Chapter 111: So Unfair, I Was Here First
The sky darkened as the blood-red evening glow spilled from the western dome, blanketing the entire street.
The once-busy street gradually quieted down, and the crowd that had packed it during the day thinned out.
Although this era already had the early stages of electricity, technological development had nearly come to a halt since the Calamity Era, and nighttime illumination remained inconvenient—far from the ever-bright, sleepless cities of the modern world.
Only now did the city begin to truly live up to its name... the feeling of a "Netherworld."
Helen walked along the street, holding a skewer of dumplings in her left hand and a bag of pancakes in her right, nibbling on them in small bites.
Behind her, Rast carried the grilled fish she hadn’t finished earlier.
"How is it? The street food stalls taste okay?"
Rast asked.
The next moment, he saw a neat line of delicate ice-blue handwriting appear on his collar: "This skewer of dumplings is a little burnt, but the pancakes are decent."
With the thinning crowd around them, the risk of others noticing the strange occurrences dropped significantly, so Helen and Rast became more relaxed in their means of communication.
Rast’s collar, cuffs, palms, pant legs... all became places where Helen scribbled her notes.
There was even one time when Rast noticed her quietly drawing a little turtle on the back of his hand. When she realized he had seen it, she hastily tried to wipe it away.
"In any case, they’re all delicious."
The delicate blue text on his collar paused for a moment.
"Better than the food in the palace OvO."
"Didn’t expect such a high rating from Your Majesty. That’s quite an honor for them."
Rast smiled. "But if that’s the case, I’m afraid the palace chefs will have their hearts shattered..."
"After all, they’ve spent decades perfecting their dishes. Top-notch cooking and ingredients... and yet, in Your Majesty’s eyes, they can’t beat street food."
Helen gently shook her head: "I’m just tired of it."
She finished the last dumpling on the skewer, and as she looked at the now-empty stick, a flicker of lingering desire flashed through her violet eyes: "These are things I’ve never eaten before."
"They taste new and special QwQ."
Through their time together, and Rast’s patient guidance, Helen’s ability to communicate through writing had improved significantly.
No longer was she like before, only able to spit out a few simplistic words or phrases, forcing others to play fill-in-the-blanks to guess what she meant... now she could communicate like a normal person, forming complete sentences.
Under Rast’s tutelage, Helen even learned how to use emoji faces and emoticons, though she still wasn’t very fluent with them, often producing hilariously mismatched results.
She carefully picked up the empty skewer and solemnly held it in her hand, grouping it with the other used sticks and empty packaging.
Back in the palace, Helen had always been the type to eat and toss, with Rast or other maids cleaning up after her.
But on this outing, Rast had told her that as a citizen of the royal city, she had to take care of her own trash outside and that littering was irresponsible toward the city’s environment and sanitation.
So for the whole day, Helen had been cautious, collecting all her empty wrappers to bring back to the palace for proper disposal.
"But why..."
Helen finished her dumplings and took another bite of her pancake. A hint of confusion flickered in her violet eyes:
"That pancake stall owner... he messed up five batches of ingredients before finally getting one right."
She tilted her head, a strand of ice-blue hair falling over her forehead: "Was the boss sick? At this rate, he’s going to lose money, right? (╯°口°)╯"
"Maybe. Besides being sick, he might’ve just gotten cheated on."
Rast nodded, ignoring the off-topic emoji: "But who knows, maybe that pancake guy is actually an undercover cop on a secret mission, and the stall is just his cover?"
"So that’s it."
"That pancake guy is amazing Σ(°△°|||)"
A trace of surprise flashed through Helen’s eyes as she studied the pancake in her hand seriously.
Seeing she didn’t dwell on the topic, Rast secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
All the street food stall owners were last-minute recruits—if they were actually skilled, now that would be suspicious.
Otherwise, why did food stalls always show up perfectly on time whenever Helen and Rast were shopping and happened to get hungry?
Still, for such a simple task like making pancakes... someone who failed five times in a row had to be a rare talent.
Rast seriously doubted how that guy had ever passed the Shoreguard recruitment test.
...
The sun gradually dipped below the horizon, and boundless darkness rose to consume the searing twilight.
They continued walking down the street dyed red by the setting sun, their slanted shadows stretching endlessly with the light.
"Circus, opera house, adventurers’ tavern, detective agency... we’ve hit all those already. The next stop must be the Fortune-Telling Club, right?"
Rast recalled the first half of Chronicles of the Silver Wings, that travelogue where the male and female leads toured the continent together.
