Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

He glanced at Erii's outfit and quickly sketched out his itinerary for the day in his mind.

Even a fool could understand that Erii, dressed like this, should never be allowed to walk the streets of Tokyo.

The Snake Clan is conducting a city-wide manhunt, and photos with a 1 billion yen reward have likely been sent to every thug's phone in Tokyo. In the photos, she is dressed as a shrine maiden, with a red sash and long, dark red hair, making her as easily recognizable as a flag waving in the wind on a battlefield.

If they just swaggered across the Shibuya intersection like that, someone would call to report them within fifteen minutes. Then, when Lu Mingfei took the subway back to his love hotel, he would probably be grabbed from behind by a group of men in black, who would say, "Sir, please come with us."

Fortunately, Caesar and Chu Zihang had sent Lu Mingfei some clothes beforehand.

Erii was tall and slender, and the clothes she borrowed fit her quite well. She put on a dark gray turtleneck sweater and a pair of dark blue jeans, and then put on a beige long trench coat. Apart from her long red hair, which was still a bit eye-catching, her overall outfit had largely blended into the general style of a twenty-something woman on the streets of Tokyo.

Erii still really wanted to bring the knife with her.

Lu Mingfei and Erii discussed things on the notepad for a while. He wrote that the outside world has an extremely rich variety of accessories, such as princess dresses, high heels, headbands, earrings and necklaces, each of which is high-end and classy.

Using knives as decorations was a tradition of samurai women hundreds of years ago. Nowadays, modern women all use lipstick and handbags to adorn themselves. I'll take you shopping in a bit. Let's leave this knife at home for now.

Erii stared at the words for a long while, then looked up at Lu Mingfei. Her red eyes held neither displeasure nor resistance; she simply thought for a moment, nodded slightly, and gently placed the knife beside her pillow. Like a samurai wiping his soul clean one last time before embarking on a long journey.

The troublesome things are still the hairstyle and hair color.

Erii's long hair is completely natural, almost without any styling, and reaches her knees.

Girls with this kind of straight, long hair are rare to see on the streets of Tokyo these days. Occasionally you might bump into one or two girls with a Mori Girl style in Daikanyama or Jiyugaoka, but their Mori Girl hairstyles are meticulously styled, with every strand of hair having been carefully crafted with hair wax and curling irons. It's completely different from Erii's all-natural, knee-length waterfall hair that only needs to be washed with water.

Moreover, her hair color is an extremely rare red; among Tokyo's population of over 20 million, you probably wouldn't find another person with that color.

Lu Mingfei rolled his eyes and remembered that there was a beauty salon across the street.

Last night, when he went to buy milk, he passed by that store. There were several mannequins in the window with hairstyles ranging from bob to wavy curls. There was also a lightbox sign hanging at the door that read "Our store introduces the latest Korean hair dyeing technology".

With the beauty industry so advanced these days, a haircut and a hair coloring can make someone unrecognizable, even to one's own mother. Just trim Erii's hair a few inches shorter, dye it dark brown or black, and style it, and the missing person ad that's constantly playing on TV will become nothing more than a worthless piece of paper that doesn't match the person's name.

The feeling of walking down the street embraced by the sunshine was unexpectedly wonderful.

Lu Mingfei felt like a groundhog emerging from an underground burrow, squinting from the bright light.

He and Frilian, along with Erii, sneaked into the beauty salon. He walked in front, with Frilian and Erii following on either side of him. The three of them formed a formation that looked like a not-so-standard arrow.

Before he could even reach out to push the door open, before he could even fully process the thought, "We just want to get our bangs fixed," the glass door of the beauty salon was pushed open from the inside.

A burst of thunderous applause erupted.

The store manager led all the employees out of the door in single file, and they lined up in two rows at the entrance. Everyone was clapping enthusiastically, as if they were welcoming a head of state who was coming to inspect the country.

The store manager was a man in his forties with slicked-back hair. He was the first to approach Lu Mingfei, grabbing his hands and shaking them vigorously up and down, so hard that Lu Mingfei wondered if his shoulder joints might dislocate at any moment.

Chapter 769 Haircut and Styling (Part 2)

Immediately afterwards, a shop assistant rushed over with a Polaroid camera, clamoring to take a picture as a souvenir.

Before Lu Mingfei could refuse, the store manager grabbed his shoulder. Erii stood to his left and Frilian to his right. At the store manager's command, three or four employees simultaneously raised their phones and Polaroid cameras, snapping away in a flurry of photos. The flashes made his vision go blank.

The store manager patted him on the back and announced in a booming voice that today was their store anniversary—their third anniversary, which was of great significance.

They had planned this all along: to give the first customer who arrived today a super deluxe gift package—a thank-you event they'd been planning since the beginning of the year. They guaranteed to make your two friends the trendiest girls in Tokyo, the kind who'd get photographed at Shibuya Crossing.

