Declaration: I am not gay, and I will not turn into a mosquito coil!

I have never liked men! Huh? You mean Rinka? That was an accident, okay!? At the time I didn’t know she was a cross-dressing pro, and now she’s a girl anyway!

Nobody besides me can cook, and I’m a patient in a cast.

So the four of us ordered takeout for lunch: five dishes, one soup, and drinks.

Delivery apps really are one of this century’s greatest inventions — hot food brought to your door, no washing dishes required.

Rinka, with chopsticks in her mouth, sighed philosophically: “Now I know why I can’t cook, it’s obviously the delivery’s fault for being so convenient!”
Xiao Lei nodded in agreement — how will those two ever get married like this.

Halfway through the meal, Old Yan casually said, “Speaking of which, senior Li Jianlian came by my house to deliver takeout before.”

“Not surprising — his job situation’s stable now. He used to hop around a lot.”
He always happened to change jobs when I ran into him; I once suspected he might be a government spy following me.

Xiao Lei asked, “When did he deliver takeout here?”
She was curious — she and Li are now coworkers at the maid café, so any gossip about him is good downtime talk.

Old Yan thought for a moment: “It was during summer vacation, right when Chang Kai first… turned me into a woman.”

I nearly sprayed my soup everywhere.

“Ahem, Old Yan… Yan Liuzhuan, do you realize how that sounds?”

Apparently he didn’t notice that “turning me into a woman” is a phrase that invites all kinds of misunderstandings. Yeah — normally people use that kind of phrasing about a girl’s “first time.”

“What? When did Old Yan first turn into a woman? What are you two talking about that I don’t know?”

Xiao Lei got excited and began grilling about the summer. Rinka, unwilling to be an open book, told her we’d come over here as models. She kept the follow-up date between us and that her quasi-confession a secret.

After lunch, Xiao Lei and I got ready to leave; Rinka said she’d stay a while. Honestly, Old Yan’s place lacks entertainment — a giant house, but less fun than my ten-something square meter room.

Xiao Lei didn’t walk me home; she pushed my wheelchair straight to the Tianping Commercial District to meet Senior Changpu about granting the self-transform permission.

The plan was simple: have Xiao Lei get Changpu out, distract Sis Qiuluo, find a quiet corner, and then I’d “stamp” Changpu as if the gods decreed it.

Just as I was thinking where to kiss, my phone rang — it was Sis Xi.

“Hey, Sis Xi?”
“Xiao Kai, are you free? Lü Le woke up. Want to come see him at the hospital?”

Guess the kissing-senior plan is postponed.

“I’ll be there now.”

Lü Le finally woke after being in a coma for three days from severe blood loss. I wasn’t exactly close to him, but he’d helped when I was kidnapped by Sharo, and he’d assisted with getting Scarlet-chan out of trouble before… Honestly, I had a good impression of him: cold on the outside, kind inside, like a roaming, righteous cowboy.

Xiao Lei panicked: “Now? But my shift —”

The maid café’s been packed the whole day; she had to go to work.

“Don’t worry, you go to work. I’ll get there somehow.”
“Then… say hi for me, okay?”

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Lü Le had been moved out of ICU into a regular ward, so visiting hours were free. I found the room number Sis Xi sent and pushed open the door — only to be met by a wall of faces and back out in embarrassment.

“Sorry, wrong room!”

Sis Xi squeezed through the crowd and dragged me in.
“Wait, Xiao Kai — you didn’t take the wrong room.”

I pointed at the seven or eight grim-looking big guys in the corner. “What’s with all these people?”
“They’re our old brothers,” she said. “They heard Lü Le was awake and came to visit.”

They used to be Lei Laohu’s men — most of them have quit the gang, so I barely recognized anyone now that they don’t have crazy hairstyles.

“Where’s Sis Meow Meow?” I asked.

“Sis Meow Meow and Uncle Lei Luo are on their way.”

Sis Xi had been staying here with Lü Le the past few days. She saw me pushing a wheelchair and smiled amusingly.

“Oh, you actually pushed your real body here?”

Right — I used the Avatar Bookmark and the notebook’s costume change to put myself in some clothes, then pushed my actual body’s wheelchair to the hospital. It doesn’t look weird in a hospital.

“There’s nobody to pick me up,” I said.

I placed the wheelchair along with my main body by the wall and squeezed past the big guys to the bedside. “Yo, Brother Lu.”

“Miss Lingmeng? cough cough…”

“You don’t have to sit up, just lie down and rest.”

He tried to sit, so I pushed him back down; he nodded gratefully and coughed a couple times. He was still weak — bandages, a cast, but the breathing mask had been removed. Still, he was wearing his face mask again — he’s probably ashamed of the cleft lip.

“Do you know who stabbed you?” I asked.

Sis Xi answered for him: “They don’t know the specific person. The alley where Lü Le was attacked is pretty dark, and he didn’t know the attacker. But the organization behind it has already been identified.”

She lowered her voice: “The gang’s called ‘Rashomon’. According to Lü Le, they’re not ordinary street thugs — there’s shadows of the local gangs behind them. They’re trafficking banned stimulants.”

So, basically drug trafficking. Ordinary small fry wouldn’t touch that. But when I think of local gangs, the first thing that comes to mind is Brother Zhu…

Lü Le coughed and said in a hoarse voice, “This isn’t the worst part. Even though the gangs in the Tianping district don’t like each other, if the police move in to wipe them out, the big groups and the small cliques will band together and resist.”

“Uncle Lei Luo’s trying to shake the tree — the monkeys in it won’t just stand by and watch the tree fall. There’ll be moves soon.” I deduced.

Worst case: the gangs all relocate together, and Lü Le’s map of forces becomes useless.

“Exactly.” Lei Meow Meow’s voice came from behind the human wall. Her former subordinates — now fans — shouted “Big Sis!” and cleared a path. She pulled up a chair, straddled it backward, and stared down at Lü Le on the bed.

“From the intel my dad got, the gangs in Tianping are meeting soon. The organizer is the guy surnamed Lu.”

“Surnamed Lu?”

“The leader of ‘Rashomon.’”

“Can’t we infiltrate and learn their plans?” one underling blurted. Meow Meow stood up and smacked him.

“Don’t be stupid. The meeting’s attendees and the time and place are unknown. Likely only the gangs Rashomon trust will be invited.”

I asked, “But if Rashomon is organising it, will the other gangs accept the invite?”

The gang relationships are messy — turf wars, mass brawls are normal.

Meow Meow nodded: “They would, because Lü Le’s notes fell into Rashomon’s hands. Rashomon will probably invite the gangs Lü Le recorded as they have dirt on them, and have more chips against them at the meeting. That’s why if we can’t wipe them out now; Rashomon will only get harder to deal with.”

If they absorbed the loose underground forces in Tianping, they might actually turn into a gang with significant scale.

Lü Le coughed again and analyzed, “Big bro, if you flip it around: if we could find the meeting’s time and place, all the big players would be there. If they all get arrested at once, the small fry will be easy.”

“But how can we find that out? The remaining informants can’t reach that far, and you’re already compromised as the deepest one.”

“No… there’s still a way.” Lü Le turned to look at me.

“‘Rakshasa’ — the Rakshasa gang’s boss — didn’t Miss Lingmeng coerce her into becoming a maid?”