Get off work and become a magical girl

Chapter 237 Secret Promise
Lin Xiaolu has been in a good mood these days.

It's not just because school is on vacation and there's no need to deal with more schoolwork, but also because the intensity of work related to magical girls has decreased.

The intensity of work has been reduced, on the one hand, because the frequency of attacks by remnant beasts has further decreased recently and is almost returning to the level of a year ago; on the other hand, it is because Lin Xiaolu herself has become stronger, and with the magic armor, she has become more adept at dealing with remnant beasts.

Thanks to this, she now has a lot of personal time for the first time in a long time. Even if she uses a considerable part of it to practice as a magical girl, she still has a lot of free time to use.

However, when it comes down to it, these are not the main reasons why her mood improved.

On the fifth day of the holiday, with the orderly arrival of the New Year, the festive atmosphere gradually dissipated, people returned to their normal pace of life, and the streets and alleys have regained their former bustle.

Early in the morning, Lin Xiaolu opened her eyes sleepily to the sound of the alarm clock.

Last night, the two teams of new generation magical girls and fairies got together to play board games all night. Almost everyone went to bed in the early hours of the morning, so she actually did not get enough sleep now.

Yawning and walking into the bathroom, she fumbled to find her towel by the sink, dipped it in some cold water, and threw it on her face with a "pop".

"call."

Feeling the cool touch of the towel on her face, even her nerves gradually revived with this touch. Lin Xiaolu felt much better and slowly exhaled.

——"I see you're pretty sleepy too. You don't have to go to school today, so why are you up so early?"

Moko's voice came from the side.

It was also a participant in last night's party, but because it was used to sleeping soundly during the day, it did not have any problem of lack of rest even though it stayed up late with the magical girls last night.

Originally, it planned to hibernate at dawn, but when it saw Lin Xiaolu getting up, it came over to ask out of curiosity.

"I can't sleep... I can't sleep."

Lin Xiaolu's vague voice came from under the towel: "I have something important to do next."

"What's the important thing?"

Mo Ke tilted his head and thought for a while, then suddenly realized: "Oh, should I get up in the morning to play mobile games..."

——"That's not the case!"

Lin Xiaolu pulled the towel off her face and glared at Mo Ke: "You got up so early in the morning just to play mobile games? Who do you think I am?"

"Did you secretly play in the middle of the night during the final exams?"

"I've told you so many times, that's because there are activities in the game!"

Lin Xiaolu raised her finger and made a "quiet" gesture at her mouth: "And don't speak so loudly, didn't I tell you? Don't spread this kind of thing."

"Who has nothing better to do than spread your little story every day?"

Mo Ke also rolled his eyes: "If you don't allow me to say it, then don't say it. I'm going to bed. Lend me your alarm clock."

Although he had his own room after moving to the base, Moko didn't have any private belongings, so most of the time he slept in the rooms of several team members.

And because Bai Jingxuan often stays in the base during the day, it would go back and forth between Xia Liang and Lin Xiaolu's rooms more often. It had become normal for it to ask Lin Xiaolu for things.

"Go away, whatever you want. Just don't bother me." Lin Xiaolu had become accustomed to this behavior pattern. She didn't even bother to agree or disagree. She just pushed his hand away with disgust.

Mo Ke didn't say anything else. He flapped his wings leisurely and flew out of the bathroom. But before leaving, he muttered something softly, and the voice fell into Lin Xiaolu's ears.

This made her involuntarily stop squeezing the toothpaste.

Putting down the toothbrush in her hand, she squeezed half of her body out of the door and said angrily to the figure leaving outside:

"Who are you calling a donkey? You lazy snack goblin!"

"I'm just lazy!" Mo Ke turned around and made a face at her, then sped up and flew out of the corridor.

Today, when the team from Baian City has gradually become familiar with the group from Fangting City, Moko has already recognized his own position under the shadow of the two senior magical girls, Delphinium and Margaret.

——Although it still plays an irreplaceable and valuable role as a sower, it is indeed not as experienced as the two predecessors in leading and teaching the magical girl team.

In addition, Fangting City is now seriously overstaffed with magical girls, making the need to find new combat power irrelevant. In the end, the only thing it can do is to detect the attack locations of the remaining beasts.

This ability is innate to the garden fairy. Even if it is sleeping, it does not affect its perception of residual animals. In this way, daily life naturally becomes extremely lazy.

At first, you may feel a little guilty about this, but as time goes by, this guilt has long been thrown out of the window, and all that remains is a sense of contentment.

Lin Xiaolu was aware of this kind of mental journey, but she couldn't see it clearly, so she tried to criticize Mo Ke on this point. However, she didn't expect that the other party had already stopped buying it.

