[GL] I'm Just A Side Character... So Why Is The Heroine Chasing Me?!-Chapter 46: The Palm Problem

Three days after the overflow incident, Lan Yue had developed a problem with her left hand.

Specifically, she couldn’t stop looking at it.

At breakfast, she stared at her palm while chewing. During her afternoon work in Tang Xiaoli’s workshop, she paused between ingredients to examine it. At night, she held it up in the moonlight and traced the exact spot where Zhao Lingxi’s lips had touched.

She had washed the hand seventeen times.

She could still feel it.

This was clearly some kind of spiritual energy residue from the golden overflow. A leftover tingle. A phantom sensation caused by nerve damage. Very scientific. Very explainable.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Zhao Lingxi had kissed her palm.

Because that had been a thank you. A gesture of gratitude. Like a handshake. Or a bow. Or any number of perfectly normal, completely platonic things people did when someone saved their life.

People kissed other people’s hands all the time. It meant nothing.

Lan Yue looked at her palm again.

Her stomach flipped.

It meant nothing.

"You’re doing the thing again," Tang Xiaoli said.

They were in the alchemy workshop. Lan Yue was supposed to be grinding spirit herbs. Instead, she was staring at her hand like it held the secrets of the universe.

"What thing?"

"The hand thing. The staring at your own hand thing. You’ve been doing it for three days and it’s starting to worry me."

"I burned it during the overflow. I’m monitoring the healing." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"It healed two days ago. I checked."

"Internal healing takes longer."

"The burn was on the surface."

"I have deep skin."

Tang Xiaoli put down her pestle and turned to face Lan Yue fully. Her expression was the kind of gentle, patient look that people reserved for friends who were being spectacularly stupid.

"Lan Yue."

"What?"

"Something happened."

"Nothing happened."

"Something happened with Zhao Lingxi."

"Absolutely nothing happened with Zhao Lingxi."

"Then why have you washed that hand seventeen times?"

"You counted?!"

"You do it at the basin outside my workshop. I have a window." Tang Xiaoli leaned forward. "Tell me."

Lan Yue pressed her lips together. She ground the herbs with aggressive force, reducing them to powder far finer than the recipe required.

"She kissed my hand," she said finally.

Tang Xiaoli fell off her stool.

Not metaphorically. She actually toppled sideways, hit the floor, and scrambled back up with wild eyes.

"SHE WHAT?"

"Keep your voice down!"

"She kissed your hand?! Zhao Lingxi? The ice queen? The woman who makes blizzards look warm? She put her lips on your actual hand?!"

"It was a thank you. For saving her life."

"A THANK YOU?"

"Stop yelling!"

"Lan Yue." Tang Xiaoli grabbed her by the shoulders. General Fluffbottom, startled by the sudden movement, squawked and flapped to a higher shelf. "Nobody kisses someone’s hand as a thank you. You bow for a thank you. You say the actual words thank you for a thank you. You do not press your lips against someone’s palm unless you..."

She trailed off, eyes widening.

"Unless you what?" Lan Yue asked.

Tang Xiaoli’s face split into the biggest grin Lan Yue had ever seen on a human being.

"Oh no," Lan Yue said.

"Oh yes."

"Don’t say it."

"She likes you."

"She does NOT."

"She likes you and you like her and you’re both too stubborn to admit it and it’s the most beautiful disaster I’ve ever witnessed."

"I am going to put General Fluffbottom on a diet of nothing but plain rice."

"Worth it! This is the best day of my life!"

---

Lan Yue escaped the workshop with her dignity in tatters and her face the color of a sunset.

She needed air. She needed space. She needed to be somewhere Tang Xiaoli couldn’t reach her with uncomfortable truths.

She found herself at the Academy’s eastern terrace, a quiet stone platform that overlooked the valley below. Few students came here because the wind was strong and the view, while beautiful, offered no practical benefit.

Lan Yue sat on the stone railing and let the wind cool her burning face.

She likes you.

Ridiculous.

Zhao Lingxi was the heroine of the story. A woman destined for greatness. A cultivation genius with power that could reshape the world. She would end up with someone equally extraordinary. Someone like Mo Tian, the Crown Prince. Or in a story with different tags, someone powerful and commanding who matched her intensity.

Not a transmigrated zombie apocalypse survivor stuck in a servant’s body who couldn’t stop blushing and walked into tree branches.

