“Fufu, may I kiss you one more time?”
“Fufu, you are so soft, even softer than my tentacles.”
Jin Fuxiao knew she was dreaming about Peng Hu again.
This was the sixth year since Peng Hu went missing.
Yet, Jin Fuxiao still dreamt of her.
They were both very young when they first met. Having been kicked out of her home, Jin Fuxiao had nowhere else to go, so she found a factory job that provided room and board just to get by.
At the time, Peng Hu was already a veteran worker. Even in the dim workspace, her face remained drop-dead gorgeous, like a pearl fallen into the mud.
However, the workers who brought Jin Fuxiao in warned her not to talk to Peng Hu.
“Something is wrong with her head.”
Someone so beautiful having something wrong with her head made her all the more dangerous, so it was hard for Jin Fuxiao not to pay attention to her.
As it turned out, the girl with the troubled head kept entirely to herself. Whenever she sat down at a random table in the cafeteria, the people around her would immediately move away.
It did not look like Peng Hu was sick; it looked like she was toxic.
Later, Jin Fuxiao found out that anyone rumored to have bullied Peng Hu had died mysteriously.
However, since she could do the work of ten people, the boss was reluctant to let her go, so she stayed on.
Jin Fuxiao was a newcomer who did not know any of the rules. She disliked the veteran workers prying into her family background, preferring to sit alone instead.
But the cafeteria, crammed with hundreds of workers, was already overflowing. Looking around, the only empty spot was around Peng Hu.
Jin Fuxiao braced herself and sat down beside her, while everyone around looked at her as if she would not live long.
It was as if after finishing this final meal, Jin Fuxiao, too, would suddenly drop dead.
“Why am I still alive?”
The factory noon break lasted only half an hour. Most people used this time to do laundry, leaving the dormitories empty.
Jin Fuxiao caught up to Peng Hu, who lived in a single room. The female workers’ dormitory, which was narrower than the cafeteria, felt more like a prison.
The island’s sunlight squeezed through the gap under the door with difficulty. Peng Hu, her long hair tied behind her head, stood in the shadows and turned her head in confusion. “Do you want to die that badly?”
Rather than thinking she had something wrong with her head, Jin Fuxiao felt that this person did not seem human at all.
Her skin was paler than a ghost, her facial features hardly seemed humanly possible, and she had a pair of deep blue eyes.
Some said Peng Hu was a foreigner’s child. She did not speak fluently and did not seem to understand what others were saying very well either.
“I do not want to die at all.”
Jin Fuxiao’s height only reached Peng Hu’s collarbone, so she always had to look up at her.
The other woman gave a short hum. “Then stay further away from me.”
At the end of the hallway was Peng Hu’s single room.
In this factory, that was a luxury. Yet no one envied her; everyone was terrified that a single cross word would cost them their life, as if she were a ghost story brought to life.
Just like that, Jin Fuxiao drew closer to Peng Hu, progressing from sharing a lunch table to moving into her single room.
Later, Peng Hu asked her: Did you approach me just because you wanted better living conditions?
Jin Fuxiao spoke truthfully: That is a possibility.
Peng Hu seemed a little disappointed.
Jin Fuxiao added: Mainly, it is because you are good-looking.
Peng Hu brightened up again and asked Jin Fuxiao if she wanted to keep kissing.
Good times never last. After the coastal fish ball factory went bankrupt, they stepped out of that damp land to start their own business. As the business grew larger, they became increasingly busy.
Even though they were a couple, they remained two distinct individuals, and two factions even formed within the company.
After being separated for so long, any relationship grows distant. Seeing each other daily turned into once a week, then once a month.
One was permanently stationed at the coastal factory, while the other had to prepare new products in an inland city. Overtime was a daily routine, and chatting became a luxury.
“There were problems between you two long ago, but that is normal. All good things must come to an end, and every relationship turns out the same in the end.”
“She even left a divorce agreement behind, so what is the point anymore?”
Jin Fuxiao and Peng Hu had co-founded a seafood company named Chenhun.
During the startup phase, people came and went, until finally, only one key person remained on each side.
Ju Cixin, a friend and one of the vice presidents, stood firmly on Jin Fuxiao’s side. “Since she chose to leave without saying goodbye, you can move on with a new life too.”
In the third year of Peng Hu’s disappearance, Ju Cixin began arranging blind dates for Jin Fuxiao, listing various young entrepreneurs tailored to her tastes.
Because none of their looks could surpass Peng Hu’s, every single attempt ended in vain.
In the sixth year of Peng Hu’s disappearance, Jin Fuxiao remained single.