But this didn't really have much of an impact on her, because the next thing she had to do was the important thing: eat breakfast.

Yes, staying up all night and getting up early, an act carried out with such a strong will, just for the purpose of having breakfast.

When Lin Xiaolu finished washing up and walked into the restaurant, there were already two other people having breakfast at the table.

One is Bai Ji and the other is Bai Jingxuan.

Bai Ji, or Qiu Yun's presence was not surprising. After all, this person always behaved meticulously and was very strict with himself, so it was understandable that he didn't want to stay in bed. As for Bai Jingxuan... it was not surprising either. She was the first to leave last night, just because she was caught by Cuiqiao and taken to sleep in the middle of the game.

Instead, it was Lin Xiaolu's arrival that surprised the other two.

"Sister Xiaolu? Why did you get up so early today?" Bai Jingxuan didn't hesitate and asked whatever she thought of.

Qiu Yun on the side said "Good morning" after a brief eye contact, then lowered his head to concentrate on his breakfast.

"It's just getting up. I really want to wake up easily, right?"

Lin Xiaolu walked to the table and pulled out a chair, pretending to be relaxed and said, "I got up late before not because I couldn't, but because there was no need."

"Really?" Bai Jingxuan held the porridge spoon in her mouth and uttered only two words before the handle of the spoon flew up and down beside her lips, attracting the sidelong glance of Qiu Yun, who then silently covered his bowl with his hand.

"To be honest, I am still a little sleepy."

Lin Xiaolu thought about it and felt that she really shouldn't say it so absolutely, so she slightly modified her previous remarks and continued: "But... humph, today is a rare day."

"A rare day?" Perhaps because she felt it was inconvenient to talk like this, Bai Jingxuan took the spoon out of her mouth.

"Don't you understand?" Lin Xiaolu raised her eyebrows slightly, then smiled and looked away, looking towards the kitchen: "Really? You don't understand..."

At this moment, Delphinium, wearing an apron, walked out of the kitchen.

She came out because of the conversation in the restaurant. She was in charge of cooking this morning. The first thing she saw when she came out was Lin Xiaolu who was looking at her.

"Are you actually up?"

She first sighed like everyone else, but when she noticed Lin Xiaolu's expression, she couldn't help but narrow her eyes: "What's going on? You're smiling so strangely."

"Nothing, good morning."

Lin Xiaolu immediately restrained her expression and sat upright: "I just talked about some interesting things with Bai Jingxuan."

"That's it."

Cuique didn't suspect anything, she just turned around and got a bowl of porridge from the kitchen, and brought it to Lin Xiaolu with a fried egg: "So why did you get up so early? Didn't you fall asleep? Did you stay up late?"

"I'm asleep."

Lin Xiaolu carefully took the bowl of porridge from Cuique: "It's just that I had something important to do in the morning, so I got up."

"Huh?" Delphinium was puzzled.

"Look, you said yesterday that you had nothing else to do today, so you would stay at the base and would also be responsible for breakfast, right?" Lin Xiaolu explained.

What she said was true.

Because it is now the fourth day of the new year, the shifts in the Strategy Bureau are based on three days. As the director, Lin Yun ensured that the first round of work went on normally, so naturally he had reason to take a day off.

However, she didn't think clearly about the connection between her vacation and Lin Xiaolu's early rising.

"so……"

Lin Xiaolu's next words answered her doubts: "When I thought about the breakfast you made, I got up early."

This sentence sounds like it doesn't explain anything, but if you think about it carefully, you will understand what Lin Xiaolu is saying - she thought that today's breakfast was made by Delphinium, so she came.

“…It’s so corny.”

After figuring out the problem, Cuique could only sigh helplessly, raised her head and patted Lin Xiaolu on the back of her head: "Haven't I made breakfast for you often enough? Don't say such weird things all of a sudden."

Lin Xiaolu just smiled and didn't refute anything.

This way of getting along naturally seemed very strange to Bai Jingxuan and Qiu Yun, who were sitting across the table.

Bai Jingxuan didn't think there was anything wrong with Lin Xiaolu's behavior. After all, she herself had always shown her likes and dislikes outwardly. It was just that she had never seen her "Sister Xiaolu" take the initiative to be so intimate with Cuiqiao before.

As for Qiu Yun, her expression changed from calm to confusion, and from confusion to understanding. Finally, she lowered her head to look at the half-drunk porridge in the bowl, and became embarrassed as if to say, "Should I not be here?"

Fortunately, this situation did not last long. As Delphinium returned to the kitchen alone, the turbulent atmosphere at the dining table faded away like ripples caused by a stone.

