Outside the Public Security Bureau, Zhu Yuan's parents had just finished paying the fare and were preparing to get out of the taxi with their armfuls of bags when they saw their daughter burst out of the building like a red whirlwind. She flew down the steps three at a time, face full of panic. She did not even look at the license plate before flagging down a cab, yanking the door open, and diving inside as if she were chasing down a fleeing criminal.
"Driver, hurry! Sixth Street!"
The taxi shot off the instant the words left her mouth, leaving only a trail of exhaust behind.
"Was that Xiaoyuan just now?" Mrs. Zhu stared worriedly after the taillights. "I've never seen her this flustered in all these years. She didn't even notice we were standing right here…"
"Driver, please follow that car." Mr. Zhu frowned and decisively sat back down in the cab, his tone grave and firm.
The driver's eyes lit up at once. He shifted gears with practiced ease. "Oh ho! Been driving nearly twenty years, and this is the first time I've heard that classic line outside the Public Security Bureau! Buckle up, folks. I'll stay on them, no problem!"
The taxi made a crisp U-turn on the spot, tires squeaking lightly against the pavement before it merged into traffic.
On Sixth Street, in the upstairs room of the video store, Zhe slowly sat up.
As Zhu Yuan woke from the nightmare, that bizarre, dazzling dreamscape finally receded like a retreating tide. In the final split second before that destructive burst of light devoured everything, Zero had opened a transfer channel with perfect timing and dragged Zhe safely back to base, leaving the Bomb Nightmare behind to blow itself into a cloud of fading sparks in the void of the collapsing dream.
"Whew… thanks, Zero." Zhe ran a hand through his damp gray hair and wiped the sweat from his brow.
[Good luck.] Zero's electronic voice came through the communicator, calm as ever. After a brief half-second pause, it added, [However, you appear to have failed to conceal your identity. The officer witnessed your entire transformation sequence.]
"At the time, it was too urgent," Zhe said with a helpless grin as he got out of bed, grabbed a cup, and downed a large mouthful of water. "I was worried the Nightmare would make its move against the train first, so I didn't have time to think… Okay, fine. Mostly I was too busy thinking about how to make my entrance look cool."
[Understood. That is acceptable.] Zero sounded almost unusually understanding. [Based on further risk analysis, the probability of similar dream-based threats occurring again is high. Maintaining a certain degree of contact with key figures in the Public Security Bureau may improve both intelligence gathering and operational efficiency.]
"Got it. I'll look for an opportunity to get closer to them." Zhe nodded, then rolled his shoulders and arms. The strain of all that high-speed maneuvering in the dream still seemed to linger faintly in his body. "Still, at least this one's over. I worked up a sweat fighting in there. I feel gross. I'm taking a shower first."
[Your physical training and stress-resistance training schedule has already been updated. Superior bodily conditioning and stable psychological resilience are essential components of special agent development as well.] Zero replied in the serious tone of a strict instructor.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't nag. I'm training already, okay?" Zhe raised both hands in mock surrender, though he was smiling as he did it. He waved dismissively, then headed downstairs to check on Belle.
Down below, Belle was curled up in the chair behind the counter, absentmindedly flipping through an outdated fashion magazine. Hearing footsteps, she did not even look up, simply holding the magazine over half her face as she spoke in a lazy drawl.
"Bro, while you were 'napping' just now, did you sneak off into someone's troublesome dream again to 'stretch your muscles'?"
Zhe's heart skipped a beat, but on the surface he immediately put on an innocent, slightly sleepy expression and even let out a timely little yawn. "Of course not. Just a normal nap… Maybe I've just been a little tired lately and had a dream that was weirdly exhausting."
His sister's instincts could be terrifyingly sharp sometimes.
"Ohhh?" Belle dragged the sound out, lowering the magazine just enough to shoot him a very clear I don't believe you for a second look. Still, she did not press. "Whatever. You keep an eye on the store for a bit. I'm going back to my room to lie down. Oh, and don't forget, you've still got that commission over at Lumina Square this afternoon."
"Sure, but let me rinse off first. In this weather, even sleeping makes you sweat."
"Go, go. You smell like sweat," Belle said with obvious disgust, waving him off before burying her face in the magazine again.
No sooner had Zhe stepped into the upstairs bathroom than the sound of running water began to fill the room. At that exact moment, the front door downstairs slammed open with a bang, the bell clattering wildly.
"Welcome, what can I—"
Belle looked up automatically to greet the customer, then froze halfway through the sentence.
Standing in the doorway was the beautiful female officer who had come by that morning. But now she looked nothing like she had then. Her uniform was disheveled, her chest rising and falling unevenly. Her face was drained of color, and her eyes—those steady, sharp eyes that normally never wavered—were brimming with panic and urgency, even glistening suspiciously with moisture.
"Where's Zhe?! Where is he?! Is he okay?!!"
Zhu Yuan did not even register what Belle was saying. She blew across the room like a gust of wind, slammed both hands onto the counter, and leaned forward, questions firing in rapid succession. In her agitation, she even grabbed Belle by the shoulders and started shaking her.
