When Lin Qianshu first noticed the emotion cluster drifting down the empty library corridor, his first thought was that his senses were playing tricks on him. His emotion sense was an ability that let him perceive the mood of a person as a shimmering light, but there was nothing visible in the hallway to explain the glow. Still, the light moved, changed shape, and reacted like a living thing. That made it impossible to dismiss as imagination.
He followed the flicker with his eyes even though his head told him to be calm. The cluster slowly took on a human outline. In a moment so odd it felt like a waking dream, the silhouette became a woman in a black bunny outfit. High gloss heels, sheer black stockings, an off shoulder tight top that left the collarbones exposed. Her face was delicate, familiar, and wearing an expression of faint boredom that somehow made her look both mature and lazy at once. It was, without a doubt, a perfect bunny girl.
The strangest part was that nobody else in the library seemed to notice her. People passed by without so much as glancing. The emotive light that marked her presence was visible to Lin Qianshu, and apparently to no one else. When she finally realized he could see her, she did not panic. Instead she walked up to him, stopped in front of him, and waved a hand as if testing whether he really existed. Then she said, you can really see me. The sentence sounded as if not being seen was a normal occurrence for her.
If Lin did not have emotion sensing, he would have assumed he was looking at an elaborate hallucination. Her status was not simple invisibility. It was a cognitive veil. People around her behaved like nothing unusual was happening, even when the bunny girl did things that would normally draw attention. She could drop a cup, thrash around, or speak to an empty chair and the patrons would simply treat it as background noise. The veil made her present yet unnoticed, which felt dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with the outfit she wore.
Recognition hit him like a small shock. That face, those features — you are Sakishima Mai, he said, the name arriving in his head before his mouth. Her surprise at being recognized passed quickly. Even though she had retired from show business two and a half years ago, she had been a household name before that. To be recognized used to be routine for her, but she admitted she had never seen anyone notice her while she was in this strange state. That made the moment feel awkward for both of them.
She told him the condition had started about a week earlier, suddenly and without warning. One moment she was a public figure, the next she walked into cafes and staff did not greet her or seat her. In other places, people would act normally and look at her with recognition. The pattern had no clear logic. To test it, she had even tried dressing provocatively, thinking that a flashy outfit might force people to notice her. That explained why she had been in a bunny costume that day. The costume had been a deliberate experiment, not a publicity stunt.
Lin Qianshu listened with a calm curiosity that hid the wheels turning inside his head. From what he knew of the Wish Power system, every person with a task or request showed a colored marker indicating the task type and rarity. Mai's marker, if he could see it, would blink through five colors in an irregular cycle: gray, green, blue, purple, and gold, like spinning lights. He had never seen a marker behave like that before. Whatever had affected her was not a normal wish reward. It was anomalous.
She asked him to forget what he had seen. She said it with a seriousness that made it clear she did not want attention, but the fact she had come dressed to be seen suggested otherwise. The contradiction made Lin suspicious. He asked her when the episodes started, and she answered with the aquarium visit last Thursday. That meant it had been happening for about six days, contradicting the rumor that she had left show business because of some puberty related issue. This felt bigger.
When she finally relaxed enough to sit and talk, Lin let the conversation flow without pushing too hard. He bought two coffees and even had her drink one in front of the server to prove that nothing the staff noticed was out of the ordinary. The server left without reacting, and that small moment confirmed his suspicion: this was not simple invisibility. Mai was under a cognition shield that made people treat her presence as if it were part of the furniture. If someone with bad intentions had this power, Lin thought, the consequences would be frightening.
Still, the whole thing pulled at his curiosity like a thread he wanted to tug. Supernatural events were rare and interesting. They meant the world hidden beneath the ordinary might be more complicated than it seemed, and that others might also possess strange abilities. He decided he would not forget what he had seen. For the first time since he had activated the Wish Power system after his accident, Lin felt a real urge to investigate something. That feeling was the small nudge that would push him into deeper mysteries later.
Before they parted, Mai offered him a number. She seemed embarrassed to hand it over, but she did. You can call if anything else odd happens, she said. When she left, Lin watched her fade into the normal bustle of the corridor. The light that marked her feelings dimmed, and for a moment the world felt both smaller and infinitely more strange. He tucked the number into his phone and headed to see Yukinoshita. He had a sense that the Service Club and his newly awakened ability were about to meet someone who would change things.
End of chapter hook
As Lin walked toward Yukinoshita's door with the taste of coffee still in his mouth, he realized the library encounter might only be the first sign of something larger. The markers of the Wish Power system could flicker, not just for tasks but for people. If that was true, then the kinds of help he could offer would not be limited to errands and favors. They could be the crossing points where ordinary lives and impossible abilities met. He stepped up to the door and rang the bell, but the thought that followed him was simple and clear. If helping people gave him powers, then helping this kind of person could change everything.