It was a very young face; after all, the owner of this face was just a student who had recently entered college. Lin Mo's condition back then was much better than it was now—the job she had now felt as though it drained the very life force out of her.
Yet she still couldn't be called normal. Her lips were pale to the point of turning blue-green, and her complexion looked even worse than that of the person lying on the ground.
A9 felt a sentence in the comic's comment section was spot on: Lin Mo simply possessed a ghostly aura, both in temperament and appearance.
Under the light, a faint speck of brightness reflected in her pitch-black eyes, while a vast shadow fell beneath her neck.
Unlike the adoption scenario A9 had imagined, it seemed Lin Mo had taken the initiative to approach her “younger brother.”
Lin Mo remained in place for a long while, trying to assess whether the injured person on the ground posed a threat to her.
A9 drifted down to watch along with her.
Most of the man's blood-stained face was pressed against the ground. He had a high, straight nose and thin, bloodless lips.
It narrowed its eyes, feeling as though it had seen this face somewhere before. Perhaps he had appeared in the plot at some point.
If it was an area outside its jurisdiction, it wouldn't pay much attention. Since it had no impression of him, he likely wasn't an important recurring character in the plot. A9 quickly threw this feeling of familiarity to the back of its mind.
But why had he come here?
Why would someone from a big city stay quietly with Lin Mo in a tiny place like this?
Perhaps sensing the scrutinizing gaze and danger from above, the corner of the battered man's eye twitched twice. After a moment, he opened his eyes.
Through a blurry haze of blood, he saw the shadow cast over him.
“Kh...” His eyelids were stuck shut by dried blood, and his throat sounded as if it contained a mouthful of grit. “Help me... help me make a call...”
Lin Mo asked, “What?”
Still alive.
“A call...”
“You don't have a communication device on you...” Lin Mo squatted down, her tone softening as if she were addressing a stray cat or dog on the street.
“Use your phone,” the man struggled to crawl up from the ground, leaning against a moss-spotted wall. “Anyone's is fine, hurry...”
But Lin Mo was destined to disappoint him. She stood up. “...I don't have a phone either.”
The man could no longer understand what she was saying. He swallowed repeatedly. “It hurts... it hurts so much... I'm going to die...”
“Pain? Then let me help you.” Lin Mo saw no fatal wounds on him and looked him up and down in confusion.
Why did it hurt?
How strange. Was it a disguise? He was so weak, looking even more helpless than herself.
Would he suddenly lash out and hurt her too?
But... he looked very easy to manipulate.
Someone like this was precisely what she needed: someone who could be completely controlled by her, someone who would stay by her side for a long time regardless of their own will.
Seeing him swallow frantically to soothe the pain, Lin Mo pressed down the back of her tongue. Looking somewhat nervous, she gave a completely unrelated response: “Then... do you want to be my younger brother?”
“Because I want you to stay.”
“It hurts so much...”
Lin Mo nodded to herself. This might be her only chance. Despite the danger, she couldn't bear to let it go.
She needed family.
“Mm... okay.”
A9...
So that was how this younger brother had come to be. It really hadn't looked into Lin Mo's family in that original world. Could it be that upon coming to this world and discovering a lack of family members, she developed a morbid obsession to fill the vacancy?
“It won't hurt soon,” Lin Mo said, leaning on her knees.
Just as A9 thought she had finally found a conscience—that she was going to find someone to call an ambulance or carry the injured man to a nearby clinic instead of sneaking behind him to beat him to death—it saw her pull a steel pipe out of the trash heap in the corner.
Phys... physical pain relief?!
Lin Mo gripped the steel pipe with both hands, drew back slightly to gather power, and swung.
Wait! Wait! It hadn't exited the memory yet—
Thump—
Accompanied by a surge of intense pain, A9's world plunged into pitch darkness.
Confusion and disbelief swirled together. The agony transcended the physical impact on bodily bones, leaving its mind blank for a split second.
A person and a plushie had somehow synchronized across different timelines, sharing a strange sense of comrades-in-misfortune.
A9 lacked the physiological state of passing out. After being ejected from the body, it rolled around on the floor in agony.
It didn't dare to look at any more memories after that, terrified that some violent scene would indirectly affect it.
After recovering for a long while, it pushed itself up off the floor and looked pityingly at Lin Nan, who was frowning on the bed as if having a nightmare, before letting out a long sigh.
It really wanted to contact the other managers now. Where on earth had Lin Nan come from? If worst came to worst, it would just send him back.
Life here was simply a bit too harsh...
...
“You look like you're in terrible shape...” Lin Mo pinched the bread in her hand, while Lin Nan sat across from her looking like a wilted cabbage.
“Didn't sleep well last night? Didn't I tell you that you don't need to wait for me to get back? You must go to sleep earlier next time... You're still a student; it won't do if you don't have the energy for class.”
After finishing her breakfast, Lin Mo prepared to head off to work.
“It's nothing, I just had a nightmare.” Lin Nan shook his head, dark circles under his eyes.
Lin Mo asked, “What kind of dream?”
Lin Nan hesitated. “...I forgot it as soon as I woke up.”
