Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

"I'm sorry, Xiao Mu." Su Shi hugged Mu and gently patted her back. "It's not your fault. We will find Xiao Xiang, and Crychic will come back too. We can go back to the way things were."

“Hmm…” Mu responded softly.

Lying in Su Shi's gentle embrace, Mu opened her eyes wide and looked at the seed of lamentation standing upright on the table.

Motoyo Nagasaki is unaware of the truth about magical girls.

But Mu knew.

Xiangzi told Mu the first person she told, because she believed that Mu's emotions were absolutely stable.

Mutsu could understand Xiangzi's desire to keep them away from danger, and she could also understand Su Shi's concern for Xiangzi, but neither of them understood Mutsu's thoughts.

Even Mu himself didn't understand.

What should she do and say to make things right again?

"Thank you, Xiao Mu," Su Shi said. "Leave it to me."

"......Um."

========

RiNG.

Xiangzi brings Aine to LivehouNG, which is also a gathering place managed by Popipa.

"My benefactor~ Where are we going now?"

“Let’s go to Diagon Alley,” Xiangzi said.

"Huh? This used to be the Break the Cauldron Bar."

Ai Yin had done a lot of research to integrate into the British environment, and immediately understood what Xiangzi meant by "Diagon Alley," picking up on the joke.

"I had no idea!"

That's right. On the surface, RiNG is just an ordinary livehouse featuring girl bands, but if you know the special entrance, it's like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, allowing you to enter another world.

"You even have the app for the Reed Plains Magical Girl Gathering, how could you not know about it?" Xiangzi raised an eyebrow and said sarcastically.

"Should I know?"

"After entering the app, there will be a beginner's tutorial. If you don't know how..." Xiangzi's eyes twitched twice.

Aine scratched her head.

It dawned on me.

"Oh no, I think I skipped that!"

The Tale of Nirvana: Keeping Your True Self: Chapter 26 Girls In RiNG

"I knew there really were people like you." Xiangzi rubbed his forehead.

"Hey, what do you mean by 'someone like me'?" Aine pouted.

Xiangzi sighed.

"It's nothing, it's rare to see someone who's a bit slow." Xiangzi pointed to his head and shrugged. "It could also be my problem."

"what?"

"Come on, or I'll abandon you if you get lost."

"Hey, wait for me."

Xiangzi walked up the steps to the second-floor coffee shop and greeted a woman in her early twenties behind the bar.

"Sister Rinrinko".

"Good afternoon, Xiaoxiang. Are you here to see Xiangcheng?" The woman named Rinrinko greeted her with a smile.

"Hmm." Xiangzi nodded, gesturing with his thumb to the people behind him, "And bring along a newcomer as well."

"Huh?" Several question marks appeared above Chihaya Aine's head.

Are you talking about me?

“Then I won’t bother you any longer. The ‘door’ is open, and Kasumi is on duty today,” Rinko said.

"it is good."

Xiangzi responded and continued walking towards the corner of the second-floor coffee shop, bypassing the bar and leading Aiyin through the work passage next to the bar.

"Is that older sister also a magical girl?" Aine asked.

“No, just an ordinary person,” Xiangzi said.

"How would she know, you know, this and that?" Ai Yin paused for a moment.

“We will cooperate with ordinary people to collect information related to witches, then summarize it in the gathering, and finally issue a commission.” Xiangzi stood in front of the employee elevator at the end.

"Oh..." Ai Yin nodded, seemingly understanding, "Where are we going next? Are we going to knock down the three bricks on top of the trash can and then count two more horizontally?"

"You're pretty savvy." Xiangzi glanced at her indifferently and pressed the elevator button.

"Hehehe~" Ai Yin grinned triumphantly, revealing her sharp little tiger teeth.

A few seconds later, the elevator arrived.

“Because you skipped the tutorial, you’ll have to watch me do everything from now on,” Xiangzi said to Aiyin as he walked into the elevator. “I’ll only demonstrate once.”

"Uh-huh."

Xiangzi opened the app.

"There's a dynamic code on your personal information page. Open it and take a look."

Following Xiangzi's instructions, Aiyin opened the dynamic code and saw a string of numbers from 1 to 4, along with a progress bar that was shrinking.

"It's open, what's this?"

“The elevator’s dynamic password,” Xiangzi said. “Because RiNG only has four floors, the number of password combinations is small, so a dynamic password is needed to prevent it from being cracked.”

"Is it that complicated...?"

"Yes, I also find it very complicated."

Xiangzi helplessly spread his hands, and as if by magic, produced a black membership ID card from his palm.

"So actually everyone is using credit cards."

"..." A few beads of sweat visibly trickled down Aine's forehead. "Who came up with this...?"

"It's not me anyway."

Xiangzi took back the ID card, then took out the dynamic password, raised his index finger, and placed it in front of Aiyin.

"Getting back to the main point, if you don't have an ID card or have lost your ID card, you have to use a dynamic password, but entering a dynamic password is not as simple as pressing a few numbers as in Hollywood movies."

"Mmm." Ai Yin nodded her head up and down to show that she was listening attentively.

