Urushibara Ryuri sat against the wall, hugging his shoulders, the knife handle nestled between his arms.
He looked at the five children in the ship cabin with a smile, as Big Ben chimed in the distance. In the melodious sound of the chimes, the morning light enveloped the innocent faces through the window.
Their expressions were a mix of surprise and confusion.
They cautiously sized up this uninvited guest; just a second ago, there was no one else in the cabin besides them, and suddenly this figure appeared, talking to them on his own, quite suspicious!
It was at this moment that Kong Youling finally snapped back to reality.
She hesitated for a while, withdrew her defensive posture, and slowly sat back beside Ji Minghuan.
Ji Minghuan patted her on the head and whispered without turning back, "Don’t do that next time, I don’t need you to protect me."
Kong Youling neither nodded nor wrote, just hugging her knees in a daze. She thought for a moment, then picked up her notebook and slowly wrote in pencil, stroke by stroke:
"But...I also want to protect you."
After writing, she didn’t show it to Ji Minghuan, just closed the notebook and hugged it to her chest, silently lowering her head. She knew Ji Minghuan was upset, even if he acted indifferent.
A moment of silence enveloped the cabin, the children exchanged looks, but nobody dared to speak to the youth dressed like a Japanese samurai before them.
The big sister eventually stepped up and took the lead.
Sun Changkong sat cross-legged on the Somersault Cloud, curiously examining Urushibara Ryuri, and asked,
"Was it you who brought us back?"
"Who else?" Urushibara Ryuri smiled, "The pattern on your hand is my superpower; as long as you have that pattern, I can bring you back."
Hearing this, everyone paused for a moment, then pulled up the sleeves of their hospital gowns to look at their wrists, only to find the strange rhombus pattern had vanished.
So that was his superpower, with an effect of teleportation? No...it must be more than that, Ji Minghuan thought, looking down at his wrist, before gazing at Urushibara Ryuri:
"Your superpower doesn’t have a distance limitation? You got us back to the ship from so far away."
"That’s confidential."
"Big brother, you’re a Catastrophe Level Superpower User, right?" Ji Minghuan thought for a moment and then asked.
"Why do you say that?" Urushibara Ryuri raised an eyebrow.
"I heard your name on the broadcast before, when you went to see the Mentor."
"Your memory’s not bad," Urushibara Ryuri suddenly smiled, "Though you should call me sister."
"Because of work, I’m skilled in disguise," Urushibara Ryuri said, "If I want, I can appear in any form before you."
"So today you’re playing a Japanese samurai?" Ji Minghuan asked curiously.
"More or less," Urushibara Ryuri said, "When I dress as a man, you can treat me as such. I often disguise as a man and go on dates with girls; women understand women better, so I know how to charm them utterly."
Ji Minghuan muttered to himself: "Sounds like you could exchange tricks on enticing young girls with that female train hero."
Sun Changkong stared at his pecs for a long time before realizing what they were talking about. She sniffed the nosebleed and naïvely asked:
"Wait, you’re a woman?"
"And- and- and- your muscles are?" she asked, trembling.
Urushibara Ryuri smiled slightly: "Pasted on, pretty realistic, right?"
Sun Changkong was stunned, her mouth agape in shock, with the sunlight glinting off her little fangs.
Then she lowered her head, her gaze dimming gradually.
She pouted, squatting miserably on the Somersault Cloud, drawing circles in the white fog. As a countryside kid who later spent years in the Salvation Society prison, this was her first time seeing a handsome man, and also her first glimpse of a man’s abs, only to find out she was tricked...Is the world just set on bullying lone kids, she wondered.
Ji Minghuan glanced at her, thinking the hurt she suffered might not be less than a young boy discovering his online love affair was with a faux girl.
He thought: "So Urushibara Ryuri is a woman...Then is she the leader’s sister or younger sister?"
He felt that this Urushibara Ryuri, could totally play poker with Tong Zizhu and Black Cocoon, all being women fond of disguises.
Especially that person in the middle, who pretended to be a No.1 machine’s mother, once granting Ji Minghuan a feeling of maternal warmth.
Objectively speaking, though Tong Zizhu’s act as his mom was indeed heartwarming, Ji Minghuan decided to repay kindness with vengeance, resolving to make every machine he encounters call her mom, leaving a psychological shadow.
"You mentioned earlier that our mission is over?" Only Mario brought up the serious matter.
"Indeed...you failed." Urushibara Ryuri said.
Upon hearing this, Sun Changkong finally remembered something important, she blinked, got up from the Somersault Cloud, and cried unhappily: "Why, but we could still fight!"
"Failing is failing." Urushibara Ryuri smiled, "But this time it wasn’t your problem, instead the Salvation Society didn’t foresee the obstacles being so many in the mission."
She paused, "For your safety, we had to abort the mission."
Sun Changkong asked: "Can’t you just drive away those bad guys, and capture that traffic light?"
"No, my orders were solely to ensure your safety, not to directly engage," Urushibara Ryuri shook her head.
Mario, expressionless, said: "Didn’t the Mentor say, he wanted to test our abilities, there was no point if others interfered?"