novelraw Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Cover and Complicity
Lu Li's hand froze on the doorknob.
"...You——"
She slowly turned around.
Ning Ye still had her back to her, the rhythm of her fingers tapping on the keyboard unchanged. Data streams scrolled continuously across the screen, the blue light reflecting off the girl's cold, impassive profile.
"...You know?"
"Know what?" Ning Ye didn't look back.
"What you are—I don't care."
"You should know that my Mindscape ability is a specialized perception type. I can hear sounds that ordinary people can't. I can't make out the specifics, but that hunger inside you—the kind that wants to devour everything—is loud enough to give me a headache."
Ning Ye, very unusually, spoke a long string of words in one go.
So...she'd been exposed from the very beginning?
"Why?" Lu Li asked the most crucial question. "If you heard it, why did you still help me?"
Ning Ye finally stopped what she was doing.
She turned her chair around, and the eyes beneath the baseball cap regarded Lu Li with calm composure.
"Because it's a hassle."
"...Hah?"
"If that alarm had gone off just now, what follows is a Level 1 lockdown, Elimination procedure, on-site decontamination, writing an incident report, writing an autopsy report, writing an equipment-loss application..." Ning Ye ticked off the items on her fingers, expression blank, "Just the reports alone would run to tens of thousands of words."
"I don't like writing reports. Especially the ones for sudden incidents like this."
"..."
The reason was so utterly plain and matter-of-fact that Lu Li found herself momentarily at a loss for words.
"Besides," Ning Ye put that enormous pair of noise-cancelling headphones back on, "Sister Lin Lu likes you quite a bit. If you got taken out, she'd be very upset."
"I don't want to see her upset."
"Honestly...in the world we live in now, I don't care what you are. Human, monster, or whatever other strange thing—as long as you don't cause trouble and don't make things difficult for Sister Lin Lu, I can act like I didn't see anything."
Ning Ye, unusually, said quite a lot in one breath.
"Understood?"
"..Understood."
"Then get out. Stop being an eyesore."
Lu Li gripped the doorknob, hesitating for a moment.
"Um...thank you."
"Don't mention it."
Lu Li's hand was already on the doorknob.
"One more thing."
Ning Ye's voice came from behind her—still that flat, near-indifferent tone.
"Sister Lin Lu...I don't know why, but the way she looks at you is a lot like the way she used to look at me."
Lu Li stopped, and didn't turn back.
"...What do you mean?"
"Nothing." The sound of keyboard tapping resumed. "Just a reminder—don't let her down."
"Back then, after my parents died in a Calamity, it was Sister Lin Lu who took me in."
Lu Li froze.
She wanted to turn around, wanted to say something, but Ning Ye had already completely immersed herself in the screen again, her silhouette carrying the unmistakable air of a conversation that had ended.
"...I understand."
....The door clicked softly shut behind her.
The world outside was still bathed in sunshine.
Or rather—at least the corridor lights were bright.
Lu Li leaned against the wall and let out a long, slow breath.
Those last few minutes had felt even longer than lying on the examination table.
Ning Ye's words were still echoing in her head.
That cold girl—parents dead from a Calamity, taken in by Lin Lu...
Were they the same kind, then?
Both people discarded by the world, then caught by Lin Lu?
Lu Li didn't know what to make of that.
But at least——
At least for now, she was still alive.
Still able to keep up the act.
"What took you so long? Did Ning Ye give you a hard time?" Lin Lu's voice drifted over from the far end of the corridor.
Lu Li adjusted her expression and looked up with a smile.
"No, Senior Ning Ye...she's actually pretty nice."
"We just...chatted a bit about skincare tips."
"Hah? That kid treats pulling all-nighters like drinking water, and she actually knows skincare?" Lin Lu looked thoroughly shocked, then made a sweeping gesture. "Forget it! Come on—to celebrate Xiao Li officially becoming one of us—hotpot!"
As it turned out, after extreme tension, the body really did develop a massive energy deficit.
The hotpot restaurant was hot and steaming, the spicy broth churning red.
Lu Li ate a lot.
Enough that even Lin Lu's eyes went wide with surprise.
The tender slices of beef slid into her stomach. They couldn't fully fill that hollow, gnawing hunger—but at least the warm, full sensation made her feel like she was still alive.
As long as her stomach was full, the void in her heart didn't feel quite so cold.
"Eat slower, nobody's taking it from you." Lin Lu laughed and poured her a glass of sour plum juice. "Starting tomorrow you can officially take on some simple Cleanup missions. Don't worry—with me and Ning Ye around, nothing will happen to you."
Lu Li nodded, chopsticks still in her mouth.
She was perfectly aware that the thing inside her was probably a hundred times more dangerous than the Calamities outside—but those words, for now, could only rot away in her gut.
After dinner, the sky had gone completely dark.
Lin Lu got an urgent phone call—apparently something had gone sideways again—and could only send Lu Li off with an apologetic look, dropping her at the entrance to the Old District.
"Sorry about this, Xiao Li—I can't see you to your building tonight. Some trust-fund idiot tried doing a spirit-summoning ritual at home and lost control of it..." Lin Lu hung up through gritted teeth. "You okay walking back on your own?"
"I'm fine, Sister Lin—it's only a few steps." Lu Li gave a well-behaved nod.
"Alright. Message me when you're home. Foggy Ford City's been unsettled these past few days—don't take any shortcuts."
She watched the SUV's tail-lights disappear into the dark of the night, then pulled her jacket tighter around herself.
So much had happened today.
The physical, Ning Ye, Lin Lu...
She needed time to process it all.
About 5 minutes into her walk, Lu Li suddenly stopped dead.
Something was wrong.
She couldn't pinpoint exactly what, but some instinct in her body was sending out an alarm.
That thing—the "it" inside her—gave a sudden restless lurch.
‘Was that...a warning?’
The street was still that same street. The streetlamps were still those same streetlamps. The pedestrians were still those same pedestrians.
Everything looked perfectly normal.
But——
Hadn't she just seen that man in the grey jacket...at that intersection?
Lu Li furrowed her brow and kept walking.
She walked for another 2 minutes.
She stopped again.
The man in the grey jacket had appeared once more.
Same jacket. Same walking gait. Same direction.
As if...
Time had rewound.
Lu Li's heartbeat began to speed up.
She glanced down at her phone.
17:42.
Then she looked up at the clock display in the watch shop on the side of the street.
17:38.
A 4-minute discrepancy.
No—not a discrepancy.
Her phone was moving forward. And the time on this street...was moving backward. Or rather—frozen.
The thing inside her thrashed even harder.
Lu Li recalled what Lin Lu had said.
Some Calamities possess special abilities.
Under normal circumstances, all Calamities can be dealt with through physical means.
So what about circumstances that weren't normal——
'If it's a high-level Calamity, we'd already be preparing to retreat.'
Lu Li slowly raised her head and looked at the street ahead of her—the street she had walked a thousand times before.
The sunset was still there. The streetlamps were still there. The pedestrians were still there.
But something had latched onto her...
"Came knocking the moment we parted ways..."
The girl stood in the middle of the frozen street and slowly removed the sunglasses she wore as a disguise.
Beneath the Colored Contact Lenses, her Crimson Pupils gleamed faintly in the shadows.
"...Looks like my luck really isn't great."