With You

by DeuxDebuzzy

Summary:

In a world where superpowers are measured by trust indexes and heroes are state-sanctioned civil servants, X—the Federation’s top hero—leads a double life between heroic bureaucracy and a mind-numbingly dull office job. Everything changes when he accidentally becomes the brother of a mysterious little girl who can bend reality itself.

She’s quiet, strange, and impossibly powerful.

And somehow… she chose him.

(This is written before season 1 ends)

Chapter 1: Found You

The funny thing about living a boring life like the one he led—unaltered, routine. Just like anyone else: a job he got after several attempts, a stable trust index, routines that surprised no one.

 

Life wasn’t simple, of course. But before becoming Hero X, before rising above the rest, there were foundations: responsibility, discipline, days that repeated themselves without brilliance.

 

And that hadn’t changed. X doubted it ever would.

 

Still, what turned his ordinary days into something strange, something interesting, was precisely… this.

 

Any sane person—responsible, normal—would’ve gone straight to the nearest police station to report what they were seeing. Maybe, first, they would’ve filmed it, posted it online. Or maybe not.

 

But X wasn’t that kind of person. Or at least, today, he didn’t want to be.

 

He watched. Without fear. Without worrying about dying or being killed for getting involved. Human curiosity worked like that: strange, unstoppable, a hook lodged deep in the mind.

 

And he fell for it. Like a mouse into a trap, he approached, knowing that this girl—like him—was different.

 

A power disconnected from the world’s trust system. A power she had been born with.

 

He knew.

 

And still, he kept walking.

 

She was small, with pale features: hair as red as burning embers at sunset, eyes green and deep like a forgotten forest. She wore a simple brown dress, worn down by time or flight. But what truly set her apart from the world was the crimson energy wrapped around her—dense, like a cocoon of burning silk.

 

She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t dead.

 

She was awake.

 

Stunned, tears slipping down her cheeks, she stared at something X couldn’t see. And in her tiny, fragile hands, her fingers were stained black. It wasn’t dirt, nor blood. They looked like spilled constellations of ink, as if someone had dipped her fingertips into darkness itself.

 

Her power was protecting her. That much was clear. But there was something else…

 

The heat.

 

The sensation of her magic humming in the air, like a buzz under his skin. It crept down his arms, raised the hairs on his neck.

 

She’s strong.

 

That was the only conclusion, no words needed. His own abilities vibrated in response, like two opposing notes seeking harmonic collision.

 

Then, the girl stopped looking at nothing.

 

And looked at him.

 

It was slow. Deliberate. As if the universe held its breath. As if everything else—the wind, the sound, time—vanished for a moment, obedient.

 

Ah.

 

She manipulates reality…

 

How curious.

 

How dangerous.

 

And yet, X smiled with confidence.

 

“Hello,” he said, not sure if she would understand. After all, few people learned Simplified Chinese or Mandarin by choice. He left it up to chance.

 

She didn’t react. But it didn’t matter. X snapped his fingers, and in an instant, the transformation was complete. The appearance of the average citizen vanished, and in its place emerged the instantly recognizable figure: Hero X, the number one hero in existence.

 

His power, always contained beneath his skin, pulsed stronger now, like a river clashing against stone. Meanwhile, the chaos in the girl’s aura stirred—but not to harm, rather as a confused echo, searching.

 

It happened fast—too fast.

 

The girl’s eyes widened.

 

She seemed to see something in him, something that made the scarlet light around her vanish instantly. Her bare feet, once suspended in midair, touched the grass gently.

 

And then, she ran.

 

No—she teleported, though the distance was short. As if space itself bent to her will. Her small arms, too short to wrap around him fully, clung to him with unexpected strength. She pressed her face against X’s white pants, like a frightened cat seeking shelter.

 

“Brother…” she whispered, and a red light washed over her from head to toe.

 

The change was immediate.

 

Her red hair darkened, turning black as night. Her green eyes shifted to brown—just like his.

 

When she looked up, innocent and childlike, X couldn’t move.

 

That… truly surprised him.

 

Should he step back?

 

Logically, he should. It would be the sensible thing. But there are connections that transcend reason, forces drawn to each other like opposing tides. Two powers, distant poles, now entangled in a silent embrace.

 

X witnessed her magic.

 

And his responded.

 

As their energies collided, memories flowed freely:

 

—A girl turned into a weapon.

—Parents reduced to ashes in an explosion.

—A twin lost amid gunfire.

—Experiments. Gems. Six of them, cursed and etched into her history like scars.

—An adulthood marked by fear, her power growing like a tumor, fed by pain.

 

No one warned her of the abyss she carried inside.

 

The chaos, always hungry, fed on her emotions: rage, despair, madness. A power like that, in trembling hands, could only end in sacrifice.

 

She had kidnapped an entire town.

Created her own world, her own heaven and hell.

Ripped lives from other universes like withered flowers.

 

They called her the Scarlet Witch.

 

For her power. For the time she bent, the reality she unraveled at will.

 

A version of him… but without control. Without peace.

 

X looked down. The girl—now with his same dark hair, his same brown eyes—was hugging him as if he were the last piece of the world she had left.

 

His large, steady hands lifted her to his chest.

 

“Yes, I’m your brother.”

 

The echo of those words resonated beyond the two of them.

 

You’re not alone.

 

Neither are you.

 

And in that moment, their chaos stilled, like a sea after a storm.

 

Patience had never been his virtue. Training rookies at work was tedious, but kids… kids were supposed to be simpler. Right?

 

The girl smiled, unaware of his doubts, ready to play along.

 

Or maybe—just maybe—by digging through her memories, X had triggered something irreversible. What remained of that cosmic entity, of the feared Scarlet Witch, was now just a creature with his eyes and surname. A little girl who existed in this world simply because he (or she) had imagined it.

 

He adjusted her with one arm while the other searched inside his jacket. With the ease of someone who had signed a thousand documents, he pulled out the family hukou. The new name gleamed on the paper, fresh and legitimate, as if it had always been there.

 

As easy as wishing it, he thought wryly.

 

His glasses slipped down his nose. He pushed them back with the back of his hand, a habitual gesture.

 

“A gem in the mud,” he chuckled, though he wasn’t sure which of them he meant.

 

But in the end, what could he do? This girl was like those stray cats that choose a human on a whim and refuse to let go. X didn’t protest.

 

They left the forest. The wind played with his dark hair, and he glanced down at the mud stains on his suit with resignation. Luckily, I’ve got more in the closet, he thought. Tomorrow was another day.

 

“Rib soup with vegetables doesn’t sound bad…” he muttered as they walked. The girl watched the streets with wide eyes, amazed. He didn’t blame her. “Although fàntuán is delicious too.”

 

Just imagining those sticky rice balls—filled with egg, lean meat, and seaweed—made his stomach growl.

 

“Rice balls…” the girl echoed, in a whisper so soft it nearly got carried away by the wind.

 

X stopped cold.

 

“Mhm?” He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Clever. You learned the language just by listening.” A genuine smile appeared on his lips. “A prodigy. I like that.”

 

And he kept walking, his new sister in his arms and hunger by his side. The world kept turning, but something—something small and red like a bud—had changed forever.

---

The street food stall appeared before them like a beacon in the night, wrapped in tempting vapors: the sweet scent of steamed rice, the smoky touch of grilled meat, the earthy perfume of roasted seaweed. X stopped, and the girl—still holding his hand—did the same, her eyes glowing at the feast of smells.

 

The woman behind the counter, hands worn from work and smile warm, looked at them with curiosity.

 

“Two fàntuán, auntie,” X said, while the girl stood on tiptoes to get a better look.

 

The cook nodded efficiently. Her fingers, quick as birds, shaped the sticky rice around the fillings: golden egg, marinated pork bits, fresh vegetables. She wrapped them in bamboo leaves with movements perfected over years and dropped them into boiling water.

 

The girl watched, fascinated.

 

“Do you like cooking?” X asked, noticing her gaze.

 

She shook her head but pointed to the woman’s hands.

 

“Ah… it’s like magic, right?”

 

A shy nod.

 

The vendor, seeing the girl stretch her neck to watch every expert move, couldn’t help but smile tenderly.

 

“Is she your sister?” she asked, while wrapping another fàntuán with precise gestures.

 

X looked at the girl—her brown eyes glowing with curiosity, her fingers clean, no longer stained.

 

“She is, auntie,” he replied, and his voice sounded firmer than expected.

 

The fàntuán were ready in minutes. The woman handed them over, steaming, wrapped in rice paper. X paid with a few coins, and upon receiving them, noticed the girl blowing on hers seriously, mimicking an adult.

 

The first bite was an explosion: the rice, sticky and sweet; the meat, juicy; the seaweed, a salty contrast. The girl closed her eyes, savoring it like it was heavenly.

 

“Good?”

 

“Good,” she repeated, mouth full.

 

X smiled. Maybe this new life—with its unexpected responsibilities—wouldn’t be so bad.

 

Well, that’s what he thought.

 

“I’d like one too… please, ma’am.”

 

The new voice came like a familiar whisper. X didn’t need to look to know who it was: that calm tone, that perfect cadence. Lin Ling, the newly appointed hero of the Federation. The “good-hearted boy,” as they called him.

 

Even with a cap pulled low and his head bowed, there were things that couldn’t be hidden: the straight posture, firm shoulders, that disciplined military air. People had already learned to tell the difference between the perfection of the former Nice and Lin Ling, who never went unnoticed.

 

The vendor blinked, surprised. For a moment, her hands paused in the air, but professionalism triumphed over astonishment.

 

“Of course, young man,” she said, beginning to mold another fàntuán with fingers that barely trembled.

 

But the damage was done.

 

A murmur ran through the street. Heads turned. Footsteps approached. In seconds, they were surrounded: fans, onlookers, people holding up phones like offerings.

 

The girl shrank. Her hands, marked by those dark stains, rose instinctively. Her palms glowed with a faint crimson light—subtle but dangerous.

 

X reacted fast.

 

His hand covered hers, snuffing out the light before it fully emerged.

 

“We don’t do that in public,” he whispered, so softly only she could hear.

 

To his surprise, the girl nodded. No tantrum, no confusion. She simply understood—shockingly fast, as if she’d always known those unspoken rules.

 

“I-I’m sorry… I…” Lin Ling stammered, uncomfortable with the growing circle of people crowding out others just trying to get food.

 

His eyes, full of regret, sought out the man and the girl who still held her fàntuán like a treasure. With his usual warm smile, he crouched down to her level, trying to connect like he often did with children. The crowd parted for him, but before he could speak, the little one hid behind the man’s legs, clutching his pants tightly.

 

Lin Ling couldn’t help but laugh, the sound light and sincere.

 

“Forgive me, miss,” he said, kneeling to meet her gaze. His voice was gentle, like wind rustling leaves. The girl peeked out, curious but not entirely trusting.

 

Her brown eyes, now full of life, turned to the man for confirmation.

