Responsibility
At the exact moment Ren Hui’s group “broke in,” Lu Ling also opened her eyes.
Lin Que was one step ahead of her, likely driven by some subconscious instinct to hide her. Lu Ling curled up under the covers, her breathing slowing down—thump, thump, thump. Aside from her heartbeat, all other sounds felt distant and blurry.
The air was filled with the scent of mint. Despite the tension of the atmosphere, she felt inexplicably at ease. Within that minty fragrance was the floral note of her own perfume.
—Wait.
It seemed everyone was gone.
Lu Ling held her breath: Should I check?
What if she misjudged the situation? How would she explain appearing in the bed of Lin Que—her boss—looking so disheveled? She couldn’t exactly call it a “team-building activity”!
Actually, that seemed like something Lin Que should be worried about, not her.
Lu Ling’s fingers tightened on the quilt, a flicker of resentment rising in her heart. Why did she feel like a secret lover who couldn’t see the light of day? It was just a spring night between two adults! If anything, the one who couldn’t “see the light” was Lin Que, right? A female star in the human world who was, in reality, a time bomb of vampire instincts.
Forget it!
Lu Ling decided to just let things happen. She couldn’t stay hidden forever. If the outside was “unsafe” right now, then roughly speaking, Lin Que brought this on herself.
Lu Ling took a deep breath.
Three, two, one—
She flipped back the covers.
Whoosh— Whoosh—
The sound of the waves, carrying the damp, cold dawn sea breeze, drifted in through the cracks in the window. It felt as if the ocean was mocking her internal monologue. The room was so quiet that only her breathing remained. Her heart felt as if a piece of it were missing. At the edge of the horizon, a faint pink glow began to reflect. The night was declaring its end.
“This is a good thing, Lu Ling,” she whispered to herself. “Filming is work.”
It was a good thing, but why did her heart feel so empty? It was like playing hide-and-seek and realizing no one was coming to look for you; you realize you’ve been forgotten, yet you can’t help but make excuses for them.
Lu Ling took a deep breath, forcing herself not to sink into pointless emotions. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the clothes previously scattered across the floor were now neatly arranged in front of the vanity mirror.
She grabbed her clothes and looked into the mirror, tilting her neck—thankfully, the marks weren’t very obvious.
Lu Ling touched her neck: Do vampires always bite like this? Without leaving a clear mark, or do the marks heal automatically? Is there a built-in ‘destroy the evidence’ buff in their genes? What a despicable species.
The next second, as Lu Ling turned around, a sharp pain suddenly shot through her lower back.
“Hiss…”
Lu Ling rubbed her waist haphazardly, muttering, “Can she read minds? Can she operate remotely?”
—”Achoo!”
Lin Que sneezed. She hadn’t even unfolded the lot she just drew, yet three people in the other room were already staring at her in unison.
The target of the wake-up mission: Mo Li. The result of the mission: Buy one, get two free.
Theoretically, there was only one “Chosen One” by Lin Que, but as luck would have it, the three of them had chosen the same room. The original wake-up mission was canceled, and the four of them gathered in the first-floor living room to start an upgraded version of the “Wake-Up Game.”
The four of them lined up according to the order in which they woke up. First was the “Reverse Direction Game”: they had to turn their heads in the opposite direction the moment Ren Hui pointed.
After passing that, they moved to the next stage: General Knowledge Trivia. They would draw a question from a bucket, and the production team would read it. They had to answer within three seconds; otherwise, they failed and had to start over. Those who succeeded could choose between “Making Breakfast” or “Going Back to Sleep.” Once “Going Back to Sleep” was chosen, those who passed later could no longer pick it.
Three people would be responsible for the entire breakfast process, from sourcing ingredients to cooking.
“The rules have been announced.”
The four looked at each other.
Chu Man blinked, then tilted her head. Above her, Daisy’s large eyes looked toward Xie Qizhi with the same bewildered expression. Xie Qizhi’s lips curled into a gentle smile, but before she could speak, Mo Li grabbed Chu Man and pulled her behind her back, explaining succinctly: “Two games. Play the first, then the second. The first person to pass can go back to sleep. The ones who pass later can only spin around in the kitchen. Understand?”
“Oh…”
Chu Man nodded, reflexively glancing toward Xie Qizhi again. Mo Li let out a small “tsk” and, before Chu Man could see Xie Qizhi’s face clearly, reached out and decisively straightened her head. Mo Li spoke with a tone of “disappointment in a student”: “Did you forget how she tricked you into almost losing your entire net worth last night?”
“Senior,” Mo Li said to Chu Man, but her eyes were fixed on Xie Qizhi, “she is not a good person—every time her eyes blink, she’s coming up with a dirty trick.”
Lin Que looked at Xie Qizhi and nodded, offering a solemn nod as a fellow victim.
Xie Qizhi smiled radiantly and tapped her nose. She didn’t defend herself, but her body language said it all: I know I’m wrong, but I’ll do it again next time—I just need a new strategy.
Lin Que was undisputedly the first person to wake up. As Mo Li was about to step behind her, Xie Qizhi spoke up: “Wait a minute.”
“What now?” Mo Li looked at her, eyes full of suspicion. “Lin Que’s mission was to wake me up.”
Lin Que stood beside her: “Correct.”
“We all woke up together, we can check—” Before Xie Qizhi could finish, Mo Li realized what she meant and said, exasperated: “Does the order even matter? Isn’t the success of the mission what’s important?”
“The order is very important!” Xie Qizhi countered.
