Chapter 329
Chapter 329: Luna Also Has an Identification Card
“Ugh… my head hurts,” Little Red Riding Hood muttered. She sat on her bed, staring at the daylight pouring in through the window. After struggling to wake up for a long time, she turned her head toward Rapunzel, who had appeared in her room at some point.
Only after complaining did she belatedly react. “Why are you in my house?”
Rapunzel lifted her chin. “We slept in the same dorm for years. Now you won’t let me into your house?”
“That’s not the point. Didn’t you build a bunker next to my house and say you’ll never live in a high place in this life—that you want to be a safe, stable cave person?” Little Red Riding Hood rubbed her forehead as she spoke. “Ah, it still hurts. I’m never touching alcohol again. It really is unhealthy… Did I black out yesterday?”
“Yeah. You did. It was pretty amazing. In the end, Bro carried you back,” Rapunzel said with a shameless grin, walking over with a bowl in her hands. “And I changed your clothes too. You threw up as soon as you got inside, and we cleaned up for ages. Head hurts, right? I heard people always feel like this the next day after drinking too much. Come, drink this while it’s hot.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s head was still foggy. She took the bowl in a daze and glanced at it. “What is this?”
Rapunzel waved a hand. “Hangover soup.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Little Red Riding Hood mumbled. She took a sip and froze for two or three seconds. Then she smacked her lips and realized what it was. “Isn’t this just instant noodle broth?!”
“Yeah. See? One sip and you’re awake, right?”
“…Where are the noodles?!”
“I ate them,” Rapunzel said righteously, perfectly innocent. “And I added two sausages. Let me tell you, the sausages you stock are bad. One bite feels like chewing rubber. Next time buy the san liang shi fu brand. They’ve got a corn sausage…”
“You stole my instant noodles again—and you added two sausages! I only ever add one!” Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes went wide. “Last time you stole a whole box of immortal spirit pills and I didn’t even settle the bill with you…”
Rapunzel kept grinning, not guilty at all.
She was always like this, and Little Red Riding Hood was used to it. After yelling a few lines, she let out a long sigh, set the bowl on the bedside table, and sat there dizzy for another two minutes.
Then she suddenly remembered something important.
In the next second, she sprang up from bed. “Hey—my morning class!”
She panicked, about to change clothes and pack her bag, but the moment she found her jacket, she heard Rapunzel’s unhurried voice from behind.
“Hey, don’t rush. We already got you leave.”
Little Red Riding Hood froze mid-motion, turned to Rapunzel, and stared suspiciously. “You managed to get leave approved for a third-year student? What reason did you use?”
“Group drinking at a birthday party. Hungover and still unconscious.”
Little Red Riding Hood looked like she’d been struck by lightning. She stood in the middle of the room, eyes gradually glowing green. “…And then?”
“Your homeroom teacher is super easy to talk to,” Rapunzel said cheerfully. “They told me you didn’t need to come to class today.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes turned fully green. With a howl, she lunged.
“Big Goldie! I’m going to kill you!!”
But the moment she moved, Rapunzel giggled, dodged to the side, and turned into a waterfall of golden hair flowing across the floor. She slipped through a crack by the window and shot out, clearly prepared for this for a long time.
Little Red Riding Hood didn’t catch her.
She only grabbed something hard.
She looked down and saw Rapunzel’s phone.
The screen wasn’t locked. It was still on the last playback history.
Little Red Riding Hood froze, then instinctively tapped it.
In crisp 4K, she heard a wolf howl, and then her own clear, powerful declaration:
“From now on, we’re partners in crime—”
…
Yu Sheng, sitting in the living room with his own phone in hand, was scrolling through his album when he suddenly shivered. A chill crawled up his back for no reason at all.
Foxy, curled lazily on the floor mat and yawning, snapped her head up and flicked her ears. “Benefactor, murderous intent?”
“What murderous intent? That’s obviously ‘Yu Sheng suddenly shivering,’” Irene said, sitting on the coffee table and watching TV. She glanced over. “Your spiritual intuition is pinging again?”
“No idea,” Yu Sheng said, scratching his head. He didn’t really care where the chill came from. His attention shifted to the figure near the stairs.
Wearing a nun’s veil, the “artificial saintess” Luna stood motionless beside the staircase to the second floor.
In fact, she’d been standing there for an hour.
Irene noticed Yu Sheng’s gaze and spread her hands helplessly. “She’s spacing out. She’s been like this since morning. Foxy moved her once while mopping, but when no one talks to her, she just stands right there. She looks like a statue.”
Yu Sheng frowned. After hesitating, he still waved Luna over.
Luna walked to the sofa and stopped beside it.
Statue-still again.
“You don’t have to guard the stairs like you’re on duty,” Yu Sheng told her. “If there’s something you want to do, go do it. If you want to rest, go rest. This is your home. Relax.”
Luna stood there blankly. After a long while, she spoke slowly. “Here… relax… good.”