 

“She’s just my little sister,” the man replied casually, adjusting his glasses with one finger while the other rested protectively on the girl’s head. His tone was light, almost playful, but there was something in his posture—something firm—that made it clear he wouldn’t allow further intrusion.

 

Lin Ling nodded, understanding. He stood gracefully, brushing invisible dust from his knee.

 

“I get it,” he said, though his gaze lingered on the pair with unhidden curiosity. “It’s a blessing to have siblings.”

 

The girl, now a little braver, nibbled on her fàntuán while eyeing the hero with a squint, as if trying to figure him out.

 

X smiled, but this time, words weren’t needed.

 

“Thank you. It’s an honor to meet a hero in person,” he said with a polite bow, his voice tinged with the kind of professional courtesy he used at the office. Too polished to be fully genuine, but respectful enough to pass.

 

Lin Ling stayed a moment longer than necessary, his eyes scanning X’s flawless demeanor. Something about that smile felt… familiar. As if behind those glasses and that perfect posture, something unnamed was hiding.

 

But the crowd kept pressing, phones kept recording, and duty called.

 

“The honor is mine,” he finally said, with a smile that couldn’t quite hide his curiosity.

 

As he walked away, X felt the girl squeeze his hand tighter.

 

“You don’t like him?” she whispered, with that childlike perceptiveness that could be unsettling.

 

X bent down to tuck a loose strand behind her ear.

 

“What heroes have to endure is complicated, little one. But don’t worry about that now.”

 

He held her fàntuán as she took another bite, already distracted by the sweet taste of rice.

 

The sun began to set, painting the streets in golden hues. X checked his watch.

 

“How about we take a few more for dinner?”

 

The girl nodded enthusiastically, worries forgotten for now.

 

And so, amid the murmur of the street and the aroma of food, they kept walking.

 

Two figures against the sunset.

 

One hiding secrets.

 

The other, a future yet to be written.

Chapter 2: Going Under

Notes:

This fanfic was born from a crazy idea someone told me while watching To Be Hero X. So enjoy! By the way, I'm not a native English speaker, so if there are any mistakes, please let me know. And the tags will be updated as we go. Without further ado, happy reading!

 

 

To truly grasp the extent of someone as powerful as her, X watched in silence, savoring every move the little girl made: those delicate fingers, splayed as if sketching dreams in the air.

 

He had to admit—it was mesmerizing to see the red sparks she conjured swirl like trails of fleeting constellations. Objects floated, weightless, defying gravity with an otherworldly elegance.

 

Thankfully, it was Saturday. No work called him, no pressing responsibilities demanded attention. A day like this—unburdened by obligations, something he rarely allowed himself—he would have spent alone, perhaps at a spa tucked in soothing waters, or wandering aimlessly through unfamiliar streets.

 

But today, that wasn’t necessary. His new responsibility—the girl he’d found over fifteen hours earlier—played absorbed with objects she summoned effortlessly. Who would’ve believed it? Watching her wield such power naturally was like witnessing a magician whose tricks weren’t illusions but pure wonder.

 

“Do you like it?” the little girl asked, as the red energy flowing from her hands cloaked the crystal sphere, making it glow like a living planet suspended in mid‑air.

 

Ah… How beautiful.

 

But something still unsettled him. Was it necessary? Children imitate their caretakers—gestures, words, even flaws—but this felt excessive.

 

“Tell me, was it necessary?” he asked, genuinely curious. Seated in the quiet of his apartment living room, silence stretched between them, dense and expectant.

 

The girl giggled—but not mockingly. Nothing about her suggested malice, not even that bright laugh spilling from her lips. X didn’t bristle or misinterpret—he simply waited, patiently, for an answer.

 

The girl scrunched her nose in a comical gesture, peered at him through lenses identical to his own.

 

“Why?” she inquired, tilting her head.

 

X tapped his own glasses, unhesitant.

 

“I’m nearsighted. But you’re not…”

 

“Are you blind?” she asked softly, as if she’d uncovered something important.

 

He shrugged—neither denying nor affirming.

 

“Who knows.”

 

Then, almost without thinking, he touched the bridge of his nose playfully, as if she were an irresistible kitten.

 

“Why they can’t see what I’m doing?” the girl asked, her humility contrasting with the spark of inquiry in her eyes.

 

X stayed still, fingers resting on his chin in a thoughtful pose. A silent “uh-huh” escaped his lips.

 

She was quick—he knew it because she acted without guile, no shrouded secrets. But even a genius—capable of teaching herself languages, deciphering worlds—could be naïve in the face of true power.

 

One dark dream of hers, and reality’s tapestry would unravel. The impossible would become real: from princess to dictator, the world bending to her whims.

 

So yes. Partly because she didn’t yet know how to channel her power without ripping the fabric of reality, and partly to keep others from discovering what she could do. Humans—they cling to the strong, betray them, use them.

 

And this girl had been used before. They gave her safety, yes, but it was a gilded cage. They feared who she was… and, above all, what she might become.

 

Yes, X thought, watching her unconsciously adjust her glasses.

 

“You don’t yet realize that the world fears saviors more than monsters,” he replied. A snap of his fingers, and space folded—they slid down a path he knew better than anyone.

 

It took only seconds, but when reality re‑stitched itself, they were there: a serene lake, intimate and unmistakable. Families camping beneath the sun, children laughing as they darted through tree shadows, everything bathed in perfect calm. Nothing seemed out of place.

 

The girl blinked, momentarily disoriented by the shift, until she looked at herself—and saw she now wore a white, floral‑patterned dress, a playful straw hat, her black hair in twin braids brushing her shoulders, woven with light brown strands shimmering in the sunlight. Her tiny brown sandals sank gently into the sand as she hopped with delight.

 

“How pretty!” she exclaimed, twirling as the wind toyed with her skirt. Her laughter blended with the lake’s soft whisper, as light as a butterfly’s wings.

 

X nodded, inwardly recognizing that his words had taken root, carried by the wind to her spirit. She, oblivious to the shadow in his thoughts, continued spinning beneath the sun like a sunflower drunk on light. And that was fine—young hearts must be light before they learn how to measure the world.

 

’I’ll have to teach you to walk on your own,’ he thought to himself, observing how her fingers intertwined with sunbeams. The irony wasn’t lost on him: he, who’d chosen isolation as armor, would now guide this being toward independence. How hard it would be for a soul yearning to belong like sap longing for roots.

 

He never intervened. Not for lack of power—his ability could quell any conflict with a snap. But every action takes sides, and X had vowed to align with neither. His path was distance, though sometimes temptation whispered: ‘One thought, and the pain vanishes. One gesture, and happiness becomes mandatory.’ But isn’t imposed peace just another prison?

 

Humans were contradictions incarnate: they loved with the same hands they struck, sought vengeance with the mouths that had known kisses. What would he gain by intervening? Applause? Dependence? Trust was a fragile bridge spanning vast expectations.

 

“So that’s why field trips are important!” he declared suddenly, hefting their gear with enthusiasm that sounded like a slightly off-key song. His attire—worn linen pants, a shirt printed with withered leaves—stood out by design. Even his fogged glasses were part of the disguise, as if he only wanted the world to see what he allowed.

 

The girl ran forward, leaving ephemeral footprints in the sand. “Are we going exploring?” she asked, her eyes burning with that special fire only children hold before life teaches them restraint.

 

X flopped onto the grass, dumping the bags heedlessly, using his arms as a pillow beneath his neck. The edges of her straw hat curled whimsically around her face, casting dancing shadows when the breeze stirred them.

 

“Exactly,” he murmured as a dandelion seed slipped between his lips. “Adults chase time like it’s a runaway train. But you…” He shot her a conspiratorial look. “You can lie here, watching clouds turn into dragons and whales, and nobody can say you’re ‘wasting the day.’”

 

The girl collapsed beside him, and a swirl of golden motes danced around them. Her braids mingled with wild daisies as she mimicked his posture, her knees streaked with dirt and joy.

 

“What if someone asks what we’re doing?” she whispered, as if guarding a secret.

 

X reached out to catch a mosquito drifting nearby. “We’ll tell them… we’re hard at work mastering the supreme art of being useless. The hardest work of all.”

 

X had always believed that a simple life is the hardest to attain. People work tirelessly to achieve it, but often die before they ever get there… And yet, the everyday lifestyle isn’t like that—not for him.

He would have to teach the little one that, even though she could hold the world in her hands, she couldn’t simply give it away to people. Not because no one deserved her help, but because the world…

 

“Names are curious things,” he murmured, plucking a grass blade gently as his thoughts drifted. “They can be cages or wings—depending on who speaks them.” The blade quivered between his fingers before the wind carried it off.

 

The girl furrowed her brow in childlike puzzlement, every part of her face joining in: brows coming together, nose crinkling, lips pressing like they tasted something sour.

 

“You don’t have a name?” she asked, voice suffused with the wonder and disbelief only children freely express.

 

X smiled—not the wide grin of grown-ups, but a half‑smile that held secrets. “I have many. Too many, perhaps. Like a puzzle.” He paused, watching a butterfly settle on her straw hat. “But for you… call me Xiao.”

 

The butterfly fluttered its wings gently, as if marking time between two heartbeats. The little girl extended a careful finger—but before she could touch it, the insect flew off, leaving only the echo of its ephemeral beauty.

 

“I want a name too…” she said suddenly.

 

Her arm remained suspended in air as the atmosphere around arrested its motion. Laughter froze, emotions stilled, people halfway through steps turned to impromptu statues.

 

“I mean a new name…” This time, the adorable child had vanished. In her place stood a woman of comparable age, clad in worn blue jeans and a long‑sleeve beige blouse—stained with black blotches like crossed‑out words—standing against the sudden stillness.

 

Wanda stared at the sky.

 

She knew she shouldn’t be here. She thought she should be dead. That was what she’d wished for since realizing she had nothing left to fight for, nothing to drag herself through another day.

 

She glanced at her hands. As she feared, the splotches on her fingertips—exposed like a sin—were visible to all. Everyone would know, she realized. They would know what she’d done, what she’d thought, what she had forced others to do just to scrape a piece of that sky that now watched her in silence.

 

The wind brushed the stains as if trying to wash them. But some marks, Wanda knew, weren’t ink. They were memory. And memory, like names, never fully erases.

 

It unsettled her.

 

Pain drives people,

and sometimes beasts like her.

That feeling weaves into the veins,

becomes a drug,

turns into need.

 

She didn’t want to think.

She must not crave what she craved. But then… What remained to do? And what, finally, should she leave behind?

 

No answers came.

Only the echo of her own breath,

rough and laden with guilt,

like an animal cornered

that no longer even tries to run.

 

Because sometimes the worst punishment isn’t the cage, but the memory that you once possessed the key. Freedom…

 

A scarlet light burst from her chest, crimson energy materializing around her like a nightmarish cloak. Magic detached from her skin, torn from the depths of her being, while bright trails danced from her fingers, tearing through the air, leaving behind fleeting spark tears that evaporated before touching the ground.

