I like you

Author: Read the auxiliary chapter in volume 0 first

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Shaolan didn't tell her father too big a lie. She had no intention of letting him doubt and contradict her lying statements.

The girl simply said that yesterday morning she felt miraculously better. But she didn't know how to explain that to her parents. This made her terribly anxious. Furious even with all the accumulated rancor…

Shaolan said how she was bitter.

Even if she told her parents that her heart and body had both healed, they wouldn't believe her until a lot of time passed. Maybe weeks, maybe months.

The reason she escaped was because she was tired of all the fighting and being a prisoner. She wanted to live her life and discover the outside world, no matter what…

She apologized for her abrupt and immature decision, but she was really fed up.

That was part of the story.

Hearing the part, Shaolan's family understood her situation well. How could they not…

They didn't comment much on her anger issues and her immaturity. They blamed it on her puberty. Instead, they all asked if she was really healed and if yes, how it happened.

Shaolan knew very well that, from that moment, all the words in the world could not be compared to a demonstration.

Not just any, she wanted to strike a blow in the mind of her father.

Looking at the food utensils on the table, Shaolan didn't find a fork or a knife. The damn eastern culture was annoying, otherwise she would have devoured or merged with metallic utensils like knives and forks already.

She was thinking of taking the guard's swords or armor outside, but it would waste time, and she would be caught making their tools disappear.

Her devouring ability was as practical as her fusion skill. But only when items were involved. To devour people and their souls, Shaolan had to end their lives first. Snuff it…

It was the same for her system… Now that she found out that the information-hoarding AI could devour stuff… It would be good if it went out of its way to bring great help rather than simply replying to her queries…

But she had a system. She couldn't have everything.

Stealthily going for the next best thing, Shaolan absorbed it in a second. Under her red clothing's sleeve.

It was a porcelain spoon.

Shaolan didn't plan to break like porcelain, certainly not.

Devouring or fusing with items, she would get their good features. Not their problematic ones.

In the case of porcelain, Shaolan deemed that its best ability was, with little doubt, its cutting edge. That was all she needed.

Besides bending, there were martial arts and chi-blocking in this world. Sokka learned from a master swordsman one time in the show.

There were all sorts of strange and unexplained masteries people used along with and to display their power.

"What are you doing?" When Shaolan got up suddenly, Ukano frowned and asked.

She was walking toward the wall, her back facing him, when she said, "Father, remember how weak my bones were, right? Look." The moment Shaolan said, she clawed at the wall with her fingers.

Obviously, she couldn't grab it. It was made of iron. But she left dents, or rather small claw marks, on it after her hand passed over.

"What!" When her family was tongue-tied and Ukano got up dumbfounded, Shaolan decided to do some push-ups inside the room. To show her stamina and her healthier heartbeat.

Shaolan was still somebody with no physical training whatsoever, for years. So she couldn't do a lot. But unlike before, as she performed a physically demanding feat, the heart rate went up normally.

By the time the fire nation magistrate touched her body curiously, laughing, Shaolan was resting on the ground. She had damaged a wall. However, everybody was focused on the 11 push-ups she had done instead.

11 push-ups… Shaolan wasn't proud of her physical fitness. It was terrible. But she had done what she wanted to do, so it would have to do for now.

Enjoying the warmth and the change of attitude of her family, her father most particularly, she told herself how it was okay. The body she was given had already given up and was supposed to have died.

… Ukano was besides himself with the happiness and the pride. "Hahaha, as expected of my daughter! How could she forever remain a waste?!"

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'Waste your mom.'

Shaolan thought but said with her cutest face, "Father, I shouldn't need to stay put in my room from today, right? Please."

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Acting nice and innocent, Shaolan had heinous, treasonable thoughts toward a princess.

Shaolan was thinking how she needed to have a talk with Mai about her good friend Azula in the next few days. About teaching.

Shaolan didn't need teachers in her new life, but she needed Azula. She needed Azula's torrid, burning love.

When she was still completely a man, not just on the genital aspect, Shaolan died because of an unbalanced individual with an -evil queen's syndrome-.

Unbalanced was the key word, and that was how professionals labeled the peculiar trait of character in that strange martial arts Earth.

Evil queen's syndrome was Shaolan's own made up term.

Regardless, the bonafide facts and the highbrow circumstances didn't matter. The short and more immersing version of those events was that Shaolan was whipped, bleeding and to death, by a brainsick woman. And it hurt.

That brainsick...or rather, unbalanced woman was his/her cherished spouse. A bloody beautiful spouse. Pun intended.

She and Shaolan were not-so-happy newlyweds when that happened. But it couldn't change what went down after the last mistake.

The past was the past... That was life. As a perpetual optimist, Shaolan would never be coy with beauty. Beauty acknowledged no evil, and love didn't intromit any blockage.

Quite frankly, that bad luck incident only happened because Shaolan was weak in that world where women were the stronger gender.

She didn't think that being stuck as a man could be a curse one day. Not until she was introduced to that place.

Beyond any doubt, the dating experience was jinxed.