As soon as Shen Sixing finished making his announcement, he raised the brightly colored feather duster and started chasing Shen Yi.
The moment Shen Yi realized something was wrong, she turned and ran.
She was fast, darting between the furniture in the living room like a slippery little fish. She rounded the sofa, crawled beneath the coffee table, stepped onto a stool and leaped onto the dining table, then slid down the other side and charged toward the bedroom.
Shen Sixing ran after her, feather duster raised in his hand.
“Stop right there! Do you have any respect for me as your father?” he shouted.
The two of them chased each other up and down the house, but Shen Sixing was nowhere near as nimble as she was.
Shen Yi could easily grab the railing and slide down, landing steadily on the floor. She planted her hands on her hips, looking especially smug.
Shen Sixing leaned over the second-floor railing and looked down. A moment later, he let out a howl of helpless fury that sounded almost like a drawn-out “ah.”
When Wen Ya opened the door and came in, she saw Shen Sixing standing upstairs with a feather duster that had lost half its feathers, screaming in despair.
She hung her coat by the door, changed into slippers, and walked to the center of the living room. She looked to the left, then to the right.
“What’s going on?”
Shen Yi answered first. “He’s trying to hit me!”
Almost at the same time, Shen Sixing spoke up, his voice weak with exhaustion. “She’s always causing trouble for me. It’s so annoying! My code! My work! My life! She’s ruined everything!”
He looked genuinely aggrieved. The few remaining feathers on the duster drooped along with him, as though wilting in sympathy.
Wen Ya looked at the two of them.
One was a child.
The other was a grown-up child.
Together, they weren’t even as old as her shoe size.
She sighed, clapped her hands, and gave them a helpless smile.
“Stop arguing, stop arguing. Shen Sixing, you’re not the only one whose life has been turned upside down. Whose hasn’t?”
It didn’t matter whether someone was a notorious assassin who had once made the world tremble, or a villain capable of turning clouds into rain with a flip of the hand. Once they had a family, all those old tales of romance and adventure became nothing more than empty talk.
Wen Ya ignored the odd father and daughter and began opening the lunch boxes she had brought.
The sweet-and-sour ribs released a tangy, sugary aroma that instantly filled the entire living room.
She urged them, “Go wash your hands. It’s time to eat.”
“…Got it, Mom!”
“Okay, honey.”
“…”
This kind of mundane yet ordinary life continued to play out in different ways every day.
Sometimes the three of them would curl up on the sofa and watch a tearjerker about youthful romance with Wen Ya.
Usually, Shen Sixing would fall asleep halfway through.
Then Shen Yi would slump against his shoulder and fall asleep too, leaving Wen Ya to angrily watch the rest of the movie by herself.
When the two of them finally woke up and pretended nothing had happened, Wen Ya would grab a pillow and smack them both flat on the sofa before storming off.
She would even swear, “I’m never asking either of you to watch with me again.”
But whenever she got bored, she would still drag them both over to watch another one.
Sometimes, when this impoverished assassin couple had no jobs to take and the household happened to be short on money, Shen Sixing would urge Shen Yi to go to her grandparents’ house and hit them up for some spending money.
As a result, Shen Yi would spend more than ten days every year at her grandparents’ place, mooching off them.
…
This was Shen Yi’s third year in this world.
She was eleven years old.
Shen Yi was woken by the light shining in through the window. For some reason, winter always seemed longer here.
It began snowing in November and continued until early April, when it finally decided to stop.
Shen Yi had seen winters when the snow piled as high as the windowsill. She had also seen icicles hanging from the eaves, some as long as a person’s arm.
Winter was the season that had left the deepest impression on her here.
Today, sunlight streamed in through the window, but the winter sun had no warmth to it. It was pale and bleak.
Shen Yi rubbed her eyes, washed up, and went downstairs in her slippers.
The moment she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw Wen Ya and Shen Sixing in the living room.