 

The sky—once spectacularly blue beyond pristine clouds—died in an instant, as though someone had ripped its soul away. The sun dimmed without warning, without reason, and the people around her disintegrated, only to re‑emerge distorted, their forms twisting within reality’s fabric like shadows cast by a flawed light.

 

Still kneeling, Wanda stared at an unseen horizon beyond the window, as though what happened around her—the world collapsing—was nothing more than an echo of something far worse burning within her. The sky turned blood‑red, clouds frayed into bloody shreds, and then a burst of crimson light erupted from her chest. In seconds, a wave of corrupt magic spread, devouring everything in its path. Trees, once proud and upright, withered instantly, their branches contorting in agony before drying to dust. Crystal lakes evaporated without trace, as if life itself had been erased. Only the wind remained, roaring violently through the skeletons of what had been a vibrant landscape.

 

“No one asked me what I wanted…,” Wanda whispered, though no one was there to answer. Or perhaps they were, but could no longer respond. They were mere shadows trapped in her nightmare.

 

The earth cracked beneath her feet, and for a moment, even the wind paused, as if the world held its breath before what she—only she—had unleashed.

 

“What if you called yourself Xinyi? It’s lovely… it literally means ‘Inner Peace.’” The male voice cut through the silence like a knife slicing canvas. “You asked for a name, and now I gave you one. Xiǎo mèi.”

 

What…?

 

The woman whipped her head toward the only voice that hadn’t faded in the chaos. Her eyelids tightened, but she kept her guard up. Who the hell was this man? And why was he still here, untouched, when everything else was falling apart?

 

Before her stood a man in a suit: crisp white pants and vest, a black shirt that absorbed light like a void, and a red tie that shone with artificial intensity—like fresh blood under the distorted sun. Yellow-tinted sunglasses hid his eyes, reflecting the scarlet sky rather than revealing emotion. White hair combed back with flawless precision, and that smile… a smug smile that didn’t just mock her, but seemed to know her, as if he’d witnessed this moment over and over.

 

The wind howled between them, stirring dust from dying earth. But he didn’t even blink.

 

Inner Peace? The irony struck her like fire. In the midst of all this?

 

The man shrugged theatrically, every movement choreographed to irk her more. “Names are promises. Or curses. Depends on how you use them. That’s human nature: to believe something—or someone—is special simply because you have faith.”

 

His words might have comforted in another context, but now they shocked her. No one—no one—had accessed her mind and read her thoughts with such ease. Wanda ground her teeth as crimson energy flared from her trembling hands. Every muscle burned—not just from the physical strain, but from memories and wounds that never healed. Still, she forced herself into a battle stance, palms glowing with pure chaos, ready to defend herself—or strike.

 

“Who are you?” she demanded, voice ragged, pupils igniting in furious red.

 

She expected him to retreat, to stop treating her like a toy. But to her utter confusion, the man simply shoved his hands into his pockets, nonchalantly, like chatting at a café rather than confronting a reality‑shattering sorceress. He even raised an eyebrow, amused.

 

“You want to fight?” he asked,playing with words. “We can play. Though I warn you, control is most effective when it isn’t filtered through your feelings, Xiǎo mèi.”

 

“Answer me…” Wanda pressed again, but her voice had lost strength. There was something about that calm, relentless cool that seeped beneath her guard like a slow poison.

 

The man sighed, as though explaining the rules of the universe to a stubborn child was a trivial annoyance. “Anger, fear, sadness… they distort your reality, whether you know it or not. Just like right now. There’s no universal logic that applies only to you. Pain isn’t something you can rip out of people… that’s why stopping you is pointless.”

 

Wanda felt her fingers clench tighter, magic flames crackling to her turmoil. Was this another trap? Or did this man—whoever he was—truly see something she couldn’t yet grasp?

The man stepped toward her without hesitation, as if the chaos swirling around them were nothing more than a light breeze. That excessive confidence made her instinctively step back, though she hated to admit it. What kind of person walked straight into a storm like that? There were only two possibilities: either he was far more powerful than he looked, or he was a madman with a tongue too sharp for his own good.

 

And when he showed no sign of stopping, Wanda stopped thinking.

 

Scarlet energy burst from her palm in an instant—a violent spiral of power that lit the desolate landscape with a sinister glow. The blast shot toward the man in white with the force of a gunshot, the air warping in its path.

 

Behind those yellow sunglasses, X paused only for a moment—not out of fear, but with a look that was almost… fascinated. As if the destructive power she’d just hurled at him were a work of art worthy of admiration.

 

“Incredible…” he murmured, and then, with the same ease someone might swat away an annoying fly, he drew one hand from his pocket and slapped the attack aside.

 

The energy orb disintegrated on contact—no explosion, no resistance. Just a faint wisp of smoke that vanished in the air, as if it had never existed.

 

Wanda held her breath. Had he absorbed it? 

No. There’s no way he could do that…

X adjusted his glasses with a casual flick. “Not bad, little sister. But if that’s how you respond to advice, it’s no wonder they got the better of you last time.”

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3: Burn

The sky was no longer the sky.

 

It was an open wound—a ravenous red devouring the clouds like an endless fire, mercilessly stealing the last traces of color from the world. This wasn't twilight painting the horizon, but something deeper, more violent, as if the heavens had been torn apart and were bleeding without end.

 

From the ground rose a scarlet mist, thick and electric, flickering with fleeting sparks like embers trapped in a whirlwind of dried blood. It wasn’t moisture climbing upward—it was something corrupt, a crimson vapor poisoning everything in its path. Wherever it touched, grass rotted instantly, stalks twisting before collapsing into black ash. The flowers that once blanketed the family park—that corner of laughter and light—were now no more than withered petals, consumed by the same mist that had choked them in a toxic embrace.

 

Dead leaves, brittle as bone, rolled across the barren earth, pushed by a wind heavy with that sick air. The red haze moved forward—slow but relentless—like a tide that knew no bounds.

 

It was beautiful.

It was horrifying.

 

Crimson clouds slithered like starving serpents, slowly smothering the last star still shining in that scarlet hell. For a moment, its light flickered—fragile, resisting—like the final breath of hope before being devoured. Then, the darkness claimed it.

 

Dark red tendrils, thick as the veins of a dying god, coiled around that point of light. They moved like massive fingers, closing with deliberate slowness—suffocating, strangling—until no trace of it remained. Silence fell.

 

Until something rumbled.

 

From the heart of that red eclipse, a wave of energy exploded, shattering the sky like a mirror struck with a hammer. Jagged, radiant cracks spread outward, and for a moment, the heavens looked ready to break apart.

 

And then—it emerged.

 

A new sun. But not the kind the world had ever known.
It was encircled by a violet halo, a perfect ring radiating an unnatural glow. It gave no warmth. Offered no comfort.
It only illuminated—cold and distant—like the eye of a predator that had finally opened its eyelid.

 

The sun's transformation was only the beginning.

 

As if the sky had declared war on the earth, furious lightning storms crashed down in twisted columns—tornadoes of pure energy battering the ground with savage force. Across the seventy-one districts of City X, alarms blared in a chorus of panic, but their wails were mere whispers beneath the roar of chaos. In Central District 11, the crowd became a sea of bodies—shoving, screaming, stumbling—like ants fleeing a fire they didn’t understand.

 

Meanwhile, in District 1, the red mist coiled around the Heroes’ Tower with the malice of a cat toying with its prey. The heroes arrived swiftly, their gleaming suits a sharp contrast against the crimson fog, but neither their powers nor their training had prepared them for this.
The mist was no simple vapor. It was hunger.

And it devoured everything—metal, flesh, breath—leaving behind only silence and dry bones.

 

Inside the Hero Affairs Commission’s meeting room, the screens showed the collapse in real time.

 

“We need to evacuate,” one of them declared, but the words rang hollow.

The faces around the table were masks of bitterness.

Not even the brightest scientists, with their charts and theories, could form a coherent response.

 

“What is this?” a councilwoman asked, her fingers gripping the table’s edge until her knuckles turned white.

 

“What does it want?” another added, voice cracking.

 

“Who is it?”

 

All eyes turned to the expert, whose shadow trembled against the flickering screens.

 

He took a deep breath before answering.

 

“We don’t know yet… but we can investigate. However, the state of emergency is a clock we can’t outrun.”

 

A heavy silence filled the room.

 

Until someone broke it with a snarl.

 

“Are you serious?”

 

One of the HAC members slammed a fist on the table, sending a half-empty glass of water flying.

 

“No hero can stop this shit?”

 

The expert lowered his head. Even he—always composed—now showed deep under-eye shadows, as if the weight of every lost life had etched itself beneath his skin.

 

“The red mist… is immune to every registered power,” he admitted, the words dragging from his mouth.

“We’ve sent our best heroes—but only for evacuation. The orders are clear: no one, no one, goes near that fog.” He paused, swallowing hard.

 

The air smelled of cold coffee and fear.

 

“It’s not just toxic. It’s… intelligent. It deflects attacks, adapts to technology, spreads like a virus. In short—”

 

Another breath. This one heavier, steeped in something worse than defeat: resignation.

 

“Whoever’s behind this… may be able to control the Fear.”

 

The weight of that word crashed into the silence like a slab of stone.

 

Someone let out a choked gasp.

Another looked away, as if already seeing tomorrow’s headlines.

 

No one answered.

 

“Where is Hero X?”

 

The expert blinked, caught off guard by the question. His gaze drifted toward the scattered reports on the table before replying, his voice calm—but too calm.

 

“We don’t know…”

 

Until—

 

A deafening crash split the air like an axe. The entire tower shook, and for an instant, every head tilted upward, as if they could see through steel and concrete. What followed was a red lightning bolt—electric and merciless—cutting through the upper floors like a knife through paper. The last sound they heard wasn’t a scream, but the groan of metal bending-and then, the world shattered.

 

 

---

Wanda didn’t waste the opportunity.

 

While the man in white remained at a certain distance, watching with that maddening calm that made her blood boil, she moved her arms with the precision of a predator. Inside her skull, the voices kept screaming—an endless chorus of agony that echoed like war drums. The laments of plants as they withered, the broken sighs of the dying earth… but she was no longer the one meant to care about that. She was no longer meant to care about anything.

 

Silently, she opened the fists she had kept clenched until now. The release was immediate—like her very skin exhaled after holding its breath for too long. Magic pulsed through her veins, an ancestral beat that connected every particle of power to her senses, to the pain, to the rage.

 

Beneath the skin of her palms, scarlet light began to glow—first like embers, then like flames—until two projectiles of pure energy took form. The wind whipped into violent gusts, obedient to her will, carrying with it the dust of a world no longer worthy of existence.

