The room was exceedingly quiet, making the sounds of the stray cats outside seem overly piercing.
Xun Long turned on her side and switched on the lamp, clearly making out the face of the other person on the bed.
Single eyelids, black hair cut short in the front and long in the back with ends shaped like octopus tentacles. Her originally straight bangs were messed up from frantic tugging, revealing a pair of panicked eyes beneath a high, smooth forehead.
Perhaps she had gotten too carried away, as the lingering waves of desire had yet to fade, and the skin around her eyes was still very red.
Clearly scared out of her wits by being caught red-handed, she was actually staring stupidly and smiling foolishly at Xun Long’s light-drenched face.
Xun Long frowned, thinking to herself: I never heard that this person had mental issues.
After returning to Feixian Town, Xun Long had hardly ever left the house.
For one, there weren’t many young people left in town. For another, very few people her age used wheelchairs, and people would always cast strange gazes her way.
Not just in the town, but even in the county seat fifty kilometers away, it was hard to keep young people around.
Thanks to the vigorous development of tourism in recent years, tour groups were finally bringing busloads of people to play here, breathing some life into a few local shops.
Before Xun Long’s accident, a colleague had even mentioned that the company might choose her hometown for a team-building trip, hearing that the mountains were green and the waters clear, making it a great place for a vacation.
Xun Long herself came from those deep mountain gullies; she had no idea what was so fun about it.
Even as a small town, it only consisted of two streets. She had lived in a dorm in the county seat since junior high school, so she knew even less about what new shops had opened in Feixian Town.
After graduating and starting work, Xun Long was swamped with projects, and spent many holidays away on business trips. The rare moments she managed to squeeze out time to visit her grandparents were just day trips, arriving today and leaving tomorrow.
She never expected she would be lingering in her hometown in this sort of manner.
The town only ever had those few fixed households. In recent years, population mobility had increased somewhat because outsiders came here to dabble in tourism.
Yet the address of the lantern shop remained as immovable as a mountain, while the blacksmith shop next door seemed to have become a mandatory stop for tourism.
Expanding from one storefront into two, it even offered advance-booking experience programs. Ever since Xun Long returned, she could always hear the sounds of renovation, seemingly preparing to open a tea-drinking space.
Just by the sound of it, it is a project bound to go under.
Grandma had told Xun Long all about these things. She had said, “Old Jin’s daughter, Little Fire Spoon, do you still remember her?”
Xun Long said she didn’t, thinking to herself what kind of weird name that was. Were there supposed to be Big Water Spoons too?
Still, she didn’t ask any further.
Aside from what her work required, Xun Long had zero interest in other people’s business.
She wouldn’t ask about the studies of kids still in school, wouldn’t ask when college graduates planned to find jobs, and couldn’t be bothered to ask about the romantic lives of people of marriageable age.
Even though she was naturally blessed with a gentle face like a springtime breeze, Xun Long radiated a keep-strangers-at-a-distance aura.
While she wouldn’t make things awkwardly quiet, it was also very hard for anyone to get close or warm up to her.
Grandma was different. When Xun Long said she didn’t remember, Grandma gave her hints.
When it came to Grandma, Xun Long’s attitude was much better, and she took in quite a few things she had long forgotten.
Things like how Little Fire Spoon had gotten lost when she was little, and Xun Long was the one who found her.
Xun Long thought to herself: When on earth was I ever that helpful? There is definitely an exaggeration there.
Grandma said again: “You even tutored Little Fire Spoon back then.”
That was a bit too much; Xun Long couldn’t even picture this Fire Spoon’s face, let alone what happened during tutoring sessions.
She vaguely remembered that back then, as soon as summer vacation arrived, many parents on the street loved sending their kids to the lantern shop in an attempt to make Xun Long tutor them.
A bunch of idiots. Unfortunately, Xun Long couldn’t say it straight to their faces and still had to serve them with a smile.
Later on, she stopped coming back to her hometown for summer vacation, preferring to find a job outside to earn some pocket money rather than earning this sort of humiliating wage paid in fruits and vegetables.
For the first two months, Xun Long didn’t step a single step outside her house.
The mountain town had long been connected to the internet, and Grandma loved putting on her reading glasses to scroll through Douyin. Xun Long would occasionally swipe across local recommendations.
The blacksmith shop’s account was run by this very Fire Spoon.
The storefront on the right retained its old-fashioned appearance, and the characters on the wooden sign were still hand-written.
Inside the shop were all sorts of farming tools, along with smoke-blackened walls and a stove that looked like it had been used for who knows how many years.
The left side was a newly opened business, presumably run by Old Jin’s daughter, the Fire Spoon Grandma had mentioned.
It was closer to an experience shop in a tourist city, where people could make bookmarks, keychains, bracelets, and other souvenirs out of thin metal sheets.
