As the night deepened, a faint scent of blood drifted along with the midnight breeze.
“Ah! Don’t kill me!” Several men ran for their lives, shoving and pushing one another in a desperate bid to survive. Each hoped to outrun the others so that the unfortunate soul at the very back would draw the monster’s attention.
The headless woman pursued them closely, her limbs flailing. At some point, she had changed heads again; the severed head sat loosely on her neck, wobbling violently with every stride. A woman’s body topped with the head of a corpse made for a truly gruesome and horrifying sight.
Suddenly, she halted her pursuit. Turning a head that still wore the expression of terror from the moment of death, she blankly stared at the figure lurking behind the low bushes.
Xia Miao had no idea she had caught a monster’s attention. She was squatting on the ground, picking up the scattered bone fragments piece by piece.
The bandaged boy crouched beside her, mimicking her actions as he scooped up items from the dirt. Whether the bone joints were simply too fragile or he was using too much force, a sharp snap rang out as one of the fingers shattered in his grip.
Unable to take it any longer, Xia Miao slapped his hand away. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth. Just sit there and don’t move an inch!“
The boy instantly retracted his hand. He huddled in a ball with both arms resting over his knees, his eyes darting back and forth to follow Xia Miao’s every move. He looked remarkably like a young child who had just been scolded for doing something wrong.
The headless woman took a step forward.
Abruptly, the boy whipped his head around. The shadow behind him surged up from the ground like a terrifying black demon, opening a blood-red maw lined with jagged, razor-sharp teeth.
The headless woman shuddered, let out a soft wail, and abruptly veered off in another direction to chase after the fleeing survivors instead.
Why do we still have to work overtime after dying?
Why is there still workplace bullying after you’re dead?
Going to work is so exhausting; she didn’t want to go to work!
It took Xia Miao a tremendous amount of effort to retrieve all the “flowers” scattered across the ground, but many of the “petals” had been crushed or broken. Even after gathering them, piecing them back together was going to be a massive headache.
She furrowed her brows, wearing an expression of deep resentment and frustration. Even though she was thoroughly annoyed, she still diligently tried to puzzle the “flowers” back into their original shapes. This project was far more tedious than any jigsaw puzzle, especially since once a joint snapped, it refused to fit back together.
The boy sat with his arms wrapped around his legs, his eyeballs spinning in circles around her. He wanted to reach out and help, but he was afraid of being despised by Xia Miao. For a moment, he actually forgot that here, in the slaughterhouse, he was supposed to be the terrifying butcher that everyone feared.
“Why bother piecing them back together?” he muttered in a muffled voice. “If you like them, I can just make another bouquet and give it to you.“
His tone carried a hint of grievance, largely because Xia Miao’s attention was no longer revolving around him, but was instead locked entirely on the cluster of hand-bone flowers.
Xia Miao shot him a glare. “This is the very first gift you gave me! Its significance is huge, so of course I have to fix it properly!“
His heart gave a wild, erratic leap. “The things I give you… they’re important?“
“Of course.” Xia Miao picked up a bone fragment, hesitating over which claw it belonged to. Without looking up, she casually replied, “Who else is going to make me fall in love at first sight?“
Fall in love at first sight?!
The boy spun around, thrusting one of his hands straight into his own chest cavity to grip his wildly thumping heart with a death-grip. Naturally, he didn’t dare let his heart actually leap out of his chest—if Xia Miao saw that, wouldn’t it be utterly humiliating?
Fortunately, Xia Miao was far too absorbed to notice his clumsy antics. She had managed to recover a large portion of the scattered “flowers,” though plenty of fragments were simply too smashed to ever be reassembled.
She let out a regretful sigh.
Turning back toward her, he asked in a tiny voice, “Do you like the flowers I gave you?“
“No.“
He pressed his lips together, the tight curve shaping them clearly visible even through the bandages.
