Chapter 61: Assessment

Chapter 61: Assessment

Yu Sheng and Irene brought Hu Li downstairs.

The next urgent matter was arranging a place for the demon fox girl to sleep.

“Right now there’s one empty room on the second floor and one on the first floor,” Yu Sheng said while standing in the second-floor corridor, pointing at the door opposite his own room. “This room is across from mine. Since nobody’s been living there, it’s temporarily being used to store some odds and ends, but it’s still fairly clean. The empty room downstairs doesn’t have anything piled up in it, but it also has no furniture, and it hasn’t been cleaned in quite a while. There’s also a basement, but although it’s spacious, it’s very damp and not suitable for living in.”

“However Benefactor arranges it is fine,” Hu Li said with a nod. She casually pulled out a biscuit from one of her tails and nibbled at it in small bites. “No matter what, it’ll be better than the valley.”

Yu Sheng’s gaze involuntarily fell upon the demon fox girl’s cluster of fluffy tails. Even now, he could not figure out how she managed to hide things inside them.

Just as he could not figure out how Hu Li’s tails emerged from her clothes. The tails seemed to pass directly through her clothing like phantoms, requiring no holes in her trousers, yet when they swept around, they occasionally bumped into surrounding objects, making it obvious that they possessed physical substance.

It could only be said that demon foxes were truly amazing.

“What’s that room for?” Hu Li suddenly seemed to notice something else and raised a hand to point at the door at the end of the corridor.

“That one... theoretically, it’s Irene’s room,” Yu Sheng replied, following the direction of her finger. His expression became slightly odd. “But that room has a small problem right now...”

“A small problem?” Hu Li asked curiously, pulling half a packet of instant noodles from her tail and stuffing the compressed noodle block into her mouth, crunching away as she spoke.

“The situation inside the room isn’t very stable after the door is opened. I still need to observe it for a while,” Yu Sheng said. Seeing Hu Li continuously pulling things out of her tails, he finally could not stop the twitch at the corner of his eye. “...Just how much stuff did you cram in there?”

“After I finished bathing and passed through the living room, I put all the food Benefactor gave me in there,” Hu Li said, cradling the instant noodles with a satisfied smile. “I didn’t touch anything else.”

Then she looked toward the room at the end of the corridor and remarked very seriously:

“Benefactor’s cave abode is very magical.”

Yu Sheng stared blankly at her mass of tails, thinking that she was far more magical than his “cave abode”... How exactly had she stuffed that huge pile of things in there? Was this some kind of magical pocket from a round blue robot?!

He pondered it for quite a while before finally setting those questions aside for the moment and pointing at the room opposite his own.

“Then you’ll stay in this room for now. Other than the pile of miscellaneous junk, it already has furniture. Later, come with me and we’ll move all that clutter down to the basement... I’ll also find you a clean set of bedding.”

Hu Li immediately nodded happily.

“Okay!”

Beside them, Irene eagerly joined in.

“Yay! Moving stuff! Moving stuff! I love tidying up!”

“You should stop joining in the excitement blindly,” Yu Sheng said, lowering his head to glance at the little doll (66.6 cm / ~2.2 ft). “You’re not even taller than a storage box. If you try carrying things and roll down the stairs, your arms and legs will break and I’ll have to repair you.”

The instant Irene heard that, she flew into a rage. Charging over, she jumped with all her strength and kicked Yu Sheng directly in the knee.

“Yu Sheng, damn you!!”

Yu Sheng let out a howl and jumped far higher than Irene had.

Hu Li watched the scene with some confusion, but quickly realized that this was merely the friendly daily interaction between Benefactor and Irene. The brief concern on her face transformed into a cheerful smile.

Then she pulled a sausage out of her tail.

Deep within the old city district, inside an ordinary-looking private clinic, Lin Yi, dressed in a white coat and wearing dark brown shoulder-length hair, was frowning tightly as she examined the right arm of the girl before her.

Little Red Riding Hood sat opposite Doctor Lin in a sleeveless T-shirt, her arm resting on the table. Her dark red coat, now missing one sleeve, hung from a coat rack near the door.

“Doctor Lin, is it serious?” Little Red Riding Hood finally asked after the doctor remained silent for a long time.

“This time, it isn’t serious. But your overall situation is serious,” Lin Yi replied, raising her head. A trace of irritation showed in her eyes. “How many times has this been already? Your injuries never stop. At this rate, the aftereffects of your aberration will have almost no breaks between episodes. Neither your body nor your mind will have enough time to recover. This time is fine, but sooner or later something major will happen.”

“I know, but the situation was really urgent at the time. There was no other choice,” Little Red Riding Hood said, her gaze shifting slightly. “We were being hunted by an entity above Danger Level Three, and it had tendencies toward mental contamination. Making it out alive and intact was already a miracle...”

