A slender young girl pulled a thick, person sized burlap sack out from the adjacent woods. Perceptively sensing something, she abruptly turned her head. Her expression held a trace of surprise alongside a delight that had not yet fully faded. Dark, unidentified stains smudged her otherwise pristine, flawless cheek.
Character, action, time, place, combining any two of these together radiated a faint sense of eccentricity.
With bright eyes and a alluring smile, the girl offered a familiar grin. Under the dim glow of the streetlight, she resembled an old, faded fresco.
Mysterious, weird, ominous.
The spine chilling dragging sound ceased, leaving only the occasional gust of wind under the hazy moonlight.
Those honey colored eyes no longer possessed the soft sweetness of daytime. In the dimly lit night, they actually displayed the dangerous quality of a wild beast. Whether it was her imagination or not, Qi Qi felt as though the outer golden brown ring of the pupil had lightened, while the dark inner iris expanded slightly.
When their eyes met, Qi Qi gave a slight nod as a greeting, then politely averted her gaze without breaking her stride.
As the saying goes, if you walk in the dark long enough, you’re bound to run into a ghost.
Although the person she encountered wasn’t a real ghost, in a sense, she was even more terrifying than one.
She simply wanted to pretend she hadn’t seen a thing, hoping the other party would spare her out of appreciation for her tact.
“Student Qi, hasn’t gone home yet so late at night?”
The girl’s crisp, gentle voice still carried laughter, breaking the unsettling silence and causing Qi Qi’s heart to skip a beat.
Especially when she noticed the change in form of address.
Before, no matter how Qi Qi corrected her, Bai Zhi always called her directly by her name. Now that she had become so distant, it signified a shift in her attitude to some degree.
The dragging sound behind her started up again. The rustling friction was extraordinarily distinct in the quiet night, following closely behind her like a shadow, even gradually drawing nearer.
Qi Qi was forced to stop. The moment she turned around, her face almost bumped into an expressionless one. Even though it looked pale under the light with a smudge of dark red trace on the cheek that looked wrong no matter how one viewed it, that face was still so beautiful that it subconsciously made one overlook all strange elements.
“Yeah.”
Upon seeing that she had finally stopped, Bai Zhi smiled once again.
Her speed in changing expressions was nothing short of extraordinary.
“It’s getting late. You’d better head home early too, and be careful of danger on the road,” Qi Qi remarked, catching a glimpse of a temporary flash of light behind Bai Zhi as she shifted. She offered a rare piece of well-meaning advice, attempting to reform this suspicious classmate who was carrying dangerous props using goodwill.
A faint metallic scent of blood wafted over.
Looking at the young girl dragging a suspicious burlap sack down the road in the middle of the night, countless ghost stories, mystery novels, and scenarios from legal education programs flooded her mind, and she briefly imagined her own tragic death.
The autumn night wind grew chilly, prompting Qi Qi to pull her scarf tighter around herself.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll be taking my leave.”
Throughout the interaction, she tried her best not to let her gaze fall upon that burlap sack.
However, just as she was about to turn, Bai Zhi let go of the thick sack’s tied opening. She reached out, gently held Qi Qi’s hand, and murmured, “You know now, don’t you?”
It was an intimate gesture with interlocked fingers, but Qi Qi couldn’t bring herself to smile.
“Know what?”
Bai Zhi’s sudden self-exposure caught her off guard. Her reaction was inevitably delayed by a split second, causing her to regretfully miss the optimal moment to run away. Immediately afterward, a gleaming blade appeared before her eyes.
Just from that brief daze, she was forced back repeatedly by her classmate who had suddenly transformed into a murderer, until her back pressed against the streetlight pole. Only then did she wake up as if from a dream, beginning to recall her thin, boring life of the past dozen or so years.
“Because I find you quite interesting, I don’t want to kill you.”
Bai Zhi looked at Qi Qi with regret, looking as though Qi Qi was the one who had done wrong.
Then don’t kill me!
Qi Qi stared coldly at the girl whose expression feigned melancholy while her pupils were actually dilated with excitement.
“But since you’ve found out, there’s no helping it.”
She felt strongly that she shouldn’t die here.
Qi Qi tilted her head up to look at the streetlight above casting a dim glow. Phototactic insects swarmed around the light that seemed ready to go out at any second. She could feel her newly tightened scarf being unraveled, and cold wind surged in violently.
Pouring in along with it was the scent of gardenias wrapped in a faint metallic tang of blood.
A slightly cool hand pressed against the side of her neck, while on the other side, an even colder metal blade touched her newly warmed jaw. Like a cat playing with a mouse, it teased her at ease, slowly sliding toward the location of her carotid artery.
At such a life or death moment, her mind inappropriately drifted to the half-finished milk sitting in her refrigerator.
Yet, just as she closed her eyes to await the impending pain and death, a sudden burst of laughter echoed in her ears the next second.
Opening her eyes, she saw Bai Zhi bearing her usual bright, radiant smile.
“I was just kidding,” Bai Zhi stepped back a few paces, restoring a normal social distance as the terrifying pressure from earlier vanished by half. “How could I possibly kill someone and dispose of the body in a place like this? Cars and people are bound to pass by at this hour, so I’d be caught in no time. But you actually believed it, how cute, haha…”
Noticing Qi Qi’s distrustful expression and her gaze slowly shifting toward the suspicious burlap sack beside her, Bai Zhi casually wiped away the moisture at the corner of her eyes. She openly untied the tightly bound sack to show her.
