be easy.

If left unchecked, she had a feeling that sooner or later Baki would be exposed to the other two Magical Girls, then be defeated, give her up, and her own plan to clear her name would fall apart—and then she'd end up being dragged in to take a pounding alongside her...

“Mm. Got it.” Aside from speaking, Baqi hadn’t moved at all. “What are you squirming for?”

Only then did Jiecheng Yuan realize that she was straddling the railing with her legs pressed together, her lower body squirming unconsciously. Imagining the two of them being defeated together, she actually felt a slight thrill of excitement.

Jiecheng Yuan awkwardly coughed twice. “Ahem. Never mind what I’m squirming for. I said we shouldn’t be alone together, so what are you doing here?”

“I’m eating lunch,” Baqi answered with complete honesty, making Jiecheng Yuan wonder if she was the one with the problem for being so on edge.

Baqi slurped up the last of the juice in her carton until it quickly caved in. Then, still biting her straw, she turned her head and looked around before adding, “We’re not alone together. Look, there are tons of people on the rooftop.”

Baqi wasn’t wrong. The girls on the rooftop sat in scattered groups of three or five, eating lunch and chatting about whatever had happened lately—their favorite celebrities, where to go after school, things like that. Of course, their conversations also included Jiecheng Yuan and Herika, and the rumors about them had somehow gotten even more bizarre.

Jiecheng Yuan had originally planned to keep an eye on her classmates during school. Anyone who seemed to be watching her suspiciously would go straight onto her list of suspects.

After what had happened that morning, everyone was looking at Jiecheng Yuan strangely. She couldn’t exactly write down the names of everyone in school who was talking about her, could she?

“Fine. No problem.”

Jiecheng Yuan sounded tired as she stuffed her mouth with bread.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t argue back. She just didn’t think there was any point in arguing with Quanshan Baqi.

She still hadn’t asked Baqi why she’d transferred here, because she had absolutely no doubt that what Baqi had told her and the other students was the truth. This girl had come here for her. No question.

From launching an attack to the chase, then the conversation at the café, and finally transferring schools—it was hard to imagine how Baqi had managed to pull off that whole combo in a single day.

“Xiao Yuan, Xiao Yuan.” She ignored Baqi, so Baqi started talking to her instead.

You’re calling me that so naturally all of a sudden, Jiecheng Yuan thought. Reluctantly, she replied, “What is it?”

“I need to recharge my magic!” Baqi said without the slightest hesitation, as casually as if she were saying she wanted something to eat.

Jiecheng Yuan couldn’t stay calm. She immediately turned to Baqi and clapped both hands over her mouth, furtively glancing around to see if anyone had heard that extremely dangerous remark.

Fortunately, they were sitting near the edge, and everyone else was busy with their own thing. It seemed nobody had noticed what was going on.

“Mmph! Mmm!” Baqi struggled, her face turning bright red as she tried to push Jiecheng Yuan’s hands away from her mouth and nose.

Jiecheng Yuan quickly let go.

Baqi gulped down the fresh air. She looked a little displeased, but when she saw how tense Jiecheng Yuan was, she lowered her voice anyway. “What are you doing? The others can’t even understand what we’re talking about.”

“How do you know there aren’t any other Magical Girls at this school? What if someone finds out? We’ll lose, and then everything will go completely off the rails!” Jiecheng Yuan couldn’t exactly blow up at her, so she could only hiss the words in a voice barely loud enough for the two of them to hear.

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. You have a point.” Baqi listened intently, then nodded and slapped a fist into her palm. “I need to recharge my magic!”

Good grief! You really don’t listen!