Lin Xiaolu picked up the spoon as if no one was around and blew air into the porridge she scooped out. Bai Jingxuan had already finished her porridge and was leisurely dealing with the eggshell in her hand.

Only Qiu Yun, after a long silence, slowly raised his head and looked at Lin Xiaolu with a complicated expression:

"How did you do that?"

"Huh?" Lin Xiaolu was stunned when she heard that. At first, she couldn't even figure out who was talking to her. It was a few seconds later when she realized that it was Qiu Yun who was asking her a question: "How do you do that?"

"It's just... that you can say such words openly."

Qiu Yun rubbed his thumb against the bowl wall: "Wouldn't it be embarrassing?"

She couldn't say that she was familiar with Lin Xiaolu, but she thought that they had known each other for more than half a month, so she shouldn't be wrong in her judgment of people. Lin Xiaolu, like herself, was obviously a very dishonest person by nature.

Therefore, there is actually a second half to this sentence that has not been said, which is that she believes that if she were still the Lin Xiaolu from half a month ago, she probably would not be able to do what she just did.

"Ah, you're talking about this."

Lin Xiaolu understood, and then put the porridge in her hand into her mouth, looking up, obviously thinking about how to express it. After a while, she spoke again: "Do you feel embarrassed to act like a spoiled child with your mother?"

"Eh?"

Qiu Yun's train of thought was interrupted by the sudden question. After a moment, he answered hesitantly, "I don't know?"

"Don't know? Oh, oh, sorry."

Lin Xiaolu understood the other party's answer without much effort. When she looked at Qiu Yun, her expression was less repulsive and more understanding. She put the spoon back into the bowl and raised her finger: "Then you can make an assumption. Suppose you are still with your mother now, how do you feel?"

Qiu Yun was silent.

She did not give any further recollections of Lin Xiaolu's "hypothesis", and it was unclear whether she was thinking about the answer or immersed in her own memories.

Just when she didn't react, Bai Jingxuan had already eaten the egg in her hand in no time, and ran into the kitchen with the bowl in her hand and her mouth puffed out.

"Five Thunders Collapse the Gate!"

The other two heard her muffled voice before running into the kitchen.

Suddenly there were only two people left at the table.

Immersed in her own thoughts, Qiu Yun did not care about Bai Jingxuan's actions. She just kept searching for her remaining memories of her mother in her mind, piecing together the image that had become somewhat distorted, and then got an answer that she was not sure of yet.

She opened her mouth again, wanting to tell the answer and discuss it with Lin Xiaolu, but she saw that Lin Xiaolu had already lifted up the bowl in front of her with great pride.

Then, under Qiu Yun's horrified gaze, he put his mouth to the edge of the bowl.

God has mercy on us. In order to ensure that all the team members who woke up late also had hot porridge, Cuiqiao kept the porridge in the pressure cooker on the stove, and turned on the fire to warm it up every once in a while. In other words, even if Lin Xiaolu came a little late, the porridge in her bowl was hot enough to make people stick out their tongues.

But now, right in front of Qiu Yun, Lin Xiaolu, who was drinking porridge in small sips while blowing slowly a minute ago, put it directly to her mouth.

Then, under her gaze, he bulged his neck and drank all the porridge in the bowl as if he was drinking cold water.

Is this person crazy?
Qiu Yun didn't know the answer, but Lin Xiaolu didn't give her a chance to think about it. She stuffed the eggs on the table into her pajamas pocket and rushed into the kitchen with the bowl in her hand.

"I'm coming too!"

The speed of the action, the decisiveness of the decision and the outrageous motive all made Qiu Yun amazed.

So much so that soon after, Delphinium's angry voice, "It's just two bowls, you two are squeezing them to death!" could no longer enter her ears.

If we really want to find out why the situation has evolved into this state, we have to go back a few days.

This was the answer given by Cuiqiao when Lin Xiaolu asked, "Can I treat you as my mother?"

——"I didn't think of you as Sakura, and I can't be Sakura. If you really want to find her shadow in me, the final result may only be disappointment."

This was her answer.

She didn't know what Lin Xiaolu's mood was in when she made such a request. Although for her, no matter what her identity was, it was not a big problem for her daughter to rely more on her.

However, she still spoke frankly about her true thoughts.

In front of Lin Xiaolu, the identity of Cuiqiao is just a disguise after all, and her real identity is Lin Yun. In Lin Yun's eyes, he can clearly see every detail of the family when Anya was still there.

She knew how much Anya doted on her daughter, and how much her daughter depended on Anya. She knew very well that no matter who it was, it would be impossible to replace Anya's position in Lin Xiaolu's heart.

Even though Lin Xiaolu has shown trust and even intimacy with Cuique's identity at this stage, and even Lin Xiaolu herself feels that this feeling is sincere, Cuique is worried that she cannot play the role of "mother" that her daughter wants.