Inside was neither the pale, contorted human body nor the bloodier remains she had imagined, but wild pheasants, rabbits, and even a smaller sized sika deer.
“There’s a hunting ground nearby. I originally came with some others and agreed to meet up at the campsite at the foot of the mountain. But I ended up chasing this sika deer, and by the time I caught it, it was already pitch black. Not only did I get lost, but I also didn’t bring my phone. It took me so much effort to reach this spot, and I never expected to be mistaken for a murderer.” She casually flipped the multi-tool military knife in her hand into the air and caught it with precision, flashing a reassuring smile at Qi Qi while her eyes darted curiously over her face. “I’m really sorry, I just wanted to tease you. I thought Student Qi wouldn’t fall for such a crude lie.”
“Was Student Qi scared by me?”
As she spoke, she tried to wrap the scarf she had removed back around Qi Qi, reaching out to smooth Qi Qi’s hair that had been tousled by the wind.
After confirming that things were indeed not as she had imagined, a wave of heat gradually flushed Qi Qi’s earlobes. Nearly annoyed, she shoved away Bai Zhi, who was leaning in close to inspect her expression. “Don’t touch me.” It was all because of that story she had been listening to earlier that made her subconsciously jump to that conclusion.
She even found the scarf that Bai Zhi had touched displeasing to the eye.
She pulled off the scarf, threw it onto Bai Zhi’s head, turned around, and walked away.
Bai Zhi froze. Her cheeks, chilled by the wind, brushed against the soft, fluffy scarf that still retained Qi Qi’s body heat. That comforting warmth made her unconsciously snuggle her face deeper into the fabric.
Qi Qi walked forward angrily, deciding to skip class for the entire day tomorrow.
The annoying dragging sound started up once more.
Bai Zhi seemed utterly incapable of reading the room, following behind her without backing off.
“Stop following me!” Qi Qi spat without turning her head.
“I’m sorry, I really didn’t expect…”
Qi Qi turned and glared at her, her lips tightly pressed.
After being glared at, Bai Zhi left her remaining words unsaid. Yet, seeing Qi Qi wearing her heart on her sleeve like this, she couldn’t help but find it fresh and interesting. On the surface, however, she didn’t reveal a trace of it. Frowning with lowered eyes, she looked deeply remorseful. “I walked for so long without seeing anyone and felt terrified. As the sky grew darker, my nerves were constantly strained. So when I saw someone I knew, I couldn’t help but relax and wanted to crack a joke to lighten the mood. But I accidentally did things that upset you. I’m sorry.”
Having grown up in an environment filled with intrigue and deception, Bai Zhi was adept at grasping and guiding other people’s emotions.
She immediately identified the cause behind Qi Qi’s emotional fluctuations and took advantage of it.
Bai Zhi also took note of Qi Qi’s reaction, her cold, stern expression noticeably softened upon hearing that Bai Zhi admitted to being scared too. Thus, she continued, “I walked for a long, long time by myself before I finally made it out. I was exhausted and starving, and I had to worry about whether bad people or monsters would suddenly pop out. I was truly terrified. Would you be willing to host me for a night…”
Seeing that Bai Zhi wasn’t wearing much, her pale face, and her fingertips trembling slightly in the night wind, Qi Qi, who had originally intended to leave directly, felt her rock solid heart waver faintly as she looked at the poor little fox curled up into a ball.
Part of it was also due to her own misunderstanding.
Bai Zhi’s initial words were likely meant to ask her for help, but before she could speak, Qi Qi’s impression of her had been fixed as a prospective murderer right from the moment they met, causing her to jump to conclusions without any evidence.
Bai Zhi managed to maintain a strained smile, looking quite pitiful now. Glancing at Qi Qi’s unchanging expression, she hurriedly changed her tune, unconsciously lowering her head even further while clenching her fingers. “You don’t need to host me. Just lend me your phone so I can make a call to my family. It’s too far from my home, and I can’t find my way back to the hunting ground either. If possible… but if it’s not convenient, that’s fine too.”
The girl’s slender shoulders quivered slightly, as if she were holding back silent tears.
Pitiable and endearing.
Qi Qi, who was helpless against this exact approach, ultimately let out a sigh. Stepping closer, she properly adjusted the scarf she had thrown earlier, which was still awkwardly hanging over the girl’s head, unlocked her phone, and handed it over for her to dial.
“My apartment is nearby. You can wait at my place until someone comes to pick you up.”
Bai Zhi snapped her head up, the corners of her eyes tinted with a fragile red, looking utterly stunned as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard.
“Hurry up, it’s freezing outside.”
Qi Qi sneezed, prompting her while walking ahead.
So simple.
While dialing the phone to tell the person on the other end where to pick her up, Bai Zhi took advantage of the fact that Qi Qi couldn’t see her and stared intently at her receding back.
Could it be that Qi Qi was actually much easier to approach than she had anticipated?
It almost felt a little boring.
The girl withdrew her gaze and kicked a stone on the road, feeling somewhat devoid of interest.