The clamor flooding into her ears made An Ning pause.
The KTV’s signature disco ball cast shifting, dazzling lights overhead, and along with the noisy voices, the pungent smells of alcohol and cigarette smoke rushed into her senses.
An Ning scanned her surroundings. She was at the center of the crowd, seated on an old sofa whose stains were indiscernible under the dim lighting.
The three sofas around her were all fully occupied, and in front of them sat a tea-brown glass coffee table.
On the table were beer bottles scattered haphazardly, along with a cream cake that had an old-fashioned feel to it.
On it, “Happy Birthday” was written in both Chinese and English with jam, and the name at the top read An Ning.
“Sister-in-law, give Brother Huang a kiss!”
“Yeah, it’s a special day—Brother Huang, give us a kiss!”
“We’re not kids here—a kiss isn’t enough, you’ve got to use some tongue!”
The words “use some tongue” seemed to trigger something in the people around, and the jeering shifted from “give a kiss” to “French kiss.”
As one of the two people being egged on, An Ning was lost in thought. The man across from her, however, clearly enjoyed the atmosphere, licking his lips and leaning toward her with eager enthusiasm.
The first thing An Ning noticed when she woke was the man with yellow hair in front of her.
His entire face was flushed red from alcohol, and his murky, excited eyes held a discomforting malice. Before he could press against her, An Ning frowned and stood up.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
The moment she rose, her wrist was tightly gripped by the yellow-haired man, so she could only make an excuse to leave.
“What’s with the bathroom? That’s really not giving face.”
“Exactly, why now of all times?”
“You two, cut it out.”
The yellow-haired man pretended to scold his jeering friends, then wrapped an arm around An Ning’s shoulder. “Baby, I’ll go with you.”
His actions drew another round of cheers from the crowd in the room.
An Ning pretended not to hear, quickly opening the door and stepping out.
The private room was a bit of a distance from the bathroom. An Ning didn’t walk quickly, observing her surroundings as she went, carefully checking the signs overhead while moving forward.
The yellow-haired man had clearly drunk a lot, stumbling as he walked. His hand on An Ning’s shoulder roamed restlessly, and he leaned his head against hers, breathing in her fragrance deeply.
“Baby, don’t you feel hot?”
His breath, fermented with alcohol and tobacco, carried an unpleasant odor. An Ning’s breathing hitched, but she didn’t answer his question, quickly stepping into the restroom.
Her eagerness drew a string of ambiguous laughter from the yellow-haired man behind her.
Everything she’d seen upon waking had already given An Ning a bad feeling. When she stood before the mirror and saw a girl with heavy smoky-eye makeup and hair dyed yellow just like the man’s, she confirmed her premonition had come true.
After the car accident, she hadn’t been taken to a hospital—she had become… someone else?
The cosmetics of this era weren’t waterproof. An Ning turned on the tap, rubbed her face for a moment, and revealed the girl’s original appearance.
An oval face with a pair of narrow, fox-like eyes that tilted upward at the corners, and fair skin flushed with an unhealthy rosy red.
Seeing her own features clearly, An Ning was briefly stunned. Though she looked much younger, she still recognized whose face this was.
A month ago, as a judge’s assistant, she had begun handling her first case after joining the position.
By a strange coincidence, the party involved shared her name—both were called An Ning.
Beyond the name, the two also bore a three-part resemblance in appearance.
Around 170 cm tall, long black hair, fair skin, striking features.
Same name, three parts similar in looks, yet their lives were worlds apart.
She had grown up in a welfare home, completing her education through social assistance.
The party involved was 12 years older than her, with both parents alive—her mother a successful entrepreneur, her father a cultural figure with influence in the local area.
Beyond family background, the party had dropped out of high school, worked in entertainment venues in her early years, and was later kept as a mistress for a long time, circulating through high society, labeled a professional mistress.
Three years before being sentenced, the party had interfered in the family of her lover, Jiang Chenhua. Because Jiang Chenhua kept delaying his promise to divorce his wife and marry her, she set fire to Jiang Chenhua’s entire family.
Including Jiang Chenhua’s twin sons.
The case was egregious in nature, and the original party was arrested immediately.
Because of the highly connected online society, once the news broke, the original party’s appearance became a major hot topic.
The tag “Most Beautiful Mistress” exploded across the internet overnight.
The party’s high profile dragged her, the judge’s assistant with the same name, onto the trending searches as well.
The poster put her and the original party’s life stories side by side as a comparison, trying to illustrate how the original had squandered a good hand, while she had bloomed like a flower from the mud.
The greater the contrast, the more discussion it sparked.
She hadn’t gone online to defend herself, but because of this, she came to understand the party’s life story even more thoroughly.
So she knew that the original’s having both parents wasn’t some so-called good hand—and as for herself, her life in the welfare home wasn’t as terrible as netizens imagined.
The only interaction between the two was at the conclusion of the original’s first trial.
The original owner had probably seen the comments online, and looked at her, saying she really wanted to swap places with her.
Thinking of the complicated family relationships in the file, she stood quietly without speaking.
That was all.
How could she possibly become her?
Looking at the face in the mirror, An Ning tried to comfort herself that this was a dream, but the clear and unmistakable stirring in her body wouldn’t let her deceive herself.
“Baby, are you done? Do you feel unwell? Come out and I’ll take you to the hospital…”
The yellow-haired man outside had grown impatient and started calling An Ning’s name from outside the women’s restroom.
An Ning bit her lip. If she’d only suspected before, what doubt could she have left after hearing the yellow-haired man’s words?
