Shokuhou Misaki slowly opened her eyes.
The hand holding the remote control gradually lowered.
She stared blankly at the street scenery of School District 7 that entered her view, then looked at Fang Li, who was carrying her on his back and walking forward in silence.
"Sigh…"
After quite a while, Shokuhou Misaki let out a soft sigh.
"What happened?" Fang Li didn't stop walking, only frowned slightly as he asked. "Still haven't figured things out?"
Hearing Fang Li's rather impatient tone, Shokuhou Misaki couldn't help but smile.
That only made Fang Li's brows knit even tighter.
"What exactly is wrong with you?" Fang Li asked bluntly. "Sighing one moment, laughing the next, don't tell me you were really stimulated into some kind of mental imbalance? If Academy City's strongest psychic-type Ability user went mentally unstable over something like this, you'd probably be laughed at by everyone."
"Hey, can't you watch your mouth a little and show at least a shred of gentlemanly sympathy?" Shokuhou Misaki complained irritably at first, then laughed again as she said, "I sighed because I thought my past self was really stupid, but then I felt like I should be grateful for this experience, so I ended up laughing."
After all, if Shokuhou Misaki told people that the reason she once suffered amnesia was that she had used her own Ability to reset her own brain, then out of ten people, at least eight would probably laugh at her for being an idiot.
Even Shokuhou Misaki herself felt that her past self had been a full-power idiot, doing something like that on impulse. It would probably become a lifelong black history.
And yet, at the same time, she was genuinely glad she had gone through that experience.
Because,...
"If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met someone I could truly open my heart to…" Shokuhou Misaki's voice was like a whisper murmured in one's sleep at night, vanishing with the wind.
It was so soft that even a mosquito would have been louder.
Even Fang Li didn't hear Shokuhou Misaki's murmur. Because at that very moment, a system notification sounded in Fang Li's mind.
"Serial Number 11273 has completed a B-Rank Side Quest. Gained 20,000 Exchange Points."
Fang Li froze on the spot.
Completed?
The quest… was completed?
Why did it suddenly finish?
Wasn't it supposed to involve resolving an incident that happened to Shokuhou Misaki?
Could it be that the attack by Deadlock was the incident that happened to her?
But if that were the case, wasn't the completion notification ridiculously late?
For a moment, Fang Li couldn't make sense of it at all.
After all, there was no way he could have imagined that the so-called "incident that happened to Shokuhou Misaki" referred to her resetting her own memories.
Now that Shokuhou Misaki had used her Ability to re-examine her own mind and retrieve the memories she had sealed away with her own hands, that incident naturally came to an end.
If not for Shokuhou Misaki decisively using her Ability, Fang Li might genuinely have failed this quest. In other words, this quest had been completed in a way that was completely beyond comprehension.
But incomprehensible or not didn't matter.
At the end of the day, the quest was still completed.
"Hey…"
At that moment, Shokuhou Misaki suddenly spoke.
"You're really not afraid of me, a psychic-type Ability user? Not afraid that I might peek into your heart?"
That question…
Over the course of just this one day, Fang Li had heard it more times than he could count.
Whether from Shokuhou Misaki herself, or from the people of Deadlock.
However, this time, the emotions carried within the question were completely different from before. When Shokuhou Misaki had asked it earlier, her heart had been filled only with confusion and disbelief.
When the people of Deadlock asked it, there had only been warning and mockery.
But this time, when Shokuhou Misaki asked the same question again, her tone had entirely changed.
Within it were feelings Fang Li had never heard before,
Anticipation. Unease. And hope.
Fang Li's intuition told him that Shokuhou Misaki had definitely changed somehow.
That change had not only led to the completion of his side quest, but had also prompted Shokuhou Misaki to ask that question.
(Could it be… this girl has already recovered her memories?)
Fang Li made that guess. However, no matter what, his answer was only ever going to be one.
"What's there to be afraid of?" Fang Li said this without even turning his head. "I don't have any secrets worth hiding anyway. If you want to peek, then go ahead and peek."
Perhaps only Fang Li could be this open-minded.
But this was also the truth. Fang Li genuinely had nothing he felt the need to deliberately conceal.
Even matters like being a Divine Envoy or the Main God's Dimension, he had no reason to hide them. It was only that the Main God's Dimension itself had set up its own concealment mechanisms.
Under such circumstances, even if Shokuhou Misaki activated her Ability and peeked into Fang Li's heart, the memories she would obtain would only consist of the background arranged by the Main God's Dimension, along with everything that had happened after Fang Li descended into this world.
As for things that would expose the existence of the Main God's Dimension itself, there was no way Shokuhou Misaki could ever窥视 those.
So even if everything were laid bare, Fang Li had nothing to worry about.
Of course, this was only in Shokuhou Misaki's case.
If the other party were Aleister, the shadowy black hand who treated everyone as chess pieces, then Fang Li wouldn't just hide things, he would deceive outright.
In short, it all depended on his mood.
"...Is that so?" Shokuhou Misaki murmured.
In her sweet, clinging voice, there was a faint hint of complete, unrestrained relief. Perhaps this was the first time in Shokuhou Misaki's life that she had ever felt so at ease.
"If anyone else said something like that, I definitely wouldn't believe them," Shokuhou Misaki said with a soft laugh. "But if it's you, then it must really be true."
This also meant that Shokuhou Misaki trusted Fang Li, and wanted to trust him.
Not because of any Ability. But purely because of trust itself.
Driven by those feelings, Shokuhou Misaki reached out and tightly wrapped her arms around Fang Li's neck.
"Let me ask you one more question."
Burying her face into Fang Li's back, her charming face faintly flushed, Shokuhou Misaki spoke in a shy, halting voice.
"If… if I said that I might have fallen for you… What would you do?"
Her heartbeat began to race violently inside her chest. This, too, was a feeling Shokuhou Misaki was experiencing for the first time in her life.
Never before had she felt as nervous as she did now.
All for the sake of a single answer.
Fang Li halted his steps.
Shokuhou Misaki's heart immediately started pounding even harder.
Until one second later,
"What kind of stupid thing are you saying? Haven't I already told you?" Fang Li said with a dismissive curl of his lips. "I'm not interested in a brat who hasn't fully developed yet."
And just like that,
The grudge between Fang Li and Shokuhou Misaki was firmly established.
(End Of This Chapter)
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