Chapter 244: Playing Doctor at Midnight

Chapter 244: Playing Doctor at Midnight

It was nearly midnight, and the world was silent. 

The girls had all gone to bed, except for Tang Nai and Su Mu, who were still waiting in the living room for Su Ya to wake up.

“Guess what she’ll do when she opens her eyes and sees me?” Tang Nai asked with a half-smile.

“She’ll punch you right in the head. Hard.”

A slightly swollen bump still sat on top of Su Mu’s head, and it was obvious she was still very resentful about it.

“Actually, I don’t know what will happen either. It’s been so long since I last saw her.”

Su Mu thought back to the time she had returned to the past and tried to talk with Su Ya. 

Her expression darkened, like an eggplant hit by frost.

No matter whether she had probed indirectly or asked sharp, direct questions, Su Ya had always responded with the same calm indifference, and her answers had been strangely consistent.

“I’m sorry, Little Mu. Mom doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”

After gaining her new ability, Su Mu could use her threads to listen in on other people’s thoughts to a certain extent. 

The slightest tremor of the fine threads would reveal any lie. 

Yet the result she got from Su Ya was—she wasn’t lying.

In other words, Su Ya truly had no memory of anything related to magic power right now. 

Whether it was intermittent amnesia or some kind of clouded state, Su Mu guessed it had to be connected to the so-called Authority that Tang Nai had mentioned.

“Speaking of which, what exactly is my mom’s Authority? I want to know.”

“Which one are you asking about?” Tang Nai spread her hands.

Su Mu was momentarily speechless. 

Only then did she remember that she now had two mothers.

“Since you already know, why don’t you just tell me everything?”

Hearing that, Tang Nai glanced at the clock on the wall. 

The minute hand pointed at the six o’clock position, and a playful look entered her eyes.

Her red lips curved into a subtle arc. 

She interlaced her ten fingers, rested her elbows on the table, and gracefully propped up her chin.

“Telling you directly would be too boring. How about we play a guessing game instead? You ask questions, and I answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no.'”

Su Mu curled her lips. 

Wasn’t this just like the game of Twenty Questions? 

Why make it sound so mysterious? 

With dozens of rounds, she would eventually get the answer anyway.

“But—you can’t ask whatever you want. Every time you ask me a question, you have to answer one of mine in return. How about that?”

Tang Nai narrowed her eyes, her deep gaze lingering on Su Mu’s pretty face as she waited for an answer.

“You’re sick in the head.” That was Su Mu’s reply.

“Yes, I am sick, and quite seriously so. So out of humanitarianism, shouldn’t you take good care of a severe patient like me?” To Su Mu’s surprise, Tang Nai admitted it without hesitation.

Su Mu frowned slightly and said, “Let me ask what kind of illness it is.”

‘It couldn’t be cataracts, right? Her eyes always looked so gray and misty; it was probably…’

Tang Nai lowered her voice and squeezed out two words with a mysterious air between her teeth.

“Heart disease.”

“You’re crazy!” Su Mu flushed with anger, feeling completely teased. 

This was exactly the kind of thing Tang Nai would do.

“Don’t say it so harshly. The ancients said heart disease is the hardest to cure. That’s exactly this heart disease, except nowadays it’s always used as an insult.” Tang Nai grinned, spreading her small hands like a mischievous girl next door.

Su Mu narrowed her eyes, staring at Tang Nai, and finally said what she had been wanting to say all along.

“Sure enough, you’ve gone mad.”

“No no no, don’t lump me in with those brainless, bottomless guys. I’m just… lacking the perception of happiness.”

Tang Nai wagged her slender finger and explained slowly.

“Why don’t I believe that at all?” Su Mu tugged at the corner of her mouth, remembering all the weird new games this girl liked to play, and felt speechless. 

“Even you don’t believe that yourself.”

Unexpectedly, as soon as she said that, Tang Nai gave a light snort.

“Believe it or not.”

For some reason, there was a hint of sulkiness in her tone that Su Mu couldn’t ignore. 

Her heart inexplicably skipped a beat.

Before she had even finished speaking, Su Mu had quietly released her fine threads, silently wrapping them around Tang Nai. 

Although her current strength wasn’t enough to bypass mental defenses and listen to Tang Nai’s true thoughts, she could at least judge whether the other party was lying when she wasn’t on guard.

And Tang Nai’s words caused no tremor in the threads at all, which meant she wasn’t lying.

‘She really was sick? She wasn’t lying?’

“So from the way you look now, it’s almost cured?”

“Heh, it can’t be cured. Of course, now that you’re here, maybe things will be different.”

The threads remained still.

Su Mu took a deep breath and pondered silently for a moment.

‘Heart disease requires heart medicine. According to her, am I her heart medicine?’

Come to think of it, the future version of her really had changed a lot.

“In that case, I’ll be your doctor. You, as my number one patient, had better cooperate obediently with the treatment and honestly answer the questions I ask if you want to recover as soon as possible…”

She got hit by Tang Nai again.

This time it wasn’t as hard as before, but Tang Nai still struck while she was down.

“Ouch! What are you doing…” Su Mu’s eyes grew watery as she clutched her head and glared fiercely at the leg that wasn’t injured, the exact spot where the bump from daytime still sat.

“Serves you right.” Tang Nai snorted disdainfully and crossed her arms over her chest.

For some reason, watching her like this gave Su Mu a strange feeling: the girl in front of her seemed to be exercising a right called “willfulness.”

The future Tang Nai would never bother hitting someone directly. 

She would definitely set up traps and play dirty tricks…

Those who used open schemes borrowed momentum and acted with the way of kings; those who used underhanded schemes could only look for gaps and ended up inferior. 

But Tang Nai seemed to have sunk too deep into the path of trickery, to the point where it had reached an absurd level…

If it were the future Tang Nai, even if she wanted to hit someone, she would first go “Oh my, you’ve got quite the courage~” with an evil smile, followed by all sorts of bizarre possibilities.

What Su Mu could imagine was probably Tang Nai suddenly pointing behind her in feigned horror and shouting dramatically, “Holy crap, it’s Mowan!”

Then, the moment Su Mu instinctively turned her head, she would reveal a sinister expression, pull out a one-thousand-ton super mallet from under the table that was taller than she was, and give Su Mu a solid whack.

That would only make Su Mu furious with rage. 

But now, looking at Tang Nai with her disgusted expression, Su Mu actually found this expired loli strangely… a little cute.

“Fine, I’ll play along with you. At least I can ask the first question, right? Consider it a freebie. You already set the rules.” Su Mu clutched her head, her voice soft and pitiful as she asked.

“Yes, yes.” Tang Nai answered twice in a row.

Su Mu thought for a moment and was just about to ask when Tang Nai cut her off.

“Alright, I’ve answered your first two questions. Now it’s my turn to ask you one.”

At those words, Su Mu’s body stiffened. 

Once she came back to her senses, her clear blue eyes filled with dissatisfaction at being toyed with.

“Paint!”