Her body burned and went weak, and even under the cold water, her consciousness was gradually clouding over.
The yellow-haired man had first asked if she was hot, and now he was certain she felt unwell.
Going out was, of course, out of the question.
But this place wouldn’t hide her for long either.
Scanning her surroundings, An Ning spotted a ventilation opening high up at the very back of the restroom.
The small window had no security bars, though the opening was a bit small.
The last stall was a storage room, and An Ning stepped on the clutter to test it.
Fortunately, the original owner was sixteen now, her body not yet developed—if her upper body could fit through the window, her lower body could pass through as well.
“Baby, Ning Ning, An Ning, did you pass out!”
With no response from the restroom, the yellow-haired man realized something was wrong. He called An Ning’s name while telling others to go in and find her.
In the last second before climbing out the window, An Ning heard a girl’s scream.
Knowing someone had seen her escape, An Ning jumped down from the windowsill and started running.
Outside the window was a narrow gap between buildings, the passage extremely tight and reeking of rotting filth.
At first, An Ning could still spare a moment to feel disgusted at the soft, mushy things under her feet, but after running a short distance, sweat the size of beans kept dripping from her forehead. She no longer cared whether it was clean or not, and braced her hand against the wall as she moved.
The drop of over a meter had been fine when she jumped, but once she started running, her ankle throbbed with sharp pain. Combined with the stirring in her body, a metallic, rusty taste spread through An Ning’s mouth, and it took her a moment to realize she’d bitten through her lip.
In the year 2000, city infrastructure hadn’t caught up yet, and there were few streetlights on the roads. An Ning first ran toward the light, but soon heard the noise of a crowd and realized that direction led to the KTV entrance, so she changed course.
From the moment she’d felt unwell, she’d been pinching herself nonstop. Her lips had gone numb from biting, and worse, her originally twisted ankle had gradually lost its pain under the itching spreading through her body.
If even pain could be numbed, losing her sanity was only a matter of time.
Recalling the transparent sealed bag on the glass coffee table, she limped forward. Lucky for her, the road she’d taken was remote and desolate, yet it had a public phone booth.
Her eyes, under the drug’s control, shed tears uncontrollably. An Ning’s vision blurred. She picked up a stone from the ground, first using its sharp edge to scrape her thigh. After collapsing weakly to the ground, the stone became her weapon.
Dialing the police, An Ning relied on the information she’d remembered from the KTV and reported the KTV’s name and room number.
Her hazy consciousness made it impossible to hear what the person on the other end was saying. She just instinctively repeated the information she knew.
“Jinbi Huihuang, room 688… I’m at a nearby phone booth. There are illegal drugs on the table, twelve people in the room, the leader is called Huang Ming. He’s a long-term drug user and dealer. His supplier is… his residence also has a large stash of ecstasy, K powder…”
Though she had no memories of the original owner, she remembered the information about the original owner’s first boyfriend.
Huang Ming—the first boyfriend the original owner had gotten after running away from home at fifteen. The two had been together for two years, after which Huang Ming was arrested for intentional injury and drug trafficking, sentenced to fourteen years.
Gripping the receiver tightly, An Ning knelt on the ground, using her remaining sanity to think about what information she might have missed. “I don’t want them to retaliate against me afterward. Please don’t reveal my information to them… Mm…”
“Fuck, what’s she playing pure for? Eats my food, drinks my drinks, all slutty like that, probably fucked rotten already, and she actually ran off on me!”
“Brother Huang, don’t worry. She drank the spiked drink, she can’t have gotten far. She’s definitely nearby.”
“Fuck, find her! Rather than let someone else enjoy her, might as well let you all have fun. Once I’ve had my turn, you can all take a go…”
The man’s lewd voice seemed to be right by her ear. An Ning’s consciousness was fading, her whole body as if wrapped in hot water, her eyes wet with tears or sweat—she couldn’t tell. She set down the receiver and stared blankly at the leather shoes that had appeared in her vision.
In the moonless, dim night, only the faint light from distant buildings provided illumination.
An Ning dazedly lifted her head. The person before her was very tall, a faint red glow pinched between his fingers. He seemed to realize that the men searching in the distance were looking for her, but he didn’t call out to them. Instead, he bent down.
The heat, enough to burn away all reason, made it impossible for An Ning to tell whether the man before her was human or ghost.
Before her consciousness completely scattered, she didn’t know whether she was asking the man before her for help, or hurling the stone in her hand at him.
Or perhaps it was both.
Unlike An Ning, who couldn’t see the man clearly.
The man could see An Ning with exceptional clarity.
A slender girl with dyed yellow hair, dressed like a delinquent, an unnatural flush staining her fair face, her lips so red they seemed ready to drip blood.
The moment her unfocused gaze met his, it was as if she’d found an anchor. Her eyes locked onto him, and she gasped out her plea, “Please help me…”
Huo Qin stubbed out his cigarette and bent down to lift her into his arms.
But just as his hand touched the shoulder of the girl who’d asked for his help, a gust of wind came at him. He raised his arm to block, barely missing getting hit in the eye by the stone clutched in her hand.
He looked at her—her fox-like eyes were wide open, unfocused and hazy, innocent yet alluring in their confusion. If not for the fact that she still held the stone in her grip, he would have suspected that last swing was his imagination.
Shrugging off his jacket, Huo Qin wrapped it around her. Even that simple motion earned him a knock on the shoulder from the stone.
He lifted her into his arms, expecting her to settle down, but instead she began squirming against him.
Her nose nuzzled against his neck.
She sniffed, then opened her mouth and bit him right on the throat.
“Hiss—”