Bai Liu stared at the hand.

He bent down and crawled beneath the pitch-black bed, reaching toward the snow-white statue hand. But just as his fingers were about to touch it, a rose-like vine suddenly burst out from beneath the bed, producing the exact rustling crawl he had heard moments earlier.

The vine coiled around the hand model right before Bai Liu’s eyes, as though trying to drag it underground.

Bai Liu immediately lunged forward, stretching his body out as far as possible while snapping his whip toward the vine. But the vine had already tightened around the hand model.

At the final moment before it disappeared underground, Bai Liu grabbed hold of it.

The broken, icy-cold statue hand curled faintly within his palm, almost as though lightly returning his grip.

Then it dissolved into scattered rose petals.

The vines slowly sank back into the earth and vanished.

There was nothing beneath the dim bed.

The depths reflected in Bai Liu’s dark, empty eyes—where a rose gently swayed—were blurry and indistinct, to the point that even he could not tell whether what he had just seen had been real or merely an illusion.

He had not truly felt the sensation of grasping a solid object.

He thought he had firmly caught that severed hand, but in reality it had only been a phantom.

Other than the lingering trace of coldness clinging to his fingers, Bai Liu felt nothing at all.

Liu Jiayi was eventually awakened by the movement.

Still groggy, she sat up rubbing her eyes and fumbled around for the goggles near her pillow. Once she put them on and regained her vision, she looked down—

—and saw Bai Liu crawling out from underneath her bed.

Liu Jiayi instantly jolted fully awake.

“What are you doing, Bai Liu?!”

Bai Liu slowly backed out from beneath the bed.

He braced one hand against the bedframe and swayed slightly as he lifted his head to meet Liu Jiayi’s gaze.

Liu Jiayi froze.

...There was a rare trace of confusion on Bai Liu’s face, as though something had lured away his soul, leaving him dazed and absent-minded.

The rose in his eye swayed gently as a fourth petal bloomed.

The black cracks beneath his right eye deepened further. The skin there looked as though it were peeling apart, carrying the unsettling texture of something slowly “withering.”

“...Bai Liu.”

Liu Jiayi’s voice turned dry.

“Open your panel and show me your mental value.”

Bai Liu remained silent for several seconds, seeming to process her words only after a delay.

Obediently, he lowered his head and pulled out the coin hanging against his chest. Half-squinting, he summoned the system panel and leaned closer for Liu Jiayi to see.

The moment he moved near, a seductive fragrance drifted from him—

—the scent of scorched roses.

Liu Jiayi’s thoughts blanked for a split second.

Reacting instantly, she hurriedly opened her system panel and bought two respirator masks, quickly fitting one onto Bai Liu and one onto herself before her mind could start spinning.

But she was already too late.

[System Notification: Player Liu Jiayi has inhaled a high concentration of primitive rose fragrance. Due to the player’s current inability to tolerate this concentration, the player has entered the (Dizziness) debuff state. Mental value has fallen to 63. Hallucinations are imminent.]

[System Warning: Player Bai Liu has inhaled a high concentration of primitive rose fragrance. Due to the player’s current inability to tolerate this concentration, the player has entered the (Dizziness) debuff state. Mental value has fallen to 46! Please restore mental value immediately!]

The world spun violently around Liu Jiayi.

She collapsed backward onto the small bed, clutching at her mask while gasping for breath.

Bai Liu also fell heavily onto the floor, faint breaths fogging the inside of his mask.

An overwhelming fragrance flooded their senses—dense, intoxicating, suffocatingly heavy.

It churned through their minds until nausea rose uncontrollably.

Liu Jiayi coughed violently several times.

Meanwhile, the world before Bai Liu’s eyes twisted and rotated.

He felt himself sinking into a rose-colored darkness like the bottom of the sea—

—as though an invisible severed right hand had calmly wrapped itself around his throat.

Bai Liu’s eyelids slowly drooped shut.

