Gege and Meimei Meet
"Ge, are you going to eat breakfast?" A young female voice called.
Cui Xuefeng identified it as the girl who'd passed by the bathroom door earlier. Did he have a lover at this time? Maybe it was a family member? He knew he had a sister. His sister. His family. The concept felt foreign to him.
He summoned some wind to clean foreign elements from his body and clothes. A carefully constructed mana barrier covered him momentarily and disappeared. This would keep off the noxious flux in the air. No, if this was Earth then it was corrupt mana.
He went to reach for his pouch but realized it wasn't there. He looked down. It felt unnatural to be without it. He'd spent decades protecting his assets with his life. Now it is gone. He felt as if he were missing an essential part of himself. Similar to when he lost a limb or a finger or an ear. Back in his room, he found a belt. He molded it with mana until it was short enough to fit comfortably around his leg. He walked downstairs in sweats and an old t-shirt with a thick black belt buckled around his left thigh.
His sister was sitting at a wooden table in a white button-down, skirt, and blazer. She used her chopsticks to scoop rice and fish into her mouth. From time to time she took a sip of soup. Her eyes were bright as if a light shone out from them when she blinked the light reflected from her deep eyes and splayed rays through her long lashes.
Her movements were obviously practiced as she ate, but she was not in the least bit wary of her surroundings. It would be so easy to kill her. A few hundred different ways passed through his mind like a movie. If he were to count the methods he had not used but could use, then those numbers easily rose to thousands. Most of them hadn't been used because they were dumb and stupid. Leaving himself open to attacks. They passed through his mind, but he made no move to act on them. It was a habit of his to consider such things. He had no intention of allowing his precious family member to die in front of him.
"Ge, are you going to stand there and stare at me all day?" The girl looked up and laughed at him.
Cui Xuefeng didn't understand the language she spoke. He used his mana sensing to hear the voices and quickly shifted through his memory. As his mind worked to learn the language he halfheartedly controlled his body to move and sit down in the seat opposite his sister and start eating. He copied her motions. By the time they finished eating, Cui Xuefeng had learned much about his old world. He could have used water from the shower to wash rather than summoning wind.
He didn't have much mana right now and had to be more stingy than usual. He continued the use of his learning system. Before he was able to train his mind for more focus to be able to work on multiple things at a time, he would have to take it slow. He left up the new learning system casually as he turned his attention to his sister.
He glanced at her outfit. This time, he knew what it was for. It was her school uniform. The girl stacked her dishes and moved to bring them to the kitchen. Cui Xuefeng copied her actions.
"Are you sick? Are you going to get excused from school to go to the doctor today?" At the sink, she lifted a hand to his head.
Cui Xuefeng nearly cut off her arm. His eyes narrowed and he tightened his guard. He sensed her every move carefully. She pressed her warm palm to his forehead.
"You are acting differently today. Are you okay? And that in the bathroom… are you sick? Is there something wrong with your body?" She lowered her hand.
"I'm skipping school. I won't go to the doctor. My body is… fine." He wanted to say a million other adjectives other than 'fine. How would she understand what he meant if he were to say his body was a noodle and his mana was sparse? To her, this was probably the norm. He was a head and a half taller than her. Without mana, it was a big enough difference to give him some advantage in that area in a fight. If he were to complain about being weak to her… He couldn't fathom complaining about such a thing to such a weak being.
Anyway, were family members usually so open and close with one another? It was as if she had no guard at all. He noticed the other humans in the building putting up guards against their family members. Why was she so different? Maybe it was her personality.
At his words her face lit up, "Really? Then I can too, right? You promised, remember? You said that if you skipped school then I could too!" the girl had gone from overjoyed to giving him a staredown in a flash. Her pink lips were pressed together in a line and her arms were folded. She was like a child. Even now, she was only waiting for his response. She didn't suspect him or question him or anything. Did she have no life-preservation feature in her whole body?
He nodded.
Her face changed to overjoyed and she threw her arms up and around his waist. "Yay!" She squealed. "I'm going to get changed!" Her feet pattered out of the room and up the stairs.
He called up to her, "Get the money. I'm going shopping." His voice was low and steady, but it filled the house. His voice still sounded strange to him. He didn't like listening to it. It felt like a stranger's voice.
"I'm coming too! Can we get pair outfits? Can we? Can we?" Her lighthearted high shrill came again.
Cui Xuefeng didn't notice the softening around his eyes as he listened to her. "Sure."
"Woohoo!"