The club recruitment drive came to an end, and everyone returned to the Literature Club room. Compared to previous years, this year's number of sign-ups was absurdly high. Chen Wenwen planned to go back and carefully screen the application forms that had been submitted. A large portion of these applicants were drawn in by the three campus beauties. While there had always been quite a few such people in past years, this year there were clearly far more.
"It's finally over." Su Xiaoqiang slumped into a chair with an exhausted look on her face.
"We still have the cultural festival projects for the club." Zhao Menghua set down a thick stack of registration forms, and Lu Mingfei was holding another stack just like it.
"Spare me, please. I have to manage the class's cultural festival project while also taking part in the club's production—I don't know how to use the shadow clone technique, you know," Su Xiaoqiang groaned, burying her face in the desk.
"Anyway, since we've recruited so many newcomers, Xiaoqiang can just focus on the class cultural festival with peace of mind. Leave the club side of things to us," Chen Wenwen said, seeing how tired she was.
"President, you really are a good person," Su Xiaoqiang said, hugging Chen Wenwen and giving her waist a light squeeze. "You've gotten a little chubby lately, oh."
"Xiaoqiang!" Chen Wenwen's face flushed red.
"Then let's discuss what we're going to make and sort out the division of labor while we're at it. I remember we only have two weeks left, right?" Lu Mingfei sat down next to Su Xiaoqiang.
Erii glanced over and sat down beside Lu Mingfei. Lu Mingfei gave her a helpless look. In truth, he had been deliberately keeping his distance from her over the past two days to prevent the rumors on the forum from flaring up again, but she acted as though nothing was wrong, constantly seeking him out, making him accompany her to feed the dogs every day after school, and even giving one of the dogs a name—"Finger".
"Does anyone have any ideas?" Chen Wenwen looked at everyone seated around the table as the roundtable meeting commenced around her "Ahoge King" persona.
"Let's just make a newsletter like last year," Zhao Menghua said. He had never been interested in this sort of thing and advocated for keeping it as simple as possible.
"I think that works," Xu Yanyan raised her small, plump hand.
"And the theme?"
"Graduation season?" Zhao Menghua looked at Chen Wenwen.
"Won't that be a bit too cliché?" Lu Mingfei raised his hand slightly. "After all, everyone's going to think of that theme."
"True, and I want to make something better suited for keeping. Newsletters are really easy to lose," Chen Wenwen nodded.
"You want to keep it as a keepsake?"
"Yeah, since it's our final year after all," Chen Wenwen sighed. True to form, Su Xiaoqiang had seen right through her thoughts in an instant.
"A club magazine," Erii said quietly, having remained silent until now.
"A club magazine? It feels like there's a thing called that," Lu Mingfei muttered as something seemed to click in his mind.
"What's that?" Everyone looked at Erii and Lu Mingfei.
"It's a club publication, made into a magazine and sold during the cultural festival," Erii explained.
"Sounds like a lot of trouble."
"It's fine, I'll help handle the printing and logistics," Zhao Menghua raised a hand.
"Then I'll take care of the illustrations," Su Xiaoqiang volunteered. Although she hated trouble, among everyone present, her artistic skills were second to none.
"Does Erii know how to make a club magazine?" Chen Wenwen looked at her.
"I've watched people do it."
"Who?" Lu Mingfei already had the answer in his head.
"The Classical Literature Club." Erii blinked.
Lu Mingfei pressed a hand to his forehead. Sure enough, it was *Hyouka*: "Don't tell me you want the theme to be campus ghost stories."
"That's a great idea," Chen Wenwen approved of her choice. "Then the content collection will be up to Lu Mingfei and Erii."
"Wait, me?" Lu Mingfei pointed at himself.
"I can do it," Erii raised her hand, looking a little bit excited.
"You two just take charge of the campus ghost stories section, and leave the rest to us."
Hearing Chen Wenwen put it that way, Lu Mingfei figured it wasn't completely unacceptable; it sounded like a manageable amount of content.
"Then it's settled," Su Xiaoqiang stood up. "I'm tired, let's go."
