After completing the routine report, Flora felt utterly exhausted, her heart like dead ashes. She dragged her steps toward the bedroom.
She didn’t know how long her lie could hold, but the foreseeable terrible consequences made her instinctively want to escape.
Passing by the kitchen, her mother, who was cooking, glanced at her but noticed nothing amiss.
Her daughter had always been gentle and quiet, keeping any emotions deep in her heart.
Flora closed the door behind her, clenched her trembling fingers, and felt restless. She simply lay down on the bed, escaping into fantasies by rewinding time to the past before everything happened.
Back then, she was still a carefree little loli, living in the countryside with her family. The road in front of their house was desolate and lonely, and a calm, silent river flowed gently.
Back then, her father was leisurely preparing for exams, his chest not yet filled with ambition and drive, not yet harboring that ruthless determination to break into high society or die trying.
Flora’s little bed was a single bed placed against the wall, with boat-shaped raised ends.
Ashley had slept here on her first night, and the Little Orange Lantern still sat on the bedside table.
The orange peel had dried out, becoming like parchment. The candle had burned out and been replaced, with accumulated solidified wax tears inside the peel—dark brown wax tears like amber. Flora loved the scent of the candle mixed with citrus.
She lit the Little Orange Lantern, lay on her side, and left her legs dangling off the bed without taking off her shoes. A pair of pretty, melancholic eyes stared blankly at the glowing orange peel.
Her eyelids gradually grew too heavy to keep open…
The dream world was gray, swaying gently and unstably, with strands of shimmering light dancing with the water flow.
Flora felt herself sinking, as if someone had removed the bed, dropping her into a system bug. Behind her was an endless data void, and her fall had no end.
Gurgle, gurgle…
Ashley’s little face appeared in her sight, cheeks puffed out comically, eyes wide with confusion and bewilderment.
She was like a stunning mermaid, twisting downward. Her blue hair flowed like clouds at the edge of the sky, swaying freely in the water. Pearls of white bubbles escaped from the corner of her mouth, trailing behind her. Some bubbles clung to her water-soaked, dense hair strands, forming a beautiful picture.
Seeing the little mermaid’s soft hand reach out, Flora, who was dazed and about to sink into the pond’s mud, finally felt a surge of survival instinct. She struggled to raise her hand and grasped it.
In that instant, a force pulled Flora upward toward an increasingly blinding white light…
Splash!
Like a fish leaping out of the water, she slammed onto the ground, flopping wetly.
Air rushed into her lungs, bringing a sharp stinging pain, like ripping open an unhealed scar to expose the bloody wound—painful and real.
“Why did you save me…” Flora coughed up water, her voice choked with sobs.
In her sight, the loli looked like she’d just bathed. Her little face was tender and dripping wet, her hair strands clumped from the water, countless transparent droplets shimmering and rolling down her cheeks, hanging on her nose tip and lips like candied hawthorns coated in clear sugar shells, utterly tempting.
“Ashley repays every favor.” The loli said in a childish, light voice, but her tone was as hard as iron.
“My life is over… I killed someone…”
Flora suppressed her sobs, her chest heaving rapidly.
“I… I didn’t mean to… He wouldn’t let me leave… I pushed him once… and he tumbled down the stairs…”
“Yeah, you’ll get arrested, then sent to a place called Saint Dormer Community for reform—oh, right here, on-site TP, huh? Hahaha.” Ashley teased with a laugh. Though her smile was beautiful, turning her into a playful beauty in an instant, it carried a heartless flavor.
“I don’t want to… I don’t want to…”
“What’s so bad? You get free meals here.”
“If the kids find out I killed someone… all my hard work will be wasted… I’ve always tried to teach them to be noble people… but in the final lesson… I did the most terrible thing… This kind of ‘actions speak louder than words’ will ruin their lives…” Flora sobbed.
“So that’s what you’re worried about. Indeed, the kids you’ve inspired, who look up to you as a role model, will have their faith shattered and stop believing in humanity.” Ashley nodded in agreement.
Flora covered her face with her little hands, a wave of shame surging in her heart.
Uncontrollably, she lied again. The lie slipped from her mouth as easily as rice grains falling from a toothless grandma’s mouth.
In truth, she didn’t care at all about the futures of those juvenile delinquents. She often heard them bragging privately about their evils with no remorse whatsoever—zero chance of reform. It disgusted her completely.
What Flora cared about was the outside world’s evaluation—the indoctrination from childhood that she must become a useful cog in society’s machine. But now, she was no longer a cog; she was garbage—useless and harmful.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you. Where’s the body? With a little handling, we can make it look like I’m the culprit. The police dogs will chase after me relentlessly, and after investigating for over half a year, they’ll release me in court for lack of evidence…”
…
…
Rain washed the skylight, rinsing away the fine, powdery dust.
Ashley lay on the bed, staring blankly as raindrops fell straight from the sky, one after another, smashing to pieces on the glass.
Choosing to help Flora wasn’t a whim; she knew what she’d face—at least half a year wasting time in a detention center and with the police, constant interrogations, testing her mental and physical limits.
But she hadn’t expected Letisia to lower herself and personally interrogate her.
Worse, the Trial Judge who decided on bail and its amount was also Letisia. Though Ashley had no money for bail, she could take out a bail loan.
On the bright side, compared to those notorious big prisons, the detention center for suspects was relatively comfortable.
Moreover, she was confined in Saint Dormer Community anyway, and here she didn’t have to deal with violent, neurotic juvenile delinquents…
As she thought about it, Ashley actually felt a bit happy.
Her gaze inadvertently swept to the door, and her heart leaped to her throat!
A cockroach!
This dreadful intruder wore shiny reddish-brown armor, its two long tentacles quivering imposingly. The iron bars meant nothing to it; it barged in uninvited, waving its antennae provocatively at the little loli on the bed.
Ashley snorted coldly, rolled out of bed with a creak of the frame, switched to a crouch, leaned forward, and formed her little hand into a gun shape at her waist.
“Want to duel, you clumsy little cockroach?”
The cockroach wiggled its tentacles, eyes gleaming slyly.
“This isn’t a game. Have you prepared for the cost of provoking the strong?”
The cockroach continued waving its tentacles up and down, as if pondering.
Suddenly!
Rustle, rustle, rustle!
The cockroach moved!
It charged at high speed while zigzagging to evade!
What a strong enemy!
Ashley jolted, her body hair standing on end like an electric shock, but her hand didn’t hesitate. She drew her “gun” like lightning!
Bang!
A water droplet shot from her fingertip, blooming into transparent spiral ripples!
The next moment, the cockroach took a heavy hit, like a tin car struck by an anti-tank cannon. Amid the explosion, it flew into the air, crashed down, then scurried back toward the door in panicked flight.
Ashley tilted her body to brace against the recoil in her arm, grunted, sweat dampening the soft hair at her temple, and gasped:
“Your shameful past made you fall to my gun.”
After a while, Ashley rolled her eyes and mocked herself:
“Eh, have you sunk to playing with Little Roach? Ashley.”
Of course, she hadn’t defeated Little Roach by spitting like a llama. In this world, there existed unbelievable powers.
Born from the earth, entities known as “Singularities.”
By offering tribute to a Singularity, one could gain equivalent power—the more cherished the tribute, the stronger the granted power.
