"Don't bite me."
The man's voice was young and pleasant, carrying a hint of helplessness in its cool, magnetic tone.
An Ning instinctively relaxed her teeth.
The clean scent that filled her nostrils put her at ease. Even though her reason was absent, her survival instinct still remembered that this person before her was helping her evade Huang Ming and the others.
She stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked the spot she had bitten: "Sorr…y…"
Polite in attitude, yet utterly presumptuous in action.
The other person seemed startled by her move, and she was thrown straight down from two floors up—
The sensation of weightlessness hit her, and An Ning jolted awake from her dream. Realizing she had been dreaming, she breathed a sigh of relief—but the moment her gaze landed on the unfamiliar surroundings, that breath caught in her throat again.
The drug's effect had probably worn off. After waking, the part of her mind that had been blank began to flood with the original owner's memories.
Combining the original owner's memories with the fragmented recollections of last night, An Ning rubbed her head and sighed as she got out of bed.
She was alone in the room, with no trace of anyone else having been on the bedding.
She had been changed into a clean set of clothes. She had some memory of this—the kind person who saved her had asked the hotel staff to change her clothes for her.
The clothes were an old set belonging to a female staff member.
Walking into the bathroom, her gaze landed on the chaotic mess of traces there, and the memories of last night became clearer in An Ning's mind.
Last night, controlled by the drug, she had been completely out of control—one moment like a fish dropped into a hot oil pan, bouncing wildly in the kind person's arms, the next like an affectionate cat, frantically rubbing against them.
Neither mode was easy to control, and both caused the kind person great trouble.
So after entering the hotel, they had thrown her into a bathtub full of cold water.
Soaking in the cold water, An Ning had briefly regained some clarity. Her mind wandered wildly—from how there were already such high-end hotels in the year 2000, to the thought that the kind person had booked such an expensive hotel to help her, and that once she sobered up, she would be stuck in the awkward position of having no money to pay.
No money meant no confidence.
So she had let herself lose consciousness again.
She vaguely remembered the kind person calling a doctor for her, and it seemed they had even given her an injection.
An Ning raised her hand to look at her arm, searching for a while but finding no needle mark. She couldn't tell if that had actually happened or if she had just added it to her dream.
After washing her face, An Ning changed back into her own clothes.
She rummaged through her pockets—she didn't have much money on her, two hundred and seventy-eight yuan and fifty cents in total.
In the year 2000, the original owner had just turned sixteen, and carrying that much money counted as having a small fortune.
From her memories, the money had been given to her by her bleach-blond boyfriend—three hundred in total, and the original owner had spent a few dozen.
Finding a notepad, An Ning wrote out her thanks in words, then pressed two hundred and sixty yuan underneath it.
The hotel's decor wouldn't look dated even decades later. She knew that even in 2000, there were hotels costing over a thousand a night.
She didn't know if this was one of them; all she knew was that she could only afford two hundred and sixty.
Apart from her thanks, she left no other information on the paper.
Last night she had been dazed and never got a clear look at the kind person's face, but she could sense that the good Samaritan who helped her had simply been doing a good deed and didn't want any further connection with her.
This thought was confirmed when she left the room and spoke with the front desk.
She had already changed back into her original clothes and wanted to return the borrowed clothes along with the cleaning fee to the staff member.
"No need. Mr. Huo… the gentleman has already paid. He's kind, so he gave you a hand. He hopes you'll leave once you wake up—he doesn't want to see you. Don't get any ideas. We have security here, and you can't just wander around freely."
The polite smile on the front desk clerk's face quickly turned to disgust the moment she looked at An Ning.
Realizing her words would reveal guest information, the clerk stopped herself mid-sentence and pointed toward the door. "Please leave as soon as possible."
"Alright, thank you."
An Ning didn't care about the clerk's attitude. Remembering how much trouble she had caused last night, she said thanks once more.
Saving the cleaning fee, An Ning walked out of the hotel lobby, got her bearings, and headed toward the disco where the original owner had worked.
