Chapter 5: Family
Lijing, Guyimai Neighborhood. In front of a three-story residential building.
Half the setting sun had already slipped below the horizon, and the last trace of crimson and gold lingering at the edge of the sky was slowly fading.
It was approaching nightfall, yet the summer cicadas were still tirelessly singing in the trees. Under the shade, Ji Minghuan stood motionless, his face expressionless.
He was wrapped in the oppressive summer heat, staring blankly at the door ahead. A drop of sweat rolled from his forehead, slid down his pale cheek, followed the line of his jaw, and soaked into the collar of his school uniform.
It was so hot that he had already taken off his jacket on the way home and slung it over his wrist.
Tugging at the damp collar, he let out a breath.
At first, he didn’t quite get why Gu Wenyu would wear a jacket to school in this kind of hellish weather—what, afraid no one at school would notice him? People might’ve thought he was sick.
Now he understood. Gu Wenyu only wore the jacket to help conceal his esper ability. The binding restraints were hidden in the long sleeves, making them harder to spot. Like during PE—if things got intense and he accidentally summoned the restraints, the jacket would give him at least some chance to cover it up. In a short-sleeved shirt, he’d be totally exposed in an instant.
Standing outside the door, he glanced down at his phone.
The time now was July 9th, 2020, 5:30 PM. He turned off the screen and looked back up at the reddish-brown front door. A light evening breeze swept down from the city skyline, gently lifting the hair at his forehead and bringing a trace of nighttime coolness.
“Family… that word sure feels foreign,” Ji Minghuan thought.
The reason he was still standing outside the door instead of inside with the fan blowing wasn’t because he was stalling. He just needed time to figure out how to play the role of Gu Wenyu in front of his family.
As someone who’d been abandoned by his parents and grew up in an orphanage, Ji Minghuan had zero experience dealing with family.
In that orphanage, he was raised alongside other kids without parents, with indifferent teachers who just waited for class to end, annoying nurses, and a temperamental old director.
So all he could do now was dig through Gu Wenyu’s memories—piece together each family member’s personality and logic, memorize how Gu Wenyu interacted with them, and then slowly figure out how to blend in without raising suspicion.
Ji Minghuan reached down and patted his pants, only to remember the keys were in the jacket pocket.
He rummaged through the jacket slung over his arm while mentally reviewing Gu Wenyu’s “background memory.”
Gu Wenyu’s family situation was complicated, to say the least.
Originally, the family had five members: father Gu Zhuo’an, mother Su Ying, older brother Gu Qiye, younger sister Su Zimai, and Gu Wenyu himself in the middle.
At the beginning, they were basically the picture of a happy family—loving father, gentle and smart mother who was always patient and attentive to the kids’ emotions. Gu Wenyu and his siblings all relied heavily on her.
But everything changed five years ago.
On June 15th, 2015, his mother got caught in an accident.
The official report said a member of “Rainbow Wings”—a top-tier esper task force under the United Nations—was in the middle of a mission when they clashed with a powerful enemy. In the chaos, they couldn’t control the collateral damage and accidentally injured civilians in the Guyimai neighborhood.
And Su Ying, their mother, was one of the ordinary people accidentally injured by a Rainbow Wings member.
To be exact, not just injured—she was killed, with not even a trace left.
Honestly, this kind of thing wasn’t rare anymore. In today’s world, normal people getting caught up in esper battles was like ants getting crushed underfoot when people fought—it wasn’t personal, just collateral.
Who has the bandwidth to worry about an ant underfoot when they’re fighting for their life?
After that, the father filed complaints with the government multiple times, but Rainbow Wings had a ridiculously high status. It was the world’s strongest esper organization, made up of elite espers selected by member countries, directly serving top UN officials.
Rumor had it there were 12 members in each generation of Rainbow Wings, and all their information was top-secret. Unless absolutely unavoidable, their identities and abilities could never be exposed. If their powers were revealed, it could give enemies the chance to counter them.
