Mygo, you guys seem to be getting a bit heavy-hearted.

Chapter Seventy-Nine: Scolding Duke Su.

Then, this strange pair appeared on the street.

I would call it the Cucumber Chariot.

Passersby turned their heads to look, but the two people being stared at had no time to respond.

"Yanming, turn left and then go in."

"Back to Ring? You think she'll be inside?"

Despite raising questions, Yanming continued walking into the LiveHouse without pausing for a moment.

After going around in circles, we've ended up back where we started.

“I’m not sure… but if I had to choose a place, I think Soyo would go there…”

Crychic's former rehearsal room.

The place where they first played "Spring Shadows" together.

"Su Shi...she's hidden away. She hopes to be found, but only by someone who knows her...and this is the only place..."

"Ha, then she'll be disappointed by my arrival."

Yanming chuckled to himself, walked to the front desk, put Mu off his shoulder, and then slapped his driver's license on the desk. "Miss Rinrinko, I want to go in and find someone."

Rinrinko looked at Yanming, who was panting heavily and covered in sweat, and the small cucumber he had just been holding, and immediately understood: "Are you going to find that girl who was crying so sadly? Well... if it's Mr. Yanming, I'll make an exception."

"Thank you. I'll treat you to dinner sometime."

Yanming thanked him and led Mu towards the interior.

"Oh, right, there's one more thing. Mr. Yanming, please wait a moment... Ah, you're running so fast."

Rinrin watched the two disappear behind the door in less than a second, then helplessly lowered her hand. "Rana's grandmother said she wanted to see you..."

The two walked through several corridors and then stopped in front of a closed door.

Mu confirmed, "...This is it."

But having reached this point, Mu was hesitant to open the door.

She could sense that Su Shi was inside, and that it was intentional on her part—she hadn't locked the door.

Soyo... really longs for someone to find her, but she can't speak... even if someone finds her, she won't be able to express her thoughts...

"Wakaba-san."

"Ok?"

"I have to tell a lie. Could you please not expose me later?"

Without hesitation, Yanming pushed open the door.

Inside the door, Nagasaki Motoyo's figure was facing away from them, seemingly unsurprised by their arrival, only fiddling with her uneven fingernails.

"Xiao Mu."

Even without turning around, she can accurately call out people's names.

She had considered the possibility that Mu might run after her, but she never expected that the usually dull Mu could figure out the trick so quickly, grasp her psychology, remember the place where they shared Crychic memories, and find her.

...If a candlestick is placed on wood, someone must be there to provide the ladder.

Is it Xiaodeng? No, it's not her. Even if my intuition is right, given Xiaodeng's personality, she would only lose her composure and panic after learning that she ran away. So it can't be her.

Lixi? She should be with Deng right now, comforting her.

Could it be... Xiao Xiang?

Su Shi herself could hardly believe that Xiangzi would come looking for her again. After all, she had been frantically trying to contact her since Crychic disbanded, only to be blocked in return. Xiangzi had even found a new love and cruelly abandoned her.

Is this little... Toyokawa Shoko really the same person I used to know?

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Nagasaki-kun."

The young man's voice was flat, but with Nagasaki Motoyo's emotional intelligence, she couldn't possibly miss the arrogance and slight resentment in it. "Surprised?"

"Why is it you... Where's Xiao Mu?"

Su Shi stood up from the chair, turned around, and confronted the person who had come.

"I'm here, Soyo..."

Su Shi's voice left no room for argument: "Come here, don't stand with that person."

"But……"

Yanming whispered in a voice only she could hear, "Let's go."

He knew of Su Shi's hostility towards him, and coincidentally, that was exactly the kind of hostility he needed—the more the better.

"……it is good."

Mu walked silently behind Su Shi, who protected him. Su Shi then glared at Yan Ming warily.

The undisguised arrogance and disgust in Yanming's eyes made the fifteen-year-old JK clearly feel what immense pressure meant.

This is a huge gap in social experience, and at the same time, it is the innate sense of superiority and pressure that the current partner has over the ex.

"What are you doing here?"

Yanming looked down at her and said sarcastically, "Go and coax back some sulking little baby who ran away crying? Would you be satisfied with what I said?"

Su Shi frowned: "Did you come here to argue?"

"Arguing? How could that be?"

Yanming suddenly chuckled, "Why would I need to go and argue with Xiaodeng and Xiaoxiang's 'former' bandmates? Wouldn't that just make me uncomfortable? Right?"

This statement infuriated Nagasaki Motoyo, but she couldn't refute it because everything he said was true.

He is the victor standing beside Xiao Xiang now, while I... am no longer needed.

"Xiangzi and the others told me some things about you, so I personally became a little curious about you."

Su Shi: "..."

“Nagasaki Motoyo, actually, our band is about to disband, just like your Crychic band.”

Lying doesn't necessarily mean telling the whole truth; not telling the whole truth is also a complete lie.

"...Disbanded?"

Yanming found a chair and sat down to make himself appear less frail. Then, he succinctly saw through Nagasaki Motoyo's little scheme:

"Want to know why? No, I think you don't care about that. You must be feeling relieved right now, right? After all, if our band is finished, your disbanded band might just come back to life. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

"As expected, you're just like me, the kind of person who only thinks about yourself."

