Xingzhu

[Code Name] Xingzhu

[Gender] Female

[Combat Experience] None

[Place of Birth] Yan

[Date of Birth] Mar 24

[Race] Feline

[Height] 166cm

[Infection Status]

Medical tests have confirmed that no infection is present.

[Physical Strength] Normal

[Mobility] Normal

[Physical Resilience] Standard

[Tactical Acumen] Normal

[Combat Skill] Standard

[Originium Arts Assimilation] Standard

Historian of the Imperial Historical Cabinet, and author of the best-selling culinary essay collection 'Baizao Cuisine & Food Culture'. Currently a guest at Rhodes Island through the introduction of Operator Blaze.

Imaging tests reveal clear, normal outlines of internal organs, and no abnormal shadows have been detected. Originium granules have not been detected in the circulatory system and there is no sign of infection. At this time, this operator is believed to be uninfected.

[Cell-Originium Assimilation] 0%

Operator Xingzhu shows no signs of Originium infection.

[Blood Originium-Crystal Density] 0.16u/L

Operator Xingzhu takes great care when coming into contact with Originium.

She shared a little tradition from her hometown, which is located upon an Originium deposit. She wears her jade ring with the patterns pointing to the fingertip, which is meant to ward against the poison of Originium and prevent it from entering the body. Children are taught such traditions by the elders of the family from a very young age.

—A Medic Operator

Blaze had been busy lately. She had been asking other operators about their hometowns' traditional delicacies, submitted multiple procurement requests, and was paying close attention to the arrival of Messengers. Picking my words carefully, I asked if someone she knew was visiting.

While she is normally cheerful and straightforward, I had never heard her talk about her family, so I thought it best to be tactful.

Indeed, even such a carefully worded question made her frown and mull over it. In the end, her hesitant answer surprised everyone in the room: 'I guess you could say... my little sister's coming. She finally finished what she's been doing, and she'll be coming back with me to Victoria.'

'Sister?! You have a sister?!'

'Hehe...'

'How old is she?'

'...We were born on the same day.'

Twins?! Looking at Blaze, clothes still soaked in sweat from a training session, I could only picture someone just like her: loud and cheerful, with the same black ears and eyes.

'Then all those snacks from different countries that you bought...'

'Yeah, she eats six meals a day.'

A big eater! But not too shocking, if she's Blaze's sister.

'So you cleaned up your desk because...'

'Nothing gets past her eyes! She'll know everything I don't want her to if I just leave my stuff lying around.'

An inquisitive spirit, too.

Seeing how busy Blaze was, I decided to help out and prepare a training room for them. Given that she was Blaze's sister, I expected them to have a friendly brawl first thing after meeting up.

'Hey, guys, er... this is my little sister.'

My brain froze for a moment. Blaze's 'twin sister' turned out to be a polite, mild-mannered young lady with spotless white ears and tail. The two of them were nothing alike. Indeed, one could say they were polar opposites.

'Who are you calling a little sister?' This 'sister' of Blaze's retorted with a smile. 'We don't know who was born first, do we?'

The woman by the name of Xingzhu was friendly and graceful, sharing snacks she brought from Yan with us. As she left the office with Blaze, we all had the same question in our hearts, but none of us felt comfortable asking it aloud—

Who actually is this 'sister', born on the same day but sharing not a single thing in common?

I have gotten into the habit of reading Xingzhu's gourmet reports. There is a simplistic charm to her writing, true to her experience as a historian, and her accounts are filled with interesting anecdotes.

March 7th. Upon trying a fin dish, she recalls that one of her strengths when she was little was being good at getting small finbones out of her mouth.

May 8th. After an argument with her supervisor about whether to include a certain entry in the historical records, they awkwardly shared a table at a snack stand in front of the Imperial Historical Cabinet's office. After biting into some unripe green plums, she looked up to see her supervisor's face scrunched up from the sourness. They both looked at each other and laughed.

She attached delicate sentiments to food, and reading her gourmet reports is like reading a slice of life.

Interestingly, by searching her pen name I also found a number of side accounts. It did not take long to understand why she used them: Xingzhu's writing style is reserved but also straightforward, mincing no words if there are any deficiencies in the ingredients or the preparation of a dish, which unsurprisingly earned the ire of more than a few restaurants. Xingzhu herself seems entirely unconcerned though, occasionally poking fun at it in her books before continuing to write her blunt and honest reviews, perhaps under a different account.

