Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 41p1

Chapter 41 p1: User and Used

The one-and-a-half-meter bed was crowded with the two of them. They lay back to back, sharing a down comforter.

It was Shen Yiyi who turned over first.

Qin Luo had left a large space for Shen Yiyi. She only covered the corner of the blanket, leaving a black hole between them.

Shen Yiyi suspected that Qin Luo’s feet were still exposed.

“Come over a little. There’s a gap in the middle of the blanket, and the wind will get in. Aren’t you cold?” Shen Yiyi said her request very gently.

Hearing this, Qin Luo moved her body.

But her movement was just a pretense. Her waist and hips didn’t lift at all. The distance between them had not changed, and there was still a clear dividing line.

Shen Yiyi was too embarrassed to push Qin Luo again and gently poked her back with her fingertips. “Come over a little more. I’m wearing shorts, and the wind is blowing on my legs.”

Shen Yiyi had never liked the heat since she was a child. She would always be covered in sweat when she took a nap in the summer.

Because of her poor stomach, Shen Qinwen had taken Shen Yiyi to see a traditional Chinese medicine doctor.

The doctor had said that her liver was overactive and her spleen was weak.

Shen Qinwen did not allow Shen Yiyi to wear shorts to sleep at home in the winter. If she kicked off the blanket and exposed her knees in the middle of the night, it would be bad for her joints.

But Shen Yiyi never listened. She would wear warm loungewear in front of her dad, and as soon as she got into bed, she would immediately change into her favorite shorts.

Shen Qinwen would always knock on her door when he entered her room. In all these years, her dad had never noticed the tears she had cried in her room, the lies she had told, or the pillows she had punched.

But now, Qin Luo was a witness to her lie. Her love of wearing shorts had finally come back to bite her. Her knees were cold, stiff, and numb.

Hearing her say she was cold, Qin Luo said softly, “Then you move in a little.”

Shen Yiyi squeezed the blanket and moved her body, and at the same time, she pulled Qin Luo in with her.

The curtains in the room were translucent, and the streetlights outside had not yet been extinguished.

The night would ferment the gloom. People would always count their wounds before closing their eyes, in order to better maintain the new life of tomorrow.

Unfortunately, winter was not suitable for dreaming.
Winter was only suitable for withering.

The heat wave behind her made Qin Luo clutch the corner of the blanket. She had taken off her glasses, and her vision was a blur. She could only stare at the white wall in a daze.

Just as she thought Shen Yiyi was about to fall asleep, a question suddenly came from behind her.

“How old were you when you started sleeping in your own bed?”

Qin Luo had originally wanted to pretend to be asleep, but she couldn’t help but answer her.

“Three? I’ve kind of forgotten.”

“How could you forget something as painful as starting to sleep in your own bed?” Shen Yiyi asked, lying on her back.

“It wasn’t painful.” Qin Luo’s answer was easy, a simple sentence to summarize. “They left when I didn’t have many memories. I didn’t feel it, so it wasn’t that painful.”

Happiness is the prerequisite for sorrow, so without happiness, there is no regret.

No child is not afraid of the dark. Qin Luo had also been afraid, but she couldn’t answer Shen Yiyi’s question.

She was just afraid of the night, not of sleeping in her own bed.

Besides, the word Shen Yiyi had used was “painful,” not even the “afraid” that she had in her mind.

Qin Luo had never been a crybaby since she was a child. Her tolerance for “pain” was very high.

Whether it was getting a vaccine, having blood drawn when she was sick, being bullied, or being placed in a daycare by her grandmother for a year for dinner. Qin Luo would always find a bunch of reasons to convince herself to accept this disappointment.

Disappointment was the sweet apple that she could never touch in her life, so she had no curiosity or desire to explore. She could only passively wait for the missing corner to be filled in automatically, based on her fluctuating emotions.

Self-filling is a complicated process. Once it encounters a large amount of irrigation from parents, it will immediately burst its banks and collapse. So Qin Luo actually thought that “reunion” was more painful for her than “separation.”

“What about you?” Qin Luo was also curious about Shen Yiyi’s question. “Why are you asking me this?”

Shen Yiyi said, “I just remembered the fear I had when I started sleeping in my own bed as a child.”

Shen Yiyi closed her eyes tightly, a clearly discernible sense of fear growing in her bones, as if a black shadow were passing through her body, devouring her internal organs.

“I remember it was in the small class of kindergarten.” Shen Yiyi turned over, her back to Qin Luo, and curled up, her knees against the wall. “My mom said I was already in school, so I had to sleep in my own bed.”

Shen Yiyi’s voice was cold and trembling, her volume a whisper.

Qin Luo couldn’t hear clearly, so she had to turn to face her back.

“I was so scared that day.”

Shen Yiyi had never mentioned the secret of starting to sleep in her own bed to anyone, not even Xu Meng and Shen Qinwen.

“She was so cruel. She locked the bedroom door. No matter how I cried and shouted outside the door, she wouldn’t pay any attention to me. It was dark all around. I was so scared I ran back to my bed and covered my head with the blanket, hiding and crying for half the night. Later, I was so tired from crying that I fell asleep.”

For Shen Yiyi, that memory of starting to sleep in her own bed was full of bitterness.

At four, she didn’t know what separation was.

She only knew that the night was full of dangerous things. Even the fluttering curtains were like ghosts.

