Chapter 198: Before the Year-End

With the year-end approaching, on the second-to-last day before the holiday break, Lin Yun left the Anomaly Strategy Bureau after work and arrived home at nearly nine o'clock.

This was not only because he had a meeting with government officials that afternoon, but also because after work he could appear at the base in the guise of Senior Cuique, which had almost become a fixed routine in recent times.

Normally, he might have stayed at the base house by default, but today was somewhat different—Lin Xiaolu had come home.

Sometimes once a week, sometimes once every half month, Lin Xiaolu often returned home to change her spare clothes and daily necessities, take away some items needed for the coming period, bring back some unused things, and tidy up her room in the process.

For her, this was a natural matter requiring no consideration of any complex underlying reasons, but for Lin Yun, deciding whether to return home required multiple considerations.

During the first two months after moving into the secret base, his schedule was kept in high alignment with Lin Xiaolu's; basically, whenever Lin Xiaolu went home, he would also find an excuse to leave the base—after all, Xia Liang already knew the truth, and Bai Jingxuan didn't care at all about these things. As long as he ensured he was also present when Lin Xiaolu returned home, he could alleviate the issue of identity conflict to a certain extent.

However, as time passed, especially after the Full Moon Festival, Lin Xiaolu discovered that her father was not an ordinary person in the full sense of the word, and later even learned that Lin Yun was the Director of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau. Thus, one evening, she posed a thought-provoking question to her father:

—"Don't you need to work overtime or attend social engagements in the evenings recently?"

Lin Yun could actually give a definite answer, which was "Indeed, I don't," but it was difficult for him to explain the underlying logic in a few words using language suitable for his daughter to understand and accept.

After all, this involved both personal reasons on his part and reasons at the level of Fang Ting City.

Objectively speaking, he indeed had many things to keep busy with, whether it was various decision-making tasks within the Anomaly Strategy Bureau, communication with certain government officials, or even intervening in the political affairs of Fang Ting City as a result; if Lin Yun were willing to spend time on these matters, he could be so busy that he couldn't return home every night.

But in reality, Lin Yun was unwilling to waste time on trivial matters.

His attitude toward the work of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau was very simple: "Eradicate the unstable forces within Fang Ting City." Apart from this goal, he had little interest in deeply participating in the policy-making of Fang Ting City, the power games of the city's upper echelons, and a series of other matters.

This was both a matter of personal inclination and an assessment of the situation.

Because although Lin Yun was a native of Fang Ting City, he had never shown any performance in the political arena during his past thirty-plus years of life; he had no seniority, no experience. Although he was currently the Director of Fang Ting City, to the government officials of Fang Ting City, he was still an "outsider."

And if he were merely a simple outsider, that would be one thing, but he happened not to be; any person with ulterior motives who tried to investigate Lin Yun's identity and background, even if they couldn't investigate Anya or reach the level of Lin Xiaolu, could still learn the fact that made people fall silent: "Directly appointed by the General Bureau of Tian Du City, with a suspected will of the Magic Kingdom behind it."

"How to handle the relationship with the new Director of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau" had directly become a major difficulty for the current Fang Ting City government.

The relationship between the Anomaly Strategy Bureau and the city government was not one of superior and subordinate, but two sides of the same coin within the same city.

The Anomaly Strategy Bureau was responsible downward for managing groups such as Magicians who possessed supernatural powers, and upward for connecting with existences with excessively powerful forces such as Magical Girls and the Magic Kingdom; the government was responsible for guaranteeing the lives of ordinary people and maintaining the facilities and social operations within the city.

In the vast majority of cities, the relationship between the Anomaly Strategy Bureau and other government departments was in a state of being somewhat close yet somewhat distant; most of the time they each performed their own duties, but there were also many contents requiring joint cooperation.

A typical and sensitive topic was the operational funds of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau; money needed to be obtained from the government. And as long as a matter involved money, there would be countless interested parties within it.

Under normal circumstances, when the Anomaly Strategy Bureau of a city requested money from the government, it meant that some dirty deals among the my lords were about to begin: how much money to give, in what form to give it, and when to give it; there were quite a few things for the Anomaly Strategy Bureau and the government to wrangle over, and personnel on both sides could use this as a reason to seize more benefits for the public or for themselves, with a large amount of funds flowing into the pockets of certain officials under the name of "Anomaly Strategy Bureau activities."

These matters were also one of the unspoken unwritten rules in Fang Ting City in the past, even when Mo Si was in office; after all, although the dirty deeds done by Black Ash Dawn were not things a human would do, they still required money, requiring massive resources.

