Roy stepped out of the abandoned building.
Fan Xinglou had already left. She had thrown her final question at Roy before walking away without a care, and the pitch-black special barrier within the building had vanished without a trace. To any outside observer, it would simply seem as though Roy had entered the abandoned building and stayed there for a day before leaving—even the tracking from his school emblem showed no discrepancies.
But Fan Xinglou had truly left Roy with a massive dilemma.
"Is my personality really such a flaw…"
As Roy walked away from the abandoned building, heading toward the outskirts of the redevelopment zone, he fell into silent contemplation.
He had split his personality into two distinct facets to resolve the contradictions within his own mind.
His dual personality was different from Touko's. Though Touko also used glasses to switch between personalities, the alternate persona was something she had deliberately crafted—a tool specifically for business dealings and similar situations. It wasn't born from internal conflict but from necessity.
Because of this, Touko's personality was remarkably stable. To her, the alternate persona was merely a convenient tool—something she could take up or discard at will. Which side was her true self was obvious at a glance.
Roy's dual personality, however, was different. He had cleaved his own nature into outward and inward facets to reconcile the contradictions in his thoughts. As a result, both sides were equally part of him—neither could be discarded.
Touko treated her dual personality as a convenient tool, but Roy saw the division as a solution to his problems.
This inevitably made Roy heavily reliant on his glasses. He struggled to control his personality through sheer willpower—instead, the glasses dictated his shifts in temperament.
Just as Fan Xinglou had said, the initiative to control his personality didn't entirely lie with Roy himself but with the glasses.
If, one day, he couldn't find a single pair of glasses to wear, he would likely remain trapped in his malicious persona forever, unable to return to his benevolent side. The urge to cut down anyone in sight would dominate his mind without respite, turning him into a pure agent of destruction.
Of course, he always carried multiple pairs of glasses on him, so such a day would never come. He could also switch to other tools—a snap of his fingers, a lighter, or something similar—but the core issue remained the same: Roy was bound by the tools rather than using them freely.
Solving this problem was, in theory, simple.
He just needed to reintegrate the two divided halves of his personality into a single, unified self—a final and sole personality. That way, he would no longer be constrained. Thinking back, Taigong Wang had even suggested the same thing, advising him to transcend the duality of good and evil.
But easier said than done. He had split his personality in the first place because his thoughts had become irreconcilable. If he could have maintained unity, he wouldn't have resorted to such measures.
Still, for the sake of his future, this flaw had to be addressed.
Otherwise, if an enemy ever discovered this weakness and manipulated him into losing control, it would be nothing short of foolish.
Yet, Roy had no idea how to reconcile the two conflicting sides of himself.
A hasty fusion might instead lead to one's own spirit becoming unstable. To lose to oneself before being defeated by time would be utterly ridiculous.
One must find a point capable of merging both good and evil, allowing this point to act like a black hole, firmly drawing the two opposing sides into orbit around it in a spiraling motion, ensuring they never conflict—only then can the path of self-destruction be avoided.
"How strange... Why do I feel like I should be able to do this...?"
Roy walked along a deserted path. For the sake of his reputation, he had no intention of passing through the red-light district and deliberately took a detour through the darkness. Yet, as he pondered this dilemma, he found his mind eerily calm.
It was as if he already possessed that point of fusion—he just hadn't realized it yet.
Was it an illusion?
"H-Hey, mister! Wanna come play at our place?"
Just then, a figure suddenly rushed out from the side, crashing into his chest like a charging bull.
Who was this?
Roy tensed his muscles slightly. Though he had been deep in thought, he wasn't so distracted as to be completely unaware of his surroundings. Yet this person had been hiding by the roadside, and he hadn't sensed them at all?
Still, he detected no hostility, so he relaxed a little.
He looked down at the person who had barreled into him like a bull, their head colliding with his chest—hard enough to hurt.
The moment he lowered his gaze, he saw a familiar beret.
Roy's expression instantly twisted into something strange.
"...What are you doing here?"
"Ahaha, well, I'm just drumming up business~"
The brown-haired girl in the beret tilted her head up slightly, deliberately keeping the upper half of her face in shadow, revealing only the lower half—wearing a strained smile.
"Sir, care to come to our place for a drink?"
She took a small step back, tugging her hat even lower, adopting the eager demeanor of a hostess.
From that brief collision, she had already caught Roy's scent—no alcohol, no perfume, just the overpowering stench of sweat.
It nearly knocked her out.
"..."
Roy was momentarily speechless.
He couldn't fathom what this woman was up to.
Why would a world-class idol abandon her career to work as a hostess in the red-light district?
How much was she charging per night?
"This is a back alley, isn't it? Shouldn't you be out on the main street if you're soliciting customers?"
Though he didn't know why, it seemed this woman had set her sights on him.
Fine. He'd play along.
"...Heh, the main street's already taken by others."
The girl twitched her lips but quickly supplied a plausible excuse—she didn't want to compete with other hostesses, so she came here instead. Surely that would work?
"So you're just slacking off on the job. How irresponsible."
Roy narrowed his eyes, his lips curling into an amused smirk.
"Show me your face. If you're working as a hostess, you should at least understand that looks matter if you want customers to pay. If you're ugly, I'm not stepping foot in your place!"
Alarm bells instantly rang in the girl's mind.
She absolutely couldn't show her face. The earrings could only change her hair colour, not her facial features. Wearing a beret to barely cover half her face in dim lighting was already pushing it. If her face were exposed, it wouldn't just be disastrous—it'd be catastrophic!
"Ahaha, I'd appreciate it if you could make an exception here. Actually, I'm only responsible for attracting customers, not accompanying them for drinks~!"
"You're so unwilling to show your face—are you really that ugly?"
Is this guy really someone worth entrusting my life to?!
Sylvia gritted her teeth in frustration, her smile stiffening on her face.
"And another thing, if you really want to attract customers, you should dress more provocatively."
Roy shot her a meaningful look.
"You're not showing any cleavage, your legs aren't exposed—wearing a T-shirt and long pants? You'd need divine intervention to get customers like that."
Sylvia fell silent.
She glanced at her outfit—plain T-shirt and pants. Forget being provocative, she wasn't even wearing a skirt. Anyone could tell at a glance she definitely wasn't a streetwalker.
***
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