“Don’t.” Lou Fan was dead drunk. She wanted to raise a hand to push the other person away, but her alcohol-soaked brain could only manage to wake up her fingertips, which brushed lightly across Qin Peiran’s waist.
She vaguely felt the blouse and pencil skirt that bound her being completely stripped away. Her body felt slightly cool, only to be rubbed gently by something warm and damp piece by piece.
Qin Peiran threw the alcohol-soaked clothes into another corner of the sofa, dipped a soft towel into warm water, and wrung it dry. Kneeling at the edge of the sofa and bending over, she meticulously wiped down every single inch of Lou Fan’s body.
Lou Fan had been ticklish since childhood, and her sensitivity was heightened even further by drunkenness. At this moment, she was completely devoid of strength, as if she had fallen into some dizzying dream, yet all her senses were infinitely magnified.
She had no choice but to surrender her reason, letting that warm, soft mass lap and trace over her.
After wiping the thin layer of sweat from Lou Fan’s body, Qin Peiran sat back up on the sofa and pulled Lou Fan into an upright sitting position.
Her body was soft to begin with, and after drinking, she was even more like a cat made of water, collapsing bonelessly into Qin Peiran’s arms.
Qin Peiran picked up the pajamas she had prepared beforehand and put them on Lou Fan. Perhaps the movements were too rushed and chaotic, and Qin Peiran herself might not have realized it, but Lou Fan sharply snapped awake from her dreamlike state.
“Qin Peiran?” Lou Fan looked up into her face, then lowered her head to look at the pajamas on her own body, and smiled as if realizing something. “Why are you being so sensible?”
Qin Peiran ignored her, pressing the newly changed Lou Fan back against the sofa cushions, picked up the basin of water from the coffee table, and walked toward the bathroom.
When she returned, what she saw was Lou Fan lying sideways on the sofa, one arm straining to reach her phone on the floor.
The phone ringing tone sounded exceptionally piercing in the night. It was already the middle of the night, and logically speaking, nobody should be calling at this hour.
Qin Peiran walked over, squatted down, and picked up the phone from an inch in front of Lou Fan’s fingertips.
It was Yan Li calling.
“Hello.” Qin Peiran’s voice was naturally cold, and she made no effort to soften it now.
“Director Lou?” Yan Li sounded somewhat hesitant.
“She is asleep.” Even though Lou Fan was slowly lifting her eyelids and blinking at a very sluggish pace.
“Who is that?” Lou Fan spoke in barely more than a breath, as if she might pass out completely the next second.
“Is something wrong?” Qin Peiran felt a bit impatient, holding the phone a bit farther away. The night was far too quiet, and even without speakerphone, every sound was clear. Her finger hovered over the red end-call button as she asked, “If it’s not urgent, let’s talk about it tomorrow. It’s getting pretty late.”
“Oh, oh, oh, I’m so sorry, um, you must be her distant cousin right? Sorry for disturbing your sleep, I’m so sorry.” Yan Li apologized sincerely on the other end, though Qin Peiran genuinely couldn’t see how this person matched the description of the grown-up Lou Fan had talked about.
“I had a work task with a deadline for tomorrow morning. I was supposed to ask Director Lou about it today, but I completely forgot. I only remembered when I got home tonight, and after sending her a bunch of messages without a reply, I got really anxious, so I called.” Yan Li kept trying to explain, but Qin Peiran cut her off flatly.
“You should still be more mindful of your own work. After all, nobody else has an obligation to work overtime because of your mistakes.” Before pressing the end-call button, Qin Peiran dropped one final sentence: “You should understand this much by now, little sister.”
Qin Peiran had no idea how the person on the other end reacted, nor did she care. She hung up the phone and tapped into their chat history.
Lou Fan’s phone unlock passcode was her own birthday. Qin Peiran had caught a glimpse of it once and found it strange, but it certainly came in handy today.
Qin Peiran scrolled through the chat. This person named Yan Li genuinely had the same personality she had witnessed the other day. Lou Fan would say one sentence, and she would reply with ten, not to mention the endless stream of stickers, which contrasted sharply with the official communication style of other colleagues.