At midday, the sign for the Hot Dance Zone hadn't been lit up yet. An Ning entered through the side door and found the store's HR manager in the office.
"Manager Wu, I can't continue working at the store due to family reasons. Thank you for taking care of me during this time. Could you please settle my wages for this period?"
Seeing one of his waitstaff in broad daylight, Manager Wu felt a bit out of sorts at first.
When he realized the visitor was An Ning, his expression turned to surprise.
An Ning wore heavy makeup every day, and he could tell her features were decent, but he hadn't expected her to look this good without it.
She looked younger this way, but with her face so fresh it seemed like it could be squeezed for water, paired with those bewitching, fox-like eyes, she could easily be the disco's poster girl.
"Why do you want to quit? Sit down and tell me slowly—did you have a fight with Little Huang?"
Manager Wu pushed a chair over to An Ning, his gaze sliding toward the medicated wound on her leg.
It was October, and the temperature was already getting a bit chilly.
The original owner had worn a short skirt yesterday for her birthday to look pretty.
Without pants to cover them, the wounds on her knees and thighs, painted with purple iodine, were especially conspicuous.
After An Ning called the police yesterday, the officers had responded quickly, and Huang Ming and his whole group had been caught.
An Ning didn't know whether that KTV had gotten into trouble, but it seemed the impact wasn't big—otherwise Manager Wu would have already heard the news.
In response to Manager Wu's question, An Ning put on the look of a well-behaved child: "It's not because of a fight. It's because I'm only sixteen. I've already realized I was wrong for running away from home for so many days. My parents and teachers are all looking for me. I want to go back to school."
Manager Wu: "…When you came, didn't you say you were already eighteen?"
An Ning lowered her head and said sheepishly, "I'm sorry, Manager Wu. I was young and didn't know any better. I want to go back and study now."
In this era, the age requirement for working wasn't strictly enforced. Not just now—even decades into the future, there would still be a large number of underage workers in towns and villages.
When An Ning first arrived, Manager Wu had known there was something fishy about her age, but he'd just gone through the motions and hadn't taken it seriously. Now that An Ning was saying it outright, however, it was a different matter.
The disco hall had backing and wasn't afraid of trouble, but no one wanted to actively court avoidable problems.
Manager Wu waved his hand, no longer interested in grooming any "top girl." He opened the cabinet and began calculating An Ning's wages.
"Since you're going to study, study well. Don't hang around with those little punks. Those country boys who come to town to watch over the scene—a bunch of people crowding around calling them 'big brother,' and you actually take them for somebody."
Manager Wu counted out the money as he spoke to An Ning.
With every sentence he said, An Ning obediently nodded once.
If you ignored her dry, frizzy yellow hair, her posture actually had a bit of a well-behaved student look to it.
"You worked a total of eighteen days. By the rules, if you don't work a full month, you don't get paid. But considering you've been fairly honest these past days, and our shop is generous, I'll give you four hundred in wages. If that's fine, sign your name and put your fingerprint here."
In this era, entertainment venues were monopolies, and the people who worked there—especially female service staff—were paid well.
When the original owner had come, she'd agreed on four days off per month and a thousand yuan per month. By that logic, eighteen days should have been more than four hundred.
But in this era when labor laws weren't widely enforced, and given the original owner's age, four hundred was indeed generous for this shop.
"Not everyone can study anyway. If you can't keep up, come back to work once you're eighteen, and we'll give you a raise."
Seeing An Ning press her fingerprint, Manager Wu looked at her face and still felt it was a pity.
An Ning just smiled at that and didn't respond.
After she left, Manager Wu glanced at the resignation slip, his gaze sweeping over the name An Ning had written.
He clicked his tongue: "That handwriting isn't bad."
Maybe she really could go back and study properly.
With the money in hand, An Ning's next stop was the shared apartment where the original owner had been renting.
The shared apartment was a one-bedroom, one-living-room unit with four girls living there total—two in the bedroom, and two single beds set up in the living room.
"I heard Huang Ming and his crew got picked up by the cops. He was throwing you a birthday party yesterday—are you okay?"