And when Lin Yun took office, this rule was immediately broken.

It was not that Lin Yun was unaware or didn't understand the rules, but simply that he was too lazy to bother.

He did not think it necessary to invent various pretexts just to extract money from the government; compared to such practices, he preferred to take however much was needed. He would not deliberately make the Anomaly Strategy Bureau practice extreme frugality, but he would not ask for resources beyond normal expenditures.

Regarding this, the government officials of Fang Ting City felt both joy and worry.

The joy lay in the fact that expenditures on the books had decreased significantly; compared to the amounts the Anomaly Strategy Bureau used to open its mouth wide for in previous years, the Anomaly Strategy Bureau led by Lin Yun was simply high-minded and upright. The worry lay in the fact that many people thereby lost the opportunity to scoop money into their own pockets, and also lost a chance to pull Lin Yun into their fold.

This newly arrived Director of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau was simply too incorruptible and too strict and impartial, to the point that they really didn't know how to win him over. Unable to win him over as "one of us," he would ultimately remain an "outsider," and if he were an outsider, then many things could not be discussed more deeply.

What troubled them most was that this new Director was not only difficult to win over and show favor to, but exclusion and suppression were even nonsense—after all, the other party was directly appointed by the Kingdom; who knew how high the connections went? If there happened to be a ruler from the Kingdom side above, a single casual word could cause Fang Ting City to no longer be protected by Magical Girls, and that would be truly disastrous.

They also knew that this was actually a kind of happy trouble.

Because for the Anomaly Strategy Bureaus of many small cities, let alone being directly appointed by the Kingdom, most members of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau might never be able to personally visit the Magic Kingdom in their entire lives, and they certainly lacked the capital to request anything from the Kingdom side. Many times, facing the Remnant Beasts, they could only silently clean up the aftermath, or hope that their city's Magical Girl could produce a more formidable figure.

Fang Ting City had actually been such a city for nearly a hundred years; in the past, due to its relatively remote geographical location and not large city scale, it was often a small transparent entity in the eyes of the Kingdom, and the Remnant Beast disasters that occurred every now and then made people feel uneasy.

Until twenty years ago, Fang Ting City produced a batch of Magical Girls who could be described as full of talent; not only could they easily solve the Remnant Beast disasters native to Fang Ting City, but their military power radiation range even spanned the wasteland, covering several surrounding cities, making Fang Ting City once become one of the most stable cities in the southern region of the Donghua State.

After such a reputation spread, naturally many people came admiringly, wanting to settle in Fang Ting City, which directly drove the rapid development and expansion of Fang Ting City in the past decade, and the economic development zone of the new city district was completed for this reason.

Twenty years ago, Fang Ting City was just an obscure small town, but twenty years later it had achieved considerable development; although there was still a huge gap compared to traditional large cities, it was already a leader among small cities.

This trend had once stagnated at the beginning of this year, because the Magical Girls of Fang Ting City seemed to be somewhat short of successors due to the issue of generational change, Remnant Beast disasters gradually became frequent, causing the people's hearts to waver.

But immediately following this, as the new generation of Magical Girl squads began to become active, the old generation of Magical Girls also appeared on the scene on the day of the Full Moon Festival, conspicuously killing a giant Remnant Beast that invaded the city, and the residents of Fang Ting City had already re-established confidence in the aspect of "safety."

The current stability of Fang Ting City was built to a considerable extent on the protection provided by the Magic Kingdom side, which led to the fact that facing Lin Yun, the government officials of the city could neither be overly enthusiastic nor dare to be too negligent, stuck in the middle, feeling very uncomfortable.

Regarding this, Lin Yun was actually very clear.

But for him now, this state was the best.

Once he led the Anomaly Strategy Bureau to establish deeper cooperation with the government, it would be inevitable to conduct closer communication with various parties; the large number of meetings, receptions, and social engagements that followed... just thinking about it made his scalp tingle.

He was very certain that he had no time to maintain personal relationships with this group of government officials, so naturally there was no need to do those face-saving projects; he just needed to focus on his own work.

As for the work content of the Anomaly Strategy Bureau, putting aside the fact that Hong Siyu could already help him with much of it, the work he hadn't finished didn't need to be worked on overtime until late at night; it could be continued at the base or at home.

This was the reason for the current situation where Lin Yun could return home frequently without being busy until late at night as in the past.

However, the above background and games were things that could not be told to Lin Xiaolu. Perhaps when Lin Xiaolu grew up, she would eventually have to face these things, but Lin Yun did not want her to come into contact with them now.

