The car sped past, showing no sign of stopping.
"Th-thank you!"
After recovering from their fright, the girls quickly bowed to Lin Zhi in gratitude.
"Hm? Have we met somewhere before?"
One of them—a girl with shoulder-length orange hair tied into a side ponytail—looked at him with a hesitant expression.
Lin Zhi shook the raindrops off his umbrella. Luckily, the girls were all fairly petite, so the umbrella had managed to cover them completely. A few stray drops weren't a big deal.
He smiled and nodded. "We met once back in Sui Village."
"Ah! I remember now!" the orange-haired girl exclaimed in realization.
At the same moment, the long-haired girl with sleek black hair stepped forward and bowed deeply. "Thank you so much for your help!"
"Arigato!" the other two chimed in again.
"It was nothing," Lin Zhi said lightly. "Take care, everyone…"
He nodded politely, his gaze briefly meeting that of a long-haired girl with chestnut-colored hair who quickly looked away. Then, with his umbrella raised again, he walked off toward Aoyama Apartments.
"Hah! Hahaha!"
Before he even reached the building, Lin Zhi heard strange laughter echoing through the rain.
Takanashi?
His expression froze, brows twitching.
When he reached the front yard of the apartment complex, he spotted Rikka Takanashi standing by the wall, facing a patch of shrubbery.
"So, you've managed to follow me all the way here, huh? Impressive… truly worthy of being the top enforcer under the Archangel of Judgment!"
Lin Zhi blinked.
She's… having another episode, isn't she?
Thanks to the system's generated character profiles, he knew perfectly well that Takanashi Rikka possessed no real powers whatsoever. Her "threat level" was ranked F—the lowest possible. In other words, she was as ordinary as they came.
The same couldn't be said for some of the other residents of the building, though. Especially that bald man and the fallen angel-looking one—they were the real hidden monsters around here.
"You may have crossed the boundary of the Invisible Realm," Rikka declared dramatically, "but I will never submit to you!"
With a sharp whoosh, she swung her frilly parasol like a sword.
"Don't forget… I am the wielder of the Wicked Eye of the Dark Lord!"
"Shatter, reality! Break, the chains of sanity! Banishment… this world!"
Covering her eye patch, Rikka's voice dropped to a grave, spellbound tone as she pulled the patch away—revealing a golden eye underneath, shining in contrast to her usual teal one.
The air grew tense as she glared at the bushes, her aura dark and serious.
Then—
"Hyah!"
She launched a flurry of thrusts with her parasol, stabbing at the greenery with surprising ferocity.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
The umbrella sliced through the air, its tip jabbing the leaves like a weapon forged from madness.
To her, there must have been a thousand invisible foes charging at once—yet she stood her ground, defending valiantly with her parasol.
Lin Zhi sighed, covering his face with one hand.
This girl is hopeless. Maybe putting her out of her misery would be kinder.
He shook his head and was about to go inside when Rikka suddenly gasped.
He turned—and saw her crouched on the ground, clutching her eye, her voice trembling.
"U-uhh… it hurts…"
Lin Zhi jogged over. "What happened?"
"S-something got in my eye…" she whimpered.
Glancing at her parasol, then the shrubbery, then the bits of debris scattered around, Lin Zhi quickly pieced it together.
"You're an idiot, you know that?" he muttered, exasperated.
"Huh?!" Rikka looked up at him pitifully, one eye squeezed shut.
"Don't move. Take your hand off your eye and don't rub it."
He crouched down, his tone serious. "Rubbing will only make it worse. You could scratch your cornea. Eyes are sensitive—you need to keep still."
Rikka hesitated, then slowly lowered her hand, blinking through the pain. Her eyelid twitched uncontrollably—a reflexive attempt to protect itself.
Leaning closer, Lin Zhi carefully lifted her eyelid. The eye in question was, of course, her so-called Wicked Eye—the golden one.
"A fake lens?" he sighed. "You really shouldn't be putting weird stuff in your eyes. You could damage your vision."
"No, this is the Wicked Eye of the Dark Lord!" she insisted stubbornly. "Be careful! The magic sealed within it is powerful—if you awaken it, the entire world could be doomed!"
"Yeah, yeah," Lin Zhi said dryly. "Then let me use my Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan to examine your Wicked Eye."
Rikka froze. "Mangekyō Sharingan?"
While carefully removing the speck of debris, Lin Zhi replied, "Mm-hm. The Mangekyō Sharingan."
"Sugoi!" she breathed in awe, her golden eye sparkling brighter.
"What does it do?"
"Well… it lets me see things others can't. Kind of like enhanced vision," he said casually. "Though the more you use it, the blurrier your vision gets. Kind of a dumb trade-off, honestly."
"And what else?" she pressed, totally captivated.
"It can also copy techniques, track energy flow, improve dynamic vision… that kind of thing."
"Oooh… and it can evolve too?"
"Yeah. You can overcome the weakness by upgrading it to the Eternal version."
As he spoke, Lin Zhi finally plucked a tiny piece of bark from the corner of her eye—a remnant from when she'd been stabbing the bushes.
"There," he said, standing up. "Got it out."
Rikka blinked experimentally. "Oh! It doesn't hurt anymore!" Her face lit up—then slowly morphed into a mischievous grin.
"Fufufu… as expected of my faithful servant! The Archangel's scheme shall crumble before us!"
"…Who's your servant?" Lin Zhi muttered under his breath.
He gave her a look, then asked suddenly, "You and your sister… are you two fighting?"
Her grin faltered. The brightness in her eyes dimmed as she looked at him silently, then turned away. Without a word, she walked back toward the apartment.
Watching her retreating back, Lin Zhi's expression softened.
It seemed her so-called delusions weren't without reason. Somewhere behind all that childish fantasy… something deeper was hiding.
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T/N:
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