Lu Mingfei opened his mouth hesitantly and said, "I don't plan to spend a lot of money here. I just want to bring my friends to get their bangs fixed."

He had barely finished speaking when the store manager grabbed his hand, which he hadn't had time to pull back, his eyes burning with a sense of mission.

"No problem! Brother, we'll take this job! Just for the fate that brought us together!" The shop manager patted his chest and pointed to the ceiling with his other finger, probably to say "Heaven is my witness."

"The price will be based on the haircut you requested! We'll include everything you can think of: hydrating treatment, exfoliation, laser skin whitening, eyelash perming, hand care... Anything extra will be a free gift from our shop! Not a penny more! If you bring up money with me, I'll get angry right now!"

Lu Mingfei didn't speak again. Erii and Frillie were led by four female shop assistants wearing pink aprons with smiles to two luxurious seats by the window.

The seats were made of genuine leather, with armrests as wide as those in business class on an airplane, and the back of the seats was embroidered with the gold logo of a beauty salon.

Erii was invited to the left seat, and Frilian to the right. The two seats were placed side by side in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling window, and the sunlight from Shinjuku poured in from outside, bathing them in its warmth.

With two clicks, the chairs reclined into a flat position under the staff's control, and Erii's long red hair was let down, cascading into the shampoo basin like a piece of dark red silk unfurled; Frilian's long silver hair was also let down in the same way.

The clerk in charge of washing hair rolled up his sleeves and began the process.

Test the water temperature twice with the back of your hand. First, lather the shampoo in your palms to create a rich foam, then massage your scalp with your fingertips using even pressure.

The staff responsible for facials started working simultaneously, applying hot towels to the face and gently cleaning in circular motions.

Two other staff members were waiting on the side with beauty equipment in hand; one was holding a steam sprayer, and the other was holding a photon whitening device.

A group of people were busy around the two of them in an orderly manner, like two well-equipped surgical teams performing two precise surgeries at the same time.

The shop manager personally brought two cups of hot tea, not the perfunctory paper cups, but exquisite white porcelain teacups, and placed them beside Erii and Frilian.

Lu Mingfei was settled on the sofa in the rest area, with the half-empty cup of coffee in front of him, and the poodle lying next to him, which had been giving him disdainful looks.

He held his coffee cup and mentally went through everything that had happened from last night until now.

Last night, my hotpot delivery inexplicably included a bottle of Black Dragon Daiginjo sake, which cost about eight times the price of the set meal itself.

Today, this beauty salon inexplicably offered them a full range of free treatments, simply because they happened to be the first customers on their anniversary.

And then there's this love hotel. Last night, when he checked in, the landlady took a 20,000 yen deposit, but when he checked out, she insisted on giving him a full 20,000 yen back as some kind of lucky customer discount, which meant he got a free night.

Lu Mingfei counted on his fingers and realized that since he moved into this love hotel with Erii and Frilian, the money in his pocket had not decreased but had inexplicably increased.

The stack of banknotes Chu Zihang had given him remained untouched in his wallet, while he enjoyed a series of increasingly outrageous services for free.

Something's not right.

Two little people live in Lu Mingfei's head.

One is Lu Mingfei, a loser who firmly believes that all the good luck he encounters in his life is a prepayment from fate, which will inevitably be followed by a bill of misfortune with interest; the other is also a loser, Lu Mingfei, but this loser occasionally has a thought that perhaps if he stays with a beauty of Erii's caliber, his social status will automatically rise.

As everyone says, pretty girls are the most powerful adornment for successful people. No matter if you're bald or have a beer belly, as long as you walk out with a girl in a short skirt, long legs, and a pretty face on your arm, you'll automatically be surrounded by an aura.

Lu Mingfei is no longer arm in arm with one person, but with two.

One was a stunningly beautiful girl with long, dark red hair, and the other was an elven mage with long, silver-white hair. The two sat side by side, the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows falling on their hair, the red and silver-white hair reflecting each other beautifully. The scene was so beautiful that it looked like a movie poster that could be used as wallpaper.

Lu Mingfei quickly assigned tasks to the three people in his mind: Erii was responsible for "having a pretty face", Frilian was responsible for "having a cold aura", and he was responsible for "following behind and trying not to hold them back".

But then he thought about it again and felt that something was not quite right.

Their original purpose in going out was to make Erii more inconspicuous, but if the beauty salon really turned them into "Tokyo's trendiest girls", wouldn't they attract even more attention walking on the streets of Shinjuku?

Doesn't this contradict the original intention of reducing recognizability?

Before Lu Mingfei could sort out this logical contradiction, the store manager sat down next to him with two fresh cups of coffee.

"They're all quite pretty girls," the shop manager said, glancing at the two girls on the recliners in front of him who were being carefully groomed by beauticians.

