Ye Jinyi lay on the bed, lost in thought about her now completely ruined life, filled with nothing but confusion and uncertainty.
“How the hell am I supposed to go to work tomorrow?”
She stared at the ring on her finger, on the verge of tears.
“What kind of cursed thing is this?! It auto-tracked me, auto-equipped itself, and now I can’t even take it off!”
She racked her brain for a solution but came up with nothing.
Whatever.
Time to ask the geniuses in the group chat.
Ye Jinyi reached over to her fleece-lined coat and found her phone.
She’d originally thought it got torched too.
But when she got home, she vaguely felt something hard still in her pocket.
That’s when she realized the phone had survived.
This ring had some shred of decency, at least—it didn’t obliterate her phone.
Though… her work uniform was a total loss…
Ye Jinyi turned on her phone.
The moment her finger touched the fingerprint scanner, the screen unlocked instantly.
…?
“I… can still… unlock it with my fingerprint?”
She blinked, dumbfounded.
Even identical twins couldn’t unlock each other’s fingerprint locks, right?
Ye Jinyi paused for a second, then gave up thinking about it.
Who cares?
At least she didn’t have to reset her prints.
After finding her familiar penguin app, she opened a group chat where she was always active, and fired off a message.
[Member] Yi: Guys, emergency! What do you do if a man suddenly turns into a girl?!
This random little group was always full of slackers.
As long as you dared to ask, someone would dare to answer.
Sure enough, the chat blew up almost instantly.
[Member] Xingye-chan Official: WTF why does this good shit never happen to me?! Hook me up too!
[Member] Saltiest Slacker in the Group: Don’t leave me behind, lemme board that train too!
[Member] Black-Clothed Swordsman: Bro, you smell amazing!
[Member] Blank-chan: Why’re you even asking? Send us a selfie first! GKD!
Ye Jinyi’s face darkened like storm clouds.
The light from the screen flickered on her trembling fingertips, while more messages kept popping up:
[Member] Brave Hero (Super Brave): I wanna see too!
[Admin] Cirno: GKD!
“Heh…”
Ye Jinyi finally couldn’t help but laugh.
Turns out, when people are hit with enough misery, they really will laugh.
Magical girls were already nonsense to begin with—and now she had turned into a damn little loli?
That was next-level absurd.
Who knew?
Maybe this world itself was built on absurdity.
And if that’s the case, why bother caring anymore?
Maybe the whole world runs on bugs, just like some janky computer program.
Having figured all that out, Ye Jinyi stopped worrying.
Whatever.
Let it all go to hell.
Not like she could bring herself to care about anything anymore anyway.
Ye Jinyi raised her left hand, staring at the ring on her finger—the rose that looked like it was carved from a ruby.
“Hey! You’re the one who started all this shit, right?! Can you at least take some damn responsibility?!”
Well… to be fair…
The rose ring had taken some responsibility.
After all, the perfectly fitting winter outfit she was wearing right now?
Courtesy of the ring.
But that didn’t matter.
What Ye Jinyi really wanted to know was—how the hell was she supposed to go to work tomorrow?
Though, deep down, she already knew she wasn’t.
Alright, guess this job just turned into an eternal unpaid vacation.
Ye Jinyi understood—if the company saw her current appearance, they’d definitely “gently advise” her to leave. Hiring child labor was definitely illegal.
No way she could drag the whole company down with her, right?
Still, if the company ever found out what she was thinking right now, they’d probably be so touched they’d fire her on the spot.
It’s settled then—goodbye job, hello unemployment!
Wait, not just double blessings—triple blessings!
She got a “wife” (herself), the company saved on salary, and there was a whole line of wage slaves just waiting to take her place.
Win-win-win.
Ye Jinyi felt like the word “SCREWED” had been scrawled across her life in giant bold strokes.
But she didn’t stay depressed for long.
As a seasoned master of giving up, Ye Jinyi stayed loyal to her personal philosophy of surrender.
“If you can’t change your environment, then learn to coexist with despair!”
“Come to think of it—I haven’t even seen what I look like now!”
Suddenly, curiosity hit her—what did she look like in this new body?
Since she’d already lost everything, maybe she could get something back with a good angle.
“This… this is my body. Not… not illegal!”
Sure, “copper smelting” was illegal—but self-smelting?
