If it were possible, Qi Qi would have preferred to prevent Shen Lu and Bai Zhi from ever meeting each other.
One was the target of her hard to speak of penchant, while the other was her strangely acquired girlfriend, one whom she might break up with at any given moment.
Ever since encountering the real monster, Qi Qi had finally abandoned the nickname “little monster” that she used to casually call Shen Lu.
With both of their gazes now locked onto her, she instantly felt an overwhelming heat, as if she were bathing under the scorching rays of a midsummer noon sun.
Clearing her throat, Qi Qi hoped to break this subtle, tense stalemate and, ideally, get the two of them away from each other.
Except nobody else in the room shared her intention.
“Mm, it’s because Student Qi is just so gentle. If you need it, I have a spare uniform over at my place that I can lend you, okay? My name is Bai Zhi.” Bai Zhi offered Shen Lu a friendly smile, before turning to Qi Qi as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh right, Student Qi, I think I accidentally left a blouse at your apartment earlier. Can I swing by tonight to pick it up?”
Qi Qi instinctively replied, “Ah, is it the white one with lace?”
The housekeeper had indeed mentioned it to her during cleaning a few days ago, even wrapping it up and placing it in the foyer. But Qi Qi had simply forgotten to bring it to school for several days straight.
It was only when she caught the inquiring look Shen Lu threw her way that Qi Qi realized how ambiguous those words sounded.
She cast a subtle glare at Bai Zhi, who had clearly agreed to keep their relationship a secret and tell no one. The girl’s affectionate peach blossom eyes curved into a charming arc, blatantly winking at her in intimacy.
Qi Qi rubbed her throbbing temples with a blank expression.
After a few seconds of quiet, Bai Zhi glanced at Qi Qi somewhat deliberately, then delayed her reaction with a theatrical gasp, covering her mouth: “Ah, I’m so sorry! I forgot… It’s nothing, I was just talking nonsense.”
The special admit student’s face darkened visibly.
Suddenly, a phone rang.
The moment Bai Zhi took out her phone and saw the caller ID, her expression turned sour as well. She rejected the call immediately. Hesitation and conflict flickered across her face before she finally closed her eyes.
“Apologies, I have something to take care of. I’ll be leaving first.”
She spoke through gritted teeth, yet by the time she looked back at Qi Qi, her brilliant, radiant smile had already returned.
Once again, Qi Qi had to marvel at how fast this girl could switch faces.
“Let’s hang out together when you have time, Special Admit student. I’ll host you together with her,” Bai Zhi called out warmly right before closing the door.
Shen Lu remained silent, not even raising her head.
Once she confirmed that Bai Zhi had left, Qi Qi let out a breath of relief. Looking down at the rug soaked with water stains, her slight mysophobia kicked in, causing her to knit her brows.
Shen Lu, whose attention was entirely fixated on her, naturally caught that slight frown right away. In the very next second, she spoke up. “Can I go take a shower now?”
Qi Qi casually stuffed the wet coat into a bag, intending to have the maid pick it up for laundering later.
Although nothing had actually happened and she hadn’t said much, she inexplicably felt a tremendous amount of pressure.
Listening to the sound of running water from the bathroom, Qi Qi’s memories involuntarily drifted back to the very first time she had brought Shen Lu here. Back then, the first thing they did was also take a bath. But at that time, Shen Lu had resisted fiercely, like a stray dog dragged to its first bath after roaming the streets for ages, scrawny yet fierce and unruly, looking as though it might claw her face off at any moment.
Now, after being cared for by humans for a while, with nutritious three course meals meticulously planned by a nutritionist and a chef, her body had grown healthy, and she even took the initiative to bathe.
It made Qi Qi want to praise her like a good dog.
“Qi Qi… do you have clothes I can change into?”
Just as she was immersed in a sense of gratification akin to raising a pet, the water noise in the bathroom ceased, replaced by Shen Lu’s somewhat tense, raspy voice.
“Mm, wait a second.”
She casually pulled a few garments from the closet. Warm, faint orange light spilled out from the slightly ajar bathroom door, accompanied by hazy, humid steam carrying the aroma of essential oils.
Qi Qi reached her arm through the gap, draped with the clothes. “I brought a few extra pieces. See which one you like.”
Before she could finish, she was abruptly pulled into the bathroom. Caught off guard, her voice turned unstable. “What are you doing?!”
After a dizzying blur of movement, she sat up in confusion from the bathtub filled with warm water. Like a frog being slowly boiled, her clothes gradually soaked through, and her entire body was enveloped by the perfectly heated water.
She felt the world had turned utterly absurd.
No matter how she looked at it, this scene felt extraordinarily familiar, it was a complete reversal of their very first meeting, when she had picked the girl up and dumped her into the bathtub!
Though it had to be said, compared to her own crude, careless actions back then, Shen Lu was infinitely gentler with her.
“Qi Qi, are you still very busy lately? You haven’t… bullied me in so long.”
Shen Lu stumbled through the sentence, feeling an alarming heat rising in her face, as though she were running a fever.
Even though she knew Qi Qi’s “bullying” was softer than a child’s prank, more of a personal hobby or playfulness than actual mistreatment, it still felt embarrassing to voice aloud.
A word she used to detest the most now carried an ambiguous, intimate undertone whenever it was linked to Qi Qi.
Hearing those words come out of Shen Lu’s mouth shocked Qi Qi so much that her movements to struggle froze for a moment. She desperately wanted to pry open this person’s head to see what on earth she was thinking.
She wasn’t some kind of pervert. How could she possibly bully a sick person who had just fallen into a freezing lake in mid-autumn and might still be running a fever?
“Didn’t Master tell me to eat more and gain some weight?”