His eyes didn't have the lewdness that Lu Mingfei instinctively found repulsive; instead, they seemed more like the sincere appreciation of two works of art sculpted by God himself, a veteran who had seen countless female celebrities.

"Brother, I'm genuinely envious that you have two such beautiful girlfriends."

The store manager spoke in a very calm tone, as if he were stating a conclusion that only a worldly-wise man could come to, and then handed one of the coffees to Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei glanced over there again as he took the coffee.

Frillie seemed completely relaxed, but Lu Mingfei knew that her five senses were like radar, observing the movements around her.

Erii lay obediently as the shop assistant gave her a facial. The white mist from the steam spray enveloped her face, her eyes closed, with fine water droplets clinging to her eyelashes.

"Both of them are...?" Lu Mingfei pointed at Frillie, then at Erii, realizing the shopkeeper had probably misunderstood. But then he thought explaining would only make things more complicated. "No, they are—"

He got stuck.

How to say?

Should we say, "This is a great magician of the Elf race, who has lived for over a thousand years and is currently reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms that I lent her"? Or should we say, "This is a living weapon that has been imprisoned by the underworld for twenty years and recently used her abilities to create an iceberg"?

Lu Mingfei remained silent for a moment, then managed to squeeze out, "Friends. We're all friends."

The store manager gave him a knowing smile.

Chapter 770 Beauty and Hairdressing

"Uncle, Erii is really not my girlfriend! You can eat whatever you want, but you can't just say whatever you want!" Lu Mingfei hurriedly denied, almost dropping his coffee cup. He frantically slammed the cup back onto the coffee table, spilling a few drops of dark brown liquid.

It's unbelievable! From the SWAT officer on the helicopter until now, everyone he's met has insisted that Erii is his girlfriend.

The owner of the love hotel thinks so, and now even the manager of the beauty salon thinks so.

Could it be that he and Erii are really sending out signals that "we are a couple"?

"Don't try to fool this old man," the shop manager said, gently blowing away the steam from the coffee. A thin mist rose above his lips, revealing a knowing, unspoken smile—the kind of smile that comes with experience. "What girl goes into a beauty salon with someone other than her boyfriend? Only the most patient person would accompany you to get your hair done, sitting beside you and watching you gradually become more beautiful. Cheers! If you run into a girl like that, you should seize the opportunity!"

He picked up his coffee cup and, with the same bold gesture he would use to clink beer glasses in an izakaya, extended it forward, the rim of which touched the coffee cup that Lu Mingfei was still holding on the table.

Lu Mingfei thought to himself, "Damn it! Don't shout this kind of motivational speech like you're going to drink whiskey while holding a coffee shop. This is a beauty salon, not a bar. It's nine in the morning, not midnight. You have to be mindful of the occasion when you're trying to cheer someone up."

But he still obediently clinked glasses with the store manager.

Who can resist that kind of praise? When you're with a sweet and pretty girl by your side, the whole world flocks to praise her, as if your own existence is also shimmering because of her.

This is an experience of vanity to the core, and Lu Mingfei despairingly discovers that he is utterly powerless against this vanity.

Lu Mingfei glanced furtively in Frilian's direction. The elven mage lying on the beauty chair to the right was being helped up by the staff, who were giving her the final touches. One of the staff members was using an extremely fine comb to smooth down her long silver hair, strand by strand. Frilian's eyes were half-closed, as if she were dozing or meditating.

She noticed his gaze, opened one eye and glanced at him sideways, then raised her hand and drew an arc of light in the air.

Two words came to mind: "Eri, my girlfriend?"

Lu Mingfei's face flushed red, and he shook his head frantically.

Frillie smiled, closed her eyes again, and let the shop assistant continue combing her hair.

Lu Mingfei wasn't sure if her "light" was a serious question or just a joke; he leaned towards the latter.

Two hours later, the shop assistant helped Erii to Lu Mingfei's side.

She fell asleep during that long beauty treatment.

The white steam from the facial steamer enveloped Erii's entire face, while the warm air hummed as it dried her. The sales assistant's fingers gently spread layer after layer of skincare products on her face, each one bringing a drowsy and comfortable feeling.

The way she slept reminded Lu Mingfei of small animals.

It's not a cat, because cats are alert even when they sleep, with their ears twitching slightly; it's more like a herbivore that has never been harmed by a predator and believes the whole world is soft and harmless.

Even now, Erii was still sleepy-eyed, with a thin layer of dampness on her long eyelashes, her eyelids drooping heavily, and her head tilted slightly to one side. She was only able to stay upright in her chair because the shop assistant was holding her shoulder.

The shop assistant draped a bridal veil over her head. It hung down from the top of her head, obscuring her face and hair, leaving only a hazy outline.