Chang'an suddenly became flustered and stood up from the long table.

  "Is there anything I can do to help? Or just tell me the truth, and we can figure it out together! Don't worry about dragging me into it!" he said urgently.

  The surrounding customers and staff glanced over at him before looking away again. No one seemed particularly interested in what was happening at our table.

  Seeing Chang'an so panicked and eager made even me feel my face heat up with embarrassment, stirring a wave of guilt and shame.

  But I'd already spun the lie, so now I had to see it through.

  "Don't get so worked up," I said deliberately, adopting a firm and confident tone. "It's not as dangerous as you're imagining. I've got a solid plan in place. Just think of it like I've caught some unusual contagious illness, and for the time being, it's not safe for me to casually hang out or talk with people I know... especially those who've seen that cave like I have."

  "Does it have something to do with witnessing the cave?" he pressed.

  "I can't say more than that," I replied, keeping things mysterious.

  In reality, it didn't—it was all made up from start to finish. I added that patch just in case Chang'an happened to spot me interacting normally with someone else later.

  My plan was straightforward: start by temporarily distancing myself from him in the short term, then gradually extend that period until our relationship naturally faded. If he tried to come find me during that time, I could throw out more excuses, like "Getting too close could make things worse and put us both in danger."

  I felt awful about it, but it was to keep him from getting caught up in this mess.

  Chang'an sat back down, still reluctant, and asked, "Is there really nothing I can do to help?"

  I answered firmly: "Nothing."

  "Oh... alright," he said dejectedly.

  Now it was my turn to stand up.

  "Well, I guess this is goodbye then."

  Looking at his face, thinking this might be our last real conversation, I didn't know what else to say. I just fell back on the same old advice: "You should stop hanging out at nightclubs all the time and take better care of yourself. It's not like you can't get a girlfriend—why not date one of your female classmates properly? That's way better than picking up women at clubs, right?"

  He let out a dry laugh and shot back, "How can you even compare the two? At a club, it's just a straightforward deal—bodies and money, no strings attached. Dating a classmate means dealing with all that messy emotional stuff. I'm not an idiot; why would I walk into that trap?"

  This was a conversation we'd had a dozen times before. I wasn't angry at his rebuttal; it just filled me with an indescribable sense of nostalgia and sadness. After that, I left the place.

  -

  On the way home, I walked with my head down, lost in thought.

  Knowing Chang'an's personality, he wouldn't give up that easily—he was just that stubborn. He might even head back to the fifteenth-floor room later, but the ritual array there had already been erased by Zhu Shi.

  Even if, hypothetically, the array was still there, it was originally a flawed creation with an astronomically low activation chance—nothing to worry about... except, I did need to worry a bit, because Chang'an had triggered it once before when he was alone.

  If I could open the cave because of Alice's favor, was it the same for Chang'an? Was it just because he was close to me and had been affected by Alice's bad-luck aura before?

  At least the array was gone now, eliminating that final risk. I'd felt a twinge of regret over its disappearance, but I still had video footage of it. It wasn't impossible to recreate the entrance to that "space that doesn't exist in reality" somewhere else.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  I picked up two portions of spicy grilled pig trotters on the way and entered my neighborhood. First, I grabbed my package from the delivery locker, then headed to my front door.

  Through the "Firefly" I'd set up at home, I checked on Alice's current state. She was sitting on the sofa as usual, staring blankly out the floor-to-ceiling window at the view, like a captive canary in a gilded cage.

  When she was alone, she'd read books or turn on the TV to learn about modern society through news reports. But zoning out like this was common too—I wasn't sure if she was reminiscing about her life in the apocalyptic world or just enjoying the quiet passage of time like a plant.

  I'd already prototyped a "Firefly" that could store preset commands, so it could monitor Alice's activities even while I slept. But just like how human memories fade over time, the "Firefly" would gradually forget my instructions. To keep it going, I'd need to recalibrate it regularly.

  The preset command for the "Firefly" near Alice was: "Alert me if Alice steps outside the boundaries of this home." And in recent days, she'd stuck to our agreement, never once trying to leave.

  Still, sometimes I'd worry about something else. In the past, I'd avoided tailing Zhu Shi with a "Firefly" because I was afraid he'd detect it. Since Alice was also a "superhuman" with extraordinary powers (at least, that's what I believed), could she sense the "Firefly" too?