The mermaid island of the deep sea, the floating island in the sky, the land of tiny people, the candy city where all buildings were made of chocolate... these were fantasy locations out of fairy tales.
Naturally, they couldn’t visit any of them for real.
Even with the abilities of the Shoreguards, it wasn’t possible to conjure up a floating island out of thin air.
But aside from those, all the real-world locations had been visited by Helen and Rast today, even if most were shoddy versions hastily assembled by the Shoreguard team.
And now, only the Fortune-Telling Club remained.
Earlier, Rast had discreetly passed along a code, listing all the possible Chronicles of the Silver Wings spots the Queen might want to see to his fellow Shoreguards. But he wasn’t sure if they had managed to finish the setup in time...
He could tell his teammates were already worn out.
Quite a few places had shown slip-ups earlier, and it was only thanks to Rast’s quick thinking that things were smoothed over.
Now that night had fallen, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest returning to the palace.
With that thought... Rast noticed the girl beside him suddenly stop in her tracks again.
She slightly tilted her head up, gazing at a sign not far away that read “Astrologer & Fortune-Teller.”
"The shop is about to close."
"But since you're the final customer, I’ll offer one free reading."
"Those wishing to be read, please enter. Others may wait outside."
A clear female voice called from the shadows behind the curtain, pleasant to the ear.
But to Rast, that voice sounded far too familiar—
Grey?
According to the shadow servant, he had instructed Grey to remain at the rear command center on standby.
So, had the plan changed on the fly, or did Grey volunteer to come?
Still, a fortune-teller... a long-ranked position in the "Fate" sequence... that was Grey’s original specialty.
Although Grey’s rank was negligible compared to the current Queen of the Netherworld, Helen.
The thing with "Fate" was that it was mysterious and defied logic—a long-ranked sequence that couldn’t be measured by common standards.
Long before Grey became a full Transcendent, she had subconsciously activated her fate powers... and managed to eternally trap a Crimson Moon Evil God pollutant in overlapping space-time.
If not for Rast and Shiltina breaking the endless loop in Frozenwater Town, even regular third- or fourth-rank Transcendents would have been lost in it forever.
That was the terrifying uniqueness of the "Fate" long-ranked sequence.
If Grey’s timing, condition, and inspiration aligned... there was no reason she couldn’t glimpse into the sixth rank, or even legendary fates.
As Rast pondered rapidly, he felt a soft hand tug gently at his right hand.
Looking up, he saw Helen already staring at him with eyes full of anticipation and excitement.
Come to think of it, the Fortune-Telling Club was an important location in Chronicles of the Silver Wings.
Rast nodded.
And the next moment, the girl with the long ice-blue hair walked forward with light steps, unable to contain her excitement as she lifted the curtain.
Then, she walked inside.
...
The interior of the fortune-telling hut was simple, containing only a single wooden table.
A crystal ball sat on the table, and behind it sat a girl whose face was hidden beneath a hood.
The shop’s walls were made of planks nailed together—any experienced craftsman could tell at a glance that it was a temporary build.
But Helen clearly lacked such experience—
So she simply walked into the hut with a light step, then, just as described in Chronicles of the Silver Wings, sat down across from the wooden table with the crystal ball and quietly placed her hands on her lap.
"Dear guest, what kind of fortune would you like to ask for?"
A faint voice spoke from behind the crystal ball, slightly youthful—sounding not too old.
Helen tilted her head, thought for a moment, then picked up her pencil and began writing in her notebook... she didn’t want to risk revealing her identity and ruining the reading she had longed for.
A moment later, she raised her notebook: "Can you divine what my favorite color is?"
The voice behind the crystal ball paused for a moment, then softly replied, "Blue."
"And the fruit I eat most often?"
"Grapes."
"What time do I usually go to bed?"
"Normally around eleven at night... but you often stay up late reading storybooks, so even two or three in the morning is possible."
...
The notebook continued to fill with new questions.
After a few more, the pace of her writing gradually slowed.
As she looked at the notebook’s content, a faint light flickered in Helen’s eyes.
Every single question was answered with ease by the fortune-teller.
And every answer was precisely true to Helen’s reality.
Though she had never seen the outside world, Helen still had her own thoughts... Chronicles of the Silver Wings had described scams where fraudsters pretended to be fortune-tellers to trick people.
So even though this real-life fortune-teller filled Helen with the excitement of a dream come true, she still kept her guard up, wondering if this was just another fake.