Totally fine, right?
With the justification ready, Ye Jinyi sat up, did a little hop off the bed, and walked toward the bathroom.
Only to discover a key issue—this body was way too short!
Forget looking in the mirror—her head barely reached the sink.
“Barely 1.2 meters…”
Ye Jinyi could already guess her current height.
“Great, I can ride the train for free now…”
“Free, my ass—I can’t even buy a train ticket now!”
Yeah, because she obviously didn’t have any valid ID anymore.
Congratulations—she’d successfully turned herself into an undocumented person.
“Meh, whatever. I don’t care anymore.”
She let all those thoughts go and went to drag her old work chair into the bathroom.
Climbing up onto the chair, Ye Jinyi stared at the girl in the mirror—and went blank for a moment.
“S-So cute…”
In the reflection stood a girl who looked almost like a fairy.
Beneath her question mark-shaped ahoge was a head of pale yellow, shoulder-length hair.
Her crimson eyes shimmered with a pair of star-shaped crosses.
Beneath the simple pleated skirt was… that dangerously sweet little ice cream cone.
If those magical girls hadn’t been chasing her like rabid dogs, Ye Jinyi was sure this little loli in the mirror would’ve looked even cuter.
“Those magical girls seriously don’t know how to cherish something beautiful.”
Whatever, forget it.
Once her heartbeat finally calmed down, Ye Jinyi took another good look at herself in the mirror.
And then, she broke into a totally un-self-aware grin.
“I’m still freaking adorable~”
Ye Jinyi put her hands on her hips and puffed out her slightly defined chest, full of smug satisfaction at her own cuteness.
Then she started striking a few poses.
“Onii-chan~ Hug me~”
Pfft!
She instantly overwhelmed herself with her own cuteness—blood pressure skyrocketing.
“Wait, no!!”
Ye Jinyi snapped back to her senses and quickly wiped the nosebleed trickling out.
“Damn it! I was actually thinking of using cuteness to sneak by!”
But no sooner had she cleaned off the blood and regained some logic than she caught another glimpse of that adorable little loli in the mirror—and got overwhelmed by desire all over again.
She shook her head vigorously, trying to sober up.
“Whatever! She’s my wife! What’s wrong with loving my own wife?!”
But after she’d fully admired herself, Ye Jinyi carried the chair back out of the bathroom, set it aside, and plopped back onto the bed.
Lying there, her mind felt completely blank.
Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
If the heavens had any sense of justice, she hoped they’d turn her back tonight.
But if the heavens did have justice, would she even be in this mess to begin with?
Might as well declare the heavens dead at this point.
Not that Ye Jinyi had the strength to shout out some idealistic slogans—she didn’t even know what “heavens” were supposed to be.
“So why were those magical girls chasing me anyway?”
Suddenly, she realized something didn’t add up.
Weren’t magical girls supposed to deal with disasters?
There’s no way she was a disaster… right?
Thinking of this, Ye Jinyi once again raised her left hand to look at that ring.
Well… even if she was a disaster, she was at least a superpowered little loli.
Better than being completely useless.
“Hey, if you’ve got some god-tier ability or something, could you just hurry up and tell me already?”
…
…
Time passed.
Nothing happened.
Well, yeah.
Not like you could expect a ring to start talking or anything.
“Screwed!”
At this point, there was nothing left to do—might as well sleep.
Ye Jinyi pulled over the little blanket that couldn’t even cover her properly before, and curled up under it, head and all.
She couldn’t stop wondering how she was supposed to go on living from here.
Right before drifting off, Ye Jinyi muttered softly to herself.
“I wish I had some family…”
Ever since she could remember, she’d grown up in an orphanage.
Not the protagonist kind, either—no dead parents, no godlike talent.
Whether her parents were alive or not, she had no idea.
As for talent… she was strictly average.
In fact, she’d been pretty lucky.
Despite growing up in a rural orphanage with terrible education resources, she’d still managed to just barely scrape by—passing her exams with scores that were always just above the cutoff for any school that would take her.
Later, she moved to the city, rented a tiny coffin-sized room like this one, walked to work every day—totally rootless, with no one to rely on.
Wanting “family” was just her way of hoping that maybe, if someone were there to stay by her side, she wouldn’t feel so lost all the time.
As for what “family” really meant… she had no idea.
