Chapter 167: Tong Yin & Lan Ruoling

The two of them let their hushed conversation trail off completely, falling silent as they walked.

By then, they’d already reached the visitor center.

After slipping past the front hall, the girl in the green vest led them straight into the back office. "Nalan, I’ve brought the two of them over."

"Good. You can head back now — I’ll take it from here."

A girl dressed in a retro, old-fashioned long gown rose gracefully from her seat and looked Tong Yin and Lan Ruoling over carefully, sizing them up from head to toe. "Have the two of you decided yet where you’d like to work?"

"This badge here is for outdoor duty, and this one’s for the visitor center."

She slid the two employee badges across the table toward them.

"Could I ask what the outdoor work actually involves?" Tong Yin asked.

Rather than answering directly, the girl simply asked in return, "Can you sing? Dance, maybe?"

Though she had no idea why the question mattered, Tong Yin answered honestly all the same.

"I can do both."

"Outdoor positions call for singing and dancing. Since you can manage both, this one might suit you better." She tapped the green badge.

Tong Yin glanced over at Lan Ruoling, then picked up the green badge without further hesitation. "I’ll take the outdoor position, then."

Lan Ruoling only scratched her head — she genuinely didn’t mind either way. She could have taken the visitor center role herself, but since Tong Yin had already made her choice, that suited her just fine too.

Once they’d both claimed their badges, they asked, "We noticed everyone here wears a uniform. Do we need one too?"

"Yes. I’ll take you to your living quarters first so you can learn the way there — you can start work once you’ve changed."

Nalan gestured for the two of them to follow along.

Tong Yin and Lan Ruoling fell into step behind her without delay.

Nalan led them through the staff-only entrance, and after a long series of winding turns down unfamiliar hallways, the three of them finally found themselves standing directly in front of an enormous castle.

"Wait, where exactly are we? I don’t think I’ve ever spotted this castle on the park map before?" Lan Ruoling blurted out, clearly startled.

Nalan glanced at her briefly. "It’s not open to visitors yet, which is why it doesn’t appear on the map."

"All the staff live here in the castle — and from now on, that includes the two of you as well."

This time it was Tong Yin’s turn to look surprised. "Wait, seriously? The benefits are that good? Part-timers like us actually get to live somewhere like this?"

"Of course. We’ve always treated our staff quite well here."

Once inside, Nalan led them straight up to the second floor. "The ground floor will eventually open up to tourists once everything’s ready, so all staff quarters start from the second floor and go upward from there."

"Floors two through five belong entirely to the green vests. Floors six through nine house all of the red vests. The tenth floor belongs solely to the park owner himself — it’s best to avoid going up there at all unless it’s absolutely necessary."

"This is your room." Nalan gestured toward one of the doors on the third floor. "Your uniform’s already waiting inside. Go ahead and change, then come find me."

She let Tong Yin step into the room, then continued leading Lan Ruoling further upstairs.

"And this one’s yours. Change your clothes and head back down once you’re ready — I’ll be waiting for you there."

Lan Ruoling nodded quickly in agreement.

With that, Nalan turned and made her way back downstairs.

Once inside her own room, Lan Ruoling swapped into her freshly issued red vest and stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a moment, carefully straightening out the fabric of her new uniform.

Suddenly, something about the way her body felt struck her as subtly off. She flexed each of her limbs in turn, testing them one by one, but couldn’t quite manage to pin down exactly what felt wrong about any of it.

After mulling over everything that had happened that day, she decided nothing seemed genuinely out of place and simply let the thought go.

Once she’d pinned on her work badge, Lan Ruoling froze again for a moment, shaking her head slightly. Strange — she had the nagging sense that she’d forgotten something important.

Never mind that for now, she told herself. Tong Yin and that girl are probably already waiting for me downstairs.

She hurried down the stairs, only to find Nalan standing alone on the first floor.

"Um... where did my friend go? I don’t see her anywhere."

"She’s headed somewhere different from where you’re going. I’ve already had someone else escort her there. You’ll be coming with me to the visitor center instead."

"By the way — what’s your name?"

"Lan Ruoling."

