017. Transformation
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Lin Nan got out of bed with a poker face.
He nudged the head of the guy across from him but said nothing, diving straight off the bed.
Chen Yao woke up with a start, groggily opening his eyes to stare at the speckled ceiling, clearly struggling with the transition from dreamland.
Lin Nan was already out of bed, feeling like his head was filled with cotton and his body weighed down. The dull throb on his forehead reminded him of last night’s escapades at that Sichuan restaurant, making his face turn a slight shade of red.
“Hey, Lin Nan,” Chen Yao, now perched at the edge of the bed with his legs crossed, peeked down at Lin Nan, who was getting dressed downstairs. “Do you remember anything from last night?”
“Last night? I only remember using the restroom!” Lin Nan raised his head and asked with puffed-up confidence, “Did I black out or something?”
Seriously, who phrases a question like that so casually?
“Maybe?” Chen Yao replied, sounding more uncertain than before. “You really don’t remember anything?”
“I forgot everything after the bathroom.” Lin Nan struck a deep-thinking pose, racking his brain before suddenly recalling, “I think I bumped into someone? Did that happen? My forehead is still sore.”
“Yes, that happened.”
Seeing Lin Nan getting lost in thought again, Chen Yao quickly changed the subject, “Go wake those two up, or we’ll be late.”
“Got it, got it.”
After giving a half-hearted reply, Lin Nan grabbed his toiletries and rushed to the balcony, using cold water to clear the fog of last night while experimenting with his magic.
It seemed his reflexes were indeed faster now.
He deliberately knocked a toothbrush cup off the sink, and just as he thought his brain could catch it, his left hand shot out on its own and snagged the cup by its base.
Now that’s some lightning-fast reflexes!
Sure, he might have planned it ahead of time, but this was clearly his quickest speed yet.
This kind of speed rarely showed up in daily life—except when catching his phone before it fell off a desk, or when stopping it from slipping out of his pocket, or when preventing it from taking a dive into the toilet…
With only a thousand a month for living expenses, a fractured phone was not an option.
So this magic only lets him maintain peak reflexes in everyday situations? It seems to turn emergency-level speed into his daily norm… Not super impressive when you think about it.
After a moment of thought, Lin Nan managed to brainstorm a few practical applications.
Gaming was one, especially with reaction-heavy shooters like CSGO. If he had a solid base, sports like ping pong and tennis would significantly improve too.
Chen Yao barged onto the balcony, noticing Lin Nan standing frozen with a toothbrush jammed in his mouth. He shrugged it off since Lin Nan had been acting weird lately—too weird to even complain about.
He sidled up next to Lin Nan, gave him a gentle nudge with his shoulder and said, “Move in, you’re blocking the way.”
“Ah? Oh!” Lin Nan, snapped from his thoughts, hurriedly stepped aside.
After a few steps, however, a strange realization struck him.
Even though the balcony was half-occupied by the sink, normally he could sidestep without bumping into anything. But now, there was a slight brush against the railing with his rear.
He hesitated, glancing back. He had walked this path countless times, always careful to avoid contact with the sink or railing. After all, it was a boy’s dorm, and the cleaning had a tendency to be… minimal—nobody would bother wiping down the sink or railing, and they were gloriously dirty.
“What’s up?” Chen Yao asked, spotting Lin Nan’s odd expression.
“Feels weird.”
“Hmm…” Chen Yao scrutinized Lin Nan up and down, and as Lin Nan started to squirm from embarrassment, Chen Yao finally put it together. “Your b*tt got bigger?”
“What?”
“No, wait, it’s perkier, yeah.”
“…..”
Lin Nan couldn’t be bothered with this guy’s nonsense, so he bent down to continue brushing his teeth.
Chen Yao thought he might’ve imagined it, but after a couple more glances, he felt convinced that something was slightly off with Lin Nan.
After rushing through his own morning routine, Chen Yao hesitated, wanting to say something but holding back.
“What’s wrong?” Lin Nan spat out the foam, looking puzzled.
“Just feels like your chest…” Chen Yao had barely uttered the word “chest” before he turned and scuttled back into the dorm. After all, Lin Nan had been a bit unhinged the last two days—he wasn’t that foolish.
As soon as the word “chest” fell from Chen Yao’s lips, Lin Nan’s brows knitted tightly. He was about to launch a frustrated retort at Chen Yao’s increasingly absurd comments, but saw him walking away. With no other choice, he glanced down at his chest.
Wait a minute, it did seem… a tad larger?
With no one around, Lin Nan boldly reached out to feel—yep, definitely more than he had yesterday, and ouch, it was sore too.
This rate of development was obviously not natural. So it had to be magic!
It was probably the magic messing with his body again.
Sure, he’d naturally get more feminine if he didn’t use magic, but there’s no way anything could progress this fast—he wanted to enjoy his winter break without facing judgment from his parents! Not like this!
“Guess I should use magic as little as possible,” Lin Nan mumbled to himself as he wiped his face. For now, he brushed off this tiny little change—it wasn’t like Chen Yao even noticed unless he looked really close. So at least it wasn’t as severe as the aftereffects when he dressed up as a girl.
As he stepped back into the bedroom, Xiong Da was already up, shaking Tu Junhui’s shoulder. Unfortunately, Tu Junhui had knocked back quite a bit last night too. After discovering there were familiar faces in the next room, he happily trotted off with his rum to join the party and only got dragged back to the dorm once Lin Nan finished his meal.
Even though Lin Nan jokingly claimed to have blacked out, he remembered it all clearly—he just zonked out on the way back to the dorm, which was why he had no memories after that.
Xiong Da didn’t wake Tu Junhui up and, with no other options, started washing up himself. Chen Yao was busy sculpting his hair with wax, and Lin Nan glanced around. It seemed Chen Yao hadn’t mentioned anything about last night’s wildness to anyone else, and he was clearly avoiding it too…
Success! I am so clever!
Excitedly patting himself on the back in his mind, Lin Nan walked over to the mirror on the wardrobe to check if his hair was in disarray.
But as he got a closer look, he was shocked to find that the faint spots on his cheekbone had mysteriously vanished!
Leaning in even closer, he wasn’t sure if it was the lighting, but his skin looked noticeably more even than yesterday. The large pores from squeezing blackheads on his nose were hardly visible now. Though the changes were subtle, overall, his face looked several times fresher than the day before.
Turns out using magic does have its perks!
After giving himself a little pep talk, Lin Nan finally got around to readying his textbooks for class.