Customers could draw their own patterns, and the shop also had ready-made templates.
At the bottom were booking channels linked to an app, and clicking into the homepage revealed even more daily vlogs.
Xun Long, having nothing better to do when she was bored, had actually clicked and watched them.
The person making the videos had decent aesthetics, at least it wasn’t the type of awkward dancing popular on another street, and the background music choices were very friendly to Xun Long’s ears.
Perhaps the experience shop was doing well, because Xun Long had seen shares of it on other apps too. Aside from filler text intended just to pad out word counts, Dianping reviews included plenty of comments about this store manager, Fire Spoon.
It always boiled down to the exact same phrases back and forth.
[The store owner sister is such a nice person.]
Well, duh, she is trying to make money.
[The store manager sister is so drop-dead gorgeous! Even though her hardware features a triple-white sclera which can’t be helped, her smile is still super sweet.]
Is this praise of the store manager’s looks meant to score an extra free gift?
[Great value for money! If you can’t make it yourself, you can even have the store manager help you! Sister doesn’t just have spicy red hair, she’s super hot herself!]
Several photos were attached at the bottom.
Xun Long looked back and forth through them several times. Some of the photos were taken in summer, others in winter.
In the photos, the store manager wore a tight tank top, with a very thin back and a slender waist, showing off a figure that was clearly quite good.
In a later photo taken in winter, Jin Zhuo was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, her short hair casually pinned back with a hair clip, as she helped a customer put on a finished metal ring. The camera angle was extremely peculiar.
Xun Long couldn’t quite wrap her head around whether these people were here to chase after a celebrity or to go sightseeing; why on earth were some of them asking if she had a girlfriend?
So her name wasn’t actually Gold Fire Spoon, but Jin Zhuo.
It was a structural pattern very similar to Xun Long’s own name, but it definitely shared the same kind of background.
Xun Long was originally supposed to be named Yuelong, given by her parents. They said when submitted in writing, the characters for moon and dragon combined into Long.
Her family still called her Yuelong, classmates and teachers called her by her full name, and she had an English name for work, none of which were known in Feixian Town.
After a while, Xun Long realized that Jin Zhuo counted as a minor internet celebrity, whose follower count could rank first in the same city, making her somewhat of a local figure.
Xun Long’s work had nothing to do with this industry, though she did have a colleague who couldn’t bear the work pressure, resigned, and went traveling to become a blogger.
She hadn’t paid attention to how that turned out in detail, but vaguely remembered she seemed to have taken on all sorts of industry challenges, even transitioning to a tomboy or lesbian lifestyle persona.
They weren’t close; Xun Long didn’t even have the other person on WeChat.
Right now, Xun Long wasn’t close to the woman on her bed either. Forget WeChat; in these past three months, Xun Long figured she had probably only seen her twice.
Once was when her grandfather went to visit a friend deeper in the mountains and came back saying he had lost his phone on the road, so Xun Long helped look for it.
Xun Long’s wheelchair was electric and could drive twenty kilometers on a single charge, making it much more convenient for searching than an old man who had walked over a dozen miles.
Xun Long bumped into Jin Zhuo on the road while the latter was walking her younger sister back home. After dropping her sister off, Jin Zhuo helped look for the phone together.
In the end, the phone was delivered back on a motorcycle by the child of Grandpa’s friend in the mountains, who said the old man had simply forgotten it.
The second time was when a relative came to visit Xun Long. Grandpa and Grandma happened to be out picking peaches and had locked up the shop, so Xun Long went to open the door.
Jin Zhuo just happened to walk past. The two of them exchanged a brief glance, and nothing else happened.
And the third time.
Jin Zhuo was lying in her bed, using Xun Long’s hand to do something terribly disgraceful.
Considering that this kind of sleep-paralysis dream kept repeating itself over and over, Xun Long suspected she was a habitual offender.
The bedside lamp cast a dim glow over the mess on the bed. Xun Long’s pajamas were buttoned up securely from top to bottom, but the other person looked somewhat disheveled.
Her dress was on in a way that was practically no different from being naked, and there were certain marks present that even Xun Long would have been able to spot clearly, blind or not.
Xun Long didn’t think she was the one who did this; her current physical health was poor, and doing anything made her tired after a while. She had no interest in eating, drinking, or playing around, let alone sleeping with someone.
What on earth did she use my hand to do?
Those bite marks on there certainly couldn’t have been bitten by myself.
Xun Long didn’t dare recall what the sensation of those touches on her face in the dream had come from, while various online reviews flashed through her mind:
[Store owner sister is not only great in personality and figure, she’s also super enthusiastic.]
Well, that was certainly a bit too enthusiastic.
