That spine chilling gaze was fixed dead on her through a glass window pane. Even the sound of the rain, which she had found annoying just moments ago, seemed to vanish instantly. All Qiqi could hear was the pounding of her own heart.
Because her emotions were so intensely conflicted, the clashing signals in her brain briefly rendered her incapable of reacting.
Behind her, Bai Zhi was still struggling, making rustling noises of rubbing fabric alongside almost spoiled, whining complaints. But right before her eyes was a bizarre human face largely covered in fine scales, unnaturally hovering out of nowhere outside a window more than ten meters off the ground.
A pair of sharp vertical pupils, belonging strictly to a beast, glowed green in the dark night, silently staring at her like a predator stealthily lying in wait before a hunt.
At this moment, Qiqi’s heart was overshadowed by a massive, dark dread.
Immediately after, another flash of lightning passed in an instant, but the eerie face outside the window vanished without a trace, as if it had all been nothing more than her hallucination. Outside, the window returned to a calm, pitch black darkness.
Heh. Jump scares, face to face ghosts, whatever… How could someone like me, who has spent years watching horror movies and reading supernatural ghost stories, possibly be afraid? I’ve been used to this for ages…
Just kidding! I’m actually terrified of ghosts!
On the surface, Qiqi managed a cold smirk, but inside, she was holding her cheeks and screaming silently.
Her relationship with these kinds of stories was the very definition of superficial fascination, loving the suspenseful, horrifiying, and supernatural elements in fiction, but when faced with the real thing, it was a completely different story.
Nobody knew what was going through Qiqi’s mind at that moment. After five seconds of silence, she closed the curtains with apparent composure, then walked with stiff, uncoordinated steps toward the dumpling like bundle that was Bai Zhi, who had already given up struggling and lay flat on the bed.
“Qiqi, let me out of here. I’ll sleep obediently, it’s so hot like this.”
A somewhat feeble, spoiled voice drifted out from inside the wrapped blanket.
Bai Zhi had gritted her teeth and struggled for a long time. The unreleased restlessness inside her had long turned into pure physical heat. No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t understand how someone could hit the brakes so abruptly at such a critical moment for such a absurd reason.
She watched Qiqi, who was supposed to leave the guest bedroom, stand in front of the window for a few seconds to draw the curtains before turning back. Qiqi walked over to her bedside with her head slightly bowed.
The lights weren’t on, and the dim room made it impossible to see Qiqi’s expression. Bai Zhi tried to figure out why she had returned, but considering how her usually spot on deductions had proven utterly useless against this person in the past, she regretfully gave up.
It couldn’t be that she’s suddenly afraid to sleep alone at night and needs me to keep her company, could it?
At the thought of a person with such a cold, arrogant face saying something like that, Bai Zhi almost burst out laughing at her own ridiculous fantasy.
However, since her hands and feet were trapped in the blanket, she could only awkwardly turn her body to try to face Qiqi.
Maintaining her usual pure, beautiful, yet slightly insincere smile, Bai Zhi blinked at the silent Qiqi and teased, “What’s wrong? Is Student Qi scared of thunder and wants to sleep with me? But you did such awful things to me…”
She paused hesitantly, dragging out her tone.
“Though, if Student Qi takes the initiative to kiss me, calls me by my nickname Zhizhi, and genuinely confesses your love with a sentence or two, maybe I’ll be willing to let you hold me while we sleep.”
Bai Zhi winked at her with a smile, casually listing several impossible demands as a joke. In her heart, she expected Qiqi to give her a cold glare in the next second, turn around, close the door, and leave.
Either way, continuing tonight was clearly off the table. Might as well wash up and sleep.
“…Zhizhi, I like you.”
Bai Zhi wondered if she had misheard due to the overlapping thunder. Her face reflexively maintained its smile, but her eyes unconsciously widened. “What?”
After saying it, Qiqi hesitated for half a second. Her mild mysophobia made it impossible to accept sleeping without taking a shower, so she bent down to rescue Bai Zhi from the blanket. Her steps gradually quickened into a firm, determined stride toward the bathroom.
Her steps grew larger and larger, almost breaking into a jog.
At this moment, aside from her mysophobia, the only thing driving her actions was the sheer instinct for survival, to flee from whatever unknown creature was hiding behind that window.
Bai Zhi remained dazed until warm water from the shower poured over her head. Her clothes had been stripped completely clean. Before she could say anything, Qiqi, acting as if she were bathing a cat or a dog, swiftly and efficiently washed her clean.
Then, Qiqi wrapped her in a large bath towel, skillfully blow-dried her hair, took a quick shower herself, and ran toward the master bedroom while carrying her.
“Qiqi, why are you…”
Qiqi sat straight backed on the bed. Her hair was slightly messy from the hairdryer, and she held Bai Zhi’s hand with a serious expression. The warmth of a living human finally allowed her to calm down a bit.
Bai Zhi had never seen this usually nonchalant girl with such an expression. Stunned by her solemn and serious aura for a second, she was about to finish her sentence when a soft, moist sensation on her lips caused her pupils to shrink abruptly.
In the end, she couldn’t finish her words.
Qiqi was… kissing her.
It was a kiss stamped with Qiqi’s strong personal style, neither passionately lingering nor gently tender, yet easily capable of plucking the exact nerve that thrilled her most.
Bai Zhi was tired of all kinds of extreme sports that brought her close to death and pumped her full of adrenaline, and she was used to effortlessly controlling other people’s emotions.
When she initially proposed dating Qiqi, she had only done so with a half-curious, half-probing attitude.
She didn’t really understand.