Because of that, no matter how many complaints the father filed, he never got any answer about which Rainbow Wings member had killed Su Ying… even after going ballistic and organizing protests with other victims’ families.
The only thing they ever got was a cold, formal letter from a lawyer and a string of airtight official responses.
Eventually, the matter was buried. One by one, others gave up the fight. Only the father was left, standing alone in the street.
The one small silver lining was that he finally received compensation in the hundreds of thousands.
After the funeral, their father fell into total despair. He didn’t even have the strength to care for the three kids anymore.
Later, when Su Zimai ran away from home, Gu Qiye and their father got into a massive fight. Things completely broke down between them. They acted like strangers forced to live under the same roof.
Now, the father worked long-term out of town. The only tie he had left to this family was the monthly living expenses he wired back and a few obligatory messages.
To Gu Wenyu and Su Zimai, it was really their big brother who had raised and cared for them all this time. He was more like a father than their actual one.
And the real father? He’d long since become nothing more than a distant concept—a faceless ATM who sent money once a month.
He hadn’t been home in two years.
As for Gu Qiye, he had gotten into a local top-tier university in Lijing.
The school wasn’t far from the Guyimai neighborhood—a thirty-minute subway ride. So he could take care of his siblings without interfering with his studies.
Ji Minghuan yawned and tilted his head back to stare at the sky. “When you think about it, it’s actually not too bad. Since the dad’s never around, I only need to deal with the brother and sister. As long as I keep interaction to a minimum, I won’t risk getting found out.”
“Oh right,” he suddenly remembered, “I think the character background during profile creation said—‘Every one of Gu Wenyu’s family members hides a secret no one knows.’”
“But from what I can tell in Gu Wenyu’s memories, aside from his mom who’s already gone and can’t be verified, the other three—dad, brother, and sister—they’ve always acted like normal people. Not a single slip-up. So what, the whole family’s actually a bunch of secret agents?”
After a few moments of thought, he finally felt a hard object in his jacket pocket. He pulled out a silver-plated key and inserted it into the door lock.
Just as he was about to turn it, there was a soft “click” and the door opened from the inside.
Ji Minghuan raised an eyebrow, pulled the key back out, and through the open door, saw a familiar face.
The one who opened the door was Gu Qiye, Gu Wenyu’s older brother.
He had a tall frame, shoulder-length black hair, and sharp, well-proportioned features. His high nose bridge and the slight curve of his lips gave him a look that was somewhere between confident and cocky. He’d always had admirers, but to Ji Minghuan, he looked like someone asking for a punch.
At the moment, Gu Qiye was wearing a simple black T-shirt, jeans, and plain indoor slippers, with a silver cross necklace around his neck.
“Been waiting forever,” Gu Qiye said with a grin.
Leaning against the doorframe, he casually tossed his little brother a bottle of ice-cold cola.
“Thanks, bro.” Ji Minghuan caught the bottle without blinking and unscrewed the cap as he spoke.
With a hiss, cool vapor escaped from the can. He brought it to his face to cool down a bit.
Gu Qiye crossed one arm over his chest, using his other hand to check a message on his phone. Without looking up, he asked casually, “Why are you back so late? Didn’t you say school let out early since vacation starts tomorrow?”
Ji Minghuan took a sip of the cola, then wiped the sweat from his jaw with the back of his hand. He explained helplessly:
“Couldn’t help it. Our homeroom teacher just wouldn’t shut up. The other classes left ages ago, but he was still going on and on up there.”
As he spoke, he glanced up at Gu Qiye—right at that moment, a long text panel popped up in front of him.
【Main Quest 1: Uncover what your “brother” Gu Qiye is hiding.】
【Quest Reward: 1 Split Point (collect enough to create a new game character in the real world), 1 Skill Point (usable in the “Character Skill Tree”), 1 Attribute Point (can boost a stat on the “Attributes Panel”)】