She had always possessed great self-control; she never got drunk at business dinners, much less drank to drown her sorrows.
This was the only time an exception occurred.
Attending a party, she overheard someone claim to have met Peng Hu, and that person even came over to ask Jin Fuxiao if she knew Peng Hu had a daughter.
“About this tall,” the person said, a coat draped over their shoulders. They were a child of some wealthy businessman, seemingly there to watch a farce. “Has Chairman Jin been scammed?”
It had been a long time since anyone talked to Jin Fuxiao like that. The secretary, who always accompanied her to various parties, hastily stepped in to smooth things over.
Peng Hu was Jin Fuxiao’s fatal weakness. Whoever treated Peng Hu poorly made Jin Fuxiao angry first.
And then what happened?
Jin Fuxiao thought hazily. She constantly felt as though something were wrapped around her body. Had the Peng Hu in her dream grown tentacles?
In the past, Peng Hu would occasionally blurt out: I should have a lot of hands.
Jin Fuxiao would casually reply: If you are the Thousand-Hand Guanyin, I would not dare desecrate you; if you are a cockroach, you would disgust me.
Peng Hu said she was neither.
These days, it was trendy to use animals to represent oneself. People often said Jin Fuxiao was a sleek, shiny little tiger. But whenever Peng Hu was brought up, people would first click their tongues several times, seemingly at a loss for how to personify her.
This was true even though, after going into business with Jin Fuxiao, Peng Hu had acted much more like a human.
With no known parents or siblings, she was just a woman picked up at the pier by the fish ball factory owner after a typhoon; even her name had been given at random.
Facing Penghu Bay across the water, she was named Peng Hu, and in the end, she ended up bent, which could be considered destiny.
“What do you mean I was scammed?”
Jin Fuxiao’s fiery temper had tempered a lot with age, but when faced with topics regarding Peng Hu, it remained hard to suppress.
“Miss, please…”
The other party cut off Jin Fuxiao’s secretary. “I just saw Chairman Peng a moment ago, holding hands with a little girl. Looking at her features, she is clearly her biological child.”
After that…
Jin Fuxiao rubbed her head. The entity wreaking havoc on her body seemed to be sniffing her scent.
Calling it a dog was not quite right; a dog’s body temperature would be scalding hot, but the body pressed against her was icy cold, almost like a block of ice.
Ice…
Jin Fuxiao snapped her eyes open. The unique chandelier overhead revealed the suite of the seaside hotel where she was staying.
The sensation on her body was too abnormal; it was pushing her almost to her limit, as if trying to coil her deep into its body, or tear her body open.
Jin Fuxiao froze for a brief moment before realizing this was no dream.
“Who are you?!”
She shoved away the person lying on top of her. Wrapped in the blanket, the person rolled twice across the huge bed without falling off.
The faint blue color was so unfamiliar that Jin Fuxiao almost fainted. She questioned the woman whose face was half-covered by long hair: “How did you get in here?”
“Key card.”
The voice shocked Jin Fuxiao even more. Disregarding her bare body, she practically knelt to approach the woman wrapped in the blanket on the other side of the bed.
“Peng Hu?”
Her trembling hand pulled back the blanket. Messy, long hair cascaded down like a waterfall over the woman wearing a bathrobe.
A skin tone identical to her memory, the eye color that had sparked so many rumors.
And the two red moles at the outer corner of her lower eye, looking as if they had been copy-pasted, made her look exactly like her ex-wife, Peng Hu, who had been missing without a trace.
Yet the person before her looked far too young, closer to the way she looked when they met at the fish ball factory that year, rather than the lover Peng Hu with whom Jin Fuxiao had built a corporate group.
“Who are you?”
The other woman’s long hair was exceptionally smooth, the kind of long hair Jin Fuxiao had complained to her stylist about countless times, yet could never achieve perfectly.
The stylist said it might be a genetic issue. Furious, Jin Fuxiao went home and almost bit through her pillow.
In the past, Peng Hu had not understood what she was actually angry about. Later, when she realized Jin Fuxiao simply wanted to be like her, she leaned over and let Jin Fuxiao touch it.
I am yours.
She would repeat it untiringly to dispel Jin Fuxiao’s insecurity.
Her lover’s emotional state was extremely stable, almost non-human.
Yet Jin Fuxiao, who had slept with Peng Hu countless times, also knew very well that Peng Hu was human.
Body heat, breathing.
She could get sick, and she could feel sad.
It was just very faint, so faint that in the eyes of others, she seemed cold and arrogant. Only Jin Fuxiao knew her vulnerability.
“Who are you?”
Receiving no answer from Jin Fuxiao, the young woman wrapped in the blanket looked at her.
