Chapter 1.6

Warning: Long thought processes detailed ahead!

Ling Xia pushed his bicycle along the sidewalk in the direction of Li Ming's school. He was just adjusting his backpack when somebody grabbed his hand. Ling Xia froze for a moment and then slowly turned around to find a tall boy staring at him. "May I ask what you need?"

"Classmate Li, I'd like that book you just stole from my parents' car back." Ling Xia recognized the boy when he called him 'Classmate Li'. His name was Ji Shengge and he was usually the top student in the grade. But that didn't matter. Ling Xia was still shocked at how Ji Shengge had managed to figure out that he'd taken anything from his parents' car in the first place.

In truth, the only reason why Chu Yan's gang members didn't find Mu Ninghua's diary earlier was because of something he had been planning for some time now. For the past few days, he observed which cars were usually in the area at what times.

He found one car that was always there, and, for some reason, its owners always kept the windows down. He didn't know why, but he threw Mu Ninghua's diary in it the night of the break-in. When he passed the car while he was pushing his bicycle on the sidewalk, he had discreetly grabbed it. But how had Ji Shengge known? Either way, Ling Xia needed to get away from the situation.

"Do you mean this book?" Ling Xia pulled out the diary from behind him and showed it to Ji Shengge.

"Yes, that would be the one. I'd like it back now."

"But it's my book?"

"Well, it became mine as soon as you put it in the car last night. I even caught you on camera taking it from the car."

There was always the chance that Ji Shengge was bluffing, so Ling Xia took that chance and replied, "Even if you had a camera, it wouldn't catch me taking anything from this car because I didn't do it."

Ji Shengge simply walked over to the car and plucked a hidden camera behind the rearview mirror. Unfortunately for him, as soon as he reached towards the camera, Ling Xia had already taken off. By the time Ji Shengge had looked back, Ling Xia had already turned the corner and was nowhere in sight.

He arrived at Li Ming's school in record speed with Mu Ninghua's diary in hand. After he locked up his bicycle, he went to the library. He had left Li Ming's house earlier than usual because he wanted to decrypt and read Mu Ninghua's diary at school, and even though Ji Shengge and his shenanigans interrupted him, he still got to the school early. He entered the library and quickly got to figuring out what was in the diary.

The diary was encrypted, and the only clue to what code it might be written in was the 'M08←' written at the top of the first page. The backward arrow most likely meant that the text was written backwards. He originally thought that the letter 'm' was replaced by '08', but there were no numbers in the text, so he shelved that idea for the time being.

The one thing he could always go back to if he guessed wrong was that the text was definitely not in Chinese. The text was written using a phonetic alphabet mostly used in the west, most likely English because it was written by a student in the modern era.

After some time, Ling Xia finally cracked the code. It was a fairly simple code where the letter 'm' was just replaced with the eighth letter of the alphabet, and Ling Xia assumed correctly when he thought it was in English. After reading a bit of the diary, what he found was surprisingly not very surprising.

In the memories of the world, Mu Ninghua found out that she might have been the reason for Li Ming's death and broke down crying. She had gotten into a fight with a gang member and, in retaliation, Chu Yan got his entire gang to kill that gang member and the rest of his gang. Unfortunately, it was on the same day that Li Ming was going through that shortcut, and he got caught in the crossfire and died.

There was only one problem: the diary said the exact opposite. Not only did Mu Ninghua not feel guilty, she was the one who orchestrated the entire thing from behind the scenes. She had tried to make this scenario play out a few times before by provoking somebody from the enemy of Chu Yan's gang. From her past failures, she reasoned that she didn't succeed because Chu Yan didn't have any information on when and where it was supposed to happen.

So she offhandedly mentioned to Chu Yan that Li Ming went through a specific shortcut on Wednesdays to get to his tutoring session because she knew that Chu Yan held a strong contempt for Li Ming and was jealous that Li Ming spent more time with her. How had she known that Chu would take the bait? Simple, Chu Yan once brought up that he had a mental disorder and liked to obsess over certain things. His latest obsession just so happened to be Mu Ninghua.

If Chu Yan ever got caught, Mu Ninghua would be free of blame because she technically wasn't involved at all, and Chu Yan could vouch for her. In the end, Chu Yan was caught, and everything went as planned, and Mu Ninghua even used that as the reason to reject his confession. Chu Yan never knew it, but he was basically sold by Mu Ninghua and then helped her count the money(1).

But Ling Xia never really trusted anything he didn't see with his own two eyes, so his shock was only mild. He had only one question. The flames of war always had a cause to fuel the fire and a catalyst to ignite the flame. Mu Ninghua didn't like Li Ming; that was the cause of the conflict, but that wasn't enough reason to have Li Ming killed. What was the spark that made the fire burn?

Ling Xia needed more information, which was fine because it was almost time for the first class of the day, and daily interactions with Mu Ninghua appeared to give him the most information. He snapped the last few photos of the pages in the diary just in case he required it in the future, and went outside to burn the book with a lighter that, for some reason, was allowed in the school... What an odd school.

Ling Xia realized the bell was going to ring soon and made a beeline to class. He entered the classroom right before the bell rang and hurried to his seat.

Mu Ninghua was sitting in her seat with her head down, quietly muttering to herself about something. Ling Xia instantly recognized this as an opportunity to get more information and quietly approached Mu Ninghua. He sat in his seat and scooted close to Mu Ninghua. She seemed very absorbed in her thoughts, so Ling Xia took this action as safe. He strained his ears to catch any possible valuable details.

"Why... capture... favorability... one day... dropped... fifth target... difficulty... Ming shouldn't mean... " The blaring bell suddenly rang causing Mu Ninghua to jerk in surprise and stop her mumbling. She looked up to find Ling Xia next to her. "Li Ming? When did you get here?"

"I only came here a few seconds ago."

"Really? I guess I just didn't notice you." Mu Ninghua brushed aside her worries that Ling Xia heard her words while Ling Xia pondered on what she meant.

Before long, a bold conjecture formed in his head. Ling Xia had once read a novel where the setting fit the words Mu Ninghua said perfectly; a novel about an otome game. Otome games were games where the heroine was a poor girl, ridiculously talented in some aspect, and admitted to a prestigious school where they made all the capture targets fall in love with her because of their innocent and loving soul.

In novels with otome games involved, after the main character beat the game, they died and transmigrated into the game as either the heroine or the villainess. Although, it could be seen with very little observation that if this truly happened, Mu Ninghua had transmigrated into the heroine. Heroines always had perfect track records.

There was another thing, though... Usually, the otome game that the main character woke up in was a popular game at the time. ...There was a reason otome games were always set in medieval times with magic involved, okay?

Mu Ninghua must have had pretty bad taste to play this game. Of course, there was always the possibility that Mu Ninghua was just delusional and never actually transmigrated anywhere.

But she had said something about favor which made more sense if this was a game. For some reason, those types of games also always let the main character see the capture targets' favorability toward them.

Speaking of targets, Ling Xia heard something about the fifth target, which was odd because only four people ever pursued Mu Ninghua in this world and stayed in her life. There was no 'fifth target', so to speak, so maybe it was a target Mu Ninghua failed to make fall in love with her? Who could it be?

Whatever the answer was, Ling Xia would have to think about that later because PE was coming up, and Li Ming's class was pairing up with a class with two 'capture targets'.

Notes:

1: Being sold and then helping the seller count the money: A person got sold by somebody, but instead of realizing it and wanting revenge, that person was completely ignorant and even grateful enough to help the seller count the money received from selling them.