 

This attack wouldn’t hurt her. But humans… them…

 

The distance between them wasn’t far—but not close enough to miss. Wanda raised her arms in front of her and unleashed the two scarlet orbs, which tore through the air at a lethal speed. Behind them, bright trails distorted reality itself, as if space were being ripped apart in their wake. The magic danced with ferocity, hungry for destruction.

 

But then, the unthinkable happened.

 

The man in white, who until now had kept his hands buried casually in his pockets, lifted one palm with lazy ease, as if swatting away an annoying fly. A moment later, the back of his hand sliced through the air with a sharp flick— snap! —and the orbs simply vanished, dissolved into nothing like tears under the sun.

 

Wanda barely had time to frown when the man snapped his fingers.

 

Above the man’s head, space twisted into violent vortices, and from them burst—like bullets fired from another dimension—her own orbs of energy, now turned into projectiles against her.

 

Damn it! she growled, but years of battle had carved steel reflexes into her bones. She dropped into a defensive stance, raising her right arm to shield her face while the left summoned a crimson energy shield. The impact was brutal, rattling her down to the marrow, but the shield didn’t just hold—it absorbed the attack, drinking in the magic like a sponge soaking up poison.

 

The air reeked of ozone and fury.

 

“So you fight dirty, huh?” she spat for the first time, feeling the burn of her own energy recycling through her veins.

 

The man merely adjusted his glasses with a single finger, that insufferable smile never leaving his lips.

“Not bad, little sister. But if this is how you react to advice, I’m not surprised you lost last time.”

 

That line was the spark that set fire to the powder keg of her rage.

 

Was it her fault?

What the hell had she done, exactly, to deserve being abandoned by everyone? She had fought for justice. She had poured every drop of her power into protecting those who couldn’t defend themselves.
And what had she received in return?

 

Ah, yes.

 

They had labeled her a monster.

 

Dangerous. Unstable.

 

A cosmic mistake that didn’t deserve a single corner of happiness in the entire multiverse.

 

Too many sins. Too much blood.

 

As if every act of love she had ever attempted was nothing more than another step toward damnation.

 

Her reflexes reacted before her mind could catch up. While dark thoughts clouded her vision, another energy shield burst forth—like a wall between her and the second strike. Her own power, once again, cruelly hurled back at her by the man now watching with his head slightly tilted.

 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, raising a finger to point at her, as if he already knew every shadow living inside her skull.

 

Wanda blinked, and for a second, the world snapped back into focus.

 

In one fluid motion, magic poured from her palm and sank into the barren earth like a poisonous river seeking its path. The ground trembled, then twisted, cracking with a mournful groan before erupting upward in three columns of stone and dust.

 

From the craters rose the golems, their bodies shaped by Wanda’s distorted memory of the sacred mountain’s stone guardians.

 

They weren’t perfect replicas—they were rougher, pure rage given form—with fractures between their stone plates glowing with the same scarlet light that burned in their creator’s eyes.

 

The rules were simple:

 

This man was strong.

 

Too strong.

 

If he could manipulate her powers, then he wasn’t just a fighter—

 

He was a sorcerer.

 

A parasite of reality itself.

 

And against that, she had experience.

 

The golems charged with a roar that made the air vibrate, their fists—each the size of boulders—rising to crush, to destroy. Wanda didn’t move.She watched, muscles coiled like springs, waiting for that instant—  The moment he’d be forced to reveal his hand.

 

The stone creatures obeyed her unspoken command in utter silence. Without hesitation, they raised their colossal arms toward the man in white, whose feet remained firmly planted. No defensive stance. Not even a flicker of concern.

 

And that was exactly what Wanda was waiting for. She shifted her stance, muscles pulled taut like bowstrings, as the golems’ shadows closed in around their target.

 

Then came the snap—

Like a whip cracking through the air.

 

The sound echoed in her skull, hypnotic, warping time until it no longer made sense. Above, the sky shattered into jagged fragments, like glass beneath a hammer. For a moment, all was silence and stillness— Until her instincts screamed.

 

Wanda dropped her gaze—just in time.

 

A scarlet shield flared to her right in a burst of sparks, intercepting a long, razor-sharp sword that would’ve split her skull in two. The impact hurled her back several meters, her shoes carving trenches in the parched earth as the friction scorched the soles.

Pain bit into her arms—

But she didn’t falter.

 

“You bastard—!”

 

With a thought, she vanished— Reappearing five meters back. The air scorched her lungs as she rematerialized; the force behind that last strike wasn’t human—

Not even metahuman.

She gasped, channeling her magic to seal the fractures in her bones, to douse the inner fire threatening to consume her.

 

But there was no respite.

 

A cold presence formed behind her—silent as death. Before she could react, a hand rested on her shoulder—almost gentle— And then, her right arm turned to lead.

Useless.

Numb.

 

“How about we talk now that you're a bit calmer?”

 

The man's voice dripped with calculated patience, that condescending tone far too familiar— It brought back the echo of her former mentors—those self-righteous saviors with easy smiles and promises more fragile than ice in summer. They had shaped her, used her, and spat her out the moment she no longer fit their world of perfect heroes.

 

Wanda’s irises flared with a crimson spark, and before she could stop it, The memory of that betrayal—so old, and still so fresh—boiled through her veins. Her good hand rose like an executioner lifting their axe, and the red energy answered in a furious whirlwind.

 

Stones, debris, the remains of a world that no longer mattered— All rose in silent obedience, aiming at the man like an army of projectiles ready to tear him apart.

 

He only sighed.

 

“All right.”

 

He rubbed his forehead with a tired gesture, like a teacher dealing with an especially difficult student. The watch on his wrist let out a sharp, almost mocking beep.

 

Wanda wasn’t okay.

 

She knew it.

 

She hated it.

 

Every word that man spoke was a knife twisting in old wounds, dragging up things she had sworn to bury.

 

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”

 

The scream came with a psychic lash—

 

A desperate attempt to break into his mind, to control him, to silence that endless stream of poison eating her from the inside out.

 

But it was like trying to hold back the sea with bare hands— There were too many to guard, too many fronts unraveling at once.

 

So, she made a choice.

 

With a strangled grunt, she twisted her paralyzed arm until the bone gave with a dull snap.

The pain was a white-hot flash, But she ignored it, rebuilding flesh instantly with threads of scarlet magic.

 

Her fingers—once clean—began to blacken, like ink bleeding beneath her skin. Her features sharpened, her posture stretched, and upon her brow, the red crown materialized—hungry.

 

Power wrapped around her like a long-lost embrace, lifting her body into the wounded sky, where the bleeding sun painted the dying atmosphere in crimson.

 

There, suspended among the shreds of a broken world, Wanda finally felt that terrible calm that only comes once the last line has been crossed.

 

And now, with cruel clarity, she saw it— the threads of the world unraveling before her like an infinite, sickened web. Every human life shone in her mind—fragile, trembling— Drowning in a sea of fear and sorrow.

 

The hypocritical faith of people in this universe was no different from that of her own world—
Which somehow made it worse. How many of these so-called heroes had been hurt by ordinary people?

 

The major corporations used heroes as glittering puppets, and the heroes, in turn, used smiles and empty promises to manipulate the masses.

 

Everyone cried out for hope—

 

Yes,but it was a packaged hope, fake as fool’s gold. They knew they were being lied to. And yet they chose to believe.

 

It was a grotesque cycle. A hall of mirrors where no one was innocent, but everyone pretended to be blind. Wanda closed her eyes, letting bitterness mix with her power. Maybe that’s why no one had ever truly understood her.

 

Because she, at least, had never pretended to be anything other than what she was.

 

“That’s the cruel reality.”

 

The man in white looked up at her from the fractured ground— No weapons. No heroic gestures. Just those words that hammered into Wanda’s skull like blows from a forge.

 

“You could describe every second of your pain in vivid detail, and still, no one would understand the storm you had to survive. No one was there. No one saw how you had to rebuild yourself with bleeding hands— Over and over again.”

 

Wanda felt a shiver. That man’s a hero. He’s just another liar.

 

“You’re waiting to feel ready,” he continued, his voice deliberately slow, “But the truth is… you never will be. Strength doesn’t embrace you before the leap— It’s born in the middle of the fall. You’ve spent years frozen, waiting for the stars to align, waiting to suddenly feel safe, invincible, whole. But what you need isn’t motivation.”

 

He paused, letting the wind carry his final words like a challenge:

 

“It’s courage.”

 

“…What?” Wanda asked.

 

“You shouldn’t let what others think of your past affect you. No one—ever—will truly understand what it meant to you... But still, not everyone is a bad person.”

 

Hero X—the TOP 1—let his mask of nonchalance drop, as if pretending wasn’t worth it anymore.

 

“Besides, they need me at work tomorrow. This is over.”  He adjusted his shirt cuff with an irritated flick, as if arguing with her was just another boring meeting. “Oh, and by now, you should already know who I am.”

 

Something in that sentence tugged at a thread deep in Wanda’s chest. There was something she was missing—something important— but the man was already turning away, walking off as if she wasn’t worth another second of his time. 

 

Rage exploded before thought could catch up.

 

Wanda shot toward him like a scarlet missile, her fist outstretched, aimed for his jaw. Wanda let the rocks she had levitated with her magic drop at the same time she moved forward— but she wasn’t surprised when they vanished into nothing mid-air, before reaching the man. Doesn’t matter, she thought. Soon, she would show him he couldn’t toy with her.

 

But the man dodged without even glancing, with the ease of someone swatting away a fly. His movements were too clean, too precise. Her momentum carried her past him, forcing her to spin mid-air and land in a battle stance, her feet skimming the fractured sky.

 

She didn’t wait. A second jab. Then a third.

 

Each strike faster, more brutal— but her fists met only empty space, or the perfect deflection of his open palms. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

 

“Don’t fall asleep on me,” he warned, almost affectionately, before throwing a hook she narrowly dodged by a hair’s breadth.

 

“You’re underestimating me!” Wanda roared, but the hero only shrugged.

 

“Are you sure about that?”

 

Then— He moved.

 

It was like fighting the wind. Every punch, every teleport, every deadly elbow— Clashed against a presence that was no longer there. Until, with a roar, her fist lit up crimson— And connected. The impact cracked like thunder, a shockwave of wind scattering the scarlet mist. For a moment, Wanda thought she’d won.

 

Until the rising kick struck her chin.

 

A pair of immaculate Oxford shoes appeared in her peripheral vision. Her ears rang, drowning out any words. Still, her lips moved, forming the question she already knew the answer to:

 

“Are you… going to kill me?”

 

The man in the impeccable suit adjusted his orange-tinted glasses with a gesture that reminded her too much of him.

 

Of Pietro.

 

Of that brother lost in the folds of time. For an instant, her heart skipped a beat.

 

Could it be?

 

But before she could voice the question, he gently shook his head and crouched down to her level. His bare hands touched the dead earth— And then, the impossible happened.