With a half-smile, Qin Peiran tapped on Yan Li’s WeChat profile picture, a selfie with a very strong atmospheric vibe.
“Troublesome,” Qin Peiran murmured, even though she wasn’t entirely clear on what was making her feel troubled.
Lou Fan had been thoroughly woken up by their conversation, but her head was still spinning. She sat up, wrapping one arm around her knees while her hand hung down naturally, lightly grazing the back of her foot. Her other arm stretched out, reaching toward Qin Peiran for her phone. “It’s fine, let me take a look for her.”
“You think you’re sober?” Qin Peiran locked the phone screen and turned it face down on the TV cabinet across the room.
She walked closer and, mimicking the way Lou Fan used to treat her, ruffled Lou Fan’s hair. Then, suddenly struck by a mischievous impulse, her hand slid from the top of Lou Fan’s head down to the back of her neck, gently teasing and stroking until Lou Fan’s fragile, drunken reason yielded to instinct, causing her to lift her chin slightly.
“Feels good?” Qin Peiran asked.
“Mhm.” Lou Fan narrowed her eyes slightly like a stroked kitten, whimpering softly in agreement.
“Want to feel even better?”
With those words, Qin Peiran kissed her.
It was a restrained kiss that stopped at a shallow taste. Qin Peiran’s lips hovered right in front of those brightly flushed lips, and like a siren seducing a soul, she brushed against Lou Fan’s mouth and whispered, “Open your mouth.”
Lou Fan wanted to dodge, but the back of her neck was still being held in a firm, gentle grip and stroked upward, forcing her to lift her head.
“Children. Aren’t allowed to date early.” Her thoughts were fragmented, picking up pieces from memory fragments to patch together a semblance of logic, even if it looked rough and rudimentary.
“Hah.” Qin Peiran let out a cold laugh. “Can’t kiss a kid, so who can you kiss instead? An adult? Someone who already has a job? Or someone who calls you in the middle of the night?”
An indescribable emotion caught fire along those off-the-cuff words, igniting the fuse buried deep within Qin Peiran’s mind. She extended a single finger and pressed it into the seam of Lou Fan’s lips.
It called to mind a cherry ripened to a soft, mushy sweetness.
Lou Fan was forced to expose her vulnerability. Qin Peiran’s body temperature was presumably cataloged somewhere in Lou Fan’s system, causing her to involuntarily recall overlapping scenes from her past life.
Only back then, Qin Peiran had been a lot colder.
“What are you doing?”
“Inspecting,” Qin Peiran answered earnestly.
She was probably the most serious dentist in the world, using her knuckle-defined fingers to carefully inspect every single one of Lou Fan’s smooth, white teeth, maintaining infinite patience even as Lou Fan kept stumbling and causing a mess.
Lou Fan, however, was losing her patience. She started trying to twist her head away, prompting Qin Peiran to finally kiss her again as a form of appeasement.
Before long, the root of Lou Fan’s tongue began to ache, and she started feeling sorry for it being forced into a one-on-two match. Perhaps out of teasing mischief, or perhaps purely driven by instinct, she raised her leg and wrapped it around the other person’s waist.
Like a thorny briar, it looked gentle on the surface, yet carried an unyielding strength.
Qin Peiran could no longer keep her footing; she caught Lou Fan’s back and fell backward, the two of them tangling together onto the sofa.
Teeth nibbled gently at that troublesome finger, and Qin Peiran obediently withdrew it so the kissing could resume in kind. The briar pretended to retract its thorns, winding down from Qin Peiran’s waist where she had relaxed her guard, only to abruptly spring sharp barbs back up and coil tightly around Qin Peiran’s legs.
Qin Peiran glanced down and let out a soft chuckle.
She shifted her body up slightly, creating a small distance between their lips. Seeing Lou Fan’s body suddenly empty out and a look of unmistakable grievance surface on her face, she paused.
Lou Fan refused to be outdone. She reached out to grab Qin Peiran’s arm, pressing down toward her wrist bone until she tangled her fingers with Qin Peiran’s. Smiling faintly yet enchantingly, she used her fingertips to hook and toy with the other’s hand.
