The person has already been apprehended.

On the athletic field of Upper City High School, a group of students in track team uniforms were practicing sprints under the watchful eye of their coach.

“Take a break and have some water, Nayuta,” the club assistant said, handing a towel and a bottle of mineral water to Nayuta, who was the first to cross the finish line.

“Thank you,” Nayuta replied, taking the towel to wipe the sweat from her face and downing more than half the water in one go.

After two hours of training, her whole body was soaked with sweat, and her pure white cotton T-shirt had turned nearly transparent. Even though she wore a sports vest and safety shorts underneath, the semi-translucent, flesh-toned effect still caught the eyes of passing boys.

“Nayuta’s got great athletic ability,” the club assistant, a short-haired girl with glasses, remarked. “If you keep this up, the coach might let you compete in the high school sports league three months from now.”

“I’ll do my best!” Nayuta replied, joy lighting her face as she pumped her fist in a lovable gesture.

Nearby, the male club members couldn’t help but be smitten:

“Nayuta is just too cute. I wish I could date her...”

“Seeing her every day heals my weary soul!”

At the coach’s direction, the team wrapped up their training for the day and began packing up to head home.

Just then, a female teammate hurried over and whispered, “Nayuta, there’s someone waiting for you outside the field. I think it’s your brother.”

“My brother?” Nayuta blinked in surprise, then broke into a delighted smile.

Without even changing her clothes, she quickly sought out Chen Shang, who was leaning against a wall, waiting.

“Brother, you’re still here so late?” Nayuta asked softly, unconsciously making her voice sweeter.

“My club activity just finished. I thought I’d check if you were done too,” Chen Shang replied with a mild smile.

Though Nayuta, drenched in sweat and wearing a nearly transparent sports shirt, was quite an alluring sight, Chen Shang had just used “Calming Hormone” on himself and felt nothing at all.

“Huh? You joined a club?” Nayuta was momentarily stunned.

She’d always thought her brother was obsessed with celebrities and virtual idols, and had long since given up on school social life. Only this morning she’d learned from the news that Kim Woochan, his favorite idol, had gone missing, and worried he might be devastated.

Who would have thought he’d join a club? Are men all so fickle?

“Hehe, I’m so glad to see you bouncing back, brother~” Nayuta couldn’t help but break into an innocent, silly grin.

“I’ve always been fine, haven’t I?” Chen Shang tilted his head like an owl, looking puzzled.

After Nayuta changed clothes, the siblings walked home together after school. Along the way, Nayuta reverted to her usual chatty self, sharing amusing stories from school.

From her, Chen Shang learned that Xu Qing had suddenly canceled Saturday’s class gathering, apparently because of some trouble in the family business.

“Aww, I was really looking forward to having barbecue with everyone...” Nayuta’s shoulders slumped in disappointment at the mention.

“If you want barbecue, I’ll take you on Saturday,” Chen Shang offered offhandedly.

“No, it’s okay! Our parents hardly give us any pocket money...” Nayuta waved her hands in a flustered refusal. But then she lowered her head, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. “But if it’s with you, brother, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad...”

In Chen Shang’s [Character] interface, Nayuta’s favorability score rose by two points, back up to eighteen.

Chen Shang quietly breathed a sigh of relief. These past days, he’d been too cold toward Nayuta, and this “guaranteed heroine’s” favorability had dropped by four points. If he let it fall any further, things between them would become awkward. Though he had no intention of pursuing Nayuta, he didn’t want to come home every day to a sulking little sister.

He had no desire to turn a cheerful rom-com into a stomach-churning family drama.

That was why he deliberately took the chance to walk his sister home today, hoping to restore some favorability.

But compared to Nayuta, what really worried Chen Shang was Chiyo Yasougi.

Because he’d interacted with Chiyo Yasougi, her favorability info had naturally appeared on his [Character] panel.

Chiyo’s current favorability toward Chen Shang was [0/100]. He had triggered a sparring event with her, but ended it using an abnormal “bug-exploit” method.

Back when that rich kid joined the development team, he’d immediately fallen for the character of Chiyo Yasougi. At his insistence, the team had to add a huge amount of interaction with the second male lead, Xu Qing, even overhauling her AI’s behavior to boost her initial favorability toward him.

After all these rushed changes, Chiyo Yasougi was nearly reshaped in Xu Qing’s image. But because the edits were so hasty, a severe bug was introduced into her model.

According to player tests, if you touched Chiyo Yasougi’s right ankle, her physics model would start to spasm, and she’d spiral upward into the sky.

Of course, players were delighted to have this bug remain in the game. After all, who wouldn’t want to see a villainess spiral into the sky and eat humble pie?

Stranger yet, once a player triggered the bug, Chiyo Yasougi’s AI logic would collapse, and the resulting behavior was entirely random.

So Chen Shang decided to take a gamble—triggering the bug to end the sparring event in a state of “neither win nor lose.”

It worked. Chiyo Yasougi’s favorability didn’t rise, nor did he sustain any injuries that would trigger the “sister’s revenge” follow-up event.

Whenever Chen Shang recalled the sight of the mafia heiress spiraling into the air before everyone, her head stuck in the ceiling, he wanted to burst out laughing.

But the calming hormone was still in effect, so all he managed was a serene smile.

“Hm?” Just as he was silently congratulating himself, he saw on the [Character] interface that Chiyo Yasougi’s distance from him was steadily decreasing.

No—rather than decreasing, it was as if she’d been circling nearby, never more than a thousand meters away.

“What’s going on?” A sense of foreboding rose in Chen Shang as he unconsciously rubbed his chin.

“Brother, are you okay?” Sensing his troubled expression, Nayuta quickly stepped closer to comfort him. “Was club practice too much?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, really~” Chen Shang gave her a perfunctory smile and patted her shoulder. “I just need to run an errand. You go on home.”

“Aw...” Nayuta looked a little crestfallen. “Where are you going, brother? Want me to come with you?”

“No. Go home, now.” Chen Shang switched to cryptic mode. “Don’t ask so many questions.”

Seeing his resolve, Nayuta could only shrug and head home alone.

Watching her icon recede on the [Character] interface, Chen Shang let out a long breath.

“It’s better not to get her mixed up in this.”

Almost as soon as his meddlesome sister was out of the way, the distance to Chiyo Yasougi shrank to about five hundred meters.

Chen Shang immediately picked up his phone and dialed Black Calis’s number.

“Hello, I need your help—”

Bang!

A dull thud sounded behind him. He felt a hard blow to the back of his head, as if his brain were about to rattle loose.

He didn’t even finish his sentence before collapsing to the ground.

Standing over him was a short-haired woman in a black uniform and sunglasses. In one hand she held a police-issue rubber baton; in the other, a mechanical hand gripped his phone.

“We’ve got him.”