 

A single snap of his fingers, and the world unraveled like sand slipping through open hands. The chaos, the deaths, her magic, even the sharp pain in her ribs— All vanished, swept away by an invisible current. Wanda blinked, and suddenly she was kneeling on the grass of a sunlit park, where children laughed and pigeons pecked at scattered crumbs. No one looked at her in horror. No one seemed to remember.

 

What the hell had just happened?

 

"Xiǎo mèi."

 

The voice made her turn. A man with a bowl cut and square glasses stared at her with impatience, sweat beading on his forehead. Before she could protest—“I’m not who you think I am,” “I don’t know you”— A large hand grabbed her wrist.

 

And then—

 

She knew.

 

Memories that weren’t hers flooded her mind: A childhood in a leaky apartment, an older brother who worked late into the night, sleepless evenings waiting by the window, face pressed to the glass. Pain— but a different kind. More mundane. More human.

 

"I don’t wanna go!" she cried, and the voice that came out of her throat was high-pitched, childlike.

Her— brother ?—crouched down, guilt and exhaustion carved into the dark circles beneath his eyes. "This is the last time. I swear it won’t happen again. I… I definitely won’t leave you again!"

He was lying. She knew it. Xinyi knew it.

Still, she threw a tantrum, kicking and flailing until he, desperate, gave in:

"Fine! I’ll punch my boss! But just a little."

"And the coworkers who make you stay late?"

"Xinyi—"

"And the food truck guy who always gives you cold rice?"

The argument lasted exactly two and a half minutes— Just long enough for the bus to pass them by.

The man paled as he looked at his watch.

“The bus is gone…” he muttered, holding back a laugh.

He jumped to his feet, nervously smoothing back his hair. Without thinking, he bolted after the bus like a starving dog.

Xinyi sighed.

Almost on instinct, she raised a hand toward a parked taxi. The sign read "On Break," but she didn’t care. Tendrils of red energy—her favorite color—spilled from her fingers, wrapping around the car doors.

The driver, a man with calloused hands, already had his on the wheel when she slid into the back seat.

“Follow the guy with the glasses. The one chasing the bus,” she ordered, like she’d been doing this her whole life. “And stop when I say.”

The man nodded silently.

The engine roared to life, and for the first time in years, She felt like the world could be simple.

Chapter 4: Paint It, Black

 

 

---

Xinyi studied the others in silence, her chin resting on the palm of her hand. A grim, sharp grimace of boredom took over her face as she watched the other children her age laughing and shoving each other in the schoolyard. Their games seemed written in a language she couldn’t decipher: gravity-defying jumps, aimless races, words that fell to the ground before reaching her ears.

 

No matter how hard she tried, mentally she couldn’t tune in with them. It wasn’t a matter of distance, but of substance. As if someone had poured lead into her blood while the others were filled with light.

 

“Aren’t you going to play?” a teacher once asked, her smile made of chalk and good intentions.

“I am playing,” Xinyi lied, tracing circles on the ground with the tip of her shoe. “Let’s see who can go the longest without speaking.”

 

Even when she forced her voice to mimic friendly tones, rejection and discomfort always surfaced.

Though she sensed her brother had altered something in her mind—rearranged the furniture of her memory, erased footprints—she asked no questions. She didn’t seek answers. She allowed the wall between her past and present to grow, brick by brick, until what remained on the other side was only a rumor, a whisper of waves in the night.

Wanda, from some corner of her consciousness, watched impassively. Like someone watching a stranger build a wall with the stones of their own memories, making no effort to tear it down. What for? her silence seemed to say. In the end, they’re just rubble.

“I’ve never set foot in a school.”

The certainty burned her tongue like sour candy. She knew it in her bones, in the way the letters on street signs felt foreign, in how the numbers on clocks seemed to spin backward in her eyes.

The teacher approached with the professional hesitation of someone trying to salvage the unsalvageable. “Sweetheart, why don’t you play?” Her fingers drummed against her skirt, following a rhythm of nerves.

The girl offered a smile that froze her own lips. “How kind, but I don’t need it, ma’am.” Her bow was so exaggerated it bordered on sarcasm, her fingers sketching an ironic arc in the air before she spun on her heels.

When she heard the woman’s hurried steps approaching, Wanda stopped. She didn’t turn around. She simply let out a sigh that smelled of sea salt and ancient warnings. The sound of shoes on linoleum suddenly ceased.

In the hallway mirror, Wanda saw the reflection: the teacher frozen, her pupils dilating until they turned a deep red, like wine spilled on blotting paper. Without a word, the woman turned and walked away, her steps now measured and hollow, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“How long will this go on?”

Wanda looked at her open palms, the lines of her skin drawing maps of battles never fought. Her brother’s words echoed in her ears: “Sheesh, look at you. It’s like you were born with a face that defeats villains without throwing a punch!” But now, in the distorted reflection of the window, she saw only a girl so… ordinary.

This time, she could swear it hadn’t been intentional. Her abilities—that rebellious magic in her blood—seemed to have a will of their own. Like sleeping snakes that hissed at any threat, releasing venom before she could choose not to bite.

 

The Municipal Primary School of City X No.12 had a huge window that kissed the street. Wanda climbed up with the ease of someone who had practiced too many times, settling into that narrow cement limbo between the bars and the glass. From there, the world seemed arranged in perfect grids.

“A world without fear is pleasant,” she murmured, watching the passersby. People who walked without calculating escape routes, who slept without fearing their home would turn to dust by dawn. No child should learn to count bombs before counting jokes.

The other girls crouched in the shadows of the playground, just like her, but with different intentions. While Wanda sought refuge, they hunted—recess predators—measuring their next victims with sharp smiles. Their wrists gleamed with digital bracelets displaying high numbers: social trust scores that rose with every act of fake kindness or cruelty, recorded by the rest of the school. They didn’t even look at Wanda. Sometimes, it felt like her existence faded into the gaps of their attention, like a ghost among the living.

Wanda learned quickly. She studied their tactics: how they shook hands with calculated force, how they laughed too loudly when teachers walked by. “In this society, trust is everything,” read the posters in the hallways. Professional heroes smiled from the walls, their wrists glowing with perfect scores. “Be like them! Make them believe in you!”

But Wanda frowned, her fingers brushing the sleeve of her school uniform. She remembered—or imagined—another system. One where books weighed more than forced smiles, where universities were sanctuaries of knowledge, not factories of popularity. “Study, graduate, submit your résumé,” someone had told her in a dream (or another life). Status was measured in degrees, not likes disguised as interpersonal trust.

A shrill laugh pulled her from her thoughts. The girls in the yard were celebrating another point gained on their bracelets after humiliating a shy boy.

Wanda lifted the sleeve of her school sweater, revealing the pale skin of her wrist. Nothing. Not even the faintest glow of a screen. Just her skin, marked by the shadows of the bars filtering the light from the yard. “There’s not a drop of trust here,” she thought, though the idea didn’t hurt as much as it should have.

 

Her brother, on the other hand, never took off that thick-strapped digital watch. Wanda had never asked if it displayed a trust index—he was an adult, of course he’d have one—but now she wondered if his numbers were just as empty as hers. Or was he one of those whose scores gleamed with perfection, carved through calculated smiles?

A slow blink. Fatigue weighed heavy on her eyelids, but she couldn’t leave. Not yet. Just as she surrendered her body to the chill of the concrete, a sound shattered the silence of her corner: crying. Sharp, muffled, like the whimper of a wounded animal.

Wanda turned her head. There, huddled between the trash bins, a boy her age—one of those the recess predators usually hunted—curled into himself, his shoulders shaking with each sob. The solitude of her hiding place was no longer hers alone. It was now tinged with this unexpected intruder, this echo of fragility.

Children were cruel. The certainty struck her as she stared at the trembling boy. There he was, soaked and hurt, his knees scraped and his uniform stained with mud. Wanda knew that unwritten law of the world all too well: the strong thrive, the weak cry in forgotten corners. She could look away. She should look away.

Because she wasn’t a hero.

Something deep inside whispered that she had once tried—that she had believed in that path of smiles printed on school backpacks and collectible figurines. But the memory came with a sharp pain, as if her mind rejected it. The migraine pulsed behind her eyes, forcing them shut for a moment. A warning buzz.

‘Though… he wouldn’t like this,’ she thought. Her brother was one of those absurd types who gave coins to beggars and bought food for stray cats. A sentimental fool.

Wanda raised her hand with a sigh. The reddish power responded instantly—a familiar tug in her veins, as if someone had hooked a thread to her sternum. It was hard to explain: a tingling born beneath skin and bone, a magnetic connection to the fragile seams of reality itself. “If I lower my hand,” she thought, “the world will tilt with it.”

And then—oh, then—the energy burst from her palm.

Her face lit up with a crimson glow, casting dancing shadows on the walls. The energy now flowed freely, snaking through the air like a suspended river—alive and ravenous. Wanda held her breath. It was magnificent. Terrifying. Hers.

The floating red power reflected glimmers in her pupils as her fingers slowly curled, ready to twist the fate of the crying boy.

The boy’s sobs stopped abruptly when the impossible lights—those crimson spirals that twisted the air—illuminated his tear-streaked face. His eyes, swollen and red, widened in awe at the supernatural spectacle. Will I die here? he thought, as a warm wetness soaked his pants. But fear had already burned away all shame.

He curled into himself, arms shielding his head, bracing for pain. Expecting that nightmare magic to scorch his skin like acid, to leave him marked forever. But instead of the fire promised by stories of heroes and villains...

...came the sun.

A gentle warmth wrapped around his shoulders like his father’s arms after a day at the park. That scent of freshly cut grass and oven-baked cookies that always lingered at home on Sundays. The magic caressed his cheeks, wiping away the tears without a trace, and for one absurd moment, the boy forgot where he was.

He took a deep breath, swallowing the tears still burning in his throat. Suddenly, the warmth vanished—that embrace of light that for a moment had made him feel important, loved—leaving him hollow, like a sock turned inside out. He opened his eyes, bewildered.

 

The alley was once again what it had always been: dark, damp, reeking of garbage fermenting under the sun. The cold concrete reminded him of his place in the world—just another insignificant boy beneath the shadow of the strong. And the warm puddle between his legs confirmed that not even his shame was special. At least I’m alone, he thought, biting his lip until it bled. No one will see this. No one w—

“You’re pathetic.”

 

The voice cut through him like a knife.

 

“Ahhh!” he screamed, falling backward onto the pavement. His hands trembled as he made out the silhouette of a girl in the shadows—how long had she been there?—perched on the edge of the window like a crow on its roost.

Wanda swung her legs with indifference, but her eyes gleamed with something dangerous. The crimson glow from before was now just a flicker in her pupils, like embers about to die out.

The boy wanted to run. Wanted to apologize. But all he could do was gasp, feeling his heart slam against his ribs as if it were trying to escape without him.

“I-I…! What are y-you doing here?!” His voice came out cracked, but louder than expected, as his hands clutched the wet fabric of his pants, trying to erase the evidence through sheer force. Oh no. Of all people… a girl. Not a teacher, not a school bully, but a girl his own age—barely twelve—watching his misery with eyes that seemed to spark in the gloom.

