A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

The clock on the wall ticked away. Before he knew it, the hands had reached twelve noon.

Ke Mingqing rested in his swivel chair for a short nap. Opening his eyes, he packed the postcard and pencil case from the desk into a gift box and placed it on his bookshelf.

He rose from the chair and walked out of the bedroom.

Turning into the hallway, he stopped in front of the adjacent room. He looked up and spotted a blue sticky note on the door, bearing a few eye-catching words:

—"Ke Mingqing and dogs not allowed inside."

Reading the note, Ke Mingqing shrugged. His dear sister was certainly getting good at this.

A moment later, he raised his hand and knocked gently on Xia Zili's door. "You in there? Hello?"

A long moment passed with no response from the bedroom. It was dead silent.

"Jeez, you aren't still mad, are you?" he asked.

When the bedroom remained completely still, Ke Mingqing hesitated, then reached out and gripped the doorknob.

He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The young man looked up, met with a chilling sight.

A young girl in an orange dress sat on the windowsill. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted upward as if sniffing the air, and a faint, eerie blue flame flickered at the corners of her eyes.

The flames drifted through the air, forming the shape of a cross.

It looked just like the crosses used to burn witches at the stake in ancient times. A faint peal of laughter seemed to echo through the air.

It was a girl's voice—innocent, yet cruelly cold.

Watching this scene, a single word surfaced in Ke Mingqing's mind:

—Witch.

"This is—"

He froze, mouthing the word, and closed the door behind him.

The summer heat rippled the curtains, obscuring and revealing the girl's figure on the windowsill. A moment later, like a drowning person breaking the surface, Xia Zili's eyelids fluttered and snapped open.

Her head drooped as she panted softly. The wisps of eerie blue flame at the corners of her eyes dissipated, and the laughter echoing in the air vanished.

Xia Zili blinked, taking a long moment for her vision to refocus. Only then did she lift her head and realize someone else was standing in her room.

The young man was staring blankly at her.

"Why... didn't you knock?" Xia Zili asked with a frown after a long pause. Her tone was completely normal, as if nothing had just happened.

"I did, but you didn't answer," he said softly.

Xia Zili thought for a moment. "Oh. So what do you want?"

"That thing you mentioned on the postcard, what was it exactly?" Ke Mingqing asked nonchalantly. "I couldn't quite remember, so I came to ask."

Xia Zili froze, then lowered her eyes and shook her head. "If you forgot, never mind. I just brought it up randomly. It's nothing important."

"Really?"

"Really," Xia Zili said, abruptly changing the subject. "When you came into the room just now, what did you see?"

"I saw you—"

Ke Mingqing stopped himself. The image of the blue flames drifting from the corners of her eyes flashed through his mind. In that moment, she had looked like a complete stranger.

"Forget it. Don't tell me—" Xia Zili's voice carried a slight tremble, sounding a bit hoarse.

Ke Mingqing was stunned.

"Just pretend you didn't see anything, okay?" she murmured, lowering her gaze. "Just let me be quiet for a bit."

Ke Mingqing lowered his head, remaining silent.

Xia Zili stayed silent for a long time. "I'll tell you something, but don't tell anyone else."

Ke Mingqing nodded gently.

"Actually, over the past few days, I've realized there are a lot of things from the past I can't remember anymore."

"Like what?"

"Age one... age two, on to three, then four—" Like a grade schooler, she counted them off her fingers, murmuring the numbers one by one.

Ke Mingqing didn't think much of it, assuming she was just making an insignificant little joke. "Do you have zero common sense? Normal people can't remember things from when they were one to four anyway—"

Before he could finish, his voice abruptly cut off.

"Age five... age six—"

The girl continued to murmur, folding down her fingers one by one. She was clearly just repeating the exact same motion, but Ke Mingqing's expression subtly changed.

"Age seven... eight... nine." Only when she reached this point did her voice finally stop.

The bedroom was dead silent. Only then did the girl lift her eyes and look at him quietly. "I... might forget everything about us—"

Ke Mingqing was rendered speechless, his heart tightening.

Xia Zili fell silent for a moment. "Now that I think about it, everything before I was ten is already a total blank. Whenever I try to remember, I only see a girl I don't know... She's crying under a cross. Crying and crying, like she's been weeping like that for years... It feels like her memories are replacing mine."

"Is this a symptom of becoming a witch?" he asked softly.

