Night had settled in, thick and heavy.
The clock in the corner of her phone screen ticked over to 23:15.
Rin leaned against her headboard, fingers sliding across the screen, until the backend data for her livestream finally went quiet.
"So... that's it for today's stream. Thanks for grinding monsters with me, everyone. Good night."
She smiled, saying goodbye to the audience who'd just had their worldview shattered by the "Yellow-Haired Robbery Incident."
The moment she tapped "End Broadcast," the translucent floating screen flickered once and vanished without a trace.
The room sank back into the dead silence of late night, broken only by the low hum of the refrigerator.
Rin let out a long breath, her whole body going slack against the couch as if every ounce of energy had been drained out of her.
Too much had happened today—so much her CPU felt like it was about to fry.
First day playing an AR game, and she'd already witnessed a hundred-percent-realistic elite monster, been backed into a corner by the shadow of death, and then... been saved by the server's public enemy number one.
Just as she closed her eyes, trying to let her overheated brain cool down—
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
The phone on the coffee table lit up out of nowhere, blasting off a rapid-fire string of notification chimes.
She didn't even need to check—it had to be that woman with the bottomless energy reserves.
Rin picked up her phone. Sure enough, it was a message bombardment from Carole.
Carole typed so fast it was like she was drumming on the keyboard with her fingers:
"Rin!!! You're finally off stream! That thing in your broadcast blew up huge, the forums are going insane!"
"That show-off Jiahao—okay, sure, his smug little act makes me want to reach through the internet cable and body-check him with some righteous fury. BUT! Did he seriously just hand you the server's first-kill five-star weapon, [Sakura Blossom], like it was nothing?!"
"Spill, spill, spill! How does it handle? Does it cut through iron like butter? Are the effects insanely stylish?"
Watching the excitement and gossip practically overflowing off the screen, Rin couldn't help the corner of her mouth curling up.
She typed her reply carefully: "The handling really is great, the weight feedback on each swing feels very real. And the active skill's damage multiplier is ridiculous—it one-shots regular Zombies."
"But..." Rin paused, "the timing window for the iaijutsu skill is brutally strict. It needs really precise prediction. If you misjudge the monster's attack rhythm and draw too early or too late, you get locked in a long recovery stun instead—you turn into a sitting target."
Carole replied instantly: "Well, duh, it's the rarest top-tier gear in the server right now, of course the performance is gonna be picky! You can just grind the skill over time!"
Then, without missing a beat: "Oh right, Rin, you've been playing all day and you're already holding ceiling-tier gear. Want to think about joining the guild we're putting together? We can all clear content together, carry you through everything!"
Rin stared at the message, her finger hovering over the keyboard.
Team up?
As if worried Rin would refuse, Carole immediately forwarded a brand-new official announcement.
The announcement page was designed like a blood-red declaration of war, and the content inside made her suck in a cold breath.
[URGENT BETA NOTICE: THE ABYSS DESCENDS!]
[On Day 3 of the closed beta, the System will fully unlock a brand-new high-difficulty multiplayer dungeon.]
[Monster stats will undergo an epic-level surge, and mechanics will grow far more complex. Players take note: attempting to clear the Abyss alone is nothing short of suicide! Finding comrades to fight back-to-back is the only rule for staying alive!]
At the very end of the announcement sat an infuriatingly smug sweat-drop emoji.
The core design philosophy of Ordinal Scale had clearly shown its true colors.
It was deliberately forcing players into high-intensity teamwork.
For lone wolves like Jiahao, or socially anxious newcomers like Rin, this was practically a targeted attack.
Staring at Carole's hopeful invitation and the bloodthirsty official announcement, Rin fell into a long silence.
In her heart, she was genuinely tempted.
Teaming up meant a much higher safety margin out in the field—no more getting cornered by a single elite monster like today.
More importantly, clearing dungeons as a team would massively boost her efficiency, which meant more gold, which meant improving her family's life faster.
But...
Rin lowered her head, and in the faint glow of her phone screen, quietly looked at her own hands resting on her knees.
Even now, safely back home, her fingertips still trembled slightly, uncontrollably, from the extreme tension and the PTSD flare-up of the day.
She couldn't forget the terror when that elite monster drew its blade. She couldn't forget the thick stench of blood that had seemed ready to swallow her whole. And most of all, she couldn't forget how cowardly she'd looked, too frightened to even hold her own sword steady.
If she couldn't fully conquer that instinctive fear of drawing a blade, what good would it do to join Carole's team?
When facing a strong enemy, she'd still be nothing but dead weight, trembling on the sidelines while her teammates fought for their lives.