 

“Why are you covering yourself like that?” The question dropped like a pebble into a still pond. The girl—Wanda, though he didn’t know her name yet—leapt from the windowsill with the agility of a stray cat, landing in a crouch right in front of him.

Though she wore the same school uniform as everyone else, something about her screamed danger: the rebellious fold of her shirt collar, her scraped knees like she fought the world daily, that glint in her eyes that made you think of knives tucked beneath sleeves. The boy held his breath. Was she another one come to kick him?

 

He was an easy target, after all. A zero on the margins, whose trust score didn’t even light up the screen on his bracelet. Even the teachers rolled their eyes when he raised his hand, as if his questions were nothing more than pesky mosquitoes.

Wanda tilted her head like a bird studying a half-crushed worm. “Did that happen because you were scared?” The question sounded almost scientific, as if she were observing a strange but mildly interesting phenomenon.

“W-what? No! I didn’t!” he protested, cheeks burning. But then—like a rock falling squarely on his head—he looked up at the girl’s hands.

Between her dirt-stained fingers, she held a half-eaten cherry candy, its red filling dripping like blood onto her palm.

“Y-you…?” The question stuck in his throat. Had she done it? That warm light magic that smelled like home?

But Wanda was already turning away, adjusting the seams of her uniform with a casual gesture, as if the alley, the soaked boy, and that supernatural moment were nothing more than a dull commercial interrupting her day.

“Look at your pants,” she said dryly, without turning, as she nibbled the last of the candy.

And she left, trailing the sweet scent of artificial cherry mixed with a shame heavier than any blow.

The boy looked down… and his heart lurched so violently he nearly collapsed to his knees. A strangled cry burst in his throat, but he clamped both hands over his mouth before it could escape.
It couldn’t be.

Where minutes ago there had been a humiliating stain, now there was only dry, immaculate fabric. He patted his legs with trembling fingers, searching for any trace of moisture, of shame, of reality. Nothing.

Without thinking, he ran. Dodging bodies in the hallway, ignoring the shoves and curses thrown at him as he collided with classmates. He didn’t even stop when someone shouted “Psycho!” behind him.

The boys’ bathroom door slammed against the wall as he pushed it open. His eyes searched desperately for the mirror above the sinks, and what he saw left him breathless:

The reflection staring back at him was a completely different boy. No scrapes on his elbows, no greasy hair plastered to his forehead with fear-sweat. His uniform—which he swore had frayed cuffs and a torn seam at the shoulder—now looked freshly pressed, the colors as vivid as the day his mother had handed it to him with a smile he could barely remember.

He touched his cheek in the mirror. The boy in the reflection did the same.

“Is this… real magic?” he whispered, and for the first time in a very, very long time, something dangerous stirred beneath his skin:

Hope.

---

 

 

After school, Wanda didn’t bother waiting when the adult meant to pick her up was nowhere in sight. For her, that was perfectly normal. Adults had bigger responsibilities, and she had no interest in making a fuss about it.

She supposed they’d already discussed her brother’s work schedule. Or maybe not. In the end, it didn’t matter.

On her way home, Wanda bought some street snacks with a quiet, almost routine joy, watching the same people pass by as always. It was all too normal. So peaceful. So predictable.

People didn’t change their habits or their schedules, and she crossed paths with the same faces, day after day. Sometimes, one of them smiled at her. She returned the gesture with lowered eyes, nibbling on her melted cheese bread.

 

She headed to the community park, that corner of long shadows and distant murmurs, and sat on a green bench chipped by time. She slid her backpack off her shoulders, feeling instant relief, and opened it. From inside, she pulled out her phone—a cold, rectangular object that clashed with the warmth of the afternoon. She checked the time.

No messages.

“Maybe he’s busy…” she thought, and the phrase echoed like so many others before it.

She placed the phone beside her, on the worn wood of the bench, as if the gesture might somehow summon the vibration that never came. She watched some children swinging, their sharp cries slicing through the heavy air. Should she buy something for him too? A little treat?

Ah, yes. Of course. Why not?

 

She stood up, tucked the phone deep into her backpack again, as if hiding a small disappointment, and headed back toward the snack stand. This time, she ordered two.

The vendor greeted her kindly when it was her turn.

“That’ll be 35.50 yuan, miss.”

The girl nodded in thanks, handed over the money, and received her order. Her dark hair, streaked with curly red strands and cut in a bold style that defied school regulations, along with her slightly altered high school uniform, gave her away. Of course it was Xinyi.

It was strange, Wanda thought for the umpteenth time. To see herself here, in this park, buying snacks in imitation of the person she had been before dying as a teenager.

On the way home, blending once again into the flow of familiar faces, she stopped at the small bus station. She waited beneath the metal shelter, among others staring at their screens or gazing absently at the street. This world could be seen as security made real, the ideal place to live: clean sidewalks, streetlights that turned on precisely at dusk, and bright posters with the faces of heroes—smiling, flawless—watching over the orderly rhythm of the city from above.

Wanda looked at one of those posters. The smile of the Hero of Sector 7 was impeccable, a model of certainty and strength. But in that moment, all that comforted her was the warm weight of the snacks in her hand and the idea—perhaps a bit naïve—that buying two instead of one might change something in the stillness of her afternoon.

But Wanda, the other woman who lived in her head, knew a very different truth. All humans were vulnerable and afraid of what they couldn’t understand or control. Calm was just a thin layer, a varnish over wood riddled with cracks.

The bus arrived with a pneumatic sigh, and Xinyi stepped aboard, sliding into a seat near the middle. She settled in and looked out the window. The glass, slightly dirty, blurred the outside world—but her thoughts were far clearer.

She remembered what her other self—that inner Wanda—knew and was always so willing to remind her: all humans longed to protect themselves because, deep down, they had people they yearned to protect, and vice versa. That was the cycle. Fear and love were two sides of the same worn-out coin.

Vengeance and self-sacrifice. Two impulses that sprang from the same poisoned root. Those forces had drawn out the noblest and the most dangerous parts of everyone around her—including herself. Because she had seen them in dreams, visions so vivid that she woke with the taste of ashes in her mouth. Over these past months, everything the other person had lived was tinged with a deep loneliness, as if trapped inside a glass bubble that had to be shattered, leaving behind everything she loved most.

At one stop, the sunset light reflected off a massive billboard. Xinyi turned her gaze toward it, and for a moment, her eyes remained fixed. It was the number one hero. Hero X. With that untouchable, hopeful bearing, a smile that promised absolute safety, a strength that seemed capable of halting the very course of the sun. The image was perfect—a beacon in the dusk.

She exhaled softly. Everything can change with a snap, can’t it? The thought floated in the stale air of the bus—fragile and powerful all at once.

Amid the constant hum of the engine and the low murmur of other passengers’ conversations, Xinyi snapped her fingers. The sound was swallowed by the noise, but not the effect. A bright red light expanded from her hand like a silent shockwave, a pulse of energy visible only to the eyes of an invoker. Each wave of power folded gently into the people around her, who merely frowned in mild discomfort or touched their temples, as if a sudden dizziness had passed through them—before the sensation vanished as quickly as it came.

In a world where heroes were presented as the best—as in the world she remembered—would the battles for control and the corruption born of power go any better with more heroes or more villains? The question echoed in her mind with bitter irony. No, the numbers didn’t change the nature of the game.

In the end, everyone chose which side to belong to. Justice, as proclaimed by the gleaming posters, was an uncomfortable concept—a flag waving over a foundation of mud. It didn’t truly exist, because there was no clear ‘bad’ or ‘good’ etched into human hearts, nothing that could be validated as an absolute ‘truth.’ There were only choices, made in the shadows of doubt and desire.

She stepped off the bus as it halted with another mechanical huff. She walked a few steps along the sidewalk, feeling the echo of her own power dispersing into the distance, and wondered what kind of gifts—or perhaps curses—those ordinary people had received from her. It would be curious to see, she thought, with a hint of unintentional cruelty. People who, lacking the blind faith of civilians and the grandiosity of heroes, now carried within them a spark of the extraordinary. What would they do with it? Bury it out of fear? Or use it, finally, to break something?

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5: The One

 

 

 

 

"So? How was school?"

Xinyi heard her brother’s voice—tired, but familiar—filling the cramped space of their rented apartment.

Seated across from each other at the low table, the siblings ate in relative silence, broken only when he looked up at her with genuine curiosity. Just like every night.
Xinyi looked back, and as always, she noticed the details: his disheveled appearance, pajamas still on, hair tousled, the dark circles under his eyes betraying sleepless nights, and the half-empty bottle of beer beside him.

"You don’t look well."

Instead of answering his question, Xinyi responded to the evidence in front of her.

"You always drink alone after a stressful day… makes me think you don’t have any friends."

He smiled—a crooked expression that never reached his eyes.

"No need to break my heart right off the bat. But loneliness doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I only had one. Besides—" Her brother raised his chopsticks, pointing at her playfully. "It’s just a ritual. Okay, I answered. Now, how was school?"

She didn’t quite understand why it was always the same questions. Every day, the same thing—a living room ritual that didn’t seem to bring them closer, only reminded them of the distance between them.

Was he really trying to know her?

It felt as if they’d never truly met. And if they were siblings, then… why this strange ceremony between strangers? Her head dipped toward the plate, and she ate.

The taste was warm, comforting—homey—but she was certain she’d never had it before. Or maybe she had, and had already forgotten. Wanda whispered inside her, with that calm voice that sometimes sounded like resignation, telling her there was no need to dig into something so trivial.

People forget things every day, she said.

Memory is a sieve, not a stone.

 

“Nothing special.”

The answer came automatically, almost like a reflex.
She parted her lips to continue, to release the floodgate of everything she carried inside—but stopped. Insecurity bit down on her tongue. Would he call her crazy if she said it aloud? If she spoke of the red light, of the wave only she could see, of the feeling that she was planting something strange and invisible inside ordinary people… But if this went on like this—months, years—and the chaos, or simply the ignorance of whatever was growing inside her, crossed some irreversible line…

 

"Something’s on your mind. What is it?" Her brother set his chopsticks down on the table. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His gaze was direct—tired, but persistent.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her swimming in her own silences.

"I did something bad." That was her answer, biting her lips so hard she nearly tasted blood.

She waited a moment, hoping the right words would come, but nothing coherent surfaced—only the hum of confusion. Xinyi placed her chopsticks on the clean napkin and, with a sigh that felt almost like surrender, raised her hands.

That same internal tingling stirred beneath her skin—a shiver she knew too well—and the warm pulse of something rising in her open palms lit up in a vivid, intense red.

In an instant, the chopsticks, the plates, the table itself—every object in the small apartment—was engulfed by a red energy. It wrapped around them gently, yet firmly, lifting them and defying gravity. Everything in the room rose nearly two meters off the ground, floating in a supernatural silence, swaying softly as if submerged in an invisible sea.