But after several questions, Helen dismissed the suspicion in her heart.
Her pen moved with hesitation.
After a long while, she finally finished writing the next line in her elegant script.
"Can I..."
"Ask about my own future?"
"That question is too broad and vague."
"A fortune-teller can only glimpse the flow of fate—just a small fragment of what’s to come."
"Not even the full life of a butterfly can be seen clearly by a seer, let alone the complex future of a human being."
From behind the crystal ball, the slender, hooded girl spoke gently.
"If you truly wish to know your future, it would be best to add more specific qualifiers... such as with whom, or regarding the outcome of a particular event."
"Then—"
Helen’s fingers trembled slightly around her pen.
"I want to know about my future with Rast."
"And the ending that belongs to... us."
The elegant handwriting of the Queen of the Netherworld quivered ever so slightly.
And because of that, she didn’t notice—
The moment she wrote down that name,
The fortune-teller across from her also visibly stiffened.
But the fortune-teller quickly returned to normal, speaking with an indifferent tone.
"Rast... who is that?"
"What is his relationship with you? These are all necessary conditions for a proper reading."
"I don’t really know..."
Upon hearing that, Helen’s writing took on a tinge of confusion.
"Rast appeared in the palace out of nowhere, suddenly by my side."
"But for some reason... I felt like I’d seen his face before. He looked exactly like the clay doll I’d bonded with my soul."
"And when I saw Rast, I felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity."
"As if we had known each other long ago, as if we were kindred spirits who could lick each other’s wounds... when I saw Rast, I couldn’t help but want to protect him, to help him."
"In fact, to fulfill my own desire to protect, I wanted to turn Rast into the 'specimen' he spoke of, to keep him by my side forever..."
As she wrote, the confusion in her violet eyes vanished.
Replacing it was a subtle trace of joy.
"This might sound selfish... but after meeting him, I began to look forward to every day."
"Rast tolerates all my whims in the palace, even smiles when I draw a turtle on the back of his hand... and even when I make unreasonable requests like wanting to sneak out of the palace to play, he always tries his best to fulfill them."
"Today has been the happiest time of my life. I saw so many things I’d never seen before, ate food I’d never tasted."
"It’s like the fairy tale I once read, where the Plague Witch—hated by the whole world—found light again only after losing her memory and meeting a young knight."
"I really liked that story... because the heroine’s experiences were so much like mine, and I’ve really enjoyed this time with Rast."
"Every day I spend with him brings me so much joy o(≧口≦)o (crossed out)"
"If I’m the story’s heroine—the Plague Witch—then Rast must be the young knight who met the amnesiac witch. He’s the male lead of my story."
Her pen paused as she crossed out the previous line.
As if she had finally found someone to confide in, each line she wrote was unconsciously accompanied by emoji faces she had recently learned to use.
"So..."
Helen put down her pen, gazing directly at the small-framed fortune-teller before her.
A flicker of nervousness and fear passed through her violet eyes.
But in the end, she lifted her head again, her gaze growing serious.
"I want to know where my future with Rast will lead."
"Can we... end up like the story in that fairy tale, with the hero and heroine reaching their perfect ending?"
The ice-blue-haired girl’s expression was grave and deeply earnest.
The reason she loved Chronicles of the Silver Wings so dearly was precisely because its heroine’s plight mirrored her own.
On countless starless, sleepless nights... Helen clung to that well-worn fairy tale, imagining herself as its protagonist—
Embarking on grand adventures, traveling the continent, experiencing strange and wondrous things, meeting all kinds of people.
And in the story, the Plague Witch once encountered a mysterious, prophetic fortune-teller.
The seer told her that redemption would surely come, that her long suffering would end.
Trusting in that prophecy... in the countless moments when her power teetered on collapse, when she nearly fell into eternal ruin, the witch held on, until the male lead came to her rescue.
It was because of that—
When a real fortune-teller appeared before her, Helen desperately wanted to know the answer.
She longed to know whether she and that boy could reach the end together.
To have the fairy tale’s happily-ever-after.
Looking at the page, each word burning with raw emotion—
The tiny fortune-teller’s frame visibly froze.
"So unfair..."
"I was here first..."
She unconsciously clenched her fists, whispering something only she could hear.
But in the end, the little seer slowly relaxed her grip.
"I understand. Let me help you find out."
"You and Rast bro... whether your story has a good ending or not."
As the girl whispered,
The crystal ball shone with radiant silver light,
And two pairs of dim grey eyes lit up in its glow.