The sudden sound interrupted Shen Wuqiu’s cries. She turned around following the direction of the voice.
Within the ethereal, dim circle of light cast by the streetlamp, a slender and graceful woman was standing poised and quietly.
When the woman’s face was completely and clearly projected into her field of vision, Shen Wuqiu involuntarily held her breath, staring blankly at the woman before her while her fingers clenched tightly of their own accord.
The woman inside the halo of light possessed a white jade-like face. The contours shaping her face were delicate and three-dimensional, and her phoenix-like eyes slanted slightly upward. Her pupils, carrying a faint smile, were exceptionally bright and lively, innocent yet affectionate.
Just like in the dream.
And yet it felt as though this moment might also be a dream.
This massive visual impact left Shen Wuqiu’s mind caught in a brief blankness after a flurry of rapid chaos, completely at a loss for how to react.
It felt as though a long time had passed.
The woman made the first move, walking right up to Shen Wuqiu, bending down to pick up the umbrella from the ground, and then raising the umbrella back over Shen Wuqiu’s head while smiling at her. “Older Sister.”
Up close, the woman’s features were even clearer. Even though she was drenched from head to toe, she didn’t look bedraggled in the slightest; instead, she looked refreshingly captivating.
Only then did Shen Wuqiu snap out of it like waking from a great dream, hurriedly turning her face away and blinking her water-beaded eyelashes.
Surprise, unease, panic.
All sorts of emotions surged forth together, stirring the little rabbit inside her heart into a wild frenzy.
A moment later, Shen Wuqiu reached out to take the umbrella from the woman’s hand. When she spoke, she was startled to find her throat tight and painfully dry. “Thank you.”
Whether the woman did it on purpose or Shen Wuqiu simply wasn’t paying attention, as she reached out to grip the umbrella handle, her hand ended up grasping the woman’s hand as well.
Shen Wuqiu was far too familiar with the sensation of that soft, jade-like hand. Feeling as though she had been jolted by an electric current, she eagerly wanted to retract her hand.
Yet the moment her hand floated halfway into the air, it was caught and held by another hand.
“Older Sister, your hands are so cold.”
Shen Wuqiu didn’t dare meet the face right in front of hers. She struggled with a sense of helplessness twice, but despite the soft hand looking as though it were exerting no force at all, she found herself completely powerless to resist.
A gentle imprisonment.
“Older Sister, would you like me to blow on them for you?”
“No need.” Shen Wuqiu instinctively began to struggle.
Only then did the woman release her hand, continuing to hold the umbrella over her head. “Is Older Sister looking for someone?”
Hearing this, Shen Wuqiu remembered her current objective. Taking two deep, secret breaths, she cast a hurried glance at the woman, reined in the turbulent emotions raging in the depths of her heart, and forced herself to look natural. “No, I’m looking for my cat.”
My cat. My.
The sense of ownership conveyed by those two words was far too strong.
A subtle expression crossed the woman’s face. “What does Older Sister’s cat look like?”
“Snow-white all over, blue eyes, very pretty.” Halfway through, Shen Wuqiu remembered something. “You came from over that way, didn’t you? Did you see a cat like that?”
Hearing her words, the smile in the woman’s eyes deepened. She then curled the corners of her lips. The words “I didn’t see it” were right on the tip of her tongue, but noticing the unease in the other person’s eyes, she changed her tune. “It seems I did see such a pretty cat.”
Shen Wuqiu clung to it as if it were a straw to grasp for life. “Where?”
The woman lowered her gaze to look at Shen Wuqiu’s hands gripping her shoulders. “Older Sister.”
“Hm?”
The woman looked up at her, and the smile on her face abruptly blossomed. “Why doesn’t Older Sister take me home first?”
Her response struck Shen Wuqiu’s heart like a thunderbolt. If it had been anyone else, she would have dismissed them as a shameless, vulgar person, but it just had to be this woman with whom she had shared several romantic encounters in her dreams.
Shen Wuqiu remained dazed for a long while before she finally couldn’t help asking, “Have we met somewhere before?”
“In Older Sister’s dreams.”
Another resounding thunderbolt.
The small umbrella could no longer shelter them from the intensifying rain. The drifting raindrops struck their bodies, feeling both icy and painful.
The woman shrank a bit further under the umbrella, pressing even closer to Shen Wuqiu’s side.
When that familiar, faint fragrance assaulted her senses, Shen Wuqiu instantly tensed up all over, even less daring to look at the woman.
Yet the woman acted as if she were doing it on purpose, stubbornly tilting her chin up to press close right in front of her. “Older Sister, it’s so cold.”
Her rosy lips parted and closed. In Shen Wuqiu’s mind, she actually pictured the look her white cat wore when it lifted its chin.
“Did you really see a white cat?”
“Mm.”
Shen Wuqiu pushed the umbrella toward her. “I’ll give you the umbrella.”
With that, she took a large stride out into the rain.
The woman froze in place for a few seconds with a bewildered expression, then quickly chased after her with the umbrella. “What is Older Sister doing?”