“Uh… standing and staring into space counts as relaxing?” Yu Sheng’s expression turned complicated. “Don’t you have anything else you want to do? Learn about this world, read, take a walk in the valley… or, at worst, watch TV with Irene.”
Luna slowly turned her head, glanced at the brainless entertainment show playing on the screen, then let her gaze settle on Irene.
Her face didn’t change, but Yu Sheng somehow felt a faint sense of pity rising from her.
“Influence… thinking,” Luna said slowly. “Lower… sharpness.”
Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. He thought the house was finally quiet for once, and now Irene was about to start another ball-jointed war against C Buckle. But two or three seconds passed with no reaction. When he looked up, Irene was still watching TV seriously, like nothing had happened.
Little Doll definitely heard it. She’d never miss anything that might involve her. The only explanation was that Luna’s speaking was so halting that Irene didn’t even realize she’d been insulted.
Yu Sheng wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Just as he was about to talk to Luna again about “hobbies” and “normal life,” the phone rang, interrupting him.
Irene snapped her head around. “Bai Li Qing again?”
Yu Sheng glanced at the caller ID. His expression instantly stiffened. “…Ren Wen Wen.”
Irene leapt to her feet. “…You finally wrote the male lead and the three-wheeler?!”
“Go watch your TV like a good girl. Now you’re quick to react!” Yu Sheng glared at her, raised his hand, and answered with a cautious tone he didn’t even realize he was using. “Hello? Ren Wen Wen? What is it?”
“Teacher Yu!” Ren Wen Wen’s energetic voice came through at once. The second half of her sentence made Yu Sheng relax on the spot. “I’m here to deliver the registration forms! For Miss Luna—please open the door.”
“Huh? Oh, right. That,” Yu Sheng said. “Wait. I’ll open up for you.”
“It’s just for Luna’s ID registration,” Yu Sheng said after hanging up. He stood, stepped around Foxy’s pile of tails, and headed for the door, muttering, “Should we install a doorbell or something? Calling every time is kind of annoying.”
“Where would you even put a doorbell?” Irene said without looking back. “Put it on the door and no one can see it. That’d be pointless.”
“Make a remote one. Put a post on the open ground outside. Anyone who can approach that open ground has permission or a reason anyway, so it’s not like the little kids will mess with it…”
While he spoke, he opened the door.
Ren Wen Wen stood outside in office clothes, carrying a bag and smiling brightly.
The moment they met, before the big shipper at the door could open her mouth, Yu Sheng spoke first. “Today you’re doing business for your director. We’re only talking work, not writing, okay?”
Ren Wen Wen’s expression visibly fell.
Yu Sheng’s heart sank. From her face alone, he could tell that when she came today, nine-tenths of her motivation had been to talk about “writing.”
Ren Wen Wen stepped inside. The first thing she saw was Luna standing silently beside the sofa, towering at nearly two meters tall.
Yu Sheng caught the flash of nervousness on her face, though the well-trained bureau employee adjusted her expression almost instantly.
He didn’t say much. He had Ren Wen Wen sit on the sofa, then guided Luna to sit on the other side. He also chased Irene off the coffee table, because they needed the surface for paperwork.
“We’ll mostly just fill out some forms,” Ren Wen Wen said, pulling out documents from her bag—ID registration information and organization member registration forms—and sliding them in front of Yu Sheng and Luna. “Fill this one first, to register Miss Luna’s identity information. Then I’ll have the bureau register her directly through the system backend. Once she has an ID number, we can fill out the organization member entry form.
“Oh, and you can fill it in for her.”
“Okay. I’ll fill it for her.” Yu Sheng nodded, took the first form under Luna’s watchful gaze, and remembered the time he registered Foxy and Irene.
He knew the Borderland’s special registration forms for nonstandard residents were strict and complicated, so he was already mentally prepared for a mountain of options and ridiculous notes.
But when he finished the first few fields and got to the species field, he froze.
The dense list of options he remembered was gone. There was only one pre-filled option in the blank:
Species: “Hotel member.”
Yu Sheng: “…”
After a short silence, he slowly looked up at Ren Wen Wen, who wore a professional office smile across from him.
“This ‘species’ is for real?”
“The bureau held a meeting about it. The director approved it specially,” Ren Wen Wen said seriously. “Don’t worry. It’s already set up in the system. It works.”
Yu Sheng stared. “What kind of sick joke is it to single out ‘Hotel member’ as a species?”
“We can’t exactly write ‘a Hermitage Order creation,’” Ren Wen Wen said with a shrug. “And your… situation here is pretty special, right…”
Yu Sheng rubbed his forehead. “…Then what about Foxy and Irene?”
“Their entries don’t need to change,” Ren Wen Wen said, nodding. “But the director said it’s for preparing for the future.”
Yu Sheng thought about it and felt like something was off, but he couldn’t argue.
So he could only accept it. Hotel member was Hotel member. After all, there was no way to tell what species Luna had been before she was modified… and at least in the Borderland, a place full of strange talents and extreme tolerance, no matter what you put in the “species” field, it could still be considered “human” in the broadest sense.