Xun Long’s left eye was hollow, but her right eye could still see. Watching Jin Zhuo cover herself up, slowly press against the wall, and tremble all over, she smiled and said, “What kind of look is that supposed to be? I’m the victim here, aren’t I?”
In the past, Xun Long’s hair reached her waist, with a fixed monthly expenditure just for hair maintenance, plus a dedicated one-on-one hair stylist. To many people, her most striking impression was a head of long, gorgeous hair fit for a commercial endorsement.
Now, for ease of management, she had cut her hair down to arm-length.
In the dead of night, the moonlight falling into the room was eclipsed by the glow of the desk lamp. Xun Long’s silhouette cast against the wall was slender and thin, very much resembling the shadow effect cast behind a screen in an old television drama.
If she hadn’t just punched those three digits into her phone, Jin Zhuo might have been able to appreciate the view a little longer.
“Don’t!” Jin Zhuo lunged forward. “Don’t call the police!”
There were many self-introductions that Jin Zhuo had written into the accounts she ran.
Having grown up in the blacksmith shop since she was a child, she had also learned from her father, and there were several videos of her and Old Jin hammering metal together.
She wore a tank top and should have practiced chest binding; at least she looked smaller there than she did now, and the high-waisted pants she wore made her legs look very long, indeed living up to the slender waist and long legs described in the reviews.
Jin Zhuo had even specially made a video about going to another town to learn sword-casting, which she successfully completed. Even though sword-dancing was something she learned on the spot, the entertainment value had at least been quite good.
After finishing that video, Xun Long, hindered by the autoplay feature, ended up watching it a second time.
The comments were extremely uninhibited, with countless people shouting Mommy, Wife, or Sister, while others directly judged Jin Zhuo as Feixian Town’s Lesbian World Number One.
Xun Long didn’t understand the last three letters, and only after a dedicated search did she find out it actually meant Lesbian World Number One.
Putting aside why there was even a circle like this in the first place, Jin Zhuo’s fans were bound to be disappointed anyway.
Because this Lesbian World Number One seemed to be a bottom.
Tonight’s discovery exceeded Xun Long’s expectations. Staring at her own confiscated phone, she knew that even if Jin Zhuo wanted to do something to her right now, she wouldn’t be able to put up any resistance.
Xun Long slightly raised her only remaining right eye. Her phone was pressed against Jin Zhuo’s chest, with a certain spot brushing right across the screen.
Xun Long thought rather irrelevantly: Does a phone need to drink milk too?
She let out a sigh, her breath so weak it felt as though she might stop breathing right here in the night.
“Then what do you want?”
With that, Xun Long pulled a wet wipe from the bedside table, leaned back against the pillow, and wiped her hand under the lamp while waiting for Jin Zhuo’s answer.
Clutching Xun Long’s phone, Jin Zhuo’s gaze was drawn to Xun Long’s movements.
Xun Long had very long eyelashes; Jin Zhuo had noticed that since they were kids.
Xun Long had tutored her in schoolwork back then, and she would often get lost staring at Xun Long’s face, admiring the other’s delicate, long eyelashes under the warm yellow lamplight while her profile remained breathtakingly beautiful.
Xun Long rarely did physical labor. Even after returning to her hometown, she didn’t have to do the lantern-weaving work; she just needed to write things down.
On the small bed, the two of them were squeezed together. Xun Long sat leaning back, leisurely wiping her fingers, stroke by stroke. Jin Zhuo’s breathing hitched, and her body grew hot all over again.
When she waited for a long time and Jin Zhuo still didn’t speak, Xun Long, who was already irritable due to poor sleep quality, grew somewhat displeased. She turned her head to look, and happened to plunge right into Jin Zhuo’s infatuated gaze.
Xun Long: Oh.
Even with one blind eye, she wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t see anything at all.
What on earth is this person getting so excited about? Do you really like me that much?
Xun Long had naturally had suitors before.
Most people would introduce everything from family background and education to dating history and physical health.
Unlike Jin Zhuo, whose capital was laid bare all at once.
Amidst the sultry summer night and the clanking sound of the old-fashioned electric fan, Xun Long swept her gaze over Jin Zhuo’s body. She never expected that even with her disabled condition, someone would still climb over the wall straight onto her bed, using her body as a plaything and having the time of their lives.
She tossed the soiled wet wipe into the wastebasket and turned her head to look at the glowing-eyed woman. “Are you mute? I’m asking you a question.”
“Oh, oh, oh, no, I can speak. I was just…” Jin Zhuo’s voice trembled. “I’m… my heartbeat is… hiccup.”
She actually hiccuped.
Xun Long: Oh.
After a few seconds of deadlock, Xun Long asked, “How many times is this?”
Jin Zhuo swallowed down a hiccup that was about to burst out. “The first time.”
Xun Long’s sickly complexion carried a trace of mockery. “The first time today?”