"You look troubled."

Lan Yue nearly fell off the railing.

Bai Xuelan stood a few paces away, silver hair billowing in the wind, looking like she had materialized from thin air. Which, given her cultivation level, she might have.

"Don’t sneak up on people," Lan Yue gasped.

"I walked normally. You were distracted." Bai Xuelan joined her at the railing, leaning against it with casual elegance. "Thinking about the overflow?"

"Something like that."

They stood in silence for a moment. The wind carried the faint sounds of the Academy below. Students training. Bells marking the hour. The distant clang of a hammer from the weapons forge.

"Can I ask you something?" Lan Yue said.

"You may."

"During the overflow, when I was absorbing the energy. You said I consumed seventy percent of the output."

"Correct."

"Could I do more? If I trained? Could I absorb all of it?"

Bai Xuelan studied her with those sharp ice blue eyes. "Theoretically? Yes. Your void energy is remarkably adaptive. The more it consumes, the stronger it gets. With proper training, you could potentially serve as a complete containment system for Zhao Lingxi’s overflows."

She paused.

"But that would require significant advancement on your part. Your own cultivation base is practically nonexistent. You’re running on raw ability without structure." She tilted her head. "Have you ever actually cultivated? Formally?"

"No," Lan Yue admitted. "My abilities aren’t from cultivation. They’re..." She hesitated. "Different."

"I’ve noticed." Bai Xuelan’s expression was unreadable. "Your energy signature doesn’t match anything in the known cultivation system. It’s as if your power comes from somewhere else entirely."

Somewhere else. Like another world. Another life.

"Would you let me help?" Bai Xuelan asked. "Not research. Training. If you’re going to be Zhao Lingxi’s safety net, you need to be stronger. I can teach you to integrate your void energy with proper cultivation techniques."

Lan Yue blinked. "You’d do that?"

"I’m invested in Zhao Lingxi’s survival. That means I’m invested in yours." A slight smile. "Besides. You’re almost as interesting as she is."

Before Lan Yue could respond, Bai Xuelan added, "Also, you should tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"How you feel."

Lan Yue’s face reignited. "Why does everyone keep saying that? I don’t feel anything. We have a professional relationship. She’s my mistress. I’m her servant. It’s very straightforward."

Bai Xuelan looked at her the way a scholar looks at a particularly wrong answer on an exam.

"I watched you nearly die to save her life without a moment’s hesitation," she said. "I watched her hold you afterward like you were the only thing keeping her anchored to this earth. And I watched her kiss your hand with an expression I have never seen on her face in all the months I’ve known her."

She pushed off the railing.

"That is not a professional relationship. And you both know it."

She walked away, silver hair catching the light.

Lan Yue sat on the railing, mouth open, brain empty.

---

That evening, Lan Yue returned to find a letter on Zhao Lingxi’s desk.

Her mistress was reading it, her face carefully blank. Which meant it was bad.

"What is it?" Lan Yue asked.

"From Qin Wen." Zhao Lingxi set the letter down. "He’s been accepted as a visiting scholar at the Imperial Academy. He arrives next week."

The words hit Lan Yue like ice water.

Qin Wen. Here. At the Academy.

The man who murdered Zhao Lingxi in the original novel. The man who worked with Zhao Ruoqing. The charming, calculating snake who hid poison behind a smile.

Coming here. Into their space. Their sanctuary.

"He can’t do that," Lan Yue said. "He’s not a student."

"Visiting scholars have full access to Academy grounds and resources. It’s a prestigious position." Zhao Lingxi’s voice was calm but her jaw was tight. "He probably pulled strings through the Qin family’s connections."

"This is Zhao Ruoqing’s doing."

"Obviously."

They looked at each other across the room.

"He’ll try something," Lan Yue said.

"Without question."

"Then we need to be ready."

Zhao Lingxi nodded slowly. She picked up the letter and folded it with precise, deliberate movements before placing it in her desk drawer beside the poisoned pill she had kept as evidence.

"We will be," she said.

Her dark eyes found Lan Yue’s. Steady. Fierce. Unbreakable.

"Together."

The word hung between them. Heavier than a promise. Warmer than a vow.

Lan Yue met her gaze and nodded once.

"Together."

And if her heart beat faster when she said it, well.

That was just the circulation thing again.

Probably.