Following the trail of pen names, I found another account by the name of 'SpringNightsBanquet' on a novel website, which had numerous novels published—and was getting far more Likes than her gourmet reports. Yet Xingzhu never once mentioned that she wrote novels, nor was there anything in her onboarding files.

I started browsing through one, expecting a historical novel or perhaps a food essay, only to be increasingly bewildered by what I was reading. Wait, is this a... I scrolled up and took a good look at the title. 'The Twin Moons Playing With a Flower'?! Wait, so the moons are...?! And the flower?! Oh dear. Last update... last night, right after Xingzhu submitted her work report.

I closed the webpage, took a deep breath, and decided not to search for her side accounts anymore.

—Anonymous HR Operator

What you did deserves to be recorded in the history books—these were the words of encouragement a worried Xingzhu had for Blaze after a particularly dangerous mission. For her part, Blaze did not think what she did was especially notable, but she was curious what kind of people tend to get their names in the history books. 'The Imperial Historical Records? People who have affected the livelihoods and thoughts of the masses. The greater their influence, the more people they affect, the bigger the mark they leave on history.' Since the people who left a mark in Xingzhu's eyes were massively influential, Blaze was sure she was just joking when she said that she deserved to be in the history books.

One day, they sat down together for a drink. With hazy eyes, Xingzhu spoke as if muttering to herself:

'The nanny who brought me up died when I was in school. On her deathbed, I told her I wanted to write her epitaph. She said it wasn't necessary, that she was just an ordinary person, after all. I begged and begged, and at long last she agreed.

'I sat by her side, and together we recalled the major events of her life. I filled an entire notebook, but even then I felt it wasn't enough. I didn't want to leave anything out. But the first thing I saw when I left her room was the tombstone her family had prepared for her.

'That's when I realized I could only fit a brief description on it, a few events from her entire life, and I couldn't hold back my tears anymore.

'Then... I started writing about the little people, the ones the history books leave out. I wanted my pen to remember you, all of you.'

Listening to this, Blaze remembered Xingzhu's words, and laughed. 'So it wasn't a joke after all.'

The baby-delivering fowlbeast asked the black and white cats, born on the same day, which one to send to the family that had produced generations of government officials. The white cat knew her destiny did not lie there and shrank back, so the fowlbeast took the black cat.

The black cat was confident and strong. The fact that she was the 'stray kin' of a distant clan did not make her timid, and her star shone bright even in a family full of such stars. She went into the Tianshi Bureau, found those she wanted to protect, found what she wanted to change, and never strayed from her path.

The white cat drifted to a distant land. Timid and cautious, she did not know where to go when she got Oripathy, so she took a notebook and traveled the land. It turned out that this life was not so bad, and she began to write book after book about her travels...

All was as it should have been, as they should be.

—Excerpt from a draft of a novel, discarded by Xingzhu

'If we were never swapped—I can't even imagine it! Where would I be, if not here? You should keep writing! Now I'm curious.'

Xingzhu shook her head. 'We've already embarked on a path that doesn't belong to us. No amount of words can make things right...'

Blaze's eyes went wide. 'What do you mean, make things right?'

'I always felt like I owed you... ow!' Xingzhu covers her forehead with a hand, wincing in pain. She looks up to see Blaze with her hand raised, preparing to flick her forehead again.

'S-Stop, my eyes are already tearing up from the pain...'

'Then I owe you an apology. And now we're even.'

The leaves of wild shepherd's purse become too tough in tofu soup if they are picked too late, making it feel as though one is chewing on dried grass. So grandpa and I uprooted the roses in the garden, and tried our hand at planting them ourselves. But it seemed this vegetable would rather grow on the sides of the street than be cared for by us. The seeds would not sprout properly if not sown well, or if it was too warm, as was the case in our garden.

I stopped tending to the garden when grandpa moved out. I fell ill in the winter of that year, and was hardly able to eat anything. The cook brought a bowl of tofu and shepherd's purse soup, but the leaves were too tough, so I took it back to the kitchen.

The cook said the shepherd's purse in the garden had sprouted after it snowed, and she picked them from there. She said that grandpa had been in the kitchen, pondering over a piece of tofu: 'What to do with this tofu if there are no such leaves?' We both laughed, and I finished the bowl of soup. On my way back to my room, I stopped by the garden, and laughed again when I realized that grandpa's ways of coaxing me had never changed, even after all these years. The garden was filled with shepherd's purse, but not the type we planted.

—Excerpt from the Baizao Cuisine & Food Culture, Volume 3