"Mm, dismissed." Chen Wenwen slid the two stacks of club application forms into her bag.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Japan, at Gen's Heavy Industries.
"Young Master, this is bad. Eldest Miss is playing for real this time—she already left the country a few days ago," Crow reported over the phone to Genji Zhisheng.
"What? What were you guys doing? Why didn't you stop her at the airport?"
"Every time Eldest Miss ran away from home in the past, she never went beyond three city blocks, so the brothers weren't looking on the outer perimeter at all. Who could have imagined she'd go to the airport and even apply for a visa all by herself? When the airport staff saw she was from Snake Chi Eight Families, they didn't dare stop her at all and just let her through without a hitch," Crow said, sounding extremely helpless. "Besides, Young Master, you wouldn't have expected her to go abroad either."
Genji Zhisheng looked at the headache-inducing documents before him, realizing that his younger sister was clearly an even bigger headache: "Erii must have been lured away by someone. Her common sense alone wouldn't allow her to pull off something like this."
In fact, Genji Zhisheng had been worrying about this day arriving for the past five years. Erii's bloodline had severe issues, and her Spiritual Speech carried the constant risk of going out of control; once it did, the consequences would be unimaginable. That was why she had been mute since childhood, relying entirely on writing in a notebook for all communication with the outside world. But one day, Erii suddenly spoke, telling him that she had discovered that speaking in Chinese prevented her Spiritual Speech from going out of control.
Genji Zhisheng had specially found an empty clearing and had Erii demonstrate it to him. Inbelievably, there really was no problem, but that was precisely the biggest problem of all. Erii had lived alone in a courtyard since childhood, and the only people she had contact with were Genji Zhisheng and Tachibana Masamune. Although both of them could speak Chinese, neither had ever taught Erii. Therefore, the only explanation was that Erii had encountered someone while running away from home, learned that speaking Chinese could prevent her Spiritual Speech from going out of control, and was even taught Chinese by them in that brief span of time. Yet someone like that had left absolutely no trace of themselves anywhere in Tokyo under the control of Snake Chi Eight Families. Genji Zhisheng had searched for a long time, only managing to dig up a few trivial clues from his conversations with Erii before hitting a dead end. For five years, the search yielded no results; none of the people who might have had contact with Erii fit the criteria. This meant that for five years, this person had repeatedly made contact with Erii right under the noses of Snake Chi Eight Families, and ultimately spirited away their Eldest Miss—yet with all their influence in Japan, they couldn't uncover a single thing.
Now that Erii had run away from home and fled to a foreign country, how could he not worry? Others didn't know how terrifying Erii was, but he knew all too well: single-handedly, she was capable of destroying a third of Tokyo. With such a ticking time bomb now out of their control, it was hard not to suspect the malicious intentions of the person behind it.
"Have you found out who that person is?"
"Young Master, all the clues you gave—can speak Chinese, male, bloodline grade at least A—there really aren't that many guys like that in Tokyo. But aside from you and the Patriarch, we've got every single one of them under tight surveillance. Absolutely no one has been in contact with Eldest Miss." Knowing that Erii had escaped to China, Crow felt like even committing seppuku to apologize with his death would not be enough.
"Keep investigating. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone from Tokyo. Start from the departure records of the past few days. To ensure Erii successfully left the country, this person must have made sure Erii departed first before leaving themselves, because they know very well that if they fail, we won't give them a second chance." What worried Genji Zhisheng most wasn't his sister's safety, but rather the fear that she was too naive and might be tricked into doing something bad.
"Understood," Crow nodded. "By the way, Young Master, why is your signal so terrible over there?"
"I'm on a plane to China." Genji Zhisheng set down his coffee cup and hung up the phone. The coffee on airplanes truly tasted awful.
On the other end of the line, Crow was left completely bewildered. *If you already figured it all out, why did you have me investigate? You put on an act of surprise when you actually knew everything already—so boring.*
"Old man, it shouldn't be you, right?" Genji Zhisheng closed the files in his hands and looked out the window at the clouds.