The two of them were standing there in their pajamas, their hair tousled.
“Good morning, Mom and Dad.”
She greeted them as she always did, but she received no response.
Instead, the husband and wife exchanged a strange look, their eyebrows lifting slightly before they both turned toward Shen Yi.
Their expressions were utterly unfamiliar, completely devoid of even the slightest trace of recognition.
An eerie silence settled over the room.
Wen Ya stared at her in confusion for a moment. “Where did this little girl come from?”
A probing glint passed through Shen Sixing’s eyes. He crouched down, tapped his fingers against his knee, and stared directly at Shen Yi.
“How did you get in here? Can you pick locks? But this is an electronic lock.”
A strange child had somehow appeared upstairs in their home, and both of them were utterly baffled.
Fortunately, neither of them was what anyone would call normal. Otherwise, any ordinary person faced with such a supernatural situation would have screamed in terror.
The questions from the couple, one after another, left Shen Yi completely frozen.
In an instant, an overwhelming sense of absurdity poured over her like a bucket of ice water.
She stood on the last step of the staircase and blinked. At first, she thought they were joking with her.
But there was no reason for them to play such a pointless prank.
The confusion on Wen Ya’s face was genuine.
Shen Sixing’s gaze was equally direct and scrutinizing.
Shen Yi stood there in a daze, feeling as though the stairs beneath her feet were swaying. Her fingertips dug sharply into her palm as her thoughts twisted into a tangled mess.
Desperately, she asked, “You don’t remember me?”
Shen Sixing gave a short, amused laugh. “Should we remember you?”
Wen Ya looked at her too. There was curiosity in her eyes, but nothing else.
She was looking at Shen Yi the same way she might look at any strange child on the side of the road.
Shen Yi turned and ran into the living room, then hurried to her own bedroom. There, she discovered that every trace she had left behind had vanished.
Her toothbrush was gone. The clothes that had filled her wardrobe had disappeared without a trace.
Even the height marks she had drawn in pencil on the back of the bedroom door were gone. The wall was spotless, as if it had never been touched.
“What are you looking for? Can you leave our house now, little girl?” Shen Sixing watched her rummage around in astonishment, surprised that he had been patient enough not to throw her out.
His smile was still gentle, but that gentleness was merely a thin layer of false warmth.
Shen Yi took one step back, then another. Once she realized that something was truly wrong, she could do nothing but turn and leave for the time being.
Inside the house, Wen Ya said, “How did she get in, anyway?”
Shen Sixing replied unhurriedly, “I don’t know. But it’s strange that you didn’t kill her.”
Given Wen Ya’s level of vigilance in the past, she might have attacked the instant the child appeared in their living room.
Strangely, she had shown no particularly intense reaction from beginning to end.
“I feel like I know her.” Wen Ya sounded as though she were struggling to recall something. “Do I know…”
She stopped abruptly.
“What was I about to say?” Wen Ya asked.
“Weren’t we going to make breakfast?” Shen Sixing replied.
“I think so,” Wen Ya said, her voice touched by a faint daze. “But weren’t we just talking about something—children?”
“No, we weren’t,” Shen Sixing said, sounding bewildered. “When did we ever talk about children?”
“...”
Shen Yi ran out.
She stood on the steps outside the apartment building as snow settled on her shoulders, flake by flake, melting at the slightest touch.
—Great.
She had been here for nearly three years, and now she had achieved the feat of ending up homeless.
Aside from the clothes she was wearing and the little box she had brought from the future, nothing in this world belonged to her anymore.
Shen Yi didn’t particularly feel that this was tragic.
It was just that the situation was bizarre.
Everyone in this timeline had forgotten she existed.
But being forgotten had its advantages. Even if she robbed someone in broad daylight, a few minutes later, they would forget what she had done.
That meant Shen Yi could do whatever she wanted in this timeline.
The system’s response was: [A traveler who does not belong to this timeline being forgotten is only natural.]