Lin Yi gave the girl a long look but said nothing further. She simply picked up a sharp scalpel from beside her and, without hesitation, sliced across her own arm.

In the next instant, a matching wound appeared at the same location on Little Red Riding Hood’s right arm.

Black-red blood immediately poured from the cut, but it seemed to be absorbed by some invisible force and vanished in the blink of an eye.

The black patterns covering the girl’s arm rapidly faded and dispersed.

“Thank you, Doctor Lin...” Little Red Riding Hood lowered her head and expressed her thanks sincerely. “Once the Special Operations Bureau settles the bill, I’ll transfer the consultation fee to you.”

“Forget it. This time, consider it a favor. No charge,” Lin Yi sighed. She looked helplessly at the girl opposite her. After hesitating for a few seconds, she continued, “...I know you’re their ‘parent,’ but you should leave yourself some money too. Look how thin you’ve become.”

“Got it, got it.”

Little Red Riding Hood curled her lips, putting on an impatient expression.

“You say that every time.” Lin Yi shook her head and casually tossed the scalpel into a porcelain tray beside her. Adjusting her posture in the chair, she continued, “Since you’re here today, let’s do your assessment early. When was the last time you ‘dreamed’?”

Little Red Riding Hood immediately adjusted her posture as well, her expression becoming serious.

“Three days ago.”

“In the dream, was it from a human perspective or a wolf’s perspective?”

“Two-thirds of the time as a human, one-third as a wolf. For one brief moment, I was the Hunter.”

“The Hunter shot whom?”

“The Wolf.”

“Good. That sounds fairly stable,” Lin Yi said. She pulled a form from a nearby cabinet and took a ballpoint pen from the holder on her desk. She scribbled on the paper, but no ink came out. She grabbed another pen, and it still failed to write. Immediately, she frowned. “...It has to be those two new assistants. Every one of them writes as if they’re carving inscriptions into stone...”

After rummaging through the pocket of her white coat, she finally found a pen that worked and began rapidly recording notes on the form.

As she wrote, she continued asking questions.

“Did you see Grandmother at the end? Was she human or wolf?”

“...A wolf.”

“Looking at your expression... you got caught?”

“I got caught. But that part of the memory is very chaotic. The last thing I remember is escaping from the forest together with the wolf pack.”

Lin Yi stopped writing. Her brows knitted together as she tapped the desk irritably with her pen.

“Then there’s still some risk. Take a Type-2 Intervention Agent when you leave. Inject it intravenously before going to sleep tonight. I’ll put the cost on your tab.”

“Okay.”

After that, Lin Yi asked several more questions in succession, and Little Red Riding Hood answered them all honestly.

This was the assessment she had to undergo every month.

Including her, every member of Fairy Tale was required to undergo this kind of assessment regularly.

Within the Boundary Zone, there were actually many doctors capable of conducting such assessments and providing the corresponding treatment, but Doctor Lin was the one she knew best.

The lengthy questionnaire finally came to an end.

At the bottom of the form, Doctor Lin wrote the conclusion, “Temporarily Stable, Observation Required,” and let out a long breath.

Little Red Riding Hood saw the conclusion at the bottom of the form. Although she tried to maintain a calm expression, a trace of relief still appeared in her smile.

“So you do know how to worry?” Lin Yi glanced at her. “If you’re really that scared, then protect yourself properly. Don’t end up like the previous Little Red Riding Hood...”

She suddenly stopped speaking.

Little Red Riding Hood also fell silent.

For a time, the clinic was filled with oppressive quiet.

After an unknown length of time, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly felt warmth on her hand.

Doctor Lin had placed her hand over hers.

“Little Red Riding Hood, you’re different from the others, at least different from every other Fairy Tale member I’ve met,” the young aberration doctor said, staring directly into the girl’s eyes with a serious and solemn expression. “Your wolves, the wolves you tamed in the beginning, are very close to you. Although I can’t sense them directly the way you can, I can tell that they’re willing to protect you.

“So your chances of successfully reaching adulthood, and even successfully passing through Molting, are higher than anyone else’s. But precisely because of that, you can’t squander this gift just because your condition is more stable than others’. You need to find a way to survive first. You need to live longer. Do you understand?”

Little Red Riding Hood remained silent.

After a long while, she finally nodded gently.

“...Mm.”

Within the shadows beside the girl, several pairs of dim green eyes quietly appeared.

One pair moved closer, and a tongue extended from the darkness, gently licking her fingertips.

Lin Yi sensed the change within the shadows, but she did not look in that direction. Instead, she rose from her chair and walked toward a refrigerated cabinet in the corner of the room.

From inside, she retrieved a vial of medicine that emitted a faint glow.

“Here, a Type-2 Intervention Agent. This just happens to be the last one left, so I’ll charge you half price. Once you get paid, settle your account quickly. You already owe me several thousand.”

“Thank you, Doctor Lin.”