“Get up! Hurry up and get up already!”

A vicious, impatient voice exploded beside him, accompanied by sharp clapping sounds.

“How late is it already?! Do you know how expensive it is to stay in these tents during the May Rose Festival?!”

“If we weren’t short on workers, trash like you wouldn’t even qualify to come here and pick flowers!”

Half-awake and half-dreaming, Bai Liu felt himself being yanked upright by the arm.

His head throbbed violently.

It felt as though he had worked overtime for a week straight without sleep, been dragged into a forced company drinking party and made to down ten bottles of vodka, then hauled straight back to work after barely an hour of rest.

—At this point, a light breeze might genuinely kill him on the spot.

Bai Liu rubbed his numb, aching forehead and steadied himself against the back of a nearby chair.

After several deep breaths, the spinning scenery before his eyes finally settled into focus.

It was still the same dilapidated little tent.

But now daylight fully illuminated the outside world.

Bai Liu looked toward Liu Jiayi, who was sluggishly climbing off the bed.

The processing worker dragged her down impatiently before turning and barking at them:

“Where are the roses?! Where are the roses you were supposed to pick overnight?! You useless pieces of trash didn’t work and even got high sniffing fumes!”

As he cursed, the processing worker suddenly raised his foot and viciously kicked toward the still-unsteady Liu Jiayi.

The kick never landed.

Bai Liu knelt calmly on the floor and intercepted it with his knee.

His expression remained composed, completely unlike someone who had barely been able to stand moments earlier.

Bai Liu gave the processing worker a polite nod and gestured toward the bulging sacks and the roses hidden beneath the blankets behind him.

“All the roses picked last night are here,” Bai Liu said calmly. “A total of 83.7 ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ kilograms.”

The processing worker’s expression shifted repeatedly.

In the end, he lowered his foot and walked over to inspect the roses personally.

After roughly confirming the weight Bai Liu reported was accurate, the worker turned back and stared at Bai Liu with a look mixed equally with fear and resentment.

Only then did he finally sneer:

“You barely count as having completed the task.”

“Don’t get arrogant. Even if newcomers like you manage to finish your assignments, you’re still nowhere near qualified to replace experienced processing workers like us who’ve worked hard for years!”

He had already reached the tent entrance when he abruptly turned around again and viciously kicked Bai Liu once more, lips twisting maliciously.

“Tonight your quota is doubled. Eighty kilograms per person.”

“If you fail, then prepare to be fired and exiled!”

The kick landed directly against Bai Liu’s shoulder.

Still suffering from the [Dizziness] debuff, the “frail” Bai Liu had almost no resistance left. The impact knocked him backward into the chair behind him.

The processing worker snorted coldly, picked up the roses they had harvested, and left.

Before leaving, he casually tossed two small glass bottles toward them.

Liu Jiayi caught them before they hit the floor.

Inside the bottles was pale pink perfume.

[System Notification: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for completing the side quest (Pick 40kg of Roses). Reward obtained: One bottle of (Low-grade Dried Rose Leaf Gas Perfume).]

[System Notification: Player Bai Liu has triggered a new mission. Please collect 80kg of roses tonight. Upon completion, you will receive two bottles of (Low-grade Dried Rose Leaf Gas Perfume) and gain progress toward the main quest (Promotion Qualification for Processing Worker).]

Liu Jiayi staggered over to Bai Liu, who was still seated on the ground.

She uncapped one of the perfume bottles and sprayed it directly into Bai Liu’s face.

[System Notification: Player Bai Liu’s (Dizziness) debuff has been removed. Mental value restored to 81.]

The cracked wounds across Bai Liu’s face visibly healed, shrinking back into shallow fissures.

But the rose growing within his eye seemed to absorb nourishment from the perfume.

Its branches trembled slightly as the petals stretched outward.

The ominous change made Liu Jiayi immediately stop spraying.

