novelraw Chapter 4 : Who Are You Calling Two-Dimensional
Chapter 4 : Who Are You Calling Two-Dimensional
Sneaking back home in fear and trepidation, locking the door behind her, Xifeng finally felt a bit at ease.
Although she knew this matter couldn't possibly be brushed aside so easily, she could avoid it for now—while escapism was shameful, it was useful.
With a vibration, her phone screen lit up, and only then did she notice there were many unread messages in her phone's QQ.
"Coo coo coo?"
"Is the captain there?"
"7=1, we're just missing you."
Seeing these messages, Xifeng remembered that she was supposed to go to work on Alexander Ultimate from 8 to 11 PM every day. Looking at the time, it was already 20:24.
She hadn't expected to spend a full half hour on Bei Yaoyue—this phrasing seemed a bit strange, but there was nothing wrong with it.
Normally, unless there were special circumstances, she wouldn't randomly ditch her teammates, but today's events could definitely be called special circumstances, right?
Being turned into a girl was such a troublesome matter that she had completely forgotten about going to work on Alexander Ultimate.
"Sorry everyone, I overslept QwQ, just woke up now."
Xifeng quickly opened QQ and apologized to her teammates in the group, not forgetting to add a cute emoticon.
At the same time, she was mentally prepared to be criticized, as this was their fixed team's tradition—whoever was late without reason or ditched would be bombarded by the entire team.
But contrary to her expectations, not a single person came out to blame her. Instead, there were several gentle words of comfort.
"It's fine, it's fine, we only waited about twenty minutes."
"Captain is a high school student, right? I understand, high school studies are heavy, it's normal to oversleep when too tired."
"Is it because you're too tired? If you're really too tired, just rest for a day, we don't mind."
The teammates' complete 180-degree attitude change compared to before made Xifeng exclaim in her heart: Holy shit, bros, you guys are way too fucking real!
In the past, not to mention being twenty-something minutes late, even being three or four minutes late due to server queues would get her dragged out and lectured for ages. Now she was this late and almost everyone was comforting her instead.
If there was anything different about her now compared to before, it was that she was now a beautiful girl in her prime, while before she was a 21-year-old rough guy.
This polar difference in treatment instantly brought tears to Xifeng's eyes. Is this reality? Why must I know such cruel reality?
"It's okay, I can play. Really sorry for being so late, I'll come on now."
After sending another apologetic message to the group, Xifeng quickly jogged back to her room and turned on her computer.
Another day of tedious Alexander Ultimate work, not much different from usual, but what left Xifeng somewhat speechless was that with the same seven teammates, today their tolerance for her mistakes was completely more than a notch higher than before. Even if her errors caused a wipe, someone would actively come to comfort her, and their tone when talking to her had become much gentler.
Fortunately, today's progress advanced—they passed the second rotation for the first time and saw the fire tornado.
When it was time to log off after work, several team members simultaneously sent her messages like "Know you're not feeling well, get some rest early, don't tire yourself out," "It's getting late, take a bath and go to sleep," "Once we pass the fire tornado it's P4, won't be long before we clear it, keep it up," "Drink more hot water," and other caring words, making Xifeng break out in a cold sweat again.
Was this the legendary girl bonus?
But this was too terrifying, right? Had this group of people not seen girls for eight lifetimes?
Just as Xifeng was reviewing the evening's recordings as usual, several "knock knock knock" sounds came from the direction of the entrance.
"Who is it?" Xifeng alertly shouted, getting up and walking toward the entrance.
Had Bei Yaoyue come to settle accounts?
Although the two hadn't talked much, they had been neighbors for several years after all, so it wouldn't be strange for her to know which room she lived in.
But only silence responded to her, as if it was just someone's prank and they had left directly after knocking.
Xifeng, who had planned to look outside through the peephole, discovered a fact that made her want to bang her head against the wall and die—she was too short, and even standing on her tiptoes she couldn't reach the peephole.
With no choice, she gently opened the door a crack and quietly peeked outside through the gap.
But before she could see clearly who was outside, a tremendous force came from the door, pushing Xifeng backward to the ground, and the door opened with it.
"Ow!"
The intense pain from her butt hitting the ground directly made Xifeng grimace in pain, her eyebrows almost twisted together, and several uncooperative tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.
It really hurt so much! Xifeng had never imagined that falling could bring such unbearable intense pain!
In her blurred vision, she saw a figure nonchalantly walk in on their own, then close the door with a "bang."
Oh no! How did she accidentally let someone in? What if this was a bad person?