What is “liking”? What is “love”?
They couldn’t be measured by anything, nor did they exist in any physical form in this world. She had even put a question mark on whether their existence was real.
In this world, she always felt bored.
Or rather, lonely?
Soon, her brief distraction was forcefully swept away by a wave of intense pleasure. Her mind was completely filled and occupied by another person, rendered incapable of thinking about anything else.
Qiqi was slowly yet firmly prying her open, roving from the tip of her tongue to the root. Like a lazy, elegant apex predator, she nonchalantly conquered territory, marking every inch she touched as her own.
Before Bai Zhi could even resist, her defenses collapsed entirely.
To gain Bai Zhi’s agreement, Qiqi poured in the same dedication she usually used when eating chocolate, sucking forcefully, occasionally nipping lightly, and tirelessly tracing the contours over and over again.
When the kiss ended, Qiqi felt as though her tongue was about to spark from friction. Believing she had shown sufficient sincerity, she formally extended her invitation to Bai Zhi.
“Zhizhi, I like you. Let’s sleep together tonight.” And face the attack of that unknown creature together.
She cared about her pride and didn’t want anyone to find out she was afraid of ghosts, so she couldn’t possibly tell Bai Zhi that there was a ghost outside and that she wanted to sleep together because she was scared.
Bai Zhi looked like someone sweet on the outside but dark on the inside, she had looked so much like a murderer when playing the part earlier. She definitely wasn’t afraid of ghosts. Maybe she could even scare the ghost away so it wouldn’t dare enter, or perhaps even counter-kill it.
However, after a long silence, there was still no answer from Bai Zhi.
Seeing Bai Zhi touching her slightly swollen lips, dazed and lost in thought, Qiqi feared she might refuse. She quickly threw another blanket over her, covering her tightly from head to toe.
Bai Zhi didn’t resist; she must have agreed.
This is the ultimate blanket barrier, impenetrable to any ghost or monster (except Miss Kayako)!
Finally, she could sleep.
Qiqi buried herself in the blanket with satisfaction and closed her eyes. Yet, perhaps because she was too terrified, she couldn’t catch a wink of sleep despite having her eyes closed for a long time.
Her brain belatedly began to process things, replaying her recent memories. This suddenly raised a question in her mind. To prevent this question from keeping her awake, she couldn’t help but ask out loud:
“Why is your nickname Zhizhi (Squeak/Zhī)? Shouldn’t it be Zhizhi (Gardenia/Zhī)?”
A muffled voice drifted out from the tightly wrapped blanket next to her, bringing the still-dazed Bai Zhi back to reality.
Bai Zhi was somewhat surprised that Qiqi was curious about her background.
She rarely talked about her own affairs to others, but perhaps the lingering dopamine in her cerebral cortex sparked a strange urge to confide.
“…The matriarch of the Bai family said my biological mother was a thief like rat, so after I was brought back to the Bai family, my private nickname was changed to Zhizhi (Squeak)… I don’t really care, though. Either way, it’s still me.”
That noble lady, who had been proud her whole life but had to turn a blind eye to her husband’s illegitimate child due to her own maiden family’s decline, wouldn’t express a single shred of dissatisfaction toward the cheating husband who secured her luxurious lifestyle. However, on the very day Bai Zhi was brought back to the Bai house, she ordered everyone in the household to call her by this altered nickname, a contemptuous name meant to constantly remind her of her origins.
If not for the fact that she was meant to be used for a political marriage later on, and the Bai family worried that changing her legal name to “Squeak” would make her seem low-class and ruin the marriage, her name on the household register might have actually been changed to Bai Zhi (Squeak).
“Do you think I’m very strange?”
Bai Zhi didn’t know why she blurted this question out to Qiqi, nor did she know what kind of answer she was hoping for.
Yet, as she stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, she felt more relaxed than under any familiar ceiling she had been under before.
Why was that?
She couldn’t quite figure it out.
No answer came from beside her for a long time. Bai Zhi turned her head and listened carefully through the bundle of blankets, finally hearing the rhythmic, light sound of breathing from inside.
Qiqi had already fallen asleep.
Bai Zhi puffed out her cheeks again, a rare, faint feeling of frustration rising in her heart.
She gently rested her forehead against Qiqi’s blanket.
“Goodnight, Qiqi.”
The room returned to silence.
In the middle of the night, Qiqi abruptly woke up from a nightmare where a terrifying monster, half human skin and half snake scales with a blurred face, was pressing down hard on her, suffocating her. Seeing the familiar ceiling, she realized she was still lying in bed and couldn’t help but let out a long sigh of relief.
She didn’t seem to have slept for very long; the room was still pitch black. But because it was too stuffy inside the blanket, after falling asleep, she had poked her head out of the ultimate blanket barrier (invincible to all except Miss Kayako) to breathe fresh air.
Bai Zhi was sleeping deeply. Qiqi could see the blanket beside her rising and falling slightly with her breathing.
Qiqi touched her cold forehead, intending to pull her head back into the warm blanket.
However, she quickly felt a real weight pressing down on her body, this clearly wasn’t the lingering heaviness of a nightmare.
At this moment, Qiqi’s hand had already pulled back the blanket a step ahead of her brain.
A creature covered in fine snake scales, the exact strange entity she had seen pressed against the window before sleeping, appeared inside her blanket. It lay on top of her almost submissively. Those dangerous vertical pupils, gorgeous and eerie like green emeralds, met her gradually widening eyes.
The corners of its mouth slowly curled up, forming a expression that resembled a “smile,” albeit slightly strange and stiff.
“Qiqi…”