A Peculiar Lunch and Awakened Memories

Parched and overheated, the two women decided to find a barbecue restaurant on the pedestrian street for lunch, where they also discussed the thief they had just encountered.

[I’m not even nervous, so why are you rushing?]

Li Yue couldn’t help but retort, “Can’t you just speak with your mouth? Do you really have to communicate with me through your chest?”

[Yes.]

A brief response popped up on Mo Linyu’s chest.

As she elegantly twirled her knife and fork, slicing the steak on her plate, Li Yue found herself having to look up at her chest, swallowing the mouthful of beef she had before replying.

[With such a convenient function, of course I must make use of it.]

[This steak is overcooked.]

[Besides, doing this ensures that every word I ‘speak’ is the absolute truth.]

[This restaurant’s chef isn’t even as skilled as Dong Lu.]

[Isn’t that a good thing for you?]

[Hero, eating with your mouth slick with grease is hardly elegant.]

“Your thoughts jump around too much!” Li Yue exclaimed, “And frankly, ordering steak at a barbecue restaurant is a bit questionable!”

Li Yue grumbled, her brow furrowed, then glanced around and lowered her voice.

“And to everyone else, I’m just talking to myself!” she whispered, “Wouldn’t I look like a lunatic??”

[It doesn’t matter; this restaurant’s business is terrible anyway.]

“How can you say something so hurtful?”

[I didn’t ‘say’ it.]

At that moment, they were the only two patrons dining in the barbecue restaurant.

Runzefang wasn’t particularly popular to begin with, and the sweltering summer heat deterred people from craving salty, greasy barbecue, so the slow business was entirely understandable.

“Given your leisurely attitude, I suppose you’ve made some discovery? Can you really find that little thief again?”

[Yes, it’s actually quite simple.]

Mo Linyu picked up a side of fries, dipped it in ketchup, and slowly chewed it.

[The thief is very familiar with the surrounding terrain, which indicates this is her hunting ground.]

“…Hmm, if I hadn’t been able to anticipate her movements, she probably would have shaken me off.”

[Also, she usually wears a hoodie, clearly to avoid being caught on surveillance cameras.]

With a mouthful of juicy barbecue, Li Yue asked, “Oh, so she lives nearby?”

[Not necessarily, but she will definitely return to the scene to look for this piece of clothing.]

Mo Linyu patted the hooded sweatshirt the thief had left behind, which was resting beside her leg.

There was nothing else inside, only the tri-fold wallet Mo Linyu had just bought.

“If I were that thief, there’s no way I’d go back for this hoodie.”

[She doesn’t know we don’t plan to call the police; if it were given to them, it might become a clue for solving the case.]

“Then it’s even less likely she’d come back for it.”

Li Yue picked up a salt-baked potato, part of their meal, and said, “Besides, she’ll hide as soon as she sees us from afar. It won’t be easy to encounter her again.”

[That’s hard to say. Don’t you think our encounter with her this time was a bit coincidental?]

Mo Linyu slowly chewed a piece of lamb chop she had cut, leaving Li Yue to stare intently at her chest to read her thoughts.

[The Goddess once said that souls from different worlds are drawn to each other. We just arrived on this pedestrian street and ran into her; that’s quite a strong mutual attraction, isn’t it?]

“Huh? That’s just a coincidence, isn’t it? Are you going to bring up that ‘destiny’ theory again?”

Li Yue set down her knife and fork.

“Then wouldn’t we just be puppets manipulated by destiny, as you often say?”

[At this stage, there’s nothing we can do. Once this scar is eliminated, we can then consider how to escape the Goddess’s control.]

Destiny, again with destiny?

Li Yue loathed the sensation of being manipulated.

As if to vent her frustration, Li Yue ravenously devoured the American-style barbecue before her, tearing off a piece of bread soaked in beef fat with her greasy hands and stuffing it into her mouth.

Mo Linyu, meanwhile, had already finished her meal. She picked up a wet wipe to clean her mouth, then propped her chin in her hand, observing Li Yue’s eating process.

“Stop staring at me; I can’t eat when you do that.”

But Li Yue disliked being admired in such a way.

“Oh? Are you so bothered by my gaze?”