"I am the Director now; as long as I don't want to work overtime, no one can make me work overtime." This was the final answer he gave.

But constantly using this excuse was actually a bit far-fetched; more importantly, he worried that if he was present every time his daughter came home, it would give the impression of "hiding silver by denying its existence," arousing unnecessary suspicion.

Thus, occasionally, even when Lin Xiaolu came home, he would choose to stay at the base in the identity of Senior Cuique, creating the false image of "Lin Yun being busy with work."

But today was different; it was the end of the year, and the new year was about to arrive. When Lin Xiaolu came home this time, he must meet his daughter in the identity of a father.

For no other reason, but to ask for leave.

After all, it was the New Year, another day requiring reunion and gathering; considering that previously on the Full Moon Festival he had spent it with the squad members in the identity of Lin Yun, and this time the Baian City Squad was added, undoubtedly the identity of Senior Cuique was more suitable.

Therefore, the identity of Lin Yun could only be absent.

He had already thought of an excuse; just recently, he had formulated regulations for the Fang Ting City Anomaly Strategy Bureau regarding staying overnight on holidays, so he could say that as the Director he needed to stay at the Anomaly Strategy Bureau to supervise, which sounded very reasonable.

Unfortunately, when he was having dinner with Lin Xiaolu across the table, thinking about exactly when to bring up this topic, Lin Xiaolu spoke first:

"... Dad."

With just one word, Lin Yun looked up in astonishment.

Now that the father-daughter relationship was gradually easing, although Lin Xiaolu talking with him was no longer something rare, due to the cold war in the past, the number of times she called him so solemnly was extremely few.

In his memory, almost every time Lin Xiaolu used this title as an opening, the subsequent speech was bound to be quite extraordinary.

And this time, his daughter indeed did not disappoint him.

"The day after tomorrow is New Year's Eve; I want to go home to celebrate." Lin Xiaolu put down her chopsticks and said in a low voice.

"Oh, you plan... to go home?"

Fortunately, Lin Yun had already mentally prepared himself, so he didn't show too much surprise, merely acting as if he had no objection, and asked flatly, "Same as the Full Moon Festival before? Or are you going to call all your teammates over?"

"Mm, I want to call everyone, is that okay?"

Lin Xiaolu nodded: "This time there might be a few more people than last time."

"People from the Bai'an City side? Then our home might be a bit small."

Lin Yun remained calm: "Besides, if so many people are to sit down, the table we're eating at now might need to be replaced."

Hearing this, Lin Xiaolu looked down at the dining table beneath her and immediately showed a look of difficulty.

"... How about we change the table?" she suggested softly.

"Change a table just for the holiday?"

Lin Yun raised an eyebrow: "Do you think we're the kind of family that's that rich?"

"Aren't you the Director..." Lin Xiaolu muttered, "Such a high official, surely changing a table at home is no problem?"

"How many times do I have to say it? Dad is an honest official and doesn't abuse his power."

Lin Yun said while picking food into his bowl: "Besides, this table was bought by your mom; we definitely can't change it. Even if we really bought a new one, it would just sit on the balcony gathering dust. Forget it; you might as well celebrate the New Year at your base."

Upon hearing that the table was bought by Anya, Lin Xiaolu immediately fell silent; after a while, she spoke again:

"Then you come to our place?"

"I can't." Lin Yun shook his head and smiled: "I was just about to tell you; Dad has to be on duty at the Anomaly Strategy Bureau this New Year, so I probably won't be able to celebrate with you. I'm sorry."

"On duty?" Lin Xiaolu was speechless.

"Yes, after all, the big incident before the Full Moon Festival happened largely because the Anomaly Strategy Bureau reacted too slowly, so starting this New Year, someone has to be on duty." Lin Yun answered, feigning a "helpless" look.

"At the Anomaly Strategy Bureau?" Lin Xiaolu asked.

"Yes, at the Anomaly Strategy Bureau." Lin Yun agreed along with her.

"Then I'll come to your office."

"You want to come to my office..."

Lin Yun repeated the sentence, and only then did his brain gradually catch on to what his daughter was actually saying: "... Huh? Come to my office?"

"Mm, I'll come to your office to celebrate the New Year with you." Lin Xiaolu let her eyelids droop, looking at Lin Yun with an unhappy expression, giving off an air of "if you find another excuse, I'll make a scene with you."

"Why?" Lin Yun felt rare confusion in a conversation with his daughter.

"You are my dad, I am your daughter."

Lin Xiaolu stressed the words one by one:

"Isn't celebrating the New Year together a matter of course?"

(End of this chapter)