At Fuming High School, there were only two people who earned spots on the "Least Popur Figures" list. First, there was Director Ma from the Discipline Office, notorious for enforcing school rules with an iron fist and widely known as the "Bck-Faced Yaokai King." The second was a girl from Css 6, Grade 11: Tang Xiaohua.

  Tang Xiaohua, seventeen years old, 159 cm tall, pale and thin, with 500-degree myopia. Her grades are mediocre, her interests are limited, and she has no sense of fashion—a typical “blend-into-the-crowd” type. In short, if she stands next to me, my dazzling aura instantly eclipses hers. People's main feeling toward this pin girl is fear, the same kind most people feel toward mice or cockroaches: a mix of loathing and dread.

  This is because Tang Xiaohua is known as the infamous “jinx.” If she says something like, “You should be careful of catching a cold!” “Watch out for traffic when you go out!” or “You should be careful on this test; you might fail,” it inevitably comes true. Every single time. At first, people thought it was just coincidence, but after countless times, they began to believe in her “power,” moving from skepticism to fear. Some families even warned their children to avoid her, considering her a bringer of bad luck.

  As a living witness, I′ve seen countless incidents like this firsthand. Even back when she was still a babbling toddler, there was one day when her mother took her for a check-up at the hospital. Tang Xiaohua pointed at the nurse's sparkling diamond ring and said one word: “Lost...lost...” Two hours ter, the nurse's ring slipped off her finger and fell into the sink drain while she was washing her hands, never to be retrieved.

  Tang Xiaohua's tumultuous life began at this very moment. When she was young, I often shielded her from the stones and rotten vegetables that were thrown her way. The children who didn′t understand the world spat at her and called her a yaokai. Whenever the neighbors saw her family, they’d turn and walk the other way. Even her parents looked at her with growing anxiety, mixed with a deepening doubt in their eyes.

  "Xiao Tou,” Ten-year-old Tang Xiaohua sat dejectedly on a slide at school, staring at me with downcast eyes. “Is it wrong to be an honest child? Didn’t the teacher say good children should always tell the truth and never lie?”

  Sigh, how I hated her calling me “Xiao Tou!” It made me sound like a thief, and it was so girly! I'm over 180 cm tall, after all, and a handsome guy to boot! The only reason she started calling me that was because when she asked for my name, I couldn't answer, so she took it upon herself to name me “Xiao Tou.” She said the word "Tou” felt warm and familiar, just like the feeling I gave her.

  Alright, I admit that after leaving the fox den, I even forgot my own name. But what's the importance of a name? It's just a symbol. "Xiao Tou" is fine. Xiao Tou guarding Xiao Hua—it's a perfect match.

  I knew that when ten-year-old Tang Xiaohua asked this question, she was absolutely serious.

  "Well..." I nded beside her, adopting an academic posture, "Tang Xiaohua, sometimes the truth can upset people. When a lie benefits humans, they′d rather be deceived. Maybe, when you′re a little older, you′ll understand this."

  "I don't understand. I still don′t understand. Even if I don′t say it, these bad things will happen anyway. Lying is bad." Ten-year-old Tang Xiaohua concluded with the most confused expression.

  She really was a one-track mind, wasn't she? I flew back up into the air, looking down at the small figure sitting on the orange slide, hugging her knees. The setting sun moved slowly through her dark hair, its light tracing a path like an almost imperceptible flower blooming.

  Although to me, she was just a "task," the sight of her gradually lowering little face under the setting sun always made me feel a twinge of sympathy, especially when I noticed the new scrape on her knee. The day before, I had gone to the neighboring city to buy roasted chicken, only leaving for a few hours. While I was gone, the school bullies had tied her shoeces into tight knots while she napped, causing her to fall ft on her face when she got up. I felt a little guilty about this; after all, I'm a kind fox. Besides, Tang Xiaohua didn′t really have many fws, apart from being a bit clumsy and awkward.

