The instant Qiyu deactivated her invisibility, Ye Chenfeng was thrown backward, landing hard on his butt.
“Y-you… are you human or a ghost?!”
Qiyu planted her hands on her hips and pouted. “You lied to me! You didn’t see me at all! Besides, do ghosts look this good?”
As she spoke, she had already sent a command to little Maya. In less than a second, the definition of “ghost,” its cultural context, and the fear response of humans on Earth all came streaming back. She rolled her eyes inwardly—people on this planet were actually afraid of transparent dead people.
Ye Chenfeng sat on the ground, looking her up and down.
She had a shadow. She had feet. She wore a plain one-piece dress and looked to be around five-five. Her features were so refined they seemed almost unreal, but what held his gaze most were her eyes—bright, as if two tiny spinning suns were tucked inside them, carrying something he had never seen on anyone’s face before.
Not wariness. Not calculation. Pure, completely unguarded curiosity.
There was no way she looked like a ghost.
He scrambled to his feet, dusted off his pants, and forced an awkward smile. “I really didn’t see you just now. Then you popped out like it was magic and scared the hell out of me.”
Qiyu tilted her head. “If you didn’t see me, why did you ask?”
“I felt a faint breeze, then smelled something.” Ye Chenfeng rubbed his nose. “It was body scent, but I couldn’t see anyone. So I tentatively asked in roughly that direction, and then you ‘appeared.’”
Qiyu stared at him for three seconds.
Her eyes were studying him, and so was her mental probing. The images on the surface of his consciousness were simple: confusion, curiosity, and a little lingering fright. No malice. No ulterior motives. What he was thinking was almost exactly what he said out loud, except for one thought he hadn’t voiced: She really does smell good.
He was clean enough to surprise her.
Qiyu held out her hand. She had learned the gesture from little Maya’s database—a social custom for a first meeting among humans on Earth called “shaking hands.”
“Hi. I’m Qiyu.”
Ye Chenfeng scratched his head. “I’m Ye Chenfeng. Are you… Qi Qin’s older sister? Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Qi Qin’s older than me. How are you so young?”
Little Maya’s response came almost instantly: Qi Qin, legendary Chinese singer. His older sister was named Qi Yu. He had gotten the characters mixed up.
Qiyu let out a laugh. “The ‘strange’ qi, and the yu from ‘encounter.’”
Ye Chenfeng folded his left arm across his chest and rested his right hand under his chin, looking thoughtful. “Hmm… so your little sister is named Kiwifruit.”
“Yeah, yeah. And my little brother’s called Qimengzi.”
Ye Chenfeng burst out laughing and held out his hand too. “I’m kidding. I’m Ye Chenfeng.”
Qiyu took his hand. His palm was warm, his grip neither too hard nor too soft—neither deliberately forceful nor perfunctory. A very faint thought rose in her mind: This person makes me feel relaxed.
“You’re interesting,” she said.
“Where are you from?”
Qiyu blinked her right eye, her tone playful. “If I said I was from outer space, would you believe me?”
Ye Chenfeng froze for a moment.
Qiyu heard his thoughts loud and clear: Are young women these days all this weird? But she really did appear out of thin air just now. If she isn’t a magician, then she really is an alien. Well… I’ll hear her out first.
Then he adjusted his expression, made his eyes sincere, and said seriously, “I believe—”
A pause.
“—jack shit.”
Qiyu laughed. It wasn’t a polite laugh; she was genuinely amused. He was thinking, I’ll hear her out, while saying, Believe you, my ass, but there was no contradiction between the two. He wasn’t lying to her. He really did think it was absurd, and at the same time, he really was willing to listen.
He said what he thought. If he thought something was ridiculous, he said it was ridiculous, but he wouldn’t shut the door just because he found it ridiculous.
She had grown up in Utopia, where everyone around her was like that. But on Earth, he was the first person she had met who was the same.
If someone suddenly appeared in front of her and claimed to be from outer space—ignoring the Federation’s surveillance network, as if Maya were blind—she would probably have reacted the same way.
The corners of Qiyu’s mouth lifted. “Why don’t we talk while we walk?”
She began telling him about Utopia.
Not from the beginning. She picked out the fun parts. She discovered that Ye Chenfeng had one particular trait—he was very good at grasping the key points, and once he did, his reaction was always bigger than she expected.
“You attend class while you sleep, and when you wake up, the knowledge is already in your head.”
Ye Chenfeng’s voice shot up an octave. “What?! You go to class while you’re sleeping?!”
“You don’t have to work. All physical labor is handled by AI and robots.”
“Holy crap, you don’t have to work? Does the Federation support you?”
“You pick one of four professions. You can be stationed, patrol, or explore. The Federation has nine planets.”
“Nine! Can you travel between them? How long does it take by space shuttle?”
Seeing his eyes light up, Qiyu held back a laugh and answered in an utterly matter-of-fact tone:
“With your fastest space shuttle, if you don’t stop to rest—it would take about ten thousand years.”
Ye Chenfeng’s expression froze.
Qiyu thought Earth was really interesting.