“I’m going to look for my cat.”
The woman looked at her, biting her lower lip. “I’m wet, and Older Sister is wet too. You’ll get sick.”
Shen Wuqiu felt thoroughly wretched all over right now, but the moment she thought about how pitifully and helplessly her white cat might be hiding somewhere, she lost all mood to care about anything else. “You should hurry back.”
The woman hadn’t expected her to be so devoid of tender affection. Anxious and annoyed, she grabbed Shen Wuqiu’s sleeve regardless. “Older Sister, my head hurts so much.”
Having said that, she shamelessly collapsed against Shen Wuqiu’s body.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you.”
Simply inexplicable.
What could Shen Wuqiu do when faced with a woman faking illness?
Of course, if it had been anyone else, she could have simply tossed the person onto the roadside. But this woman, this woman who shared intimate, seamless moments with her in her dreams every single night, she couldn’t bring herself to ignore her.
With no other choice, Shen Wuqiu had to drag and pull the woman all the way back home.
Father Shen had been sitting at the doorway watching the distance. Catching sight of her from afar, he raised his voice to call out, “Qiuqiu, did you find the cat?”
As soon as those words fell, instead of seeing the white cat, he spotted the figure of a woman and hurried over to help. “What happened here?”
To get the person back, Shen Wuqiu was panting out of breath. Right now, her body was experiencing alternating waves of hot and cold, and since the cat still hasn’t been found, she felt nothing short of physically and mentally exhausted.
Entering the main hall, just as Shen Wuqiu was about to find a random spot to drop the person down, the one who had been faking unconsciousness woke up with absolute naturalness, and then wrapped her arms around Shen Wuqiu with equal naturalness. “Older Sister, so cold.”
Father Shen looked at the woman, then looked at Shen Wuqiu. “Is this a friend of yours?”
A bed partner was more like it.
Shen Wuqiu pressed her lips together and nodded haphazardly.
Seeing this, Father Shen immediately called out to Su Yunzhi. “Yunzhi, hurry up and boil some ginger tea for Qiuqiu and her friend to ward off the chill, or else they’re bound to catch a cold.”
Hearing this, Su Yunzhi walked out of her room, swept a glance across the main hall, and couldn’t help frowning. “Where’s Junjun? Why hasn’t he come back yet?”
“Where did he go?”
“Didn’t he also go out with you to look for that cat?” Su Yunzhi never wore a good expression whenever cats were brought up, but when her peripheral vision caught the woman in Shen Wuqiu’s arms, she paused for a moment before her expression softened. “Wuqiu, who is this?”
Finding her talkative, Father Shen waved a hand. “A friend of Qiuqiu’s. Alright, hurry up and go boil that ginger soup for them.”
Su Yunzhi cast a sideways glare at him before reluctantly heading to the kitchen.
During the span of these few sentences, the woman had plastered herself closer and closer to her. Unable to push her away, Shen Wuqiu secretly gave the woman’s waist a pinch.
Feeling the pain, the woman looked at Shen Wuqiu with a wronged expression the next instant. “Why did you pinch me?”
Shen Wuqiu felt that every day she kept running into these bizarre events. Before she could digest one, another arrived. It was completely inexplicable. Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself down before asking, “Does your head still hurt?”
Before the woman could answer, Father Shen grew anxious on the side. “Qiuqiu, what are you standing there blankly for? Hurry up and take your friend to your room to change into some dry clothes.”
With her aging father present, Shen Wuqiu had no choice but to take the woman upstairs.
Once inside the room, the woman who had just looked as weak and boneless as water instantly sprang back to life. The moment she stepped indoors, she nimbly stripped off the long white dress she was wearing.
“You, you.” Shen Wuqiu swore that in the blink of an eye, the woman who had been fully clothed just moments ago was now stark naked right in front of her.
She was simply too shameless, too devoid of shame.
“What is it?” The woman looked entirely innocent, feeling not the least bit wrong about stripping bare. As she spoke, she reached out to undo the buttons of Shen Wuqiu’s shirt.
Startled, Shen Wuqiu stepped back repeatedly. “What are you doing?”
“Older Sister’s clothes are all wet, I’ll take them off for you.”
“No need. And also.” Shen Wuqiu truly didn’t care much about titles usually, but every time she heard this “Older Sister,” her mind immediately conjured up the wild and wanton image of the woman acting wantonly upon her in her dreams. Hearing this “Older Sister” again made her inexplicably mortified. “Stop calling me Older Sister left and right.”
After thinking for a moment, feeling she was still quite curious about the woman’s age, she added with tact, “I’m not necessarily older than you, I’m only in my twenties.”
The woman tilted her head, calculating inwardly based on the conversion of human lifespans. “I just turned eighteen this year.”
“Ahem.” Shen Wuqiu almost choked to death on her own saliva, failing to catch her breath. She stared with wide eyes at the unclothed woman before her. “How old did you say you are?”
“Eighteen years old.”