She did not seem to understand why this black-haired woman was getting angry on her own, unable to keep her eyes from falling on the other woman’s chest, which trembled from emotional agitation.
“You actually dare to ask who I am?”
“Miss, you illegally broke in and got into my bed.”
Peng Hu should be thirty-six this year, yet this face was close to twenty.
“And you even did this to me.”
She pointed at the hickeys on her chest; from her waist down, it was even more unbearable, almost looking as though she had been bound by something.
However, there were no tools of the trade nearby. The Peng Hu in her dream turning into a tentacle monster was just a dream.
Jin Fuxiao reached out at random and felt that the bedsheet she had been lying on was soaking wet.
Annoyed, she slapped her own cheek, a hit comparable to slapping herself in the face. “You still have the nerve to ask me why?”
“Do not think that just because you got plastic surgery to look like my lover, I will forgive you.”
“I am Peng Hu. I came to find my Fufu.”
Jin Fuxiao thought she had misheard. “Who did you say you are?”
“Peng Hu. Not the Peng in Penghu Bay, but I am bent.”
This introduction was absurd enough to make one laugh. After they became chairwomen, Jin Fuxiao had forbidden Peng Hu from introducing herself like that.
Jin Fuxiao could not accept a departure without a goodbye, leaving behind nothing but a divorce agreement. If she was alive, she wanted to see her in person; if she was dead, she wanted to see her corpse.
Over the past two years, besides work, she had gone everywhere to identify bodies, which only made the news of Peng Hu’s death spread far and wide.
Many people plotted against the vast commercial empire behind her, attempting to become the widowed Jin Fuxiao’s paramours.
So many people offered themselves up that Jin Fuxiao had to keep her location secret wherever she went.
The vice president had even prepared many strong bodyguards for her, but the rumors became even more outrageous, saying that after her wife died, she was so insatiable that she could devour ten burly female bodyguards in a single night.
“Do not play these nonsense games with me. Where is your ID card?”
Reporting this kind of situation to the police was embarrassing. Jin Fuxiao did not know whether the liquid on the bedsheets was her own fluids or some unidentified liquid; the fact that she might have wet it made it extremely awkward.
“What is an ID card?”
“Stop acting dumb. What era is this? Is there anyone who does not know what an ID card is?”
“An electronic one works too.”
Jin Fuxiao reached out her hand, gesturing for her to come clean.
The woman whose long hair draped onto the bedsheet was extraordinarily beautiful. Her clear eyes reflected Jin Fuxiao’s silhouette. After thinking for a moment, she handed her hand over.
Jin Fuxiao slapped it away fiercely. “Cut the act. I am really calling the police.”
“Xiao Qi will not let me call the police.”
What on earth? Jin Fuxiao was already frustrated due to long-accumulated physical desire, and seeing this face made her temper flare even more.
“Then call that person over.”
Peng Hu understood these words. Under Jin Fuxiao’s shocked gaze, she pulled a phone out from inside her bathrobe and pressed only a single button.
This phone was also very outdated and leaked sound severely. Jin Fuxiao heard a little girl’s voice:
“Mommy! How did you perform last night?”
The voice sounded very young, still full of babyish tone.
She is already a mother, yet she comes out to do this kind of thing?
“Xiao Qi, I did not find Fufu. This woman says she wants to call the police.”
“Did you go to the right room?”
“There is only one executive suite here.”
“Then it is correct!”
Jin Fuxiao’s expression grew even stranger. She snatched the idiot’s phone away. “You wretched child, come take your mom away right now.”
Hearing Jin Fuxiao’s voice, the child on the other end grew even happier.
“Mommy-chan! I am your precious daughter.”
“What mommy? I am a lesbian, I do not have kids. Do not try to scam me.”
“Total nonsense!”
The phone call disconnected.
The woman staying with Zhou Qi pushed up her sunglasses. “Before your mom lost her memory, she said her wife was super fierce.”
“She certainly lives up to her reputation.”
The little girl’s hair was pure black, and her eye color was identical to Peng Hu’s, though the lower half of her face looked more like Jin Fuxiao’s.
She let out a heavy, sorrowful sigh. “My ears are even hurting.”
“Didn’t you say that as long as Mommy showed her face, Mommy-chan would fall in love?”
The dark-skinned woman lounging on the beach chair wore a dark lipstick shade. “Looks like Peng Hu miscalculated. Love really can disappear after all.”
“It seems it is already gone.”
The child kicked the sand sadly.
Soon, the woman in sunglasses received an incoming call. She said to the child:
“Xiao Qi, your Mommy-chan called the police and had your mommy arrested.”