"...Lan Ruoling? Hmm. How about this — from now on, let’s just call you Linglan instead. Lan Ruoling doesn’t have quite the right ring to it." Nalan tossed the suggestion out casually, as though it were nothing at all.

Lan Ruoling blinked, thoroughly confused as to why Nalan would suddenly want to hand her a brand-new name out of nowhere.

"Why would I need that? Do part-time staff really need stage names?"

Nalan stopped walking and turned back to face her directly. "You’re already one of us now — part of this amusement park. Naturally, that means having a name of your own."

Lan Ruoling stared back at Nalan blankly, entirely unaware that on the badge pinned to Nalan’s chest, her own portrait — along with an entirely new name — had already begun slowly taking shape.

Lily of the Valley.

"Welcome aboard, Lily of the Valley!"

Nalan laughed, and it was a bright, genuinely delighted sort of laugh.

Lan Ruoling pressed her lips together, finding something distinctly odd about the woman in front of her — almost as though something weren’t quite right with her.

Still, in the end, she chose not to say anything about it. It was just a stage name, after all. Once she eventually left this place behind, the name would mean nothing to her anymore anyway.

Linglan followed Nalan back to the visitor center and quickly picked up the basics of the job.

Satisfied, Nalan left her to it and went about her own business.

During a break later that same day, Linglan slipped quietly away to the staff lounge and reached out to Tong Yin through her personal panel, hoping to catch up with her for a bit. To her genuine surprise, she discovered that several familiar faces from the transit station were still listed there among her saved contacts as well, as though nothing had changed at all.

She let them know she’d officially become staff now, and that they were welcome to reach out to her anytime they needed help.

Tong Yin, likely caught up with work herself, never got around to replying to Linglan’s message.

Linglan didn’t think much of it — she’d only been sneaking a message in during her own bit of slacking off anyway. After sending it, she headed back out to work.

It wasn’t until evening, once Nalan finally came to tell her she was free to head back and rest, that Linglan made her way back to her room in the castle.

Only then did Tong Yin finally reply.

Tong Yin: "Exhausted. Danced all afternoon without a break."

Lily of the Valley: "That’s nothing. I spent the whole afternoon hosting tourists and got quite the education in the sheer variety of species wandering around here."

The two of them kept up a casual back-and-forth over the next two or three days.

Meanwhile, several other friends still lingering on her contact list had grown thoroughly sick and tired of the park’s increasingly reckless, borderline dangerous rides, and finally decided to reach out to Linglan directly, hoping she might be able to help them out somehow.

"Lan Ruoling, are there any part-time openings left at the park? Could you put in a word for us? You have no idea how insane the rides here have gotten — we genuinely can’t handle them anymore."

"Seriously, seriously — I’d happily take a security position at this point."

"I swear, I nearly died on that pirate ship this afternoon. The bolts were loose, and it nearly threw me clean off. If I’d actually fallen, I’d have been torn apart."

Linglan honestly hadn’t expected any of them to actually ask her about part-time work like this, but then, almost immediately, she remembered what the young green vest had mentioned all the way back on that very first day — only two positions had ever been available to begin with, right from the start.

And both of those had already gone to her and Tong Yin. So what exactly could she do about it now?

After mulling it over, Linglan reluctantly brought the matter up with Nalan.

Nalan listened, considered it for a moment, and finally said, "It’s not entirely out of the question. We’ll have to see. If we squeeze things a bit, there’s a decent chance we could still use a few more hands."

"But are you certain they actually want this? I can only go ask if you’re sure about that first."

Linglan nodded quickly. "Yes — yes, I’m sure."

"All right, then. I’ll go check and let you know before I head off work tonight."

Hey guys, I want to tell you that I didn’t add an extra Chapter because I forgot or anything like that, but because my conscience is what put me in this predicament. To begin with, if you noticed at the beginning of this month, on the first day there was one Golden Ticket; this was a continuation of the five Golden Tickets Because when you sent it on the last day of the month, in the last hour, it wasn’t complete; it was missing a golden point. So someone sent it at the beginning of the new month. That’s why I sent a Chapter. Therefore, each new Chapter will be at number 6 or 1, meaning it’s currently missing a golden point The next Chapter will be at 11 Golden, you understand? So I hope you didn’t misunderstand me. ⁦(⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠;⁠)⁩