A few days after Meilin joined Solaris, Ningshun slumped on his bed, the dim glow of his laptop casting a muted light across the room. His fingers hesitated over the keyboard before typing, "What to do if a girl ignores you?"

He hit enter, scrolled through the search results, and clicked on a message board thread that caught his eye. With a sigh, he typed his question:

"How do I get her to talk to me again? Before, she'd talk to me, joke around, and spend time with me, but now she barely says a word and ends every conversation with a short reply. It's so sudden, and I don't know what to do."

He posted it. Perfect. Now, he just had to wait for the comments to roll in. And they did. But as he read through the comments, his heart sank.

"It's over, man. She probably hates you."

"Yeah, it means she doesn't love you anymore. Move on and find someone else."

Ningshun scoffed. 'Move on? Love me? I don't... What a stupid comment!'

Soon after, another comment caught his attention: "If someone is ignoring you, you must have done something terrible."

'I did something? Could it be... what happened in her room? Did I make her uncomfortable? Still, why didn't she talk to me about it?' His gaze dropped, lingering on the sheets. "Nah, it can't be that... Ugh, what do I do?"

Ningshun's shoulders sagged, each comment landing like a punch to the gut, deepening his discouragement with every passing second. He rubbed his temples, the weight of defeat pressing on him. He leaned back, his eyes on the ceiling. But then, one comment stood out from the rest.

"Give her a taste of her own medicine, and she'll come around."

Ningshun straightened up, eyes narrowing as he reread the words. He scrolled to the comment box, fingers hovering over the keys before he typed. "What do you mean?"

"Ignore her back. Do the same things she did to you."

"Hey, thanks for the advice, but will that really work? We work and live together, so I'm worried this will ruin our friendship." He hit 'post' and refreshed the page several times.

Within minutes, a reply popped up: "Friendship, yeahhh righttt. Just ignore her back. Be cool and distant. Trust me, she'll start wondering why you're not chasing her anymore and run back to you."

"What!? Chasing her? Since when was I... I just want to fix this awkwardness and distance!" Ningshun rolled his eyes. 'Maybe this person is right. Maybe she wants me to say something or apologize. But for what? I don't even know what I did wrong. This is driving me crazy.'

~*~

Feng Deming sat upon a golden throne in the Flare Wing Palace of Middle Astara and mused, "I have restored order after the chaos left by the previous Supreme Leader... Soon, I shall reclaim Astara's lost lands and historical artifacts from the Faerie Tribe." His jaw clenched, and a twisted smile crept onto his lips. "Yet, this is merely the beginning."

"My lord," a soldier clad in bulky black armor knelt before Deming. "The King of the West has defied your order. How shall I convey your response?"

Snapping out of his reverie, Deming's piercing gaze cut through the soldier, like ice through warm flesh. "It seems my benevolence has been mistaken for weakness," he growled, his deep voice sinister, sending shivers down the soldier's spine. His jaw clenched, the tension hinting at the anger simmering beneath his composed exterior. "However, there is indeed a message I demand to be conveyed."

The soldier trembled under Deming's intense scrutiny as the Demon King rose from his throne. Each step echoed with an ominous presence in the grand hall, telling a tale of the destruction he had unleashed and the countless lives he had crushed beneath his heel, their anguished cries of despair haunting their memories.

Deming stood tall before the soldier, radiating regal elegance with his dark-brown hair flowing down to his thighs, as if drawn with a quill and ink. He wore multi-layered black garments and a golden half-crown. The horn-like protrusions on either side of the crown emphasized his esteemed status as the Demon King.

With eyes blazing like molten gold, Deming commanded, "Lock him away. Let his fate serve as a warning to all who would dare cross me."

"Yes, my lord!" The guards seized the soldier with vice-like grips, their hands clamping down hard on his arms.

Stunned by the swift judgment, the soldier protested, "But why, my lord? I'm inno—"