"When entering the password, you need to concentrate the magic at your fingertips, otherwise the elevator buttons will not respond."

Xiangzi entered the numbers shown on the dynamic code.

Suddenly, Aine felt a distinct downward sensation. After a brief descent, the elevator landed smoothly, and the numbers on the floor display screen changed into a witch's script that Aine could only vaguely understand.

[Gathering Hall]

The elevator doors then slowly opened, and the outside light, accompanied by bustling sounds, poured into the elevator.

Aine's eyes shone brightly.

She stepped out of the elevator before Xiangzi could.

"This this......"

Aiyin stood in the center of the large rug placed by the door, unsure how to express her emotions.

"Isn't this the gate to RiNG?! Where's my Diagon Alley? Where's my Hogwarts? It looks so ordinary!"

Yes, the elevator exit leads to RiNG's lobby, where there's a reception desk. Walking to the back leads to the livehouse. To the left is the staircase leading to the second-floor café, and to the right are the staircases and elevators leading to the third and fourth-floor recording studios.

The same.

"There are differences; the themes change according to the seasons and holidays, and sometimes it becomes more spacious," Xiangzi said. "This place was built by the founders of the [Reed Plains Magical Girl Gathering] in imitation of a witch's barrier..."

"Xiao Xiang!"

A girl with cat-ear hair and star-shaped hair clips spotted Xiangzi from afar at the front desk and waved loudly at her.

"Here, here!"

Xiangzi's face visibly paled.

If Aine's Liu Grandma visiting the Grand View Garden earlier only drew a few glances, Kasumi Toyama's direct greeting immediately focused everyone's attention on Xiangzi.

"She's calling you," Aine said from the side.

"I know......"

Xiangzi pretended not to hear and turned left to walk towards the coffee shop on the second floor.

After glancing between Kasumi and Shoko for a few moments, Aine followed Shoko into the coffee shop and found a seat by the window.

Before Ai-yin could say anything, a chair was moved next to their table.

Kasumi Toyama, dressed in RiNG's work uniform, brought over three cups of Earl Grey tea and sat between Aine and Shoko, a smile on her face.

"I heard from Sister Linlin that Xiaoxiang brought a newcomer over, is that you?"

"Yes, I just came back from abroad and I'm not very familiar with the environment here yet."

"Returned from abroad? Are there many magical girls abroad too?"

"There should be quite a lot... but I don't recognize many of them..." Aine managed to brush it off.

The timing of her becoming a magical girl was so subtle that she found it difficult to talk about it, so she could only tell others that she became a magical girl while abroad.

On the plane back to China, which is also abroad.

"Were you also from the Reed Plains before?"

"Yeah, I haven't been back for a while."

For a time, it refers to the fact that after flying from Reed Plains to England, he stayed for two months and then returned dejectedly.

"After becoming a magical girl, doesn't it feel different to see the familiar city again? It's a completely different landscape. Although it's dangerous, I feel like I shine even brighter."

"More or less. 岄.亿二』韭柒〤刘咎仪衤三捌....."

"Hey, when we were newbies, we thought the same thing. At first, we were just playing in a band, but somehow it turned into this. We all became magical girls, half-heartedly, and then BlaBlaKiraKiraDokiDoki........"

Kasumi was clearly getting more and more excited as she talked.

Xiangzi skillfully plugged his ears, picked up his red tea, and pretended to look at the scenery outside the window.

=====

P.S.: I was so engrossed in playing Longxin that I forgot to update. Oh dear.

The Tale of Nirvana: Keeping Your True Self: Chapter 27 Aine's Beginner's Guide

"The team recruitment notice board is in the lobby; you can go check it out later."

"The structure of the gathering is somewhat different from that of RiNG. The original performance venue has been transformed into a practice room, which also serves as a fighting ring."

"The third floor is the Soul Gem Adjustment Room. Arisa is in charge of adjusting the Soul Gems there. If the Grief Seeds are Hard or higher, they will have different characteristics. You can add the characteristics to your Soul Gem in the adjustment room. You will get unexpected results."

"The fourth floor is a conference room, which is not open to the public, so I won't go into details."

"If you want to form a magical girl band, you need to bring all your teammates to the front desk to find me—sometimes it will be Saya on duty to register the team."

"The two regions with the highest witch strength in all of Japan are Reed Plain and Kamihama. In fact, the witches in Reed Plain are not as strong as those in Kamihama on average, but the number of witches in Reed Plain is several times greater than that in Kamihama. Therefore, we have eliminated the previous territory system and encouraged everyone to team up more often."

"As for the band, it's not strictly necessary to have five people. Two, three, four, five, six, or seven people are all fine. However, everyone is used to five people. After all, whether it's forming a band or hunting witches, the ability of five people to support each other is the strongest."

"In fact, quite a few magical girls work solo, but solo magical girls can only go as far as Normal. Hard magic is a qualitative change from the start. Even for magical girls with somebody magic, it is extremely difficult and thankless."

"besides......"

"I have a question," Ai Yin raised her hand.