It was like watching an old VHS tape—static buzzing, flickers of white noise, and then, finally, grainy black-and-white film gradually blooming into color and sound.
Fu Changxun squinted as the image around him slowly sharpened.
“Ah Xun.”
Dong Zi hadn’t let go of his hand the entire time, gripping it tight—afraid they’d be separated in the timestream.
“I’m here,” Fu Changxun replied, patting the back of his hand. “Still together. But I have no idea where we are.”
They weren’t in an open space—it looked more like a cramped janitor’s closet, cluttered with brooms, dustpans, and cleaning supplies. It was narrow and dimly lit.
Dong Zi shoved at the door, but it didn’t budge. Most likely locked from the outside.
Just as they were considering kicking it down, someone outside jangled a set of keys and clicked the lock open. Fu Changxun reflexively moved to hide—but the person brushed right past them, grabbed a broom, and walked off.
Dong Zi pulled Fu Changxun along, stepping out after the janitor—but the other person gave them no reaction at all.
Even the students outside in their school uniforms didn’t spare them a glance, as if they were completely invisible.
Fu Changxun frowned. “They can’t see us?”
They’d walked right through the corridor, clear as day, yet not a single NPC reacted. No way this was just everyone being unusually chill.
That left only one possibility: to these NPCs, they didn’t exist. They were transparent.
Which was… both convenient and annoying.
On the one hand, they could roam freely without interference. On the other, they couldn’t communicate with any of the local NPCs.
So how were they supposed to help the bullied student? They couldn’t intervene. Couldn’t even talk to him. All they could do was watch helplessly.
“Screw it. We’ll deal with things as they come,” Fu Changxun said, somehow managing to console himself. “Worst case, we jump back and ask for help.”
So what if they had to hop through time a few more times? They’d get used to it.
The two of them wandered the school building for a long while but couldn’t find the boy.
Just before class resumed, they heard a burst of laughter coming from one of the classrooms—raucous and loud.
They followed the sound and saw a boy’s desk had been overturned. The student knelt beside it, trying to pick up his things, crying as he did.
It was Cheng En.
He was curled up by the wall, tears streaming down his face.
The other students were laughing.
That brutal contrast—his despair, their delight—marked the beginning of Cheng En’s slow walk toward tragedy.
“He’s still in the emotional abuse stage,” Fu Changxun said, observing Cheng En’s face and arms through the window. “No visible injuries yet. Good—we got here in time.”
But the mockery from the other students was already eroding him. It would make him more withdrawn. And that, in turn, would escalate the bullying.
Cheng En gathered his books as the teacher for the next class walked in.
The teacher took one look at the mess, swept his sharp gaze across the room, and said only: “Be ready before class next time. Don’t waste everyone’s time.”
It sounded like he was scolding the whole class—but in truth, his tone was directed squarely at Cheng En.
The bully who had laughed the loudest was now smirking with pride.
He was the son of someone important—someone high up.
Cheng En, on the other hand, was just a regular kid. It was obvious whose side the teacher would take.
Normally, only the homeroom teacher—the female teacher from before—would protect Cheng En. But she couldn’t be around all the time. And whenever she wasn’t… the bullying only got worse.
Cheng En was already used to it. Silently, he set his desk upright and sat back down on a chair missing one leg, ready for class.
And then—he glanced up.
By accident, he spotted two unfamiliar figures in school uniforms outside the window. He’d never seen them before.
He looked around. No one else seemed to notice them.
Not even a flicker of recognition. No surprise. No reaction.
And in this classroom—hell, in any high school classroom—just a bird outside the window could get everyone’s attention.
Something wasn’t right.
Cheng En glanced at the two of them again, panic creeping up his spine. The taller one… he didn’t look like a student at all. That school uniform on him looked wildly out of place.
“You can see us?” the other one suddenly noticed Cheng En’s gaze and pressed closer to the glass, asking directly.
Cheng En was terrified. He didn’t dare respond, much less acknowledge them.
Were they ghosts? Or some kind of superpowered beings?
Dong Zi studied Cheng En closely but didn’t spot anything off. “Can he really see us? Why isn’t he reacting now? He’s not even answering you…”
“He’s faking it,” Fu Changxun said with a soft chuckle. “Look at him picking at his eraser—nervous as hell. He probably thinks we’re bad guys. Or ghosts.”
Separated by the classroom window, Cheng En couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.
But he knew they were talking about him. That only made him more anxious. When the teacher called on him, he completely froze, his mind a blank as he stood up.
The teacher, already biased toward the children of the elite, was furious. Without hesitation, she kicked him out of the classroom.