  So far, she'd acted like she couldn't detect it. Was that because she really couldn't? Or because her soul was damaged and it impaired her abilities?

  Or... had she known all along that I was monitoring her?

  The thought made my heart race.

  But compared to that, I had a more pressing issue right now.

  Today was the "third day."

  Three days ago, Alice and I had agreed she'd only stay at my place for three days, and now it was that third day. In other words, she'd leave tomorrow, and I still hadn't found a way to convince her to stay longer.

  If it was just extending it by another two or three days, that should be doable. Her recovery wasn't going as well as hoped, and she still couldn't use her "blessing power" yet. But what about after that extension? If possible, I wanted her to choose to stay with me willingly.

  Of course, if she didn't want to, that didn't mean I couldn't keep her here—otherwise, I wouldn't have gone out of my way to say goodbye to Chang'an. As a last resort, I could use force. Even if she teleported away using spatial transfer, it wouldn't matter. I'd already marked her with my "signature" so I could track her location at any time and, if needed, shift into my "second form" to teleport myself right to her.

  Spatial teleportation wasn't unique to Alice and Agent Kong—I could mimic something similar.

  And this "signature" wasn't a "Firefly." Ultimately, the "Firefly" was an external monitoring tool that couldn't penetrate inside her body. So if she used spatial transfer to escape, the "Firefly" couldn't locate her.

  The signature's true nature was a segment of "heat."

  My superpower wasn't just about conjuring flames with my mind; I could also manifest the heat from flames independently, and that heat was an extension of my spirit. The reason I'd been able to track Agent Kong when he fled through the shadow world was because his body still held residual heat from my flames.

  Leaving a heat signature on Alice should, in theory, be easier to detect than a "Firefly." Think about it—if part of your body was warmer than the rest and the heat wouldn't fade for no reason, you'd notice something was off. But thanks to my fight with Agent Kong, it opened up my thinking.

  Why did I have to place the heat signature on the surface? Couldn't I just put it inside their organs?

  Human organs aren't as sensitive to temperature changes as skin, and they're already warm, so a slight increase in heat in one spot wouldn't be noticeable. For extra caution, I placed the heat signature while Alice was asleep, so her body might adapt to it before she woke up, making it even harder to detect.

  I put the heat signature in her stomach—like a little stomach warmer.

  But even with that, I didn't feel it was secure enough.

  I needed one more layer of insurance...

  With that in mind, I opened the door and stepped inside.

  Alice was as sensitive to her surroundings as ever. The moment I opened the door, she reacted, turning her head toward me.

  Then she hopped off the sofa and pattered over to me.

  I held up the plastic bag with the two portions of spicy grilled pig trotters in front of her.

  "You brought food back again? I'm not a kid—stop feeding me all the time. It makes me look like a total glutton," she said, exasperated.

  No, you basically are a kid.

  "Don't you want it? It's really good, but it'll get cold if we wait," I said.

  Even though she'd said that, she still valued food. At my words, she reached out to take one portion of the pig trotters. Then she suddenly hesitated.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "...Nothing."

  She grabbed one portion and glanced at me. Only after I took a bite of mine did she start eating, returning to the sofa with a thoughtful expression.

  I had a pretty good idea what was on her mind. Lately, I'd been doing everything to keep her here, and tomorrow was her departure day.

  If this were right after we'd met, she'd have just bluntly stated her plans. But she seemed to have a low resistance to "kindness from others"... no, that wasn't quite it. Maybe she wasn't great at handling genuine kindness, but until she confirmed if it was real or fake, she'd be extra vigilant.

  Still, she had fairly high expectations for people in a peaceful society, which was why she'd somewhat accepted me. Right now, she was probably figuring out how to say goodbye without hurting my feelings.

  Facing her like this, I walked over to the table, picked up the scissors, and opened the package I'd just picked up from the locker. From inside, I pulled out a finely crafted red bracelet.

  This was the GPS bracelet I'd ordered online.

  With my back to Alice, I paired the red GPS bracelet with my phone, then turned around.

  Alice, drawn by the noise, looked over curiously.

  And I said seriously, "Alice, I have a gift for you."