This gorgeous [Sakura Blossom] in her hands was, quite literally, a pearl cast before someone unworthy of it.
"Hah..." Rin let out a long, murky breath, clenching her fists hard, trying to force her trembling fingers to still.
She picked up her phone again and typed a reply to Carole: "Carole, thank you for the offer. But... let me think about it a little longer. I want to try figuring things out on my own for a while first."
The moment she sent it, she closed the chat window quickly, afraid she'd change her mind.
Then she opened her friends list in the System backend.
The ID [Jiahao], sitting under an obnoxiously smug smiling mask avatar, sat alone at the very top of her friends list.
Half an hour ago, that ID had sent her a short message containing nothing but a set of coordinates.
Rin took a deep breath.
If she could truly learn that fearless confidence from that man, if she could truly master how to keep moving forward...
Then, when that day came, she'd walk up to Carole and the others with her head held high, ready to fight side by side.
—————————
The night wind carried the first chill of early winter.
The holographic coordinates pointed to an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city.
Unfinished concrete pillars stood exposed and blatant, surrounded by piles of discarded construction materials and weed-choked mounds of earth.
Rin climbed the railing-less stairs to the third floor, her footsteps echoing through the empty concrete framework.
This floor had a huge open space, wind howling in through window frames with no glass installed.
The man was sitting on a battered couch, dragged in from who-knew-where, its springs poking out through the cushions.
He propped his chin on one hand, gazing out at the moon half-hidden behind dark clouds, as if lost in some philosophical question about the survival of the human race.
Rin slowed her steps, approaching a little timidly, stopping several paces from the couch.
"Brother Su Yu."
The moment those three words left her mouth, even the air in the abandoned building seemed to freeze.
"Jiahao," who had been putting on his brooding, moody pose, visibly stiffened for a split second.
He turned his head to look at the slender girl standing in the moonlight.
"Shh—my little ancestor, keep it down, would you?"
Su Yu sighed, his tone dripping with resignation to fate: "Please, whatever you do, don't blow my real name out there."
"If that mob of players I stole the first kill from—and who are seeing red right now—found out where I live, they'd probably show up tonight with torches and pitchforks to chop me into pieces. I'm not exaggerating."
Hearing that familiar voice return, Rin's tense shoulders finally relaxed.
She nodded obediently, stepping forward two paces with hopeful eyes. "Brother Su Yu, since you called me here... does that mean you're agreeing to team up with me, that you're willing to teach me how to get stronger?"
The man on the couch didn't answer right away.
He shifted his posture, crossing his hands over his knees.
"Before that, I need to ask you something first. Why do you want to team up with me? Or rather—why do you want to get stronger?"
Faced with that blunt question, Rin froze.
Her hand instinctively gripped the wooden sword hanging at her waist.
That was something she'd found and brought along before coming here, meant to substitute for the weight and balance of the hilt as she adjusted to [Sakura Blossom].
She lowered her head, saying nothing for a long moment.
How was she supposed to say it?
Say she wanted to earn money to help support the family? Say she wanted to lighten her sister's burden?
Or... say she was afraid of ever again seeing a monster that embodied the nightmares of her past?
Those bloody memories of the Far East, that fear of execution and slaughter—they pressed down on her chest like an invisible mountain, so heavy she had no idea where to even begin.
Su Yu watched her bite down on her lip.
Then he suddenly smiled, his voice turning much gentler: "Forget it. If it's something hard to say, something you don't want to talk about, then I won't ask—who doesn't have some secret they'd rather keep buried?"
He stood up, brushing dust off his hands. "You want to learn, I'll teach you. It's no big deal."
This sudden generosity and bluntness made Rin's head snap up.
She held it in for a while, but couldn't help asking anyway: "Brother Su Yu... the fact that you're willing to teach me, even give me such a precious weapon... is it because my sister asked you to?"
Rin looked at Su Yu, still radiating that same insufferably arrogant vibe, like the world owed him eight million yuan, and suddenly felt a lump in her throat.
In Rin's mind, she was just an ordinary, unremarkable student. A busy person like Su Yu had no reason to be so good to her for no reason.
The only explanation was that her sister Sakura must have asked him behind the scenes.
But Su Yu shook his head without a moment's hesitation.
He sat back down on the couch, saying in a matter-of-fact tone:
"Don't jump to conclusions. This has nothing to do with your sister at all."
"See, I don't have many good qualities, but I do have one—I simply can't stand watching a pretty girl cry. That's basically my life motto."
Normally, a line that cheesy—straight out of a playboy scumbag's script—would have earned nothing but disgust.
