"..."
Had she... traveled through time?
Just a moment ago, hadn't there been a large group of men standing here—thugs or gangsters?
Why were they all lying on the ground now, without so much as a groan? As if they had all fallen into a simultaneous illusion, they were unconscious and peaceful, as if their fierce expressions had only been an act.
The faint twilight fell through the gaps above onto her face. In the hazy distance stood a back. In the low-slung sunlight, he was draped in a veil of pale yellow.
He looked as if he had been standing there from the very beginning, separated from the surrounding world by a subtle barrier.
"Lin...?"
The person heard her murmur and glanced back at her. After confirming she wasn't injured, he turned and walked away.
She stared blankly as Lin moved further and further away. The heap of people on the ground made everything feel surreal, as if... she had entered another world.
Another world?
Dazed, she raised her hands, clenched them, then released them.
So this is what it feels like?
She immediately decided to follow him. Fortunately, Lin wasn't walking fast. She caught up to him in a few strides, pulling down her baseball cap and following him step for step.
Lin stopped. Before she could bump into him, he took a step to the side.
"...What are you doing?"
"Did you save me just now? Have you been following me this whole time?"
Lin stared at her indifferently. His absolute height advantage and a gaze she had never experienced before made the pressure feel even heavier than before.
The sunlight had vanished from the horizon. Darkness blanketed the earth, and scattered lights flickered in the city like blinking eyes.
He stood in the shadows; under his hood, his expression was unreadable.
"On the way," he spat out two words and offered nothing more.
With that, he seemed to have no more time to waste on her and accelerated his pace to leave.
"Xiao Qian, why are you home so late today?"
"Ah... that... the teacher ran over time, and I missed the tram."
"I see. Nothing happened on the way, did it? Do you want me to pick you up next time?"
Incredible.
She thought she would be scolded, but the lie she told offhandedly didn't raise any suspicion from her parents. It was dismissed quite naturally. The same old conversations continued, but her inner world was already a different landscape.
Was deceiving them really this easy? Not even requiring a second thought?
After shoveling down a few bites of food, she said she was full and went upstairs to study. She threw herself into her soft bed, covering her head with a pillow, giggling like an ostrich buried in bedding and pillows.
That guy... was too cool!
That sharpness when he acted, that indifferent gaze, that way of doing things without wasting a single move... and that aura of someone walking on the edge of the entire city...
He was practically her ideal self!
So "special," yet so "unknown." A night-walker hiding some secret. Clearly a student, yet his movements were too fast to see when he fought—and how did he manage to take down so many people larger than him in an instant?
A soldier of a secret organization, a hero of the underworld... all sorts of delusions she would have sneered at before flooded into her mind.
He said it was "on the way," but he actually went that way on purpose, didn't he? Just to watch every day and see if anyone was getting hurt there?
Good and evil didn't matter, and who he was didn't matter. What mattered was that Lin had dazzled her in a single minute, satisfying the rebellion she had only dared to hide in her heart.
And so, she fell asleep with a silly, happy grin.
The time she returned home from school was pushed back by half an hour. She lied to her parents, saying she had joined a club at school and had fixed activities after class. She fooled them with ease.
It turned out to be so simple to execute. As long as you dared to lie, you could achieve your goal.
As for what she actually did during that half hour...
"Heading straight home again..."
She took off her hat and crouched stealthily behind a large tree, watching Lin pull out his house keys and go inside. She checked the time; it was time for her to go home, too.
Something was wrong.
In this past month, she hadn't seen Lin go anywhere else after school. He always went straight home. He didn't have a single entertainment activity; he was a total "shut-in."
Furthermore, he hadn't lied. He really was just going "on the way." The shortest route from the school to his house was the place where she had been caught last time. It really was just a coincidence.
Why didn't he do anything?
According to her observations, Lin might associate with another person named Kevin at school, but after class, he had no connection with anyone at all.
He lived alone, yet he followed the rules every day.
He lived like an ascetic monk.
If it were her, she would definitely be out doing all sorts of things every day. Had she misjudged him?
It seemed he wasn't that special after all. He just went to school and back like a normal student... rather, he only wanted to be a student. Aside from being a bit of a loner, everything he did was what a student would do.
Had he discovered she was stalking him?
Impossible. For the past month, she hadn't repeated an outfit once, and she always stayed far away, blending into the crowd to watch him. She strictly followed the rules of stalking, never daring to get close.
Sigh, if only this world were a bit more exciting...
Tap, tap, tap...
Her sensitive nerves suddenly jumped. She noticed a man in a suit separate from the crowd and walk toward Lin house.
A faint, subtle smile hung on his face. His pace was slow but powerful.
Who was that? A relative of Lin?
Looking at the man's face, he should be of Lin father's generation, but he looked nothing like Lin...
Wait, she had never seen what Lin looked like, but...
She had once caught a glimpse of the eyes between Lin hood and mask. To be honest, before she saw those eyes, she never thought a man's eyes could be so beautiful—like flowing black amber, intoxicating.
The man's appearance did have the charm of a mature male, but she shuddered when she saw that smile. It made her feel that he was nothing like Lin at all.
And she wasn't sure if it was an illusion, but did he... just look at her?
At that moment, she didn't realize that from this point forward, both Lin destiny and her own had taken an irreversible turn.
The phrase "breaking her daily life in the worst possible way" was about to become reality.
"Hello, hello. You've been following Lin for over a month now, haven't you?"
The man laughed heartily, standing before her and subtly blocking her path.