 

She thought her brother would run or scream.
She expected it—because that was normal.
No one ever reacted calmly when the everyday world began to defy the laws that held it together.
She braced herself for the scream, for the look of horror, for the question that would have no answer.

But…

"That..."
There was absolutely no horror in her brother’s voice.
Only a quiet, almost domestic curiosity.

"Wow, you can lift furniture with that, huh?"
He touched his chin, watching the silent float of a chair and a couple of glasses.

 

"We’d save time on cleaning."

"Hey!" She couldn’t help but protest at the remark, though she wasn’t sure if it was truly a joke or some strange form of acceptance.

"Heh. Sorry, little sis. Really." His tone was light, but his eyes weren’t laughing. "But you can’t blame me for thinking a power like yours would make a great cleaning tool."

Xinyi stayed silent for a moment, confused—
or rather, unable to understand the nonsense coming from the other person.
Then she rolled up the sleeves of her pajamas, revealing her wrists, and held them out toward him. On her skin, right where the bones pressed beneath the surface,
there was absolutely nothing in her flesh.

 

"Do you see it?" She asked with a voice heavy with desperate hope.
"I have no Trust Value, so how can I have powers if no one trusts me? Do you see it? Can you see it?!" Her tone rose, mixing frustration with the aching need to finally be understood.

"Mhm." Her brother nodded, but his eyes seemed fixed on something entirely different. "Your arms are thin… are you sure you’re eating well? Should I cook more for lunch? It’ll take time, but I wouldn’t mind." His gaze was so genuinely concerned with that mundane detail it felt surreal.

 

"Y-you...!" She demanded, her anger flaring from her throat like a spark.
Faced with the feeling of being ignored, of having her revelations treated like just another triviality, the magic inside her reacted. The red energy holding the objects aloft pulsed sharply, growing denser, more tangible, and a vase floating near her brother tilted dangerously— as if Xinyi’s frustration had given it weight and intention.

The windows shuddered violently before exploding into a rain of sharp glass shards, while the lights flickered frantically for a few seconds—
the hum of the electric current growing louder until it became a dull roar, ending in a dry snap and a feast of sparks.
The objects that had been floating peacefully in the air suddenly distorted—
a glitch in their very form—
and slowly began to twist, elongate, and contort into grotesque silhouettes, transforming into nightmare creatures that roared with metallic, shredded voices.

He doesn’t understand, Xinyi thought, and the thought was a knife driving into her chest. He was treating her like a child— and she clearly wasn’t one anymore.
She couldn’t allow it. She was capable of erasing anything from existence if she wanted to. The plants in the house, once green and full of life, withered instantly—
their leaves shriveling and turning black, coated in a thick, red liquid like blood, dripping onto the floor like sinful tears.

He can’t ignore her.

He can’t—he doesn’t get to.

If he does, if he insists on treating her like nothing,
then soon he’ll leave, won’t he?

He’ll go, and what will she do if she can’t stop it?
Panic tangled with rage, feeding the storm she had unleashed.

 

The contortions in the air—those monsters born of her frustration—shifted again, melting into thick, vibrant red chains that shot toward the man in glasses.
He hadn’t moved a single finger, hadn’t raised his voice, and allowed the chains to seize him, wrapping around his body with a force that seemed ready to crush bone. He let out only a small huff, almost of annoyance, as the energetic metal clamped around his chest.

Immobile, the man slowly turned his head to look at the shattered windows.
The broken glass reflected the chaos of the room like a dozen blind eyes.

As this unfolded, Xinyi’s mind flooded with the memory of Wanda’s fear.
She didn’t want to lose her brother the way Wanda had lost P…

"Xinyi, I’m really sorry for how I made you feel. It wasn’t intentional… but right now, I’m scared."

Fear…

 

Upon hearing her brother’s words, Xinyi drowned out Wanda’s unsettling whispers in her mind.
She focused all her attention on the young man looking at her—
not with fear of what she was doing to him,
but with eyes so worried they seemed to want to break free from the chains just to reach her.

What was she doing?

The red chains binding him flickered, losing density for a moment,
as if her own confusion had weakened them.
The scarlet liquid dripping from the withered plants slowed,
suspended in the air like poisoned dew.
The roar of the energy-born monsters faded,
softening into a faint whimper that gradually disappeared.

 

He wasn’t afraid of her.
He was afraid for her.
And that truth—quiet and simple—hit her harder than any power ever could.

“I’m sorry, mèimei.”

 

She blinked, startled by the sudden shift in his tone.
In the darkness, lit only by the cold glow of the full moon streaming through the shattered windows and casting long, distorted shadows, her brother’s figure broke free from the last threads of fading energy and rose from the table in hurried steps.
Seeing her gruff, stoic older brother wearing expressions so foreign—wide eyes, a furrowed brow etched with genuine concern—pierced her chest with sharp guilt.

She was insecure.
She used the magic at her command to do things she thought would make her visible, acceptable, in a world that always seemed to glance at her sideways.

“I…”

 

Her brother knelt to meet her at eye level, his warm hands taking hers.
The gesture—so unusual, so direct—demanded her full attention and left her speechless.
The last sparks of red energy faded in her palms, like embers extinguished by rain.

“I think I left you to handle everything on your own. I should’ve done more than just ask silly questions like a big brother… it’s my duty to protect you.”

"Aren’t you scared?" The question slipped out in a whisper, heavy with the disbelief of someone who expects a denial but fears hearing it.

"No. I’m not afraid of you." His voice was steady, but his smile was awkward, clumsy—as if the muscles in his face had forgotten how to form that expression.
 

"But I’m new to this..." he admitted, and the smile faded.

"What scares me is knowing I might not be doing a good job. And you know I’m good at working. That’s my everyday life." His fingers reached up and tousled her hair with a familiarity she hadn’t felt in months— an old gesture that carried the echo of a lost normalcy.

Xinyi didn’t cry, because—like him—she felt the same: a knot of responsibilities and loneliness poorly tied together. Not truly belonging anywhere, though she didn’t say it.

She didn’t need to.
The silence that fell between them spoke louder than any confession.

 

Months had passed in this new stage of life where X had no one.
At least, not in the simple but essential sense of coming home knowing someone was waiting for you—not out of obligation, but because your presence, imperfect and complicated, made that place worth it.

That’s why he hugged her.

“Everything will be okay.”
He promised, and for the first time, his voice didn’t sound like an empty formula—
but a decision.

“What if I can’t handle it anymore?”
The question was small, fragile, slipping out from the folds of her blue pajamas.

“I know you will.”

 

“How? I’m unstable, dangerous… like a ticking bomb.”
The words rushed out, as if saying them aloud could exorcise the fear they carried.

 

After his explanation, her brother stepped back just slightly and, with a quick, precise motion, tapped her forehead with his fingers.
At the sudden sting, Xinyi yelped and pulled away from the hug, frowning like a little girl who’d been unfairly wronged.

“Ouch!”

She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, staring at him in disbelief and with a hint of irritation.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because you’re not a ticking bomb.”
His tone shifted—suddenly upbeat, almost carefree—so abruptly it was hard to keep up.

“You’re powerful, and that power just needs a little polishing. And who better than your boring old big brother, expert in polishing boring things, to help you with that?”

He adjusted his glasses and pointed toward the window and the darkness outside.
Though what struck Xinyi as strange was realizing they were the only ones without power in the entire building. Well… maybe that was her fault, wasn’t it?

“Everything can be fixed,” he said, with a calm that seemed to stretch into the corners of the chaos around them.

“And I think you know how to make it right. Go on, give it a try~”
Xinyi surveyed her mess— the shattered glass, the overturned furniture, the withered plants—and a wave of shame washed over her again. But really, who wouldn’t feel that way in a scene like this?

“Come on, no stress.” His voice was an anchor in the middle of the disorder.

“I trust my little sister. We’re human, and that means there will always be a day when we mess something up. Or everything.” He raised a finger, as if delivering a crucial lesson. “But what we do to fix it says far more than our mistakes ever could.”

Yes.
It does.

Xinyi raised her arms, feeling her powers emerge now with a patience they’d never known before. The sensation was the same—that familiar tingling beneath her skin—but her intentions, and the rhythm of her heart and mind, now calm, transformed the energy.

The shards of glass lifted from the floor, suspended in a red aura that seemed to breathe gently. With each piece in the air, Xinyi moved her hands as if conducting a silent dance, tracing soft waves through the space that touched each object, each fragment, returning them to their original place.

The objects reassembled, clean and whole, as if time were rewinding.
The glass shards fused together, swallowed by the magic that welded them with invisible precision, until the energy receded like a low tide, and everything was back in place—pristine.

 

She looked up at the ceiling lights, and a faint red beam shot from her left hand into the air, dissolving like dry ice, absorbed into the electrical system. Moments later, the lights returned, flickered once softly, and everything was back to normal.
Nothing had changed—except the silence, now peaceful, and Xinyi’s breathing, finally deep.

“I knew it—it’s all about practice~”

Xinyi lowered her head, a shy smile tugging at her lips—but when she looked up again, the one returning her gaze was no longer her brother. Instead, a man in a pristine white suit was watching her, his wide, enigmatic smile reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat.

A polished silver brooch in the shape of an ‘X’ pinned his red tie with elegant precision. Yellow-tinted sunglasses hid his eyes, and his white hair was slicked back with immaculate care. She stifled a gasp— she recognized him instantly.

It was Hero 1.

Hero X.

 

“Ah! What…?”
(Where’s my brother?!)

The man snapped his fingers—and everything changed.

The room, just recently restored, vanished like smoke, and suddenly they were standing in a vast white space, without walls, without a ceiling.

“You have the potential to protect yourself and those you love through your ‘unstable’ emotions. You’ve already proven that.” His voice was soft, almost a lullaby, but carried an authority that echoed through the white void.

 

“Where’s my brother?” Xinyi’s question sliced through the air like a knife, charged with an urgency that left no room for flattery or wordplay.

“Ah?” Hero X looked genuinely surprised for a moment.
His sunglasses slid down the bridge of his nose. He adjusted them with his index finger, closing his eyes as if searching for patience behind his eyelids, before blinking and fixing his gaze on her again. “He’s fine… I know…” The pauses between his words, far from calming her, made Xinyi’s stomach twist. The tall man scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.
“You can trust me.”

 

But Xinyi couldn’t trust anyone.
Especially not a hero who appeared out of nowhere in a place that wasn’t real.
That’s why two vibrant red energy spheres materialized in the air on either side of her head, crackling and ready to strike.

“Oh, come on!” he protested, raising his hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender. “I didn’t do anything to him! I’m his friend! I swear!”

 

 

“My brother doesn’t have friends,” Xinyi declared, her voice cold—a clarity that made it obvious she knew every solitary habit of her brother.
The energy spheres leaned forward, threatening.

“Ouch… but I’m the exception. …Do you believe me now?”
His tone was persuasive, almost familiar.