Chu Man nodded in agreement.
Before the words had even settled, she watched as Xie Qizhi’s eyes suddenly lit up, her burning gaze instantly locking onto Lin Que, who was watching the scene with her arms crossed.
“You say the order isn’t important? Is it because you don’t believe our Lin Que can succeed on the first try?!”
Lin Que: “Huh?”
Mo Li understood: today’s first unlucky victim had appeared.
Xie Qizhi didn’t give Lin Que any time to react. Ren Hui immediately took the hint: “Lin Que.”
Lin Que turned toward the voice. Ren Hui held out a hand: “Three, two, one, look this way!”
Ren Hui pointed left. Lin Que reacted quickly and snapped her head upwards.
“Okay, fail!”
Lin Que stood there dazed: “Why?”
Ren Hui: “You should have gone right.”
“Ah?” Lin Que frowned.
Xie Qizhi helped explain: “Opposite directions. Up is to down, left is to right.”
“Yes,” Ren Hui said leisurely, “Student Lin Que, please move to the back of the line.”
Watching the camera screen, Lu Ling saw Lin Que’s helpless and bewildered face and couldn’t help but laugh along with everyone else. In that instant, that stunningly beautiful face on the screen turned directly toward her. Her pale pupils were filled with sheer powerlessness.
“Why exactly am I in this position now?”
Mo Li, standing in front of her, turned around upon hearing this and patted her shoulder: “Because someone among us isn’t human.”
She glanced at a certain someone currently doing the trivia. Her grape-like eyes narrowed slightly, hiding an undetectable pride behind a facade of resentment as she raised her voice: “It’s a ten-thousand-year-old fox spirit.”
The “Old Fox” Xie Qizhi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She stopped answering the questions and voluntarily moved behind Lin Que, leaning out to reply to Mo Li: “Just a ‘fox’ isn’t enough, it has to be an ‘old fox’? I’m only—”
Xie Qizhi hesitated. Mo Li tilted her head toward her.
“I’m only six years older than you.” Xie Qizhi looked away guiltily, her momentum fading.
“You’ll also have a thirty—”
Mo Li smiled, turned around, and beat her to the punch: “Of course, I’ll have a thirtieth birthday one day. Don’t worry, sister, I won’t be so distraught over losing to an old fox that I’ll jump into the sea.”
Just as Xie Qizhi was about to speak, Chu Man, who had finished listening to her question, had an unexpected breakdown—”Aaah!”
Everyone’s attention shifted. A flash of loneliness crossed Xie Qizhi’s eyes.
“This is a general knowledge question?!”
Chu Man stared at Ren Hui. Her clear, articulated questioning showcased her excellent acting training: “My general knowledge does not allow anyone to throw chickens and rabbits into the same cage! And! Why should I have to defy common sense to count how many rabbits and chickens are left in a cage after some anonymous person’s maneuvers—all within three seconds!!”
Ren Hui remained calm: “It is a general knowledge question, but the scope isn’t limited to ‘life’ common sense.”
“Huh?”
“Our scope is very broad. Life’s common sense is just one part,” Ren Hui said seriously. “The ‘Chicken and Rabbit in a Cage’ problem is primary school math. It’s basic mathematics.”
Chu Man, who was now fully awake—or rather, driven by the desperation to “catch up on sleep” after being scammed all night, had a brain working at high speeds.
“Elementary students would pull their hair out over this, let alone someone who hasn’t been in elementary school for ages!”
“Which is exactly why you should—”
Chu Man didn’t give Ren Hui a chance to justify it. Anticipating her words, she retorted: “If you put college students back in the National College Entrance Exam hall, could they all get into Tsinghua or Peking University?!”
Ren Hui was speechless.
Chu Man stepped forward, looking her straight in the eye, acting like a whirlwind: “Answer me!”
Lin Que glanced sideways at Ren Hui. Game One was easy; it was Game Two that was blocking their path. The “canceled” breakfast task had clearly been merged into the wake-up task by Ren Hui. Regardless of who went back to sleep, the sun was already high. If they kept dallying, they wouldn’t even catch a single fish. Breakfast might turn into dinner.
She and Xie Qizhi shared a knowing smile.
“Let’s remove the academic categories,” Mo Li suggested, seemingly giving them a way out while actually setting the stage.
“Even current students probably couldn’t answer a math problem with two solutions in three seconds. We graduated so long ago.” Xie Qizhi appealed to emotion, returning to her persona as a sophisticated, gentle host. She tilted her chin toward Mo Li. “Besides, this one here didn’t even finish junior high.”
Mo Li rolled her eyes but nodded, not taking offense at Xie Qizhi’s comment.
Lin Que, however, was the assassin.
Lu Ling’s camera followed Lin Que’s movements. Seizing the gap while Ren Hui was thinking, Lin Que squeezed in next to her and snatched the lot: “Come on, first question: The capital of Australia is—”
The draw-and-ask format turned into a buzzer race.
Chu Man got her wish and went to sleep; Xie Qizhi narrowly defeated Mo Li.
“I’ll handle the cooking,” Xie Qizhi said, looking at Mo Li.
Mo Li had no objections and looked toward Lin Que.
In the lens, Lin Que turned her head. The golden sunlight was sliced into different colored blocks by the sticker-style stained glass windows; the intersection of red and blue filled her pupils.
Dreamlike. So dreamlike it felt unreal.
“Then I’ll be responsible for finding the ingredients.”
On the screen, those dreamlike eyes looked straight at her. “Camera teacher, are you the one in charge of me today as well?”