The Night Before School Starts, Someone Is Crying in My Dream

Bai Xiaowei felt that the greatest merit she had in this life was—being lucky.

It was not for any other reason.

It was because she really, really had nothing else to show for herself except for her good luck.

On the day of the magic talent test, she placed her hand on the crystal, and her talent in all five elements ranked dead last.

The examiner’s expression looked like he had just eaten a dish with no salt, and after hesitating for a long time, he finally squeezed out a sentence: “…Mental attribute potential: Pending.”

Bai Xiaowei did not understand what “Mental attribute potential: Pending” meant, but she understood the word “Pending”—it meant they were not sure if they wanted her yet.

Therefore, she had always assumed that the admission letter from Starlight Academy would never come.

As it turned out, it arrived.

That afternoon, Bai Xiaowei was squatting on the second-floor window sill of her family’s grocery store, standing on her tiptoes to try and reach an orange cat basking in the sun outside the window.

Her height of 155 centimeters meant that even on tiptoes, she could not touch the cat’s ears.

She was holding her breath and straining when her mother’s loud, forceful shout came from downstairs—

“Xiaowei!! There is a letter!!”

Bai Xiaowei caught a fright, her foot slipped from the window sill, and she landed flat on her buttocks.

The orange cat yawned outside the window, glanced at her with a look that said “this human is truly hopeless,” and then leisurely hopped away.

She rubbed her buttocks and went downstairs.

Her mother was holding up a white envelope, with a gold-leaf stamp pressed over the seal—seven stars forming a circle with the silhouette of a magic wand in the center.

The school badge of Starlight Girls’ Magic Academy.

“Open it! What are you standing there for!”

Her mother’s eyes were already starting to turn red.

Her father stood up from behind the grocery store counter, still holding the account book pen in his hand, silently staring at that envelope.

Bai Xiaowei opened it.

The handwriting on the admission letter glowed.

It truly glowed—the magic ink flowed across the surface of the paper like liquid silver stardust.

She read through it word by word: Congratulations on being admitted, please report before September 1st, a magic guidance mark is attached with this letter…

The very last line was a handwritten note; the handwriting was different from the printed text above, looking much messier.

[Mental attribute potential: Pending. Admission recommended.]

Bai Xiaowei stared at that line of text for a long time.

“Admission recommended”—it was not “Admission granted,” nor was it “Welcome to the academy.”

It was “Recommended.”

It felt as though the person writing the letter was not entirely sure either, but felt they should give her a chance.

“Are you admitted?”

Her mother’s voice was cautious.

“…Yes. Admitted.”

Her mother instantly burst into tears.

Her father did not cry, but he turned back around to face the counter, scratching his pen against the notebook for a long time without writing anything down.

That night, the grocery store closed an hour earlier than usual.

Her mother made Bai Xiaowei’s favorite braised pork, with a plate piled high like a small mountain.

Her father was as quiet as always, only putting down his chopsticks when they were almost finished eating to say: “Do not embarrass us in front of others.”

“Dad, that is a magic academy, not an imperial palace.”

“It is about the same. They are both places where noble people stay.”

“–I am not going there to be a maid.”

Her father did not reply further.

But when he went to the kitchen to scoop rice, Bai Xiaowei saw him scoop an extra bowl—forgetting that he had already eaten.

At night, Bai Xiaowei packed her luggage in her small room.

To say she was packing was actually her mother packing while she was responsible for saying “no need for this” and “no need for that either” and “Mom, those are winter cotton trousers, it is only August right now.”

Her mother ignored her, folding five pairs of thick socks to stuff inside, and then folded a scarf to place right at the very top.

“What if it gets cold.”

“The academy has heating. Magical heating.”

“Magic is not necessarily reliable either.”

Bai Xiaowei gave up resisting.

She sat by the edge of the bed, watching her mother stuff her suitcase—which was bigger than she was—until it was bulging.

Having grown up in this small town since childhood, the only scenery visible from the second-floor window sill was the sign of the bun shop opposite and that orange cat that always ignored her.

Only when it was time to leave did she realize how much she would miss this small, broken room.

Her mother closed the suitcase, patted the surface of the case, and then turned over to cup Bai Xiaowei’s face, staring at her for a long time.

“Remember to write letters once you reach the academy.”

“I know.”

“Don’t be a picky eater. No matter how delicious pudding is, it cannot be eaten as a proper meal.”

“–How do you know the academy has pudding?”

“A place like that will definitely have it.”

Bai Xiaowei let out a laugh.

Her mother smiled too.

Then her mother stood up, walked to the doorway, and looked back at her once—looking from her hair down to her toes, as if taking her measurements.

Then she shut the door.

The lights went out.

She fished out her diary from the drawer, flipped open a new page, and wrote—

‘Tomorrow I will be a student at the magic academy. I do not know why I was admitted. My talent is the lowest among all elements, and even the examiner hesitated. But since I am going, I will go and take a look. Who knows, maybe I can make some friends.’

She drew a crooked star right after the period.

She closed the notebook and lay down.

Falling asleep was very fast—one of Bai Xiaowei’s hidden talents was being able to fall asleep within five minutes anywhere.

That dream came very suddenly.

It was not the messy kind of images from usual times—the orange cat from the bun shop flying in the sky, or her mother’s braised pork turning into a magic potion.

This time, the dream was very quiet.

She stood inside a white space, with shallow water beneath her feet that rippled in circles when she stepped on it.

There was nothing around her.

Only water, and an endless white.

Then she heard a voice—it was not heard through her ears, but resounded directly inside her brain.

It felt as though a line of text was being read aloud:

[「Book of Memories」—Binding confirmed.]

The water surface vibrated once.

She lowered her head and saw her own reflection shattering into countless fragments, with extremely fast images flashing inside every single piece—too fast to grasp.

She wanted to squat down to take a closer look, but the fragments had already submerged into the water.

The water surface restored its tranquility.

The white space began to recede.

Then she heard one final voice.

Unlike that mechanical prompt voice in her head—this voice was very faint, as if someone was saying a sentence from a very distant place.

The tone was very ordinary, like talking about something that would be done every single day.

But she could not hear the specific words clearly.

There was only the lingering sound of the final word’s ending, and an indescribable sadness—as if the person speaking was crying.

Bai Xiaowei snapped her eyes open.

The sky was not yet bright.

A deep blue morning light peeked through the slit in the curtains.

The sound of her father snoring came from the room next door.

Everything was normal.

A certain place inside her brain—was not quite normal.

She felt an extra thing deep within her consciousness.

It was not a physical object, but felt more like a screen that had been placed inside her brain.

She closed her eyes, and that interface surfaced within the darkness—

[「Book of Memories」 Binding completed]

[Host: Bai Xiaowei]

[Level: LV1]

[Memory Fragments: 100/100]

[Current Ability: Memory Reading (Unlocked)]

Bai Xiaowei lay there for a full three seconds.

Then she made a decision that highly matched her character—she rolled over and pulled the blanket over the top of her head.

‘…Sleep for five more minutes.’

The sky turned bright.

The suitcase was waiting downstairs.

Her mother’s braised pork was still kept warm inside the pot.

Her father smoked his first cigarette of the day at the entrance of the grocery store.

That orange cat squatted on the window sill, watching her push open the bedroom door with its usual arrogant gaze.

Bai Xiaowei carried her bag downstairs, her long silver hair gleaming under the morning sunlight.

The new world was right on the other side of the road.

She did not know what was over there.

Nor did she know what that number on the system interface—100/100—meant.

But her diary was inside the suitcase.

The end of the latest page had a crooked star drawn on it.

–Who knows, maybe I can make some friends.