  More importantly, she was good to me. At kindergarten, when snacks were handed out, while the other kids stuffed them all into their mouths, she always made sure to save half for me. Even though I wasn′t a big fan of sweets, every time I saw her eyes and the grimy but very eager little hand stretched out to me, I just couldn′t refuse. One winter, she even used the skills she learned in school's craft css to knit a lopsided scarf and gave it to me on Christmas Day.

  "How ugly..." As a visually sensitive fox, I picked up the white scarf and looked through the rge hole caused by a dropped stitch. Behind it was Tang Xiaohua's silly smiling face.

  "You always wear so little; more scarves would keep you warmer," she said seriously.

  "I'm a fox; I'm not afraid of the cold." I poked her little head. "What a waste of time and effort, and it looks so ugly!"

  Tang Xiaohua sighed like a little adult and murmured, "I don’t have any other gifts for you."

  "Why give me a gift?" I was puzzled. This girl's brain really wasn't quite right.

  "Because, Little Tou, you′ve always been protecting me." She tilted her head. "You've been good to me, so I want to give you a gift. That way, you'll know I'm good to you too."

  Oh my gosh, this girl was so honestly silly.

  "Listen up, protecting you is just my job,” I said sternly. “I don’t accept any bribes, especially not something this ugly.”

  "But I knitted it for a whole week...” She looked a little disappointed.

  I could see the red blood vessels in her eyes and the frostbite marks on the two fingers of her right hand. I knew this silly girl had been knitting a scarf recently, but I didn’t realize it was for me.

  "Alright, alright,” I sighed and wrapped the scarf around my neck. “This is the st time.”

  I raised my head, and my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window was crystal clear. My waist-length bck hair was neatly tied behind me, and I was wearing a bck leather jacket that flowed with wild, dazzling fashion, topped off with my stylish Armani sungsses. It was perfect—almost tear-worthy! But now, with this ridiculously ugly scarf added… I really did want to cry.

  When Tang Xiaohua saw me wearing her gift, she immediately pounced on me, hugging my waist and giggling. “Long live Xiao Tou!”

  The clear gss reflected our intimate embrace, and as I gnced at it unintentionally, my heart suddenly skipped a beat.

  In that moment, I unexpectedly thought the scarf didn’t look bad on me.

  And, to my surprise, I even kind of liked the feeling of being wrapped in this soft little thing.

  I found myself once again pondering the true motive behind the old fox sending me to protect Tang Xiaohua. Was it simply because honesty is so rare? In a world so full of lies, a child who insists on telling the truth is so precious that I must protect her at all costs.

  That reason seemed far-fetched.

  Tang Xiaohua is human, but she is definitely not an ordinary human. Her ability to curse people with her "crow's mouth" makes others fear her, and it surprises me as well. She says that for those who are about to experience bad things, a different colored mist will float above their foreheads. The deeper the color, the more serious the accident that′s about to happen.

  She has the ability to see these mists, and not only that, but if she focuses a little harder and uses some inexplicable innate mental power, she can even peer through the mist to see exactly what will happen.

  However, having extraordinary talent and good luck aren't the same thing. Tang Xiaohua's "talent" has probably only brought her lingering confusion, as well as strange and isoting looks from others.

  I once asked her what color the mist above my forehead was. She said she couldn′t see it. This was yet another strange thing—could it be that the guardian's powers don't work on the guardian themselves?

  However, I still feel relieved. The habit of preferring to hear good things and avoiding bad ones is something both humans and foxes share. Especially for me, a fox who just hopes to finish the task quickly and return to my cozy den for a long nap.

  Under my protection, Tang Xiaohua gradually grew up. I watched her grow from a little kid to a girl whose height was now level with my shoulder. Each time she grew a little, my heart would ease a little more. When the day came for her life to end, I would have completed my mission and could roll back to my home. As long as the girl didn′t cause me too much trouble, I would be satisfied. After all, cleaning up the mess after her bad prophecies took a lot of energy, and I wasn't exactly an industrious fox.

  But luckily, Tang Xiaohua was a sensible girl, and over the years, she didn′t cause any major problems.

  But recently, she has made me faintly sense a certain dangerous smell.