"How do you even know who I am?" The girl looked as if she had seen a ghost in broad daylight.
"Didn't you just blurt out my name?" Lu Mingfei rolled his eyes, thinking it was no wonder his clueless past self had fallen head over heels for Nono. The girl standing before him was undeniably, breathtakingly gorgeous; her eyebrows knitted in surprise gave her a delightfully quirky air, making her look like a finely carved red ruby.
Yet Lu Mingfei was no longer the muddled, foolish monkey hiding in a little cave waiting for someone to lead him away. Having spent three years hacking at empty air in the kendo dojo, Lu Mingfei's heart had grown as cold as his blade. Beautiful though she was, this girl was hardly enough to shake his rock-solid "Heart of Drawing the Sword"!
"I could call you by name because you're my target!" Nono put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow.
"Huh?"
"I mean, you're our academy's target this time!" Realizing the ambiguity in her words, Nono hastily corrected herself. "Tell me, why haven't you accepted any of the friend requests I've sent you?"
Nono glared at Lu Mingfei, gnashing her teeth. She had gotten his contact information right there on the train departing from Cassel College, and she had sent him upwards of twenty friend requests, all of which had sunk without a trace. It had left her with no way to play pranks on this prospective freshman!
"Because my Aunt told me there are too many swindlers out there, and I shouldn't add strangers on a whim," Lu Mingfei replied with an innocent face.
In truth, he had known all along that the big-faced cat avatar persistently sending him friend requests and pestering him was Nono. But he genuinely had no desire to engage with her, mostly because even if he added her, he wouldn't know what to talk about.
Should they chat about how magnificent her boyfriend Caesar's pectoral muscles were? Or how popular Chu Zihang was at Cassel College? Lu Mingfei knew all of these things inside and out, so he had nothing to discuss with Nono.
"When I sent my second-to-last friend request, didn't I leave a note saying I wasn't a bad person and telling you to add me right away?" Nono asked, her anger flaring.
"Well, isn't that rich! What bad person ever admits to being a bad person? Do you take me for an idiot, or are you an idiot yourself?" Lu Mingfei looked at Nono as if she were a fool.
"You..." Nono's eyes widened, feeling as though she had put her full force into a punch only to hit a pillow.
This was the first time in her life she had felt such deep powerlessness when facing a boy. The little witch had suffered her first defeat; the guy named Lu Mingfei was clearly spouting utter nonsense with a straight face, yet for a moment, she had no idea how to refute him.
"Besides, there are over a dozen people participating in the interview. Why are you singling me out?" Lu Mingfei asked.
Nono was left momentarily speechless by the question. She couldn't very well tell Lu Mingfei straight out, "Yes, that's right, you're the one our academy pre-selected," could she? Fortunately, her reflexes were quite sharp; 0.1 seconds was all it took for her to come up with a plausible excuse.
"Because of Chu Zihang. He's my classmate now, and I heard him say you two are very close?" Nono spun the lie without the slightest trace of guilt.
"We are close. Usually, Senior Brother accompanies me to practice swords, and whenever I have free time, I chat with him." On the surface, Lu Mingfei nodded, but inwardly he sneered: *You and Senior Brother aren't even in the same faction. Chu Zihang has always been the type who wouldn't say a word even if you beat him with eight sticks; would he really go around telling you who he was close with in high school?*
*Do you think you're Xia Mi?*
"Well, that figures. No wonder your Jigen-ryū style just now was practically identical to Chu Zihang's. With that kind of strength, you could probably easily land yourself a vice president position in the Lionheart Society," Nono muttered.
"The Lionheart Society." Lu Mingfei repeated the familiar name.
He knew it was the oldest student organization in Cassel College, implying a group of people capable of unleashing the heart of a lion, and Chu Zihang was currently the Lion king of that pride.
Mistaking Lu Mingfei's silence for a lack of understanding regarding the Lionheart Society, Nono took the initiative to explain, "It's a middle-schooler-syndrome student organization at the academy. Have you ever seen *Jackie Chan Adventures*? It's pretty much like the Shadowkhan from that show."
That was just Nono's personality. She often watched anime that only boys would like and played games that only boys were good at, just to prove that as a girl, she was by no means inferior to all the boys in the world combined.
More importantly, she loved Jade from *Jackie Chan Adventures*—she was like a reckless little madcap, just like her.
Well, and the Shadowkhan, much like the Lionheart Society, loved wearing black clothes, never grew tired, and possessed formidable strength. Most importantly, in Nono's eyes, they were all truly afflicted with severe middle-schooler syndrome!
Lu Mingfei put on an awkward yet polite smile while mentally tearing her apart: *You have the nerve to call Senior Brother and the others sufferers of middle-schooler syndrome? Isn't the ultimate victim of middle-schooler syndrome at Cassel College that boyfriend of yours, who insists on unbuttoning his suit collar all the way to his belly button just so he can show the entire world the contours of his pectoral muscles?*
"Seeing as you call Chu Zihang 'Senior Brother' so smoothly, how about calling me 'Senior Sister' and let me hear it?" Nono raised an eyebrow.
"No." Lu Mingfei refused flatly, thinking that Chen Motong, that wicked woman, had finally revealed her true colors.
"Why is it okay for Chu Zihang, but not for me?" Nono asked, knitting her pretty brows.
"Because Chu Zihang is genuinely my senior on the path of the sword. We share the same teacher, so calling each other senior and junior brother is completely normal, right?" Lu Mingfei gestured toward the middle-aged man who had been watching the show for a while. "But you and I aren't close—unless you bow to the curator as your master right now, though even then, you'd only be my Junior Sister, not my Senior Sister."
"But at Cassel College, I am indeed a year ahead of you!" Nono lifted her chin, looking like a proud swan.
"The interview results aren't out yet, so it's still up in the air. Besides, even if I do join Cassel College, the most I'll call you is upperclassman rather than Senior Sister, and whether I actually call you that will depend on my mood."
"Titles like Senior Brother and Senior Sister are meant for people who are close. You and I aren't familiar at all. You'd better not harbor any notions of making me scamper around as your underling either—we're not in elementary school anymore; playing at being some big boss and little brother is really..." Lu Mingfei crossed his arms, and after rattling off a long speech, he coldly spat out two words.
"Childish!"
As if struck in the chest by a heavy blow, Nono felt dizzy and staggered back two steps, clutching her chest.
From childhood to the present, countless boys had pursued her, fawned over her, and even cried and begged to be her underling. This was the very first time she had ever been rejected by a boy, and she had actually been mocked as childish?!
"Fine, you win, Lu Mingfei!" Nono gritted her teeth, shot Lu Mingfei a look that clearly said *the mountains remain green and the waters flow, we'll settle this at Cassel College*, and then whipped her high ponytail around and stormed off.
"Brat, your girlfriend?" Once the red-haired girl had left, the middle-aged man, figuring he had caught onto a hint of what was going on, stepped forward and asked.
"She has a boyfriend, an Italian rich and handsome guy," Lu Mingfei shook his head.
"Then is she your mistress?"
"Pfft! Curator, are you losing your marbles in your old age? You can eat your words, but you can't just talk nonsense." Veins bulged on Lu Mingfei's forehead; if he had been holding water in his mouth, he would have sprayed it all over the other man's face. "If her boyfriend were to hear you say that, you'd better watch out—he might buy up this dojo and you along with it on a whim, and then ship you off to Africa to be an old black slave!"
"Then who is she?" The middle-aged man's curiosity remained unquenched as he pursued the gossip to the end.
"Just some wicked woman who loves spreading her love everywhere and hoarding underlings."