“If you’re not going to pay attention, then go stand outside!”
Cheng En could only numbly pick up his textbook and walk out to the corridor.
Which meant… he now stood face-to-face with the two people no one else could see.
Fu Changxun walked up and waved a hand in front of his face. “Alright, drop the act. I know you can see us. We’re—”
His eyes glinted mischievously as he launched into a half-true, half-fabricated story: “We’re from the future. You died, and you sent us a commission to come back and help you dodge every danger, so you could live to the age you’re supposed to reach.”
It was a little over-the-top, sure—but for a freshly minted high schooler, it wasn’t entirely implausible.
Cheng En flinched. Did that mean… his future self had died young?
Still, he said nothing. Fu Changxun had no choice but to keep the act going. “Not interested, huh? Fine by me. We already got our commission fee.”
“Oh, right—almost forgot to tell you. The one who paid our commission… was your homeroom teacher.”
Dong Zi: “…”
There was no such thing as a commission fee. At most, the female teacher had promised them a lead on solving the ghost story.
But Cheng En instantly looked up. His homeroom teacher had always been kind to him. If she’d paid on his behalf… he couldn’t let her down.
And besides—how did these two know…
“Willing to ‘see’ us now?” Fu Changxun smiled. “Don’t overthink it. We told you—we’re from the future. Of course we know what’s going to happen to you. I even know you keep a diary. That your teacher told you to bear with being bullied. And that the kid who bullies you the worst started all this just because you turned in the wrong workbook.”
That ridiculous reason was no real justification—just a convenient excuse for a bully.
The more Cheng En listened, the more miserable he felt. “I believe you. But… how are you going to help me? How… did I die?”
Fu Changxun looked over at Dong Zi, who answered bluntly, “They beat you to death.”
Cheng En was stunned. “They beat me to death?”
“Yeah. Later on, they started getting physical. You were too weak to fight back, and you couldn’t stand up to them. One day during a group beating, they cracked your skull open.”
Fu Changxun said it in an offhand, almost cheerful tone. “And just like that—you died. Your teacher was devastated.”
Clutching the back of his head as if it had really been split open, Cheng En’s entire worldview was rocked. It took him ages to choke out one sentence: “Give me a minute… I need to process.”
Fu Changxun and Dong Zi, understanding, wandered off to give him space.
“He’ll believe us,” Fu Changxun said lazily. “He doesn’t have any other choice.”
If it had been a normal student, suddenly seeing two people no one else could see, they might have dismissed it as a hallucination and tried to run. But Cheng En had been the target of silent abuse and cruel pranks for a long time.
His nerves had been stretched thin for months. Now, two people appeared out of nowhere claiming to have come across time to save him—there was a 99% chance he’d believe them.
Dong Zi nodded, deeply agreeing. “Yeah. If you’d told me something like that back then, I…”
I would’ve fallen for you right then and there.
But that wasn’t something he could say aloud. So he changed his words: “I definitely would’ve believed you.”
Fu Changxun remembered how Dong Zi had once been ostracized for being short, and couldn’t help but smile. “If I’d known, I would’ve told you the moment I saw you: ‘You’re gonna grow to be 1.9 meters tall—half a head taller than me.’”
Both of them burst into silly, spontaneous laughter, like a pair of lovable fools.
Falling in love really was strange. Suddenly, things that had never been funny before became hilarious. Boring things became fun—just because someone was there to share it with you. To mess around with.
Fu Changxun kicked a pebble as they strolled down the school path, side by side.
He added, “We can only solve the third ghost story in this timeline. Which means… maybe the other ghost stories are scattered across other timelines too.”
“You mean… this place is a parallel timeline as well? And we don’t even know how many timelines are layered into this instance?” Dong Zi turned his head toward him.
Fu Changxun nodded. “Exactly. Which means we don’t really exist here. Only those who are connected to us—like Cheng En, through his link to that teacher you mentioned—can break through the restrictions and see us. We can’t communicate with other NPCs. Can’t even touch them. Which means… if we want to help Cheng En survive that fatal bullying, it’s all on him.”
Still, weren’t they technically ‘external support’?
In other words, they could teach this kid how to fight back against school violence.
And if he could escape the bullying without them needing to lift a finger, that would be the best possible outcome.
Fu Changxun mulled it over, then said, “Ah Zi, maybe it’s time you started teaching him how to fight. Got any crash courses?”
Dong Zi: “……”
There was no crash course, but there was a drill-sergeant-level coach.
Standing outside the classroom door, Cheng En suddenly shivered. He huddled deeper into his uniform jacket, completely unaware of the brutal training that was about to descend upon him.
