But looking back, Wang Jie couldn't help but wonder if she had actually stopped him, and that the moment of being suspended in mid-air was just an illusion.

After all, what can stay suspended in mid-air without external force?

While Wang Jie hesitated, Yu Ning, after thanking her, lowered her eyes, pursed her lips, and finally left in a hurry without looking at Chaochao, who was staring at her expectantly. Her face was stiff.

After walking a hundred meters quickly from the dessert shop and turning the corner, Yu Ning finally couldn't help but tremble and bend over, her thin shoulders trembling slightly, and she gasped for breath like a fish out of water.

Her fingers, which were braced on her knees, had turned blue from the force.

In her past life, Yu Ning had a ten-centimeter-long scar running down her spine on her back. Her assistants said it was like a flawless white jade with an unhealable crack, tearing away its beauty. Once, her manager, Sister Yang, barged in without warning while she was changing clothes. When she saw the scar on her back, she instantly showed a look of disgust and pity, and ordered her never to wear a backless dress to important occasions again.

Because no one will love a broken vase.

Revealing it would be tantamount to exposing the truth about the defective product.

On the bustling street, a girl who had been bending over and supporting herself on her knees stood frozen in place, her gray pupils wide open beneath her half-closed eyelashes. Stiff as she was, she was like a wind-up puppet, pausing abruptly and unconsciously raising her hand to touch her lower back.

However, no one ever cared about the cause of the injury on her back.

Yu Ning chuckled unconsciously, a soft, mocking, and indifferent laugh.

When she was eight years old, the walls of her family's old house collapsed. In that critical moment, her mother pushed her forward to shield herself and her younger brother.

If she hadn't reacted quickly and dodged to the side, she would have been either dead or crippled.

However, afterwards, her mother never explained her actions at the time. Even later, when the woman was in the room tenderly wiping and applying medicine to her younger brother's face, she was still secretly complaining about why she had avoided her.

Yu Ning listened outside the door while the woman applied the medicine.

At that moment, the girl, who had dragged her sick body and mustered up the courage to ask her mother for an explanation, comfort, or even deception, felt her tense and expectant heart completely cool down, as if she had fallen into an ice cellar.

It was from that time that Yu Ning realized that her mother loved herself the most, followed by her younger brother, and that as the eldest daughter in the family, she was the one who could be abandoned at any time.

The moment the potted plant fell, the airflow that brushed against her cheek instantly transported her back to when she was eight years old.

This matter is neither insignificant nor major, yet it seems insignificant compared to all the changes that occurred during her long twenty-one years.

But Yu Ning remembered it to the core.

Along with the newly grown flesh and blood.

That initial despair of realizing that one could be abandoned at any moment, the complete collapse of one's understanding of oneself and one's family.

It was like accidentally lifting a stone on the ground, only to find a maggot-infested hole under the stone, emitting a rotten smell. The deeper you dug, the more foul it became, and at the very back of the hole was a heart that had been eaten away.

Past nightmares flashed before Yu Ning's eyes like a revolving lantern. She could almost smell the faint stench of decay, and her stomach churned with nausea. She actually gagged, suppressing her nausea.

Unaware of her abnormal state, Yu Ning noticed that since the potted plant tipped over, the 050 system had suddenly trembled and then fallen into complete silence. If Yu Ning had been more observant, she would have noticed that the ball of light belonging to 050 within her consciousness was constantly shrinking into a corner, as if trying to minimize its presence.

Suddenly launched into the air, 050 desperately curled himself into a ball, repeatedly chanting: Please don't come, please don't come, please don't come...

When the rope supporting the potted plant broke unexpectedly, and 050 saw Yu Ning rush to hug the little girl, his heart was filled with contempt and disdain, followed by cold-bloodedness.

It didn't intend to save Yu Ning. Although the female lead's death would lead to mission failure, if she died unexpectedly, the final evaluation score wouldn't be deducted so severely. It was better than Yu Ning living and constantly threatening it with things like the closet collapse plot.

However, just a second before 050 coldly watched the bottom of the basin about to smash into the host, it suddenly felt a small but quite familiar fluctuation in the air.

I'm so familiar with its energy that its body is still throbbing with pain...

050's subconscious reaction was that this silly, chuunibyou-ish time-space bureau system was here to beat it up again.

But the result was that this silly system actually consumed a large amount of energy and briefly changed the trajectory of the bonsai's fall.

It's important to understand that the confrontation between systems takes place on the same frequency and level. Unlike this kind of free "friendly exchange," if a system were to forcibly physically interfere with the world of a novel, it would suffer a great loss to itself.

050, who was used to traveling alone in the wild, couldn't understand why Yu Ning had stepped forward and why that damn system had spent so much money to intercept them. Were they all such bodhisattvas?

Seeing that the dog system was severely damaged, 050, who was originally eager to go and avenge itself, was suddenly attacked by the dog with a "sizzle" of electricity, which scared 050, which had just appeared, into quickly retreating into a corner.

Good heavens, does this dog have eyes in the back of its head?!

Why? Why?! I still can't beat them!

050, who chickened out in a second, was very angry, but dared not get too angry and attract the dog's attention. Before she could even think about why it was there and why it had stopped the flowerpot, she was still fuming.

Chaochao, who was left in the store, could no longer see Yu Ning's shadow in less than five seconds. She stared blankly for a while, her round almond-shaped eyes slowly drooping, and her little hand holding the cake piece withdrew slightly.

My sister doesn't seem to be injured...

But why do you look unhappy...?

and.

Chaochao recalled Yu Ning's tone of voice and her deliberate avoidance of her gaze, then looked at the small piece of cinnamon roll in her hand that had been rejected twice.

The two little pigtails, which were getting lower and lower, seemed to be saying the word "disappointment".

Does Sister Yu Ning not want to play with her?

Was it because I kept bothering my sister by playing with her?

One of the girls among the onlookers, who were about to disperse after being calmed down by the employees, suddenly stopped before turning around. She bent down to take a closer look, then showed her phone screen for a second to compare, and exclaimed in surprise, "Chao Chao?!"

Lost in her disappointment, Chaochao sighed and was about to eat the cake her sister had thrown away when she suddenly heard her own name. Before she could even process what was happening, she looked up at the speaker with a blank expression, her mouth still open, displaying the classic look of utter bewilderment. "?"

That's right, it's their favorite emoji series.