"Yeah. You know, back when I first became a magical girl, I thought it was so amazing. I really looked down on the ones who turned into witches. I thought those poor souls were just cowardly and weak-willed. I truly believed I would never end up like them—"

Xia Zili paused. With a hint of self-deprecation, she whispered, "Only now do I realize... Yeah. So this is how it happens to everyone. You slowly turn into someone you don't even recognize. It turns out the process is terrifying—"

Ke Mingqing walked over and sat on the soft bed, turning to look at Xia Zili on the windowsill.

"I read the postcard you gave me," he said.

"Your thoughts?" she asked.

"The diaries you wrote when you were little were so cute. Could you maybe learn a thing or two from your younger self?" he said. "Back then, you'd call me 'Brother' with every breath and stick to me all day long. Now you're so damn awkward, throwing tantrums over nothing. I just don't understand you."

"Oh—so you don't like the way I am now?"

Sitting on the windowsill with her arms wrapped around her knees, Xia Zili turned her head and glared at him.

"I never said that. No matter what, you're always my sister."

As he said this, Ke Mingqing recalled the sight of her counting on her fingers. He gently reached out and took her right hand.

"The one-year-old you is my sister, the two-year-old you is also my sister, same for three, same for four—"

As he spoke, he pried open her tightly clenched fingers one by one. "The nine-year-old you, the ten-year-old you... you'll always be my sister. Even if you forget everything, you're still my sister."

"..."

Xia Zili looked at his hand.

After staring blankly for a moment, she offered a soundless smile.

Ke Mingqing thought for a moment, then released her hand. "Your birthday is in two months. Since you went through the trouble of getting me a gift, I guess I'll ask: what do you want for yours?"

"To elope," she said.

"Huh?"

"Elope with me," she repeated, her tone serious.

Ke Mingqing was dumbfounded.

Just then, Xia Zili burst into a giggle. "I'm kidding. Didn't Big Sister say the same thing to me last night? It just means taking a trip together."

She stared at him and said lightly, "Look at that stupid, terrified look on your face. You didn't actually think your own sister was going to elope with you, did you?"

Ke Mingqing scratched his head. "You sisters really know how to joke around. My heart can barely take it."

"Actually, I wasn't going to give you a birthday gift," Xia Zili said.

"Then why did you?"

"I realized that by the time your birthday rolls around next year, I might not be able to give you one, so I decided I should."

"Why?"

"Do you... want a witch for a sister?"

As she spoke, the girl turned her head and fixed her gaze on Ke Mingqing. At this moment, the eerie blue flames and the shape of the cross still lingered in her pupils.

They were eyes that could strike terror into the very depths of a person's soul, yet Ke Mingqing just looked at her calmly.

"If that witch is you," he said, "then I don't mind having a witch for a sister."

"I'll kill you."

The girl's voice turned freezing cold. Her ruthless gaze plunged him into an icy abyss, as if she had transformed into someone else entirely—someone he didn't know.

"I'll kill you, too," Ke Mingqing replied after a moment.

He spoke with absolute tranquility. It was as ordinary and nonchalant as saying, "It's okay, I'll give you a hug when you're sad."

Xia Zili kept her head down, subtly taken aback.

A moment later, she lifted her head and said hoarsely, "—Are you an idiot?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am—" Before Ke Mingqing could finish, his pupils contracted.

At that exact moment, the girl before him shut her eyes, slumped to the side, and collapsed toward the floor. He instantly flashed forward like a bolt of lightning, catching her right before she hit the ground.

"You fell for it." Another voice echoed out—unfamiliar and mocking.

He looked down and seemed to see a girl with blue flames drifting in her eyes gripping his throat. But it was merely an illusion, shattering in an instant like a reflection on the water.

By the time Ke Mingqing came back to his senses, Xia Zili was lying motionless on the floor.

His own body seemed not to have moved at all from start to finish. He had simply been standing quietly in place the entire time.

Ke Mingqing stood dazed for a moment before walking over.

He quickly carried Xia Zili to the bed and checked her vitals. Once he confirmed she had only passed out, he sat by her side and kept watch for a while before quietly leaving the room.

Ke Mingqing sat at the end of the hallway, his back against the balcony door. The door was shut tight, letting no sunlight bleed through.

The young man lowered his head and took a deep breath, his face shrouded in shadows. After a long time, he closed his heavy eyelids, drifting into a deep sleep.

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