What's more, she knew very well that the identity of Delphinium would not exist in the long run.

One day in the future, when she confesses everything and reveals the fact that "Colourbird is Lin Yun", everything she does as Colourbird will inevitably be re-examined.

Delphinium asked herself that, except for the lie she told about concealing her identity, she had done most things with a clear conscience so there weren't too many problems.

But this time, if he really followed Lin Xiaolu's wishes, wouldn't he have deceived her feelings again based on a false identity?
"I know."

In response to Delphinium's honesty, Lin Xiaolu responded with complete honesty: "I still miss my mother, and I know very well that you are not her."

"It may be strange to say it, but I have a very strange feeling. Although you are nothing like my mother, when I am with you, I always feel the same as when I am with my mother."

"Although we are not the same person, we have the same feelings when we are together. No matter how I think about it, there is only one answer."

"I like you, Delphinium."

"I used to have a very vague feeling about the emotion of 'liking'. I only knew that I liked my mother, but I didn't like my father that much. I liked the magical girls on TV, but I didn't like myself."

"It was only later, when I met you, that I felt I could tell what this feeling was."

“Whenever I think of that person, I feel a warm current flowing through my heart; whenever I see that person, I feel my heart leaping with joy; whenever we are together, my heart becomes very peaceful; whenever our eyes meet, I wish this moment could last longer.”

"I want that person to pay more attention to me, I want to be more important to that person, I want to be close to him, I want to be exclusive with him, I want... to make you stay for me."

Lin Xiaolu closed her eyes: "Duzhai, you said before that you would leave after I become a magical girl who can stand on my own, right?"

"I said that you are the leader, even if I have to wait until I retire..."

"What if I said I wanted 'forever'?"

Once again, Delphinium was silent.

She could give as many false promises as she wanted, but she couldn't lie to her daughter about this kind of thing.

Because whether it is Cuiqiao or Lin Yun, perhaps one day they will leave their daughter's life.

This silence also gave Lin Xiaolu another interpretation.

"I'm sorry...are you scared?"

She took two steps back to restore the distance between them to their original state: "I'm sorry to let you see me like this... But I feel that I can no longer hide it from you, and I can no longer deceive myself."

"I'm not as smart as Xia Liang, nor as obedient as Bai Jingxuan. Every time I see you hanging out with them, I feel so jealous that I can't help myself."

"I also want to be like Xia Liang, to be able to be intimate with you as a matter of course, and to be like Bai Jingxuan, to be able to express my love without restraint. I want to be like them... no, I want to be more favored than them."

"But I'm also really afraid that I'm just being overly sentimental. After all, as a senior, you've helped me a lot. If a junior like me continues to shamelessly pester you, it would be really annoying."

At this point, she pursed her lips and said, "Although I seem to be shameless enough now."

"It's just that, rather than letting my jealousy run wild like that every day, I think it's better to speak it out and tell you all these thoughts."

"It would be best if you agree. If you think I'm annoying and irritating, I can put myself in the right place in the future..."

——"Lulu."

Delphinium's words interrupted Lin Xiaolu's increasingly rapid speech.

She didn't say much, but just two words made Lin Xiaolu, whose mind was like a derailed train, stop her random thoughts and stare blankly at Delphinium.

"That's what Sakura has always called you, right?"

Delphinium sighed, slowly raised her hands, and then opened them to both sides: "Don't let your imagination run wild, come on."

"Is it really possible?" Lin Xiaolu asked firmly.

"If you don't come, I'll stop." Delphinium drooped her eyelids.

As soon as she finished speaking, she saw Lin Xiaolu take two steps forward and gave her a bear hug.

The force was very strong, but it was only strong for a fourteen-year-old girl. For Delphinium, who maintained the body of a magical girl, it could be said that it had no force at all.

The two hugged each other, just hugged each other, without any extra words, because hugging is an action that is enough to convey all emotions.

"I will leave. Sooner or later, I will leave."

After a long moment, Delphinium spoke up: "I told you before that I could wait until you retire, but I don't know if I can wait that long."

"Yeah." Lin Xiaolu responded softly with her chin resting on Cuique's shoulder.

"But if that day comes when you have become a magical girl who can stand on your own, then you can choose to come up and walk with me."

Delphinium's voice was equally gentle: "I won't stop you, and I have no right to stop you, because no one can stop a magical girl who can stand on her own."

"Yeah." Lin Xiaolu's breath became heavier.

"And before that..."

Delphinium paused for a moment, as if making some kind of decision:
——"If you want, no matter who you think I am, feel free to act like a spoiled child."

(End of this chapter)