“Hmph, don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t like being watched while I eat…”

Li Yue reached out her greasy hand, attempting to poke Mo Linyu’s face, but the latter simply leaned back in her seat, deftly dodging the attack, while simultaneously shifting her gaze to the pedestrian street outside the restaurant.

“How awkward. Fine, I won’t look at you then.”

Unable to wipe her hands on Mo Linyu’s face, Li Yue finally asked, “Speaking of which, what’s the situation with your self-perception now? Is the Demon Lord’s personality dominant? Does ‘you’ from this lifetime still exist?”

“Hmm? Do you think I’m experiencing dissociative identity disorder?” Mo Linyu countered with a smile, “I’m perfectly normal. Even with my past life’s memories awakened, I am still myself.”

Li Yue, however, was not entirely convinced.

“You only have a little over a decade of memories from this life… no, human infants don’t have memories… How many years did you live as the Demon Lord in your past life? From what I know, you should be over two hundred years old, shouldn’t you?”

“Oh, you’re so annoying.”

Mo Linyu raised a hand to partially cover her face, speaking with a hint of shyness or perhaps jest, “Even if my past self is gone, one shouldn’t discuss a lady’s age in front of her, should they?”

Yet, Li Yue’s tone remained serious.

“I’m not joking. I want to know if the ‘you’ of this lifetime has been taken over by ‘you’?”

“Hmm…”

Mo Linyu, however, wore an amused expression.

[So you’re concerned about me, right?]

[Should I be a little happy about this?]

Under Li Yue’s silent gaze, Mo Linyu continued, “Actually, the process of awakening my memories wasn’t as dramatic as you might imagine. I didn’t suddenly transform into another person; it was merely an addition of a period of experiences to my existing self.”

“That’s hardly as simple as ‘a period of time’, is it?”

“How to put it~ It’s as if, in that moment, I suddenly transmigrated to another world, became the Demon Lord, lived for hundreds of years, was killed by you, and then transmigrated back… Hmm, just like you after completing your mission.”

Being used as a comparison made Li Yue’s lips twitch in displeasure.

“Tell me more about what happened when your memories awakened.”

“Two days ago… on the afternoon of the first day I came to find you, Han Xiaoyu and I were in the student council office attending the last regular meeting before the summer break.”

Mo Linyu rested her chin in her hand, seemingly lost in thought.

“The school assigned us the summer task of persuading truant students to return to school. But as you know, I wasn’t genuinely keen on joining the student council; I was just pushed into it by my classmates because of my popularity~”

“…No, how would someone who skips school like me possibly know about that?”

Li Yue could roughly guess that Mo Linyu was the school beauty; with her looks and outgoing personality, she seemed destined to be popular.

However, Li Yue simply refused to acknowledge it, hence her sour expression.

Mo Linyu continued her narration.

“So, as usual, I was dozing off at my desk, not paying attention to the meeting’s content, when suddenly a cold sweat-inducing, sharp pain erupted in my chest. The scar appeared with it, and memories from my past life surged forth like a tide… Strangely, these memories didn’t feel unfamiliar or repulsive; instead, it was like recovering something long lost. I clearly recalled everything about being the Demon Queen in my past life, including the moment you killed me.”

In response, Li Yue awkwardly rubbed her nose.

“You don’t need to feel embarrassed. I’ve never resented you for it; it was part of the prophecy.”

Li Yue retorted, “I didn’t kill you because of that prophecy.”

She had resolved to defeat the Demon Lord for revenge, only for it all to be attributed to a prophecy in the end.

This left Li Yue feeling as though all her efforts and suffering had been overlooked, as if she had unknowingly become an actor on a stage.

She detested that feeling.

“Mm, I understand how you feel.”

Mo Linyu said dismissively, then added, “In any case, I still remember everything from this life—my father, school, friends. My past life’s memories have only made me more complete… Hmm, wait…”

However, she seemed to recall something and fell into thought.

[When I was in the student council office, the stinging sensation in my chest never stopped.]

[It wasn’t until I left school with Xiaoyu that the pain subsided, meaning…]

Li Yue looked at Mo Linyu’s chest, understanding her thoughts.

“In school… among the teachers and students of Tianyi High, there’s also a reincarnated soul from another world?”