In the middle of the night, Wen Huaiyue fell asleep in a daze.
Ji Hua came out of the room, her footsteps very light.
She walked over to Wen Huaiyue and watched her quietly. Her expression betrayed no particular emotion as the moonlight streaming through the window washed over Wen Huaiyue’s face.
She seemed to be having a nightmare; her brow was tightly furrowed, and she was murmuring something under her breath, though Ji Hua couldn’t make it out.
Wen Huaiyue turned over, the back of her head hitting the pillow. She couldn’t help letting out a soft groan before rolling back to her original position. Ji Hua frowned slightly, stood completely still for a moment, and then turned and walked back to her own room.
The next day, Ji Hua was startled awake by a knock on the door, followed by Wen Huaiyue’s voice from outside.
“Sister, are you awake?”
Ji Hua sat up in bed. She suffered from morning irritability, and right now her mood was quite foul. She raked a hand through her hair in frustration, feeling very little desire to deal with her.
Wen Huaiyue persisted with the knocking, her voice carrying a hint of tentative caution: “Sister?”
“Come in,” Ji Hua said coldly after a long pause.
Wen Huaiyue was holding a bowl of noodles. Although she still wasn’t very good at cooking, she could manage simple noodles. She placed the bowl on the table in the room, bit her lip, and offered a hint of ingratiation: “Sister, would you like to eat?”
Ji Hua wanted to say no, but a sweet, seductive scent suddenly drifted through the air. It was very faint, yet enough to make Ji Hua’s mouth go dry.
Wen Huaiyue had mixed her own blood into the noodles.
Ji Hua looked at her with an inscrutable gaze. Wen Huaiyue anxiously twisted her fingers, and meeting Ji Hua’s eyes, she offered a gentle, hesitant smile.
That smile still held a trace of stiff awkwardness. Ji Hua assumed the little girl was just afraid of her and didn’t dare smile naturally.
Besides, come to think of it, it seemed she hadn’t drunk the girl’s blood in several days. The faint scent of blood rising from the bowl instantly awakened her desires.
She got out of bed and leisurely finished the noodles. Wen Huaiyue watched her without blinking until she took the last bite.
“Give me your hand.” Ji Hua wiped her mouth with a tissue. Wen Huaiyue let out an “oh” and slowly held out her hand for inspection.
There was a tiny needle-prick mark on her index finger, no larger than an ant, with a faint trace of dried blood. It seemed the little girl had used a needle to prick her own finger and squeeze out a few drops of blood.
Ji Hua couldn’t help smiling. “Does it hurt?”
Wen Huaiyue lowered her eyelashes and shook her head slightly.
It certainly must have hurt. After all, a child’s pain tolerance was naturally low. Ji Hua’s mood improved a bit at the thought, and she stopped dwelling on the previous night’s events.
She retrieved a medical kit from her room and raised her chin. “Go sit on the sofa.”
Wen Huaiyue tilted her head in confusion, unsure of what Ji Hua was planning to do, but she didn’t dare ask too many questions and obediently walked over to sit on the sofa.
Ji Hua took out the anti-inflammatory ointment and finally moved with a semblance of human gentleness, softly applying it to the back of Wen Huaiyue’s head. Wen Huaiyue instinctively wanted to shrink away from the sting, but she forced herself to endure it.
Ji Hua stayed silent, quietly applying the medicine. Wen Huaiyue remained quiet too, until she could no longer hold it in. Like a small, soft animal, she asked with a tender warmth, “Sister, are you still mad?”
Ji Hua ignored her.
Anxious now, Wen Huaiyue shifted her body slightly. “Sister…”
“Stop moving,” Ji Hua said in an even tone. “I don’t want to know why you left yesterday, but in any case, there won’t be a third time.” She paused before adding, “Did you hear me?”
Wen Huaiyue nodded quickly, accidentally brushing against the wound at the back of her head. Ji Hua’s voice turned cold: “Don’t move.”
A thought suddenly occurred to Wen Huaiyue, and she asked tentatively and in a small voice: “Sister, do you know my family?”
Ji Hua’s hand froze for a few seconds before she withdrew the cotton swab, put the medical kit back into the cabinet, and brushed her off with a casual evasion: “Never heard of them.”
She didn’t really want to tell Wen Huaiyue the truth.
Perhaps she was afraid that this child would cling stubbornly to her and demand to be taken back home, which would be quite annoying.
Wen Huaiyue’s expression went blank for a moment, tinged with a hint of confusion and bewilderment, but she didn’t say anything else.
She really had thought a lot the night before. She didn’t know where those memories came from, but they felt inexplicably familiar, as if they were a part of her very being.
Seeing Ji Hua today had made those memories much clearer, drilling into her little head frame by frame.