But right now, paired with his black-clad, masked, "biggest show-off on the server" getup, and that terrifying kill record from earlier, it somehow produced a strange chemical reaction.
Rin blinked, then, unable to hold it in, burst out laughing.
The instant she laughed, the tense atmosphere that had filled the abandoned building vanished completely.
"Brother Su Yu, that thing you just said..."
Rin tilted her head, a mischievous glint flickering in her eyes.
"Was that your real feelings, or were you just saying it to keep up your flirty 'Jiahao' persona?"
Su Yu just shrugged noncommittally, wearing an infuriating "guess for yourself" expression.
He reached out and slapped the slightly cleaner cushion beside him, jerking his chin toward it. "Alright, quit standing around like an idiot, come sit down. Before we start training, we need to deal with a problem you've got."
Rin walked over and sat down beside him.
The moment she sat, a sharp ache from her thigh muscles made her suck in a breath.
"A problem? What problem do I have?"
Rin was completely confused, but obediently walked over and sat at the edge of the couch anyway.
Su Yu didn't answer.
He silently activated his skill, [Eye of Deconstruction].
His deep gaze swept over Rin's body like a high-precision X-ray.
In Su Yu's field of vision, the inside of Rin's seemingly calm body was, frankly, a disaster.
All her muscle fibers and joints glowed a harsh red, signaling severe overexertion and lockup, with faint traces of micro-tearing.
This was a girl who normally got winded jogging half a mile, and today she'd not only sprinted through the streets at high intensity all day, but also fought a life-or-death battle and endured a wild swing of emotions.
Her body was already worn to the bone.
Su Yu sighed inwardly.
He reached out into thin air, pulling a glass vial filled with some eerie green liquid out of the System's storage space, and tossed it straight into Rin's lap.
Rin fumbled to catch the cold glass vial, staring at the green liquid still bubbling inside, and swallowed hard.
"This... is this rat poison?"
"This is a potent stamina-restoring formula Dr. Mobius personally developed. Yeah, it tastes like herbal medicine steeped in stinky socks, but it works like magic on fatigue. It's what the planning team at our studio drinks when they're pulling all-nighters fixing bugs."
He pointed at the vial in her hands. "Now, drink it all in one go, don't leave a single drop. Then turn over and lie face down on this couch."
Lie... lie face down?!
Rin froze completely.
She clutched the green vial with both hands, her big eyes filling with equal parts confusion and shock.
She even wondered if there was something wrong with her ears.
Su Yu watched her sit there like a dumbstruck goose and sighed patiently, explaining:
"You're way too out of shape normally, and after all the strain you put your body through today, every muscle in your body is basically maxed out."
"You might feel fine right now, but I'm about to put you through some seriously intense training. If you push forward with this wrecked body of yours, I guarantee tomorrow morning you'll be paralyzed head to toe, unable to even get out of bed."
"So?" Rin asked nervously, clutching the vial tighter.
"I know some specialized needle and traditional massage techniques passed down in secret. I can use true qi to quickly loosen up your locked-up muscles and clear out the stagnant blood," Su Yu said, perfectly straight-faced.
Her brain crashed.
Fully, completely crashed.
Acupuncture? Massage?
So that meant... Brother Su Yu was going to touch her—directly—with his hands?!
And in a place like this?!
Rin's face flushed instantly, like a ripe red apple, the color spreading from her slender neck all the way up to her sensitive ears.
The scene at hand: a deserted abandoned building, a lone man and woman alone together, a cold moon deep in the night, lying face down on a couch, cross-gender massage...
This string of loaded, suggestive words began flooding through her innocent mind like a wall of danmaku scrolling wildly, growing more and more absurd by the second.
But when she anxiously lifted her head and met Su Yu's gaze—clear and calm as an old-fashioned herbal doctor's—
Rin mentally smacked herself hard on the head, mortified enough to want to dig a hole and crawl into it:
"Rin, you idiot! What garbage is going through that little head of yours! Brother Su Yu is clearly just worried about your physical condition, he's a total gentleman, and here you are thinking these filthy thoughts! You should be ashamed of yourself!"
Gritting her teeth, she twisted the cap off and downed the strange, expired-herbal-medicine-flavored recovery potion in one gulp.
The bitter, pungent taste slid straight from her throat down into her stomach.
Rin scrunched up her face, forcing back the urge to gag, and dutifully lay face down on the ragged couch.
Just as he'd said, her body really had reached its limit today.
Even just holding the face-down position, waves of indescribable soreness kept surging up from her back, calves, and shoulders.
She buried her burning cheeks deep in the crook of her own arms, her voice coming out mosquito-thin:
"Um... Brother Su Yu. I ran a really long way today... I'm all sweaty."