The girls living there were either unemployed or doing work similar to the original owner's, so they were all lying around the place during the day.
An Ning opened the door and walked into the room, met with several curious looks.
"I'm fine."
"Then where did you go yesterday?"
An Ning pretended not to hear their endless stream of questions. She gathered up the bedsheets from her bed, looked at the clothes on the simple clothes rack that belonged to the original owner, and managed to find a simple long-sleeved shirt and long pants to change into.
Only after doing all this did An Ning seem to realize there were other people in the room: "Do you want these clothes? I'll sell them to you cheap."
The clothes on the rack were either too mature or had colors that were too flashy—they didn't match her aesthetic, nor were they suitable for a student.
She sold the clothes for fifty yuan. Knowing there wasn't much left on the rent, An Ning didn't ask for anything when she terminated the lease early. She left the keys behind, carried a red-white-blue woven bag, and found a hair salon in the alley.
When the salon owner—who had dyed red hair and spoke with a local accent—heard that An Ning wanted to dye her hair black, his face showed regret.
"This is so pretty. Dyeing it black is so plain. Didn't you just dye this? The roots haven't even grown out yet."
"I'm going back to school."
One sentence ended the conversation.
No matter the era or the group, people always yielded to the idea of a student going to school. Dropping out to run with the crowd was rebellious and cool, but if someone had a change of heart and voluntarily said they wanted to go back to school, no one could say anything—after all, it was walking the straight path. Who could object?
"I didn't expect your black hair to make you look even fairer."
Looking at the black-haired girl in the mirror, the salon owner said in surprise.
He genuinely thought An Ning looked good with yellow hair—her skin had looked bright and fair against it, like a foreigner.
He hadn't expected that with black hair, her skin would still glow white.
It seemed she was just naturally fair, and it had nothing to do with the hair.
An Ning looked at herself in the mirror. Perhaps because she had the original owner's memories now, looking directly at her current face no longer felt as unfamiliar as before.
A narrow forehead without bangs, with only a few strands of black hair falling loose.
Against the backdrop of her black hair, the original owner's features appeared even more youthful, though her upturned fox-like eyes still carried a shimmering, watery allure—neither smiling nor angry, they held a hint of coquettish charm.
After paying for the hair dye, An Ning found the bus stop and, as she had just said, prepared to take the bus back to school.
The original owner's parents had divorced when she was three. Afterward, both her father and mother remarried and started new families, leaving the original owner in the care of her grandfather.
When she was nine, her grandfather passed away, and she was sent to her father's home.
Back then, her father had fought for custody of the original owner only to spite his ex-wife. Now that he had to raise a daughter, he found her a burden and a nuisance.
He wanted to send her back to his ex-wife, but she had already remarried and had a child of her own, and was even more reluctant than he was to raise an extra child. So An Jianhua had no choice but to keep the original owner.
Compared to the bureau chief status An Jianhua would hold over a decade later, when he could command respect in society, he was now just a minor section chief.
The apartment allocated by his work unit had three bedrooms and a living room. When the original owner was young, it was manageable. But once the son born to him and his second wife grew up, the space became tight—the couple took one room, the son took another, and the daughter his second wife had brought into the An family took the third, leaving no room for the original owner.
The original owner had been resisting this lack of living space all along.
First, she took money from home and went to find her biological mother. After being sent back to the An family and realizing her mother didn't want her either, she gave up on herself entirely—she started hanging out with shady people and ran away from home from time to time.
This was the longest she had ever been away.
She had found a job and had been absent from school for nearly a month.
After more than an hour on the bus, An Ning arrived just as afternoon classes were letting out.
Quite a few people knew the original owner.
Walking against the flow of the crowd, An Ning felt many eyes land on her, along with murmurs around her that included her name in their whispered discussions.
She walked all the way to the dormitory, sensing the environment growing quieter and quieter as she appeared. An Ning stood before the bed that should have belonged to the original owner.
The sheets and pillowcases were the same ones the original owner had brought from home, but they bore obvious signs of having been slept in.