I'm not Yingjie

Her fingers did not leave the hilt, the man next to Mei had an aura of danger no less than Lin's, and his gaze was even more aggressive, always lingering over Sakura's hands and feet, alert for her sudden attack.

Mei raised her hand and glanced at her ticking watch - their meeting time was limited, and many people were staring at her, waiting for her to get back to work.

After putting down her hand, Mei said to Ying: "I have erased all traces of you. There were only me, Kevin, and Lin who had just returned to the Fire Moth by the lake that night. And Lin's injury will also be treated as a 'second-degree recurrence' laceration."

Ying studied Mei's expression quietly, but it was useless. Even a professional psychologist might not be able to tell anything from this girl's face. But Ying could feel Mei's sincerity, so she took a deep breath and nodded, "You don't look like you're lying. So, the deal is over. Goodbye."

The pink-haired girl removed her fingers from the hilt of the knife, and under Kevin's gaze, she pushed open the cell door, walked past the two men, and walked outside, completely unafraid of the darkness in front of her.

"Ms. Sakura, are you really not going to think about what I said last time? You have already experienced it during this mission, right?"

"..."

Sakura's high heels stopped in the darkness.

The temperature in various parts of the world changed drastically. Even if it was not at the center of the collapse, the phenomenon of sudden changes in the heaven and earth also affected other places, as if we had entered a low-temperature era that did not belong to humans.

Sakura saw it clearly.

A mere change in temperature can bring about earth-shaking changes in human society, so what kind of hell would those center points that she only saw in the video be like?

Can he really protect Ling from a disaster that may happen at any time?

"The Fire Moths are currently short of manpower, Miss Sakura, and humans need people like you. If you don't want to, we won't stop you, and no one will hunt you down, but no one will mention this deal to you either."

"..."

"..."

The long silence was not just about the atmosphere, but also about Sakura's considerations, and she obviously had to consider more than the average person.

For some reason, she thought of Lin.

Perhaps it was because Lin was the only member of the Fire Moths whom she had known before this incident, or perhaps it was for some unclear reason, but thinking of him at this moment, Sakura felt that this was not a coincidence.

So she turned around and asked, "...what do you need me for?"

"Welcome to join the Fire Moth, Ying." Mei seemed to have expected this result. She smiled slightly, "As I said last time, we need you to do what you are best at. You will stay in the Poison Pupa, but this team will no longer be the Speaker's personal army, and the content of the work will also change to a certain extent."

"…Where are the members?"

"It's just you for now, but I'll be expanding it soon."

"Won't the others have any objections?"

Obviously, Mei should not be the only one who makes the decision when it comes to dealing with Sakura. The senior members of the Fire Moths, the Speaker and Lin are all people who know her affairs inside and out.

"If you understand the workings and core of the Fire Moth, you won't ask that."

"Lin is the same?"

"...No, Lin..."

May paused, and Kevin's gaze wandered for a moment.

"Lin...has disappeared."

Chapter 16 Retirement

This man is mentally ill.

After the girl followed him around the house, she came to a definite conclusion.

He had been talking to himself since he entered the room, as if he was talking to someone, but in fact there was no one around him except himself, and he also ignored himself, which meant that he did not exist in his eyes.

He has severe hallucinations. Apart from being able to identify the structure of a house and avoid bumping into it, everything else is abnormal.

In less than a few minutes after he came in, he used a sculpture's hand, a shoe and a water cup as telephones and "called" others in normal language.

There was also the person who looked at the snow outside the window and said that he didn't want to swim, picked up the empty bowl and murmured that the coconut milk was too sweet, and stood under the lamp and said that the sun was too hot.

How can I describe this neurotic and mentally ill look... It looks a bit strange... pitiful?

"Anyway, it's none of my business. I'm just doing my job..." The girl scratched her hair, and then she thought of something important. "By the way, are you the person in the photo?"

Although the photo shows a boy younger than myself, it is not ruled out that the photo was taken a long time ago?

Since he can't see me, then I won't be discovered if I quietly remove the cloth from his face, right?

Thinking of this, the girl approached the man's wheelchair with her light steps, stood beside him, stretched out her hand and waved in front of his eyes. After making sure that he couldn't see it, the girl grabbed the cloth on his face like a thief.

Grab the knot of the cloth with your fingers and apply gentle force...

"Snapped."

"Alas--"

Without any warning, the man grabbed her wrist with his right hand.

He, he is pretending!

"My name is Padova! I have a boss behind me, and they love to buy my stuff! Go to Dusk Street and ask around! Don't do anything rash!" Padova pulled her hand away while hurriedly giving her own name, hoping to scare this guy.

"Is this your child? Imer, that's great. You got married right after the Honkai ended, but it took you so long to have a child."

"Eh?"

Paddo thought she had heard wrongly, so she stopped yelling and looked into the man's eyes.

Only then did she realize that the man had only one eye, which was illusory and fragile, dissipated into a diffuse round cake, and he was not looking at her at all.

"Yeah, we're finally retired."

He nodded with a smile.

……

"I still didn't see it..."