Even though Arc City had already entered winter, today's intense exertion had still left her drenched in a fine sheen of sweat.
As a girl in the sensitive years of adolescence, she was instinctively self-conscious about her appearance and scent in front of a boy.
But Su Yu, still in his "Jiahao" persona, just gave a cold snort.
"Hmph. I've seen way too much to care about a small detail like that. Just hold still and don't move. I'm starting."
Rin held her breath, her body going rigid with tension like a solid stone.
Su Yu didn't pull out a set of gleaming silver needles the way a traditional herbal doctor would.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
His fingertips twitched slightly, and Tai Xu Sword Qi rapidly condensed onto the index and middle finger of his right hand, eventually forming into needle-thin threads of energy, invisible to the naked eye.
He opened his eyes, locking onto several key acupoints along Rin's back.
His fingers blurred into afterimages, striking down one after another, through the thin fabric of her sportswear.
Pff! Pff! Pff!
The instant those pressure points were pierced, an entire day's worth of accumulated fatigue finally found an outlet.
Rin felt like her whole body had been dipped in warm water, comfortable beyond words, and her tightly clenched jaw involuntarily relaxed.
"Mmh..."
A very soft, muffled moan slipped from her nose.
The instant the sound left her mouth, Rin realized her own lapse.
She wanted to dig a hole right there in the couch and bury herself in it, her cheeks flushing so red they seemed ready to drip, her eyes—buried in her arms—squeezed shut.
So embarrassing! Why did I make a noise like that!
But those large hands, radiating a startling warmth, didn't stop just because of her embarrassment.
Those masculine hands covered her back, kneading the stiff clusters of muscle through the thin fabric of her hoodie.
Rin, who'd spent her whole life under the near-absolute protective wing of her sister Sakura, who'd been a good, obedient girl at school with almost no physical contact with the opposite sex, had never experienced anything like this.
Her skin, reacting to this unfamiliar, intense touch and to her extreme sensitivity and embarrassment, quickly bloomed into a soft cherry-blossom pink, a shade that even showed faintly through the black fabric.
As the massage proceeded steadily and methodically, the fatigue gradually faded away.
Rin lay on the couch, her body slowly going limp.
Feeling the warmth radiating endlessly from her back, her mind started to blur.
For some reason, without meaning to, the scene from that alley earlier in the day began replaying in her head.
Replaying how this man had descended like some kind of god, catching her with his solid arms as she fell backward, how he'd shattered that unbeatable elite monster with a single punch, brimming with reckless confidence.
And afterward, how he'd generously, without a second thought, tossed the ultimate, dream-worthy weapon that the entire server had wanted—[Sakura Blossom]—into her arms like it was junk.
They say a girl in love always turns into poetry.
In this night with nothing but the two of them's breathing to fill the silence, along with the burning warmth continuously transmitted through his fingertips and the reassuring presence beside her...
Somewhere deep in a corner of Rin's heart, long sealed away, an inexplicable flutter stirred.
Reason and instinct began waging a fierce battle inside her head.
Su Yu's massage technique was remarkably skilled, without a single hitch.
The Tai Xu Sword Qi kept guiding Rin's originally stagnant blood and qi to flow wildly through her body.
An unprecedented wave of heat rose up from deep in her lower stomach, rushing straight to her chest.
That heat left Rin feeling both wonderful and unbearably embarrassed, mortified beyond words.
She could only bite down hard on her own lip, using every ounce of willpower to swallow down any muffled moans that might set off imaginations, only allowing the faintest breaths to escape.
But that was hardly enough.
As Su Yu's broad palm continued down her slender spine, arriving at the small of her back...
and then, as his hand began pressing and kneading the tense muscles of her thighs—
"Hiss—"
That electric sensation instantly amplified tenfold.
Rin's body jerked with an uncontrollable shudder.
The once-cold air of the abandoned building seemed to grow warmer along with their steadily climbing body heat.
A faint hint of romantic tension began to seep into the atmosphere.
Just as Rin lay there with her eyes squeezed shut, both hands gripping the edge of the couch cushion for dear life, her whole body sinking into that embarrassing wave of heat, her mind on the verge of melting into a puddle of pink mush—
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
The phone sitting on the battered coffee table beside the couch suddenly began vibrating violently.
Rin's eyes snapped open.
She turned her head in a panic, staring at the still-buzzing, glowing phone screen like she'd seen a ghost.
The screen lit up with a cold white glow, reflecting off her still-burning cheeks.
Two characters flashed across the display.
The caller ID read—Sister.
____
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