“No.” Xinyi’s answer was instant, clear as crystal.
And as if her refusal were a command, the white space around them shattered into thousands of fragments—like a giant mirror breaking under the pressure of her will.

Her hands glowed with intense red energy, not just to intimidate, but to tear apart the illusion that held them.

When the space shattered, the ambient sounds rushed back all at once—
but they weren’t the quiet sounds of home.

Instead, a deafening chaos engulfed them. The two appeared in the middle of a street plunged into disaster, where the air reeked of smoke and fear.
Desperate screams, agonized cries, and the distant wail of sirens formed a symphony of terror. People ran in every direction, their faces twisted by panic, while something—or someone—was wreaking havoc further ahead, out of immediate sight but terribly present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6: Good Times

 

 

Good days invariably began with good coffee and an even better breakfast.
Waking up so early, with the sole and stubborn intention of arriving even earlier at that little café three blocks from home, was worth every stolen second of sleep.
It was a ritual— a small conspiracy against herself to outwit routine.
The new traditional brew, with its rich and gentle aroma that seemed to embrace the entire shop, and the donuts made by the elderly woman—sweet to the point of innocence, fluffy as clouds— were a tiny luxury she granted herself with devotion.
The final bite tasted like courage— the kind needed to dive headfirst into that gray sea of papers and screens that awaited her.

While waiting in line, she’d exchanged a few words with the other regulars— that brotherhood of sleepy office workers and enthusiastic early risers. All of them shared, between yawns and sips, the same verdict: a charming place, a refuge.

“They’ve got the blueberry one today—don’t miss it,” whispered a man in a hurry, his tie perfectly knotted. The cool morning breeze, laced with the scent of freshly baked bread escaping from the back room, was a silent and excellent companion during the wait. After his turn, he checked his watch with the serenity of someone who’d won a small battle against time. Seeing it was still early, he took a deep breath, allowing himself the luxury of calm—to savor that moment without any immediate worries lurking in the shadows.
He took another bite of his donut, chewing slowly and deliberately from his quiet corner in the little coffee shop.

The night before had been exhausting, yes.
But to him, it was too obvious—too human—not to recognize the valuable, if clumsy, intentions of his younger sister. In her struggle to claw out a bit of freedom, to carve herself a space with stubborn bites away from where she’d always existed, there was something admirable.

And yet, he admitted that Xinyi’s practical nature was as understandable as it was dangerous. As endearing as it was easy… and wrong.

Being a hero is too much for a boring guy like me, he thought, biting into the last piece of glazed dough.

The truth was, he wasn’t unfamiliar with that primitive urge to rip out the weeds poisoning his world. The idea of giving certain people a permanent lesson about the right they believe they have over others’ lives. Those wealthy and ambitious types, with their sharp smiles and stained checkbooks, who craved more power with the same greed a child has for a new toy. For them, killing and disappearing wasn’t a sinister motto—it was just administrative procedure.
The most efficient method to clear the path to the throne of any inconvenient individual.

So he couldn’t help but dream about what might happen if the right one came along— someone with the qualities, and the recklessness, to uproot what was rotten from its very core.

Wouldn’t anyone try?

He himself, in his silence and from his trench of orderly habits, sometimes fantasized about that very idea. He imagined it with a clarity that nearly burned his thoughts: the crackling of corrupt structures, the sudden silence after the roar. But not everything could be changed. He had once believed it, but life had made sure to show him the truth—brutally. Some roots were too tangled with good ones. Some evils were so common, so everyday, they blurred into normalcy and were accepted with a resigned sigh.

At that thought, bitterness bloomed in his stomach, mixing with the residual sweetness of the donut, creating a familiar nausea. He wasn’t a stranger to negative feelings; after all, he was human like everyone else.
He’d lost a friend because of them… and if he dreamed of revenge?

He did— with such intensity that sometimes—

Forget it.

 

The voice in his head was as abrupt and clear as the sound of the cup settling onto the saucer. It was too much for a day that had barely begun. For a man who just wanted to finish his coffee in peace.

All in due time. The phrase echoed within him like a mantra—an armor against the urgency gnawing at his insides. Right now, he was in the crosshairs of all of them—
those suit-clad predators, waiting patiently like vultures for the slightest chance to devour him. Though he was capable of ending it all in a fit of blind rage,
it wasn’t something Smile would have wanted for him. The image of the man smiling—tired, but full of faith—tethered him to sanity.

 

He must live if he wants to do it right. There was no heroism in a final, reckless act—only emptiness. And he’d had enough emptiness for a lifetime. He took a long, almost brutal sip of coffee, letting the bitter heat wash away the heavy aftertaste of his thoughts. The liquid burned his throat in a way that felt almost medicinal, dragging with it the shadow of revenge.

 

“Such a good flavor,” he murmured to himself, with a genuine and almost surprised happiness, as the last trace of bitterness turned into a comforting warmth in his chest.

Looking at it differently, this morning had started in a completely new way.
He’d gotten up much earlier than usual— not out of the usual grim obligation,
but driven by a clear and almost novel purpose: to prepare two breakfasts and pack Xinyi’s lunch for school.

It hadn’t been so hard, after all;
creating new routines was like learning to cook a nourishing dish that met the needs of a growing child. It required patience and a bit of faith, but the result filled him with a quiet, deep satisfaction.

As that simple happiness wrapped around him, momentarily pushing away the shadow of other thoughts, someone approached his table.
He took the final bite of his donut, savoring the sweet ending as it melted on his tongue, and gave his full attention to the girl with the bright smile, now looking at him with curious, luminous eyes.

 

“Hi again, brother.” Little Xinya greeted him as she always did,
hands tucked behind her back and a smile that seemed to hold a wonderful secret.
Though now, unlike when he first met her—
dressed in grease-stained overalls and fierce determination, like a miniature mechanic— she wore a simple, clean dress. Small but crucial signs that she was finally recovering in a safe place.

X smiled at her, and a familiar, warm affection flooded his chest—stronger and more comforting than any coffee.

“Hey. Want something?”
Normally, he wouldn’t ask something like that, but kids loved sweets, didn’t they? And… truthfully, he didn’t have any better conversation starters at hand, so that was the first thing that came to mind. He spoke with quiet sincerity, without forcing anything. He was used to little Xinya calling him ‘big brother’ every time they were together, and he never corrected her. Somehow, the title had begun to fit into the hollow space of his routine.

She shook her head, and her expression was as clear as glass in that moment.
She wasn’t there for dessert. Her gaze—serious and slightly embarrassed—said more than any words could.

“I can’t. Doctor’s orders…” murmured little Xinya. “I just came because you’re here, Brother ⬛️⬛️⬛️.”

“Do you need something from me?” he asked gently, softening his tone as he noticed her shyness— as if speaking to a frightened little bird.

“No! I was waiting for you to show up for your drink like you do every day, but you didn’t come. I got worried about Brother oooo…” she confessed, lowering her gaze to her slippers, as if the floor had suddenly become fascinating.

“Wait… you’ve been looking for me?” He set his coffee cup down on the table with a soft click, now watching her with a new kind of seriousness. Little Xinya was a smart child—perhaps smarter than he was— and her faith in Hero Ahu was so immense it felt almost tangible.

If he wasn’t mistaken, Xinya was still hospitalized. Her hair was rebelliously tousled, as if she’d bolted straight out of bed, and her slippers—adorable yet practical—had the hospital’s name stitched into the fabric… small clues of an escape. As if she weren’t supposed to be out and about.

Wait a second. If she’d snuck out of the hospital, then… where was Ahu?
He was sure the hero must be losing his mind with worry, torn between protocol and panic.

Maybe there wasn’t anyone irresponsible to blame just yet; Xinya knew how to hide when she wanted to. She had the instincts of a small, frightened beast.

“You escaped,” X murmured, adjusting his glasses with a slow, thoughtful motion,
hiding a smile he couldn’t suppress.

Xinya snorted with theatrical pride, puffing out her chest. She seemed immensely proud of a feat that, reluctantly, X had to admit was impressive. She’d escaped from her assigned personal bodyguard. That wasn’t a small thing for a girl in hospital slippers.

“I can take care of myself!” she protested, with a conviction that came from deep within, before moving her arms forward to offer him a kind of peace offering.

There, between her small hands, was the drink he always, without fail, bought from the vending machine. The can with an ‘X’ at the center. That strange, sweet strawberry-banana flavor he liked so much. Even though the soda and its contents were, in theory, easy to find, he hadn’t expected anyone to bring it to him personally— much less her, sneaking away from her guardianship to do so.

 

What was he supposed to do?

Scold her?

Impossible, when she looked at him with those eyes—full of pride and a touch of vulnerability, holding the can as if it were a treasure.

Thank her?

That would only encourage her behavior.

A sigh escaped him, heavy with exasperated tenderness.
He reached out and accepted the offering, feeling the cold metal against his fingers.

“Thank you,” he said,his voice softer than he’d intended. “But next time, wait for me to come. I don’t want you getting into trouble because of me.”

Xinya smiled, triumphant, as if he’d said exactly the words she’d been waiting to hear.

“I don’t mind.” She then sat in the chair across from him, as if it already belonged to her. Her legs dangled in the air, swinging back and forth in a carefree, cheerful rhythm.

“What’s on your mind?” X asked, watching that rhythmic sway as if it marked the tempo of her thoughts.

“I saw your sister. Why didn’t I know about her?”

That caught his attention immediately.
He checked his watch again.
7:09 a.m.
Xinyi would be arriving at school… right now.

 

“Your name is so similar to my little sister’s. You’re Xinya, and she’s Xinyi…” he said without thinking, the phonetic resemblance ringing in his mind with strange clarity.

When he’d thought of a name for the newly acquired sister, the only thing that came to mind was something he wouldn’t forget easily— something that sounded close, familiar. He blinked, confused by his own lack of originality and by the unintentional echo he’d created.

 

He was terrible with names. Awful.
And now, he had two “Xiao”s in his life, both with gazes that could melt the thickest ice.

“Alright, I’ll introduce you this afternoon. On one condition. I’m taking you back to the hospital…”

“It’s still too early to leave…” she protested, with the impeccable logic of someone who doesn’t want the adventure to end.

“You forget I have work and—”

“You hate doing extra work, I know.” Xinya rolled her eyes with an exasperation far too adult for her age. It was as if she’d spent years studying his quirks.

“Good? Besides, Ahu won’t like it.” he argued, grasping for a sensible reason that might dissuade her.

“Shhh!” She pressed her fingers to her lips, her expression exaggeratedly serious.
“No one knows who Ahu really is yet. He’s my hero, and we have to keep his identity secret.”

Of course.

Ahu was her best canine friend who, through twists of fate too absurd to say aloud but he knew the fierce overprotectiveness of that dog. That adorable ball of golden fur was, in truth, a force of nature— dangerously destructive when angry… or when his favorite human was out of sight for more than five minutes