Xia Miao cradled the bouquet, straightened them out, and said flatly, “But because you gave them to me, even if I don’t like them, I still have to treasure them properly.“
A brilliant spark of light instantly returned to his eyes, and he puffed up with undeniable smugness. “So you like me that much, huh?“
“I don’t like you at all!” Xia Miao’s expression soured once more. “I only have a crush on you; it hasn’t reached the point of liking you yet!“
He looked deeply unconvinced. “Then what’s it going to take for you to like me?”
“Didn’t I tell you? You have to woo me!” Holding the bizarre, oddly shaped bouquet, Xia Miao tilted her head in thought. “When I first met you, I liked you quite a bit—ten points, let’s say. But that day you called me some casual, easy girl, so that dropped you down to five. Today, though, you brought me flowers, so right now you’re sitting at an eight.”
He leaned in close, staring right into her face as his deadpan eyes blinked playfully. “Is the maximum score ten?”
“Nope. The max is a hundred.”
He instantly deflated, muttering gloomily under his breath, “No way, hurry up and raise me to a hundred!”
“Not a chance. You haven’t successfully won me over yet.”
“If you don’t bump me up to a hundred, I’m going to eat you up!”
Xia Miao slapped him right across the face. “If you want to eat me, you’ll just have to wait until you hit a hundred!”
Clutching half his face, he gritted his teeth. “When I hit that hundred, I am definitely going to eat you up!”
Before he even realized it, he had allowed himself to be led entirely astray by her pacing, actually treating the rule that he could only eat her after reaching a hundred points as the official rules of the game.
Suddenly remembering something very important, Xia Miao faced him directly and asked, “My name is Xia Miao. What’s yours?”
“The Man-Eater,” he replied.
Her eyes widened in a glare. “You expect the girl you’re courting to call you by a nickname everyone else gave you? I asked for your name, your real name!”
He stared at her blankly, stunned for a long moment, before vaguely dredging up the memory of his own name. “Lu… Lu Yan.”
“Lu Yan.” Xia Miao’s eyes curved into pretty crescents, overflowing with smiles. “That’s a very nice name.”
Her eyes must have caught the falling stars to be able to shine so brightly and brilliantly whenever she looked at him and smiled—so dazzling it almost blinded his trademark deadpan eyes.
And so, his lifeless, dreary eyes seemed infected by her, taking on a strange, sparkling highlight that suddenly brought them to life.
Xia Miao watched as he abruptly spun around, and then she heard a distinct thump. Curious, she asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
“N-Nothing’s wrong!” The hand the boy had plunged deep into his chest was gripping his wildly thrashing heart with a death-grip, fiercely warning it not to embarrass him by leaping out of his ribs.
Sensing that something was off with him, Xia Miao reached out and grabbed his other hand. “Hey, are you feeling sick somewhere?”
Stunned, he lowered his head to stare at the hand Xia Miao had wrapped around his.
Gradually, Xia Miao could feel the temperature radiating from his hand shift from ice-cold to blazing hot. Meeting his wide, watery eyes, she slowly found herself catching his infection, her own body stiffening right along with his.
“Lu Yan, don’t tell me you’re blushing?”
“As if! What even is blushing? I don’t even know how to write those two characters!” He put up a fierce front, completely self-righteous—mostly because he genuinely didn’t know how to write those characters.
Xia Miao wore a look of utter skepticism.
But a moment later, he noticed the brilliant crimson burning on Xia Miao’s ears. Leaning close to her face with a mischievous glint, he needled, “Your ears are so red. Are you blushing?”
“No way!” Xia Miao shot back. “The word ‘blushing’ doesn’t even exist in my dictionary!”
She instinctively tried to pull her hand back, but the boy reflexively tightened his grip, holding on fast. When she tried tugging it away again, it wouldn’t budge.
The body heat of the two of them synchronized right there in their clasped hands. They had already kissed before, yet bizarrely, the moment the boy and girl locked eyes, her pretty face flushed with a rosy cloud, while the bandages wrapped around his face began to radiate a scorching, burning scent.
With perfect unspoken accord, the two of them simultaneously turned their heads away, refusing to look at each other.
Yet those very hands slowly drifted, fingers sliding between one another until they were locked tightly, palm to palm.