She felt that Ji Hua must know her family, so why would she lie to her and refuse to take her home?
Why?
The food in Ji Hua’s house was running low, and she needed to go out and buy some. Before leaving, she told Wen Huaiyue not to leave the house.
She bought a cart full of groceries at the supermarket. While passing the snack aisle, she saw many children picking out candies and glutinous rice cakes.
Ji Hua glanced at them indifferently and walked right past. But for some reason, she turned back a moment later, tossed a few packages of candy and rice cakes into her basket, and headed to the checkout.
There was a traffic jam on the street. Ji Hua waited lazily, her gaze wandering until she happened to spot someone standing next to a car door to her front left.
It was a woman in a brown trench coat with short hair. Her exposed profile looked arrogant and striking, her brow furrowed tightly. A moment later, a man walked out of a convenience store, shook his head gently at her, and the woman let her shoulders slump in defeat.
Wen Yao, Meng Wang.
Ji Hua raised one eyebrow and tapped her fingers lightly against the steering wheel.
What brought the two of them all the way here?
This wasn’t good.
Ji Hua carried all sorts of thoughts back home. When she unlocked the door and stepped inside with her bags, Wen Huaiyue was watching television.
It wasn’t the cartoons children liked, but financial news. A previous corporate news segment about Wen Yao was replaying on the screen, displaying Wen Yao’s confident and striking face. Wen Huaiyue was staring straight at it, her brow slightly furrowed in a troubled expression.
Ji Hua’s eyes darkened as she put the groceries into the refrigerator. The moment Wen Huaiyue saw her, she guiltily turned off the TV and called out, “Sister.”
“Why did you turn it off? Weren’t you watching?” Ji Hua closed the refrigerator door and took out the candy and rice cakes she had bought.
Wen Huaiyue sat cross-legged on the sofa and answered honestly, “I didn’t want to watch anymore.”
Ji Hua let out a soft snort from her nose, carrying a hint of mockery, and placed the snacks on the coffee table. “Eat.”
Wen Huaiyue’s eyes lit up when she saw the snacks. Ji Hua rarely bought her snacks, even though everything Ji Hua cooked herself tasted far better than anything outside. Wen Huaiyue loved sweets, but Ji Hua rarely made them. Seeing the brightly colored fruit candies and rice cakes made her eyes curve into crescent moons.
“Thank you, Sister!” Wen Huaiyue’s heart was filled with the sweet joy of candy.
“Does Sister treat you well?” Ji Hua sat on the opposite sofa, propping her chin on her hand and watching her with a smile.
Wen Huaiyue hesitated for just a second before nodding. “Yes.”
“Then if you find your family in the future, will you forget about Sister?” Ji Hua asked, wearing a look of feigned distress while her eyes remained entirely devoid of emotion.
Wen Huaiyue blinked. Ji Hua moved over to sit beside her, stroking her hair with a light, gentle touch that seemed full of affection, and spoke in a slow, soft voice: “If you found out Sister is a bad woman, would you still dislike Sister? Hmm?”
Wen Huaiyue didn’t know how to answer. Children are not naturally skilled at socializing anyway, and right now her mind was dizzy with a massive tangle of memories. Ji Hua’s question was simple enough, but her brain felt like it had jammed up and stopped working entirely.
Her eyes stared blankly ahead.
Like a little fool, Ji Hua thought.
She sneered inwardly and didn’t force an answer. Instead, she roughly ruffled the girl’s hair into a messy state and stood up. “Don’t eat too much candy.”
With that, she headed upstairs. As she glanced back at Wen Huaiyue, for some reason the girl looked more and more irritating.
Ah, what an annoyance.
“Do you want to sleep with Sister tonight?” Ji Hua asked with ambiguous intent after taking a shower, looking at Wen Huaiyue who was watching cartoons in the living room.
Ji Hua’s eyes closely observed Wen Huaiyue’s expression.
Children are poor at hiding their emotions; a flash of panic crossed the girl’s face, which Ji Hua caught and met with a cold curl of her lips.
“I want to.” Just as Ji Hua was about to dismiss her, Wen Huaiyue spoke up, lowering her eyelids and whispering, “I want to sleep with Sister.”
Oh.
Ji Hua raised an eyebrow in mild surprise, but said nothing more. “Suit yourself.”
At bedtime, Wen Huaiyue seemed to struggle with herself for a long time before finally giving in to her heart’s desire and curling up inside Ji Hua’s embrace.
Ji Hua opened her eyes, staring blankly at the ceiling without blinking, then lowered her gaze to look at the child in her arms, whose eyes were wide open as if lost in thought.
The child must have remembered something, she figured, looking like a stubborn little fool.
Before long, this kind of life would probably come to an end.
Thinking about it, it didn’t feel very happy at all.