Chapter 10

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Chapter 10: Painful Memories

If you had the ability to heal yourself, would you be willing to sacrifice yourself to push a girl out of the path of an oncoming car?

This was the exact dilemma Mi Xiaoliu faced at that moment.

Having come into some money, she intended to follow Sasha’s advice and buy a school bag. However, the moment she stepped into a store, she was thrown out.

Despite holding 30,000 yuan, all she had managed to buy that morning were two meat buns. The old woman selling them, whose eyesight wasn’t very good, had failed to notice the badge pinned to her chest.

And then came the current situation.

The red-haired girl whom Mi Xiaoliu had tripped the day before was once again rushing across the street, biting into her bread as she dashed through the crosswalk just as the orange light began flashing. The result was her barreling directly into the path of a car speeding toward her with faulty brakes.

At that speed, it would have been almost impossible for her not to be flung at least ten meters, a defiance of gravity itself.

In that critical moment, the only person close enough to save her was Mi Xiaoliu, who was also running behind her, breathless from trying to make it to her own destination on time.

But Mi Xiaoliu didn’t act.

“Don’t cross the street when there are cars.” This was a piece of common sense she had just learned last night, one she had obtained by spending money, and she intended to commit it to memory.

So, during this peak rush hour, the onlookers could only stand frozen as they watched the poor red-haired girl…

…execute fifty backflips and gracefully land with a move resembling the White Crane Spreads Its Wings, narrowly avoiding being thrown ten meters by the speeding car.

What a show. Truly spectacular.

—

As she bit into the meat bun, the fresh juices burst across her tongue. Her taste buds eagerly relayed a message of satisfaction to her brain.

Far better than eating dry steamed buns with salted vegetables.

“What is this?”

“Master, this is meat. In most people’s diets, meat is considered tastier than vegetarian food. Common meats include pork and chicken, as well as other types derived from animals. Human flesh, however, is not permissible to eat…”

Sasha began patiently explaining the concept of meat and its cultural nuances to her master.

“Due to artificial breeding, these animals survived events like the meteor strike and the Level 5 Mass Extinction. After a hundred years of reproduction, they’ve finally become affordable for the general public again.”

“How much does food cost?” Mi Xiaoliu asked in her mind.

“If you calculate on a monthly basis, the absolute minimum for food expenses in this city would be around 600 yuan. However, I recommend that the Master set aside at least 1,000 yuan per month. Eating is not just about filling your stomach, it’s also about enjoying the taste of food.”

“Okay.”

Mi Xiaoliu tapped at the ten-pull draw option repeatedly. Most of what she drew were mundane and meaningless memories—like sitting on a bus and… that was it. Just waiting for the bus.

No significant events, nothing special. Even such dull and pointless memories would come up in her draws. Moreover, each single draw cost 100 miras, and there wasn’t even a guaranteed prize.

Yet, even so, these memories provided a tiny sense of fulfillment to her otherwise empty heart.

Compared to these random memories, it was the duplicates of already-drawn ones that truly held no value. These repeats didn’t even allow her to relive the associated imagery in her mind.

Another draw.

This time, the memory placed her in a pitch-black, enclosed space, her entire body restrained by straps like safety belts, leaving her unable to move.

She couldn’t move, and no one brought her food. She simply lay there in silence, not knowing how much time had passed.

At first, her entire body felt weak, and she was both thirsty and hungry.

As time slowly passed, her mind began to grow foggy. She wanted to sleep but couldn’t.

So thirsty… so hungry…

Eventually, the dryness of her mouth caused her to unconsciously forget her hunger. Her only desire became the need to replenish water.

In the end, she began losing her grip on reality. Her vision blurred to patches of white, and fleeting moments of drinking water appeared before her eyes.

But in the next second, the parched sensation of her mouth and the emptiness of her stomach would attack her again, reminding her of the truth. Then came the sudden chill that washed over her body, and her consciousness finally succumbed to darkness…

The memory ended. Mi Xiaoliu wrapped her arms around herself, staring blankly into space for a long time.

She didn’t stop and continued drawing. Even though she had just tasted what it felt like to starve to death without money.

“Master…” Sasha seemed as if she wanted to stop her, but the words got caught in her throat.

When her funds dwindled to just 1,000 mira, Mi Xiaoliu hesitated for a moment, then tapped for a single draw again.

A duplicate memory.

“Master, stop now!” Sasha urgently tried to intervene.

Mi Xiaoliu didn’t stop and went for another single draw.

This time, she drew a piece of common knowledge: “An umbrella flipping over is caused by the wind.” Satisfied, she finally stopped, as if this was exactly what she had been aiming for.

Her 30,000 mira had been drained down to a mere 800.

Sasha finally let out a sigh of relief and explained, “Master, when you experience something, there’s a high probability that related memories will be drawn that same day.”

Mi Xiaoliu had grown curious about umbrellas in the early hours of the morning, which still counted as “that day.”

Because she had gone to bed late the previous night, she was already in a bad mood when Sasha woke her up in the morning.

During the first class, her head kept nodding as she fought sleep, wanting to just lie down on her desk.

Likewise, the person on her left, Yiwen, was also fighting off drowsiness, letting out audible yawns.

“Mi Xiaoliu,” Yiwen whispered.

Mi Xiaoliu turned her head toward him.

“My pen’s out of ink. Can I borrow one?” Yiwen made a half-megaphone gesture with one hand near her mouth.

Without responding, Mi Xiaoliu quietly searched through her old plastic pencil case, which she’d had since before she lost her memories, and handed Yiwen a pencil.

However, the pencil had broken lead since she had pressed too hard while using it yesterday, and she didn’t know how to sharpen it.

“Pencils are only good for drawing…” Yiwen muttered helplessly, reaching over to take something else herself. “I’ll just use this one.”

She grabbed an ordinary ballpoint pen.

Mi Xiaoliu tried to take the pencil back, but for some reason, she fumbled and failed to grab it.

Yiwen, quick to react, caught it for her again. “You’ve got to handle things gently,” she said.

Mi Xiaoliu stared at her left hand in confusion. She felt like her left hand wasn’t as dexterous as it should be and didn’t coordinate well with her right hand when holding something together.

To others, this behavior looked like a classic case of someone acting overly dramatic, as if afflicted with a “chūnibyō” syndrome.

While Mi Xiaoliu was seemingly lost in thought, Yiwen quietly observed the red-cased black pen lying still inside her pencil case but said nothing.

Of course, she hadn’t forgotten to bring a pen. She merely wanted to confirm if that red-cased black pen was still in Mi Xiaoliu’s possession, yet she didn’t want to act rashly and alert her by directly trying to take it.

It might just be a coincidence. After all, nearly every student has at some point replaced the black ink cartridge of a pen with a red one, and nearly every student has also snapped the clip off a pen cap before.

Mi Xiaoliu had spent most of yesterday morning slumped over her desk, looking weak—likely due to having taken N1202.

N1202, an illegal drug, allows ordinary people to use superpowers for a duration of three to twenty-four hours. Its mechanism doesn’t involve unlocking latent abilities within the user, but instead forcibly implanting a temporary ability.

For instance, N1202’s physical enhancement variant enables anyone to use enhanced physical abilities for three hours, even if they already possess a different superpower. During those three hours, they gain an additional ability for physical enhancement.