"Xiaodeng and Xiaoxiang, they both care about you and they often mention Crychic to me, but..."

Yanming's gaze swept over everyone, and he said disdainfully, "After seeing Nagasaki-kun in person, all I feel now is disappointment and frustration."

What you think has nothing to do with me.

Yanming scoffed, "It's okay? Then why don't you guess why my band is disbanding after this live show? Isn't it all because of your Crychic? It's because of Crychic that our band ended up in the same situation!"

Su Shi clenched her fists, a nameless anger rising within her: "What do you, an outsider, know? Crychic is different..."

Yanming interrupted her rudely, his tone even more agitated than hers: "What's the difference? Your band is a band, but mine isn't! Everyone has put their heart and soul into their bands! What's the difference!"

Chapter Eighty: The Liar.

"I……"

Su Shi was so speechless that she couldn't utter a word for a moment.

If what the other person said is true, and his band disbanded because of Crychic, then it's impossible that it has nothing to do with me... because I was also a member of Crychic.

"Do you know Nagasaki Motoyo? Our band was built up little by little by me and Akari, starting from just the lead singer and a guitar. And it's no exaggeration to say that I put in the vast majority of the effort."

Yanming deliberately ignored some of the facts and only selected the parts that needed to be told to Su Shi, in order to guide her thinking in the direction he had envisioned.

"But it wasn't until I came off the stage that I learned from Deng Kou that her purpose in forming this band was simply to give your Crychic a farewell performance. After this live show, the band's existence would be meaningless."

"Then what about all the effort I put in? What am I? I did so much, why can't I compare to a disbanded Crychic? Can you answer these questions, Nagasaki Motoyo?"

Yanming's gaze made Su Shi feel uneasy, but she couldn't show weakness or back down because Xiao Mu was still behind her.

Su Shi pressed the little cucumber flower that was trying to peek out from behind her back back, protecting her tightly, and said, "...I don't know anything about what you're talking about."

Yanming coldly replied, "Trying to absolve yourself with a simple 'I don't know'? That's impossible. I'm petty and can't tolerate even a grain of sand in my heart."

Su Shi's expression changed slightly; she probably sensed what the young man was thinking: "What have you done?"

"Nagasaki Motoyo, you want to revive Crychic, right?"

Yanming revealed a wicked, smug expression, "Then I'll just do as you wish."

"you……"

"Is the guitar version of 'Spring Shadow' good? I got off to a pretty good start, didn't I? I might as well tell you, I didn't discuss this with Deng before playing this piece. The drummer and the original guitarist are also my people. I calculated that as soon as we started playing, given Deng's personality, she would undoubtedly be swept up and start singing."

These words exploded in Su Shi's ears like a thunderclap.

"Despicable! You actually disregarded Xiaodeng and Xiaoxiang's opinions..."

"How?"

Yanming raised his chin and looked at the other person with disdain. "Didn't you fall for it? You chose to run out of the venue crying all by yourself instead of trusting your friends and asking them questions face to face after it was over."

"I……"

"You never really trusted them, did you? You could only trust yourself, right? It was because of your self-centered thinking that I was able to find a loophole and bring down Crychic. In other words, the two of us were the ones who destroyed the band's last hope."

Su Shi's eyebrows furrowed, and she closed her eyes: "..."

Too bad.

Whether it's the other person or yourself.

"Now that I've tricked Ruoye into bringing me here to find you, and confirmed that you have no intention of going back to see them, I can finally put my mind at ease."

Yanming smiled. "What a pity, Xiaodeng and the others are still looking for you everywhere."

Upon hearing these words, Nagasaki Motoyo felt her hands and feet turn ice cold.

Yanming, already looking smug with a sense of victory in his heart, said, "You turned off your phone yourself, didn't you? Why don't you turn it back on now and take a look? Anyway, it's too late."

With a blank expression, Su Shi took out her phone from her pocket, turned it on, and countless messages popped up instantly.

Without exception, all the messages were from Crychic members, and their words were full of concern for her. Even Toyokawa Shoko, whom she thought had blocked her, sent several messages asking where she was.

"Do you understand? If you hadn't hidden yourself and any Crychic member searching for you had run into you, the misunderstanding would have been cleared up. There's nothing I can do about it, but... there are no 'ifs' in this world."

"I'm so glad I was the first person to find you, otherwise who knows how things would have turned out."

Yanming laughed. Only this last sentence was spoken from the bottom of his heart.

Thankfully, I was the first to find this child... If it were Xiao Xiang instead of the person here, I can't even imagine how heartbroken Su Shi would be.

The outsider's talk of ending Crychic is not on the same level as Xiangzi's own words.

"...I'm going to find Deng and Xiao Xiang and expose your ugly face to them."

Su Shi gritted her teeth as she looked at the young man sitting in the chair.

Yanming laughed and mocked the naive idea without any politeness: "I bet you, Deng and Xiangzi will believe me more, because I usually put on a better image than you. They all think I'm a really good person."

Every word Yanming said made Su Shi feel as if she had fallen into an ice cave and disrupted her existing thoughts.

The other person is one of my own kind.

Scheming, pretense, manipulating people's hearts...

They were completely outmaneuvered, unable to find a single rebuttal to counterattack.

What should I do...?