Chapter 3: I think about you every day.

After all… he was the one asking for help now.
This might be the only chance to cure his child.
In the end, Lin Bai couldn’t bring himself to say the word “no.”

It was just one transformation.
He should be able to endure it.

Lin Bai gritted his teeth, steeled himself, and followed Luo Xingli into the open elevator.

The metal doors closed silently, cutting off all light from the outside.
As the floor numbers began to rise, the elevator ascended.

Lin Bai immediately felt the air around him turn thick and heavy.
An invisible pressure closed in from every direction.

It was a high-concentration magic barrier, frantically repelling his decayed, middle-aged male body.

He involuntarily clutched the front of his shirt.
His breathing grew labored.
He gasped heavily, yet felt almost no oxygen entering his lungs.
It was like futilely fighting against a vacuum slowly sucking the air away.
His nails had already dug into his palms.

His body violently protested on the verge of death.
Every bone and muscle screamed in agony.

For his child… for the medicine…

Just as the extreme pressure and discomfort reached their peak, a faint glow burst from his chest.
It spread rapidly throughout his body like butterfly wings breaking free from a cocoon.

Lin Bai’s skeleton shrank.
His rough skin became delicate and smooth.
His originally short, gray-black hair grew wildly, covered by an extreme silvery white.

“Ugh… ah…”

The elevator doors opened with a ding.

The person who stepped out was no longer the dispirited middle-aged language teacher.

“Wow, Sister Xibai, it’s been so long~!”

With this cheerful call, Lin Xibai clearly felt her field of vision drop lower.
Luo Xingli, who once required her to look straight or even slightly downward, now needed her to tilt her head up slightly to see the other’s face.

This extremely low perspective brought an instinctive sense of insecurity.
It made the middle-aged man who was used to shielding others from the storm feel an almost reflexive urge to curl up.

The more obvious change was Luo Xingli’s attitude.
She seemed to have completely shed the mask she wore when facing humans.
She drew extremely close with unrestrained intimacy, directly breaking the safe social distance, and wrapped her soft, warm arm around Lin Xibai’s overly slender one.
There were even tears welling up in Luo Xingli’s eyes.

“…Sister Xibai, it’s been eighteen years. You’ve finally returned to this appearance again.
Every single day you were gone, I thought of you~.”

“!?”

Lin Xibai shivered violently and retreated abruptly.
Because she hadn’t yet adapted to the change in her body’s center of gravity and strength, her back slammed heavily into the smooth marble wall of the corridor.

She instinctively looked down.
The mirror-like floor clearly reflected her current appearance.
That waist-length white hair resembled pure fresh snow, framing a small, palm-sized pretty face that was deathly pale.
Only a pair of magnificent ruby-like pupils trembled slightly with unwillingness.

She didn’t want to look at that strange yet familiar reflection for another second.
She abruptly raised her gaze toward the blue-haired girl in front of her.

“Miss Luo,” she deliberately used a formal address, “now… is this enough?”

Seeing Lin Xibai’s reaction, Luo Xingli took half a step back, lowered her head, and awkwardly pinched the corner of her own clothes.
Her voice carried a trace of grievance.

“Did I scare you? I’m sorry… We haven’t seen each other for so long. I was just… too happy.”

“It’s… it’s fine.”

Lin Xibai looked away, her fingers curling slightly.
Her reaction earlier had indeed been a bit too intense.

Mainly because this feeling was simply too awful.
She was used to being Teacher Lin and tolerating her students.
She was used to being a father and silently bearing heavy burdens.
But she simply could not adapt to this petite body.

In this body that had shrunk by more than thirty centimeters, all her senses were amplified.
The skin that once belonged to a middle-aged man—slightly rough and insensitive to temperature differences—had now become exquisitely delicate.
The cold wind blowing in from the window immediately brought waves of tingling shivers.

The clothes on her body were no longer simple and light.
Instead, she wore an intricate, pitch-black long dress.
The slight itch of lace brushing against her collarbone, the cool sensation of satin sliding over the inside of her thighs—every feeling loudly reminded her through her nerve endings.

…You are now such a fragile little thing.

Even her sense of smell had become overly sensitive.
The sweet, cloying fragrance of a magical girl emanating from Luo Xingli seemed to have a life of its own.
It burrowed from Lin Xibai’s nasal cavity into her brain, trying to awaken the instinctive sense of belonging in this girl’s body.
Yet it was coldly pushed away by the rational “Lin Bai” soul deep within her.

“Sigh, Miss Luo, don’t mind me. I just haven’t gotten used to it yet.”

Lin Xibai looked at her, a sour feeling rising uncontrollably in her heart.
Had her reaction hurt the girl?

She tried to ease the atmosphere and forced out a strained smile.

“By the way, you’ve been working here all this time. You must have reached some supervisor position and secured a stable government job, right?”

But the effect seemed less than ideal.

“No… because my ability is only support-type, after all.”

Luo Xingli kept her head lowered, her voice growing smaller and smaller, as if talking to herself.

“No one matches with us better… Without Sister Xibai, no one wanted to partner with me. So I… could only take on small commissions like finding lost cats and dogs.”

As she spoke, she even reached out and carefully pinched the corner of Lin Xibai’s sleeve with her fingertips, gently tugging it.

The action was natural and familiar, filled with complete trust, as if the eighteen long years of separation had never existed between them.

Lin Xibai looked at those slender fingers holding her sleeve and sighed silently in her heart.

This reminded her of the little girl from back then who would follow behind her, too scared to even lift her head when facing monsters.

In her view, during these eighteen years, the world had spun rapidly and power struggles had played out endlessly at headquarters.
Yet this child… seemed to have frozen both her mind and appearance in time.

“No one matches with us better, huh…”

Lin Xibai smiled self-mockingly in her heart.

This feeling of being needed unexpectedly brought a long-lost sense of comfort to this worn-out corporate slave who had been ground down by real life.

She had thought that after so many years, in such a complicated environment as headquarters, the girl would have become at least somewhat mature, worldly, or even shrewd.

Yet those eyes before her still held the same almost stubborn dependence and trust from back then.

That’s fine too.

Lin Xibai thought silently.

Such a pure girl should not get involved in the filthy power struggles between adults.

Let the remaining heavy burdens be carried by this already rotten middle-aged man… No, by this broken remnant of mine.

“Let’s go, Sister Xibai.”

Luo Xingli released her sleeve and extended her hand again, palm up, steadily offering it to her.

“I put in a lot of effort to get that special medicine,” she tilted her head slightly, her smile soft and gentle, “I’ll tell you about it slowly.”

Lin Xibai hesitated for a moment.

She looked at her own fair, delicate little hand with nearly translucent knuckles, comparing it to the memory of those calloused male hands that always ached from marking lesson plans late into the night.

The brief hesitation rose like thin mist, then was dispersed by deeper worries about her son’s current condition and complicated feelings toward past responsibilities.

In the end, she still placed her hand on top.

The moment their palms touched, a warm, slightly moist heat flowed over.

Lin Xibai suddenly felt that perhaps her eighteen years of escape had truly come to an end.

At the end of the corridor, beyond the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, lay Qingchuan City’s azure coastline.

Sea breeze poured in through the slightly open window gaps, carrying its characteristic salty, fishy, and humid scent, gently stirring her hair.

Ahead was the world she had once fled.

Now, it was opening its arms, welcoming her back.
Or rather, welcoming the return of “Lin Xibai.”