He added a word of advice, “Don't come back too late at night either. It's not safe.”
Lin Mo pursed her lips and pushed the door open. “Okay, I'm heading out then.”
There were only two members in the family. As the older sister, she ought to lead by example, but too many things had happened over the past couple of days, which was why Lin Nan was worried.
She picked up her backpack and hurried downstairs. Today, she still took the path where the incident had occurred.
Forsiman's existence had been “erased,” so there were fewer staff from the Security Bureau around, and even the road barricades had been removed.
That was great.
The stranger's corpse brought in from out of town was exceedingly bizarre. The authorities found it strange; it was bad enough that it seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, but the inside of the body was severely decomposed, making the time of death completely impossible to determine.
It was as if something was missing in the middle, and no clues could be found.
For a member of society with uncomplicated interpersonal relationships and an incomplete family structure, his death was insignificant. Since they couldn't find an answer, they wanted to handle it lightly and treat it as an unsolved cold case.
Otherwise, if it affected the nearby construction project, higher-ups would apply pressure.
Halfway there, Lin Mo remembered that she had left early yesterday due to an emergency, even dropping harsh words like “I don't care if you fire me.”
She hesitated for a moment, repeatedly opening her phone to refresh her messages, afraid she had missed a firing notification.
The network signal was too poor to load any messages. With no other choice, Lin Mo could only head over to the food stall to check.
If she was fired, she'd just have to find a new job...
“Oh my goodness, Lin Mo, you actually came later than me today,” her coworker said, surprised to see her walk in listlessly from outside.
Lin Mo's eyes lit up. Her job was still intact!
“Th-then I'll go to the back to move goods.”
“I'll do it,” her coworker said, wiping grease off her hands onto her apron. “We take turns. You take orders up front.”
“Okay.”
Business was slow during the day, so Lin Mo stood at the front counter zoning out. Just as she cleared her head to sort through the events of the past few days, the phone tucked in her pocket vibrated twice.
Lin Mo felt a sense of déjà vu. Hesitantly, she opened her phone.
Lin Nan's Homeroom Teacher:
【Lin Nan scored extremely high on this mock exam!】
【Image】
【I even think he has a shot at going to college in Lengjing City!】
【I thought that since he just transferred here, he wouldn't be able to keep up with the pace, but I never expected him to be the smartest and best test-taker I've ever taught! Keeping him in a small place like this would be such a waste of talent.】
Lin Mo stared fixedly at these messages. Even through the text, she could feel the teacher's excitement.
She touched her face and realized that the corners of her lips were turning up significantly. She was happy.
Happy—she ought to be happy.
It was... truly wonderful.
As it turned out, her younger brother was a very smart person.
...
...
Lin Nan sat in the cramped classroom, his hands resting on a desk that was somewhat too small. The stifling, musty odor in the classroom filled him with annoyance.
He had no idea why he was going through all this.
“Lin Nan” wasn't his real name. Lin Mo had given it to him without much thought at all, picking characters off a tattered newspaper by the roadside.
What kind of terrible sin had he committed for such an outrageously absurd thing to happen to him?
Getting struck with a pipe when asking for help was one thing; he genuinely needed to find a peripheral city to hide in right now, so it didn't matter who he lived with.
But having the title of “younger brother” and being forced to attend the twelfth grade was rather awkward. Lin Mo seemed to have an obsession that “if you're a younger brother, you must be in twelfth grade.”
Even though he could work to lighten her burden, she still insisted on shoving him into school.
“Then why don't you go to class?”
When he asked that question, Lin Mo had spoken to him with complete earnestness:
【I've already attended high school. I'm a college student, not like a kid.】
If it weren't for the fact that Lin Mo's expressions and actions were entirely sincere, he would have thought she was doing it on purpose.
—That she harbored doubts about his identity, which was why she tried to minimize the time they spent together.
Lin Nan loathed doing meaningless things. Right now, sitting in a slightly sweltering classroom listening to the teacher cover material he didn't need at all was precisely what he disliked.
After class, the teacher called him outside.
Standing before the office desk, Lin Nan touched his face, almost looking forward to the teacher discovering his age issue, and asked pointedly, “What's wrong?”
The teacher didn't grant his wish. She merely praised his grades, her tone filled with excitement as if she were facing a rising star.
Lin Nan...
If he didn't even know high school material, he might as well just go die.
“Teacher, I think the high school material is too simple for me. Please let me self-study from now on,” Lin Nan said coldly. “I feel that studying outside of school will allow me to retain the information more deeply.”
He wanted to leave.
Whether it was going out to make money or revealing his identity to contact his team members, he didn't want to waste any more time.
Startled by his rebelliousness, the teacher widened her eyes. “But... your sister.”
Lin Nan said, “I'll produce the same results next month. If my grades drop, I'll return to school.”
The teacher frowned. “Our school doesn't have guaranteed college entrance slots, and we don't have the luxury to let you act recklessly. The college entrance exam is right around the corner. I don't agree.”
She couldn't bear to see a promising student fall by the wayside and refused to give him an inch.
Lin Nan...
Don't tell him he was going to have to go through college all over again?
Rate on N.U.