Qin Peiran lifted her arm slightly, but couldn’t shake Lou Fan off the way she wanted.
Her final kiss landed right between Lou Fan’s brows, and she immediately stood up, looking down condescendingly at the flushed, reclining Lou Fan on the sofa.
She asked, “Without love, you’re fine doing all of this?”
Lou Fan’s head felt like it was about to explode, half from the alcohol and half from the person standing right in front of her.
Knowing only that she wanted it, she lifted her fog-hazed eyes, furrowed her lower eyelids to put on a pitiful expression, and begged the other person purely on instinct, her voice dripping with sugary cooing:
“I want it.”
“Without love, um. No love is fine, anything goes.”
“Qin Peiran, I want.”
Just as Lou Fan’s hand hooked onto the hem of her pajamas, Qin Peiran knew what she was about to do and lightning-fast grabbed her wrist.
“You’re drunk, time for bed.” With a cold expression and not a single hint of leniency in her grip, Qin Peiran dragged her straight toward the master bedroom.
She turned on the air conditioner with a frosty face and glanced at Lou Fan, who still refused to sleep properly on the bed.
Lou Fan kept nagging persistently, calling out her name in fragmented breaths. Seeing Qin Peiran pull the curtains shut and approach the bedside, two arms slithered like thin snakes around her shoulders.
Qin Peiran let out a derisive scoff, pulled out the air conditioning quilt from the side, and wrapped Lou Fan up tightly like a sushi roll.
She stepped out of the master bedroom with decisive steps, pulled the door shut behind her, and leaning against the outside of the door with her head tilted toward the room, she smiled softly: “Sweet dreams, Sister.”
Lou Fan indeed had many dreams, though none of them could be called sweet. They were uniformly filled with being bound, wrapped tightly, and trapped.
She didn’t wake up until noon the next day, her head throbbing fiercely. While she clearly remembered the cocoons and spiderwebs from her dreams, she couldn’t remember a single thing about how she had gotten home the night before.
She grabbed the phone off the bedside table, checked the time, and opened WeChat.
“Huh?” Lou Fan scrolled through her chat history with Yan Li, her slender brows knitting tightly together.
She had called Yan Li yesterday? When on earth did that happen?
Harboring doubts while knowing she couldn’t just ask outright, Lou Fan grabbed her phone and walked out to the living room.
Maybe Qin Peiran remembered.
She paced around the apartment twice, only to find not even half a shadow of a person.
Qin Peiran had started disappearing every single weekend lately, either refusing to say anything when asked or simply chiming in with Lou Fan’s previous speculation: “Yeah, went on a date.”
After pondering it for a moment, Lou Fan unlocked her phone and dialed You Ye’s number.
“Busybody? Finally remembered me?” You Ye hadn’t hung out with Lou Fan in ages. The last time she invited her out for hot pot, she had turned her down three weekends in a row with excuses like “I’m too exhausted lately” or “I’m rushing a proposal.” If the two of them hadn’t been exceptionally close, You Ye would have suspected Lou Fan was trying to cut ties with her.
“We have to eat at this hot pot place today, I’m telling you if you don’t eat it now, their durian mangosteen ice will go out of season.” You Ye grumbled indignantly, dragging Lou Fan through the shopping mall while scrolling through a group-buying voucher she had purchased half a month ago on her phone.
“I really was that busy during those weeks. You know how our Director Chen is, she sleeps only four or five hours a day herself before getting up to work.” Lou Fan had just finished comforting You Ye when she was yanked into a passing blind-box store.
“Come, come, come. Use your lucky hand to pull one for me.”
Emerging from the blind-box store, the two were heading toward the escalator when Lou Fan caught sight of a mobile phone store not far away.
She suddenly remembered that Qin Peiran’s phone screen was cracked, and the model looked like it was from several years ago anyway.
“Wait a second.” Lou Fan halted You Ye right as she was about to step onto the escalator, pointing toward the phone store. “I’m going to buy a phone.”