Miss Planeswalker, are you free for romance?

"Hey - brothers and sisters! Is it delicious?"

There were sporadic jokes and laughter.

"Mori Yuesha is going to sing for you! Ahem, let me think of some lyrics..."

The laughter grew louder.

The mages looked at the girl on the stool as if she were their own lovely child. She was... so beautiful.

The melodious piano music, like summer flowers, fell on the ground, watered by human laughter, and gave birth to luminous flowers and plants one by one. The flowers and grass were silvery, like friendly glowing little animals, quietly crawling on the ground, dozing, listening to the girl's quiet singing like the tinkling of flowing water.

The spring water washes away the stone moss and the poet's sorrow, and the birds in the dark night see the firelight.

It is no longer lonely and sad.

'The foggy day of Kamar-Taj, the mysterious wizards!'

'Lonely and warm around the fire.'

'The ancient books are covered in dust, come and eat some meat! Do you still want to sit and meditate?'

'First, let's dance, a dance with strange and random postures,'

"The tea is still hot anyway."

'Your self is the hidden truth behind the secret,'

'You are my ideals that I have been holding on to for many years.'

"La la la la..."

'When will we meet again?'

'After parting, while traveling, or just on the way...'

Mori Yuesha plucked the strings of the guitar, her eyes sparkling - this is a brief moment for us, but also an eternal memory.

My dear friends, remember me and the nights we laughed together.

The flame is burning and the heart is boiling.

——In the distant future, when fighting a bloody battle against the invading darkness, the young wizards will never forget this day, the girl's sweet smile and eyes filled with countless stars.

And her singing voice keeps echoing in my ears.

Enduring.

Chapter 16 Girl from the Slums

A red high-top Oxford boot passes through the hollow iron railing with black patterns. Eight floors high, a short and thin leg is tightly wrapped in a child's stocking with cartoon characters. A child's hand, a child's hollow sweater.

The only thing that was in contrast was the cigarette with a dented mouth held between the fingers.

This should not happen in the hands of a minor.

The girl had a messy bob cut by scissors, her forehead against the iron railing, looking at the winding stairs going down. The metal sunband hanging around her neck made a tinkling sound when it collided with the iron.

In the slums where everyone is in a hurry, no one pays attention to this tiny sound.

And insignificant girls.

They are not available.

Her brown eyes looked in the direction of the light through the hollow hole, and she would take a puff of cigarette from time to time. Her young face showed a kind of gloom and vicissitudes beyond her age. She stared at the U-shaped staircase, watching disheveled women staggering home from work; watching drunkards arm in arm; watching gray-haired old people tremblingly climbing the stairs, and then being pushed away by the drunkard.

Every family living in the slums - or not really a family, but every household. The past stories of every household living here are enough to write a story sadder than "Boule de Suif" - the difference is that they have little knowledge, so their words and sentences are relatively shallow, and their emotions are not delicate enough.

That’s why I won’t be able to write a book that will amaze the world.

The most fundamental reason is: they are not free.

Drunkards are busy drinking and picking up prostitutes, prostitutes are busy making quick money, the old man is busy looking for his son or daughter or going to the street to get more relief; the young man lives with her today and with another one tomorrow.

Today it's gunshots, tomorrow it's stabbings.

The people who live here have no time to sum up their own tragic past or describe the darkness of the world with pretentious words.

They are not available.

Matilda looked at the person coming up the old-fashioned spiral staircase, and stared at the woolen round hat on his head with interest. It was very interesting, black and gray, round, without a brim, and with a round ball sewn on the top. The girl put her face into the hollow iron bars, and when some people came up, the scene became even more interesting.

He was about 30 or 40 years old, with a beard, a pair of black sunglasses as round as his hat, and a black woolen windbreaker. His face seemed to always show a "don't mess with me" expression - very common in the slums. What was unusual was that he seemed to be really serious. After walking up the stairs, the eyes behind the black lenses just glanced at himself lightly.

The leather shoes paused.

“Why did you hide the cigarettes?”

The man was carrying a suitcase, and underneath his woolen coat was a white T-shirt that hadn't been washed properly, as if it had been splashed with ketchup.

"Because there are always people who meddle in other people's business."

Matilda leaned back, her white knitted coat sliding down her shoulders, revealing a short red and white striped shirt underneath - and her girlish waist. "I don't want my dad to know. I've had enough trouble already."

He nodded, probably thinking that he had done his duty by asking this question, fulfilling the duty of a "neighbor" to warn underage girls about smoking. The man was about to turn around and leave, but suddenly, he leaned down, and his black glasses were close to the girl's face and chin-length brown hair.

"your face."

His deep voice was sincere, as if he really didn't understand where the bruises on Matilda's face came from.

The girl rolled her eyes: "I fell off my bike."

"I don't see any bicycles around here."

"That's because he fell while walking." Matilda was too lazy to pay attention to this old man who looked very mature but actually spoke in a childish way. She picked up a cigarette, put one hand on the fence, and cast her eyes back to the staircase that kept turning.

I could hear the sound of doors closing and my father and strangers talking. The houses in the slums were small and the walls were thin, so anyone nearby could hear any noise clearly.

'Why did you do that?'