"Stop—stop shaking me! I'm gonna throw up! My breakfast is coming back up!" Belle hurriedly broke free. "He's in the upstairs bathroom! But wait, hold on, he just went in, he's taking a—"
Before she could finish the word shower, Zhu Yuan had already spun around and dashed up the stairs three steps at a time, her boots pounding loudly against the wood.
"Hey! Wait! My brother's in the shower!! You can't just go in there!!" Belle jumped over the counter and sprinted after her, but there was no hope of stopping a Zhu Yuan who had already lost all reason.
At that moment, Zhu Yuan could hear nothing.
Her mind was filled with one image, replaying over and over with excruciating clarity: the final instant in the dream—Zhe holding the overloaded Nightmare, launching skyward without hesitation, followed by that blinding, impossible burst of light… and the last look he gave her before it all vanished.
Was he really…?
No.
She had to see for herself. Immediately. Right now.
The upstairs layout was simple. Only one closed door stood before her, with the distinct sound of running water—and, faintly, someone humming to himself in a rather good mood—coming from within.
Without thinking, Zhu Yuan seized the handle and shoved the door open.
Warm mist rolled over her face.
Inside the bathroom, Zhe was standing with his back to the door, toweling off his damp gray hair. Glittering droplets slid down the smooth lines of his back and shoulders before disappearing beneath the pale gray bath towel wrapped around his waist.
Hearing the noise, he turned around in surprise, still looking slightly languid and relaxed.
"Officer Zhu Yuan?! Why are you—"
"Zhe! You're really okay?! Thank goodness!!"
The heart lodged in her throat finally dropped halfway back into place, but the violent emotional shock left her utterly incapable of thinking. She rushed straight to him, reaching out to inspect his arms and chest as if trying to confirm with her own hands that he was unharmed.
"Are you hurt anywhere? During the explosion—"
"I'm fine! Really, I'm fine! Not injured at all!" Zhe jumped in alarm at her sudden up-close inspection and quickly retreated half a step, one hand scrambling to hold onto the precariously threatened towel at his waist. "At the last second I got pulled out! The explosion never touched me! Officer Zhu Yuan, can we sit down and talk about this later? Right now, could you maybe just—"
Only then did the humid heat of the room, the cramped space, and the male body standing right in front of her—half-dressed, dripping with water, wrapped in nothing but a thin bath towel—finally hit Zhu Yuan's overloaded mind all at once.
Boom.
Her face instantly went burning hot, the heat racing all the way to her ears and down her neck. In all her twenty-four years, she had never, ever encountered a scene with this much… visual impact. Her brain locked up completely. The language center malfunctioned on the spot.
"S-s-sorry!! I'll go right out!!"
She stammered in total confusion, turning to flee this catastrophically compromising situation as fast as possible.
But in her extreme panic, she completely forgot that the bathroom floor was slick with water. The moment she pivoted, her shoe slipped.
"Ahhh—!!"
She lost all balance and pitched forward.
"Careful—!"
Zhe instinctively reached out to catch her, only to be hit head-on by her momentum. In her frantic effort to steady herself, Zhu Yuan grabbed at the nearest thing available—his arm… and, unfortunately, the edge of the towel wrapped around his waist.
Then she felt it loosen in her hand.
"Ahhh—!!!"
Time seemed to stretch.
In Zhu Yuan's wide, horrified eyes, the pale gray bath towel slid down from Zhe's waist in a slow, graceful, and utterly irreversible arc.
The next instant, both of them lost balance and crashed to the bathroom floor amid startled cries and a heavy thud. Zhu Yuan landed squarely on top of him, and Zhe became the world's most tragic human cushion.
At the exact same moment that the earth-shaking commotion burst out of the bathroom, Mr. and Mrs. Zhu—who had just chased Zhu Yuan all the way here—and Belle, who had finally caught up, arrived at the doorway, breathing hard.
"Xiaoyuan?! What happened?! Are you alright?!"
Hearing his daughter's unmistakably panicked scream, Mr. Zhu's heart clenched. In his urgency, he forgot all restraint and shoved open the half-latched bathroom door—the door to a scene that might as well have led into another world.
Belle was half a step behind him. One glance inside made her suck in a sharp breath. She instantly covered her eyes with both hands—though the gap between her fingers was suspiciously enormous.
"I-I told her to wait… we're doomed, we're so doomed…"
What lay beyond that door was enough to freeze any bystander's brain for a full three seconds.
On the bathroom floor, in the midst of a chaotic mess, their daughter Zhu Yuan—normally meticulous, composed, and impossible to fluster—was sprawled on top of a young man who looked equally red-faced and equally stunned.
And that young man… well.
He was clearly the recent victim of a tragic and sudden accident. One hand was braced against the floor for support. The other, having originally tried to catch Zhu Yuan, was now pressed at an extraordinarily awkward angle against a certain well-upholstered part of her uniformed body.
Time, in that instant, might as well have stopped forever.
The thermos Mrs. Zhu had carefully carried all the way here slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a clang. The lid bounced away, and warm tea scented with red dates and goji berries slowly spilled out, its soft sweetness beginning to seep stubbornly into the air thick with shock, embarrassment, and a silence far too loaded to bear.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 172)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 116)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter119)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 66
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 52
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 55
The Way the Umamusume Look at 42
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 40
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 36
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 30
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 26
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 26
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