Padu came out of the house, touched her face, and couldn't help sighing.

Even if this mentally ill man is really the person in the photo, it would probably be useless to give him the key.

Forget it, just put it on the table and it’s done. What happens next is none of her business.

Although she thought so, Padu couldn't help but feel some sympathy when she thought of the strangely warm scene with the man just now. He probably couldn't even live alone. Could he die in this room...

Did he come here by himself? That's impossible. Given his mental state, even if he knew the way, he couldn't get here.

As Padu thought about it, she reached into her arms for the key.

"…Hmm? Um—no, it's gone!"

Padu frantically searched her body, but couldn't find the key that she was threatened to hand over to someone else.

Paddo always carried her keys with her to prevent them from being lost, but the keys that she had confirmed this morning disappeared after the man came?

What a joke! If that person is really the boy in the photo, wouldn’t she be in big trouble?

Paddo, who had always wanted to protect herself, made the biggest mistake at this critical juncture. She immediately turned around and went into the house to look for the key. Logically speaking, she had not left the house today, so even if the key was lost, it would only fall into the house.

but……

"No! It's over! My life, Padua Felice, has ended just like that!"

After searching the house upside down and even the man's wheelchair, Paddy couldn't find the key. She felt like the sky was falling.

At this moment, she just wanted to bury herself in the snow and pass out.

Padu left in a daze. She was in no mood to care about the man now. Trouble might come to her next. Before that, she should find a place to hide.

"Have you heard? That sanatorium seems to have saved a person with frostbite all over his body! It is said that not a single piece of skin is intact!"

"Is this true? Doesn't that mean he's dead? How could he be frozen like that?"

"What else could it be? This winter is so cold, he must have accidentally broken his leg somewhere, and then he was frozen like that."

"How miserable."

"So what if it's miserable? Isn't that what Dusk Street is like..."

Paddo became cautious when she heard the words of the beggar in dirty clothes on the street.

They are not necessarily beggars. There should be no people who make a living purely by begging on Dusk Street. Here, everyone relies on their own abilities. If you always rely on others, you will not survive for long. So they will collect all kinds of information. Padu likes to listen to it because some of the bosses who come to her shop to buy things also like to listen to it.

Fortunately, I have a house to live in, otherwise I might have been frostbitten.

Padu thought about it and decided to go and see the sanatorium.

……

"..."

Lin sat in a wheelchair, standing in the middle of the hall, motionless and peaceful as if he was asleep.

His dilated pupils were still looking ahead, or maybe he was not looking at anything and was just in a daze.

"Gah-"

A man pushed open the door and walked in, looked in the direction where Padu left, and then walked in front of Lin.

"..."

Lin still looked dull, without any trace of his former quick thinking.

"I originally wanted you to live in Dusk Street. The Fire Moths don't control this place, so it's a mixed bag but not easy to be discovered. That's why I built a house here." The man sat on the table in front of Lin and said to him, "But before the house was finished, you joined the Fire Moths."

"After you joined the Fire Moth, I decided not to let you come here. Your identity has changed. I don't know what made you think of it, but a soldier is still a soldier, not a child I need to protect."

"But someone made a deal with me, so that you can at least spend your last days in peace, that's why I decided to bring you here. Because I never break my promise."

"Here, you can go back to your past or imagine your future. At least... you still have this left."

After the man finished his last sentence, he stood up and left. He walked to the door and looked at Lin, who was immersed in hallucinations, with complicated eyes.

Then the door closed.

"Clap."

Chapter 17 Mental Disorders

Hun hummed a song as he stabbed the knife into the piglet's belly, then with a slight force he cut open the belly along the lines.

The pig, which had already been bled, stopped bleeding. The knife in her hand separated the meat and bones as accurately as a surgeon's scalpel and cut them into pieces of suitable size for cooking.

Dark red blood and fat stuck to the knife, and the sound of cutting echoed in the empty room.

"Click."

"Dong dong dong."

A knock on the door interrupted the sound of cutting meat.

"Gah-"

Hun opened the door and saw Himiko standing at the door with a forced smile on her face, shaking the bottle of wine in her hand.

"Want a drink? Soul."

……

Himiko and Hun sat opposite each other at a small round table. Himiko poured wine into Hun's glass, poured half the glass, and then filled her own glass.

"Come to think of it, when I first met you, you couldn't drink, but now you're old enough to get married." Himiko picked up the wine glass, but didn't drink. Instead, she looked at her own lost face in the glass, "It turns out that... several years have passed."

"..."

Hun lowered his head and said nothing.

A few years?

It’s been quite a few years indeed.

"Don't you want to drink?" Himiko picked up the glass, drank half of the wine, smacked her lips and asked.

"Yeah." Hun also picked up the glass, took a sip, and then coughed due to the strong smell of alcohol.

"Cough cough cough..."

Himiko sighed, then smiled for some unknown reason, helping Hun to calm down.

"Seeing you like this, you seem pretty much the same as before. Lately you've become a little unlike the little soul I knew."

"Cough cough... huh... have I changed?" Huncai asked with his eyebrows twitching after he breathed a sigh of relief.