'I don't know! I really don't know...'

'I advise you to think carefully.'

'I...I really don't know. I was just responsible for safekeeping. I took good care of the goods you gave me. I didn't touch them at all! How would I know how to do it?'

'Last month, the purity we delivered to you was 100%. This month, when we inspected the goods, the purity was only 85% - days, %.'

'I don't know! You give me things and I keep them for you, that's all I know!'

Matilda put out her cigarette and took out a lollipop from her pocket. At the end of the corridor, her father was arguing with a tall man in a leather jacket.

"I know, I know, I just want to help you..." The short-haired man looked fierce. He patted the fat man in pajamas on the shoulder with a fake smile and said sincerely: "I am helping you, but if you refuse to admit it..."

He pointed at the beige suit not far from the two of them: "...Then I'll have to go and disturb him." The man's eyes were filled with warning: "He hates it most when others disturb him when he's listening to music."

The fat man took a deep breath and shook his curly brown hair vigorously: "I really don't know anything..."

"I hope you are telling the truth. Because he - he can tell the difference between true and false, do you understand what I mean?" The man in the leather jacket pressed the fat man's shoulder and tapped his nose with his index finger: "I am saving you, saving you, you know his name, right? His brain is a little bit -"

The fat man looked confused for a while.

Perhaps the green banknotes were too tempting, or perhaps he was finally tired of the stench of garbage wafting up from the window - he liked the wealthy area two blocks away.

In short, he stuck to that sentence: I don’t know.

After he finished speaking, the man in the leather jacket looked at him with a bit of pity.

He turned around and walked carefully to the side of the person who was listening to the music with his back to the music. He was wearing a straight beige suit and had a cute bright yellow headphone cord wrapped around his neck. The person who was listening to the music swayed left and right and looked very happy.

"Stan..." He lowered his voice in panic and gently patted the shoulder of the man in the beige suit.

"I'm sorry, he said... he didn't swallow the stuff."

The person listening to the music was quiet for a while and gently took off his headphones.

"Oh."

Stanfield turned around and balled up his headphones and stuffed them into his pocket.

"Oh."

He walked around his men and swayed closer to the fat man, sniffing his neck nervously, breathing hard up and down, left and right, like a hound looking for food. Then, he put his arms around the back of the man's head and hugged him.

"Of course he didn't steal it." Stanfield grinned and rubbed the fat man's bearded cheek with his nose. "Do me a favor, Fatty."

He said, "Find out who did it by tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow noon, tomorrow noon."

Then she pushed him away.

"OK?"

He took out headphones from his pocket and put them on, then followed Stanfield away with big strides.

The fat curly-haired man turned around tremblingly, and after the two people left, he followed them angrily.

He caught Matilda, his own daughter, at the stairs.

"What are you doing here? Go inside and do your homework."

"I'm done."

"Really? Then help your stupid sister clean up the stinky house, okay?!"

He slapped her.

Snapped--!

Chapter 17 Beginning

"Matilda?"

“Matilda!!”

The small, shabby house was in a mess in the early morning. My sister was doing aerobics in front of an old-fashioned TV—which, by the way, was a found TV. My father hugged my mother and went into the bathroom. She was used to that kind of sound.

"Matilda!" The creaking sound of the sink stopped for a moment, and the mother fell silent. The father yelled: "Answer the phone! Go answer the phone! Do you want me to hit your legs with a baseball bat again?!"

The girl blew a breath, secretly glared at her sister's twisting fat butt, and ran into the bedroom in her slippers.

"Hey?"

"I'm Ms. Magrete. Principal of Spencer Middle School in New Jersey."

The woman on the phone said, "Is Mr. or Mrs. Landau home?"

Matilda looked at the door and rolled her eyes: "I am Mrs. Landau."

A stereotyped voice came from the receiver: "Mrs. Lando, when your husband sent Matilda to school, he told us that she was a problem girl, but you know, we can turn 'problem' into 'no longer a problem', little lady, right?"

"But if she refuses to go to school, there's nothing we can do." The voice in the receiver was getting faster and faster: "Matilda skipped classes for two weeks without permission - although your husband paid a year's tuition in advance, the school rules are very clear..."

“If a student is absent for a long period of time, the prepaid tuition fees cannot be refunded unless the student takes a leave of absence.”

Matilda stared at the curtains and listened to the whole thing. She spoke very softly:

"She's dead."

hang up.

The girl threw the phone down and ran out.

"Where's lunch? Lunch!" The father came out of the bathroom hugging the disheveled mother. Matilda silently calculated the time to answer the phone and rolled her eyes secretly.

"Matilda, I'm talking to you!"

“I haven’t had time to go out and buy it yet.”

"So what the hell were you doing all morning? Huh?"

The fat on Mr. Lando's face trembled with anger. The girl wondered if all men would become angry after venting their anger, otherwise why had she lived such a life all these years?

"Go get lunch, Matilda."

"It's my sister's turn to buy it today."

"Your sister can find countless little bastards to fuck her fat ass - this clock, see? The plates you eat on and this table were all bought by your sister, Matilda, if you don't want me to sell you to some place you don't want to go, then do what you should do and get out of here to school."