After hesitating briefly, she gritted her teeth and sprayed herself a few times as well, dispelling her own [Dizziness] state.

Leaning weakly against the chair, Liu Jiayi waved a hand in front of Bai Liu’s face to make sure he was conscious.

“Hey. You awake now?”

Her tone sounded exhausted.

“What exactly happened under the bed last night? You almost got both of us killed.”

Now fully conscious, Bai Liu coughed uncomfortably at the lingering scent of the low-grade perfume.

He leaned his heavy head against the chair and calmly recounted everything he had seen beneath the bed the previous night.

“Something entered the tent while [Magic Space] was active?”

Liu Jiayi frowned deeply.

“That should be nearly impossible.”

Bai Liu looked at her, silently waiting for her conclusion.

Liu Jiayi crossed her arms and continued:

“I understand what you’re implying. In a newly unlocked Level 3 game, monsters capable of bypassing [Magic Space] could theoretically exist.”

“But think about it carefully, Bai Liu. If something that powerful really entered our tent last night, why weren’t we attacked? Why didn’t you trigger a Monster Book entry?”

“And if a monster strong enough to casually bypass an [Extraordinary]-grade item like [Magic Space] truly crawled beneath my bed in the middle of the night...”

Liu Jiayi raised an eyebrow.

“...then why didn’t it kill us?”

“Did it really sneak into your tent just to hold your hand and show you roses?”

“What you’re saying makes sense,” Bai Liu replied evenly.

“But what if its goal wasn’t to attack or harm us?”

“What if it deliberately avoided manifesting physically, which is why no combat or Monster Book trigger occurred?”

“What if everything I saw was simply an illusion it wanted me to witness?”

Liu Jiayi instinctively started to refute him.

“There’s no monster whose ultimate goal toward players isn’t harm. That kind of thing simply doesn’t exi—”

She stopped abruptly.

A thought surfaced in her mind, and her expression darkened.

“...The God-level wandering NPC from Love Welfare Home...”

She stared at Bai Liu.

“What exactly is your relationship with him?”

In all her years playing these games, Liu Jiayi had never encountered a monster whose purpose wasn’t harming players.

Except once.

In the previous dungeon, that God-level NPC had willingly donated blood to save Bai Liu despite possessing every opportunity to kill him.

That was the first—and only—time Liu Jiayi had ever seen a monster save a player.

“...Relationship?”

Bai Liu’s gaze shifted subtly upward toward the tent ceiling.

For the first time, he found himself strangely unable to define his relationship with Xie Ta.

Before entering the game, Bai Liu could have confidently declared that he and Xie Ta were simply friends.

...But now—

The word “friends” lingered at the edge of his tongue, yet what surfaced in his mind instead was Tawil’s pure, slightly confused gaze.

The cool, reverent kisses repeatedly pressed against his forehead and lips.

And the moment they reunited in Siren Town—

along with Bai Liu’s own greasy pickup line that bordered dangerously close to harassment:

[What do I want...? Maybe you could give me a kiss?]

Bai Liu: “...”

Liu Jiayi originally expected an answer like:

[He’s a player whose soul I purchased after he became corrupted.]

But Bai Liu’s increasingly strange expression filled her head with question marks instead.

Bai Liu spoke with complete calmness:

“We used to be friends.”

“Later, after we reunited, I wasn’t in a very clear state of mind, so I did some things that crossed certain boundaries. Some things happened between us that shouldn’t happen between ordinary friends.”

“But afterward, once I cleared my head, I still wanted to return to being friends with him.”

He paused briefly.

“Although I don’t know what he thinks, as far as I’m concerned, we’re still friends.”

“That’s basically the current state of our relationship.”

Bai Liu summarized the entire situation with astonishing simplicity.

Liu Jiayi stared at him blankly.

“...Huh?”

Then her expression twisted in disbelief.

What kind of shameless scumbag speech was that?!

You actually did that sort of thing to an NPC, Bai Liu?!