With her current super weak body, forget about resisting—she wouldn't even have a chance to escape.
"Name." The figure in front of her suddenly spoke.
This was a girl's voice. Although somewhat cold, it carried an ethereal quality like riverside mist and rain, unexpectedly quite pleasant to hear. It would be perfect if it had less coldness and more emotion.
"Eh?" Xifeng was stunned.
"I'm asking for your name." The girl's voice became somewhat more stern.
"Xi... Xifeng..." Faced with the girl's somewhat forceful tone, Xifeng's voice involuntarily became quieter, and combined with her teary-eyed, pitifully flustered expression, she was completely like a little white rabbit ready for slaughter.
Noticing this, Xifeng cursed "not good" in her heart.
First impressions were very important. If she left the other party with a weak impression, it would be very difficult to change later.
She had completely become timid unconsciously just now, which wasn't a good sign, because it meant that the timid and tsundere requirements she had made to Lillian were indeed having a substantial impact on her personality.
Gritting her teeth, Xifeng secretly made up her mind—she absolutely couldn't continue like this. She had to work hard to become strong.
"Xifeng? Is that your real name?" The girl's voice carried a trace of doubt. "Is there really a surname Xi?"
"Of... of course it's my real name!" As if a strange point had been touched, Xifeng suddenly became much more agitated. "Although it's rare, the surname Xi does exist... Ah!"
Damn it!
Because she was too agitated, halfway through speaking, she actually bit her tongue. The piercing pain from her tongue tip made Xifeng cover her mouth and lower her head with a pained expression, her crimson eyes frantically blinking, trying to hold back the tears that were about to overflow.
"Xi means evening, dusk, so Xifeng means evening wind." Xifeng explained the meaning of her name to the girl with unclear pronunciation. In some strange areas, she always had an inexplicable persistence.
As the pain gradually faded, Xifeng wiped away the tears from her eyes and looked up at the standing figure in front of her.
It was indeed Bei Yaoyue.
Since she already had some mental preparation, Xifeng wasn't very surprised. What made her somewhat lost in thought was that Bei Yaoyue's voice was so unfamiliar to her. In other words, having been neighbors for so many years, she had never heard Bei Yaoyue say even a single word.
How pathetic.
Feeling somewhat creeped out by Bei Yaoyue's direct stare, the guilty Xifeng quietly avoided Bei Yaoyue's gaze and said softly, "Um... you're called Bei Yaoyue, right?"
Seeing that Bei Yaoyue didn't respond to her, Xifeng immediately looked embarrassed, then started talking to herself to fill the silence: "Bei Yaoyue is also a good name. Yao means uncut jade, referring to beautiful and precious things. The two characters Yao and Yue are enough to make people think of the rarely seen elegant and serene full moon that appears every fifteenth day. And the surname Bei elevates the entire name even further. In China, there are very few times when the moon can be seen appearing in the north, so a northern Yaoyue becomes even more precious and rare."
Drawing on her skills from making up nonsense in high school reading comprehension, Xifeng began seriously spouting nonsense. After her analysis, she couldn't help but nod with satisfaction, feeling that her analysis seemed quite reasonable and really made sense.
"Not bad." Bei Yaoyue crossed her arms and glanced at Xifeng sideways. "But my surname is Beiyao, and my given name is just Yue."
"..."
For a moment, the awkward atmosphere almost overflowed from the screen, and Xifeng felt her social anxiety was about to flare up.
After all that fierce operation, she had even gotten the person's surname and given name wrong. Xifeng dejectedly lowered her head.
The two fell into an awkward silence. Xifeng really couldn't find anything to say, while Beiyao Yue kept looking Xifeng up and down.
After staring at Xifeng from top to bottom several times, Beiyao Yue spoke with a strange expression: "You're so two-dimensional.
"White hair and red eyes—even professional cosplayers rarely go this far."
This comment left Xifeng completely stunned. After snapping back to reality, she immediately blushed and said somewhat indignantly, "Who are you calling two-dimensional? You're the two-dimensional one, your whole family is two-dimensional!"
However, what Beiyao Yue said did have some merit. White hair was Xifeng's fetish, and red eyes were simply to match the vampire identity. While it sounded wonderful, if placed in reality, it did seem somewhat out of place.
"True..." Beiyao Yue's cherry-pink lips curved into a tiny arc, looking at Xifeng's somewhat flustered bright red eyes with a half-smile, and said, "After all, you were originally this hair and eye color, right, Miss Vampire?"