Clad only in a modest bath towel that barely covered her, the young woman straddled Qi Qi’s waist as Qi Qi struggled to sit up. The pale skin on her body bloomed with a flush of pink under the effect of the water steam. “So I wanted Master to check on me. Even without Master’s supervision, I’ve been listening to Master obediently.”
Facing this familiar pin down position, Qi Qi’s first reaction was to resist. However, perhaps because her daily orders to have the household deliver extra meals to this financially strapped special admit student had backfired by bolstering the girl’s physical strength, no matter how she struggled, Shen Lu above her remained immovable like an unshakeable mountain.
It felt as though she had picked up a weak, dying kitten from the wild, carefully fed it and raised it, only to discover that the poor little kitten was actually a wild beast, a lion capable of swatting several people to death with a single paw. The utter confusion was overwhelming.
After a brief, valiant effort, she promptly gave up.
There were simply many things in life that couldn’t be accomplished no matter how hard one tried. Once realizing this, the best path was to abandon unrealistic fantasies and hopes. Giving up altogether saved energy.
Shen Lu’s voice continued.
“I am very obedient. Master said you were busy lately and told me not to look for you. So no matter how much I wanted to see you, I tried my best to endure it. I kept our promise really well… am I very good?”
In the past, when Qi Qi pushed her step by step out of sheer mischief, Shen Lu would only address her as “Master” with extreme reluctance. But now, she seemed almost addicted to saying it, which instead made Qi Qi, the one who had originally demanded the address in private, feel embarrassed.
“Mm, very good, very good. I get it, that’s really enough… Besides, when I made you call me that before, you didn’t seem too happy about it either, right? I now feel we should respect personal boundaries, so you don’t need to call me that anymore!”
She had thought saying this would calm Shen Lu down a bit.
As for the gloomy atmosphere currently surrounding Shen Lu, so different from her usual self. Qi Qi merely attributed it to her past bullying combined with the mistreatment Shen Lu suffered from others when Qi Qi wasn’t looking. The accumulated pressure and negative emotions were simply snapping like a compressed spring.
“Why? Master used to like it best when I called you that.”
Yet, under her expectant gaze, Shen Lu merely fell silent for a moment. The pressure she exerted on Qi Qi increased rather than decreased, and her expression grew even darker, with a hint of sorrow upon closer inspection. “Does Master no longer like this title? Or is it… just because Master has a better dog now, and doesn’t like me anymore?”
“Who was that person just now? Why would she leave an intimate piece of clothing like a blouse at Master’s home?”
Fixated by those heterochromatic eyes while pinned in this familiar stance, Qi Qi felt for a moment as if she had drifted back to those late nights, pressed onto her bed by that monster, unable to move. The atmosphere was so unnaturally oppressive that it was impossible to ignore. This was nothing like the timid, isolated child who was so easy to pick on before.
Under the abnormally intense pressure, she uttered the lie she had prepared beforehand.
“…Just a friend I met before. We were originally just going to have dinner together, but because it rained heavily that night, I let her stay over at my place.”
“Did you sleep in the same bed? Did you two sleep together? Even I have never slept with Master before.” The girl pursed her lips, her gaze holding a trace of resentment. Perhaps due to the light above, her pupils constricted into extremely fine slits. Qi Qi felt a sudden illusion that those heterochromatic eyes were gradually overlapping with the glowing snake pupils from those dark nights.
“Of course we slept separately! I am a person of high moral integrity!”
The words escaped her mouth without a second thought.
Qi Qi had originally intended to tell the truth, but her intuition warned her that if she spoke the truth right now, something unpredictable and catastrophic would happen. So she instinctively shifted her story, keeping her eyes exceptionally sincere and clear.
Technically, sleeping under two separate blankets counts as sleeping separately, she thought. So it isn’t entirely a lie.
Qi Qi managed to convince herself with this sophistry within two seconds.
Shen Lu stared at her with that terrifying look for a long time, as if verifying whether she was lying.
Qi Qi didn’t dare to breathe heavily, striving to keep her eyes wide until the corners began to ache.
Her persistence paid off. Just before her eyes went dry, she finally saw the color in Shen Lu’s eyes soften slightly. The girl muttered as if to herself, “That’s right… Master said you were only interested in my body. How could you like someone else…”
The young woman suddenly lowered her upper body, leaning almost entirely against her. If Qi Qi lowered her head even slightly, she would see things she shouldn’t. Remembering how she had intentionally built a perverted persona just to tease the girl before, Qi Qi simply closed her eyes to avoid provoking the newly physically formidable Shen Lu.
“Master, am I good?”
“Mm, very good.”
“Then why aren’t you looking at me? Why aren’t you touching me?”
Qi Qi felt her hand being lifted. Almost instantly, she realized what was about to happen. In her alarm, she forgot her intention to look away and snapped her eyes open, trying to pull her hand back.
But she had forgotten that her strength was no match for Shen Lu’s.
Under Shen Lu’s power, her resistance was as feeble as playing hard to get. She watched in despair as her hand was forced toward the demon king’s waist.
“How is it? Does it feel good?”
“Mm, very good. You’ve gained some weight, it feels very nice. You listened to me obediently, very impressive.”
With a heart as still as calm water, Qi Qi spoke against her true feelings.
Hearing this, a deep flush bloomed across Shen Lu’s cheeks. She whispered softly, “Mm, I’m very obedient…”
Seeing the girl finally display a trace of the familiar impression in her mind, Qi Qi felt a sense of rebirth, along with a flicker of relief that perhaps things would end here.
“Then will Master give me a reward?”
The young woman’s next words shattered her illusion.
“What reward do you want?”
Looking at Shen Lu’s expectant expression, Qi Qi truly couldn’t understand. The girl was already this powerful, what reward could she possibly want from her? If she wanted something, couldn’t she just take it herself?