On a night without her mother’s protection, the demons and monsters she imagined in her head would drag her to hell. She would be eaten by the old demon of Black Mountain, her legs cut off, and finally abandoned in the wilderness.

Shen Yiyi said, “The next day when I woke up, she praised me. My mom said that if I insisted on sleeping by myself for a week, she would sleep with me for one night on Saturday. Do you know? For that one night, I cried myself to sleep every night.”

Qin Luo couldn’t understand, but she had good empathy. She could hear the sadness in Shen Yiyi’s voice and experienced the pain of separation with her.

But she didn’t dare to ask further.

Qin Luo didn’t dare to continue asking about her mother’s story, because Shen Qinwen had reminded her when she moved into the Shen family that Shen Yiyi’s mother had died in an accident, and Shen Yiyi had suffered a great blow. He hoped that Qin Luo would not mention her mother to Shen Yiyi, so as not to touch on a sore subject.

Qin Luo’s hand in the blanket moved closer to her back. Her palm was against the T-shirt, and she gently stroked and patted Shen Yiyi’s back.

This was Qin Luo’s favorite way to lull someone to sleep.

She remembered that she had been infected with chickenpox in elementary school and had been in a low-grade fever and delirium for three or four days. Her grandmother was so scared that she had called Jiang Yan back from the provincial capital.

For those few nights, Jiang Yan had lulled her to sleep like this.

As Qin Luo stroked and patted, she comforted her, “It’s okay. It’s normal to be afraid of sleeping alone.”

She tucked the blanket behind Shen Yiyi’s back and then changed the subject. “Are you sleepy? Aren’t we going for a walk by the river early tomorrow morning? Why don’t we go to sleep?”

Shen Yiyi didn’t say anything more.

She held her hands between her legs and felt the unhindered stroking on her back. Qin Luo was not cold. She was both scorching hot and steaming, ironing this swamp, making her immediately fall into a daze.

When Shen Yiyi woke up, Qin Luo had already bought breakfast.

On the table were soy milk, potstickers, and steaming hot tofu pudding.

After washing up, she didn’t hold an English dictionary or a notebook of mistakes. She took a sip of soy milk in a daze and looked up to ask Qin Luo if she had slept well last night.

Qin Luo looked down and bit into a potsticker, saying it was okay.

Shen Yiyi, who had always strived to be a top student, received Qin Luo’s neutral evaluation. She didn’t know what she had done wrong.

Shen Yiyi asked, “Did I hog the blanket?”

Qin Luo shook her head. “No.”

Shen Yiyi asked again, “Then was the blanket too thin? Were you still cold?”

“It wasn’t cold last night. It was quite hot… you were even sweating.”

“Then did I kick off the blanket?” Shen Yiyi regretted turning on the electric blanket last night. “Did I wake you up?”

Qin Luo didn’t speak and continued to eat her potstickers.

It’s over.

She must have woken Qin Luo up when she kicked off the blanket.

Shen Yiyi was so ashamed. “Then let’s not turn on the electric blanket tonight. That way I won’t kick off the blanket.”

…

After a pause, she added, “I… I don’t usually kick off the blanket.”

She didn’t even usually sleep so soundly.

***

Qin Luo also thought that Shen Yiyi would sleep soundly without the electric blanket, but after a few more nights of sleeping in the same bed, she no longer believed Shen Yiyi’s absurd guarantee.

Shen Yiyi’s habit of kicking off the blanket and kicking people was not a big deal for a deep sleeper like Qin Luo.

When she kicked people in the middle of the night, Qin Luo was sound asleep. Besides, she was kicked through the blanket, so it didn’t hurt too much.

As long as Shen Yiyi’s movements were not too violent, Qin Luo would generally not wake up.

But Shen Yiyi also liked to squeeze against Qin Luo to sleep.

Shen Yiyi wore shorts. After kicking off the blanket, she would be woken up by the cold. She would cover herself with the blanket in a daze, and then squeeze against Qin Luo’s back for warmth.

Squeezing to sleep was one thing.

Shen Yiyi also liked to rest her head on her back, half-curled up, her knees against her waist and hips. Then she would feel hot, her arm would be outside the blanket, half-hugging her waist.

The alternating cold and hot all night would wake Qin Luo up several times.

Clearly, when Shen Yiyi had slept on the floor, she had been like a rock, hard and motionless. How could her movements be so strange when she slept in a bed?!

What made Qin Luo most embarrassed was waking up in the morning.

Shen Yiyi would have returned to her dead rabbit state, lying on her side facing Qin Luo, her feet either on her calf or between her legs.

One night, Qin Luo really couldn’t take it anymore. She turned over and locked her in her arms. She held Shen Yiyi’s body firmly with her arms, her chin resting on her shoulder, forcing Shen Yiyi to sleep soundly in her arms.

That night, as Qin Luo held her, she woke up.

Shen Yiyi, resting her head on Qin Luo’s arm, was like a heavy piece of wood. The light and clean scent on her body was ignited by the rising temperature.

The person in her arms was breathing softly in her sleep, like a roasted, withered tea with a sweet and astringent aftertaste, winding its way into Qin Luo’s dream.

In her dream, Qin Luo couldn’t control her greedy hands. She strangely reached into her pajamas and then took off the shorts that had made her both cold and hot.

She couldn’t distinguish between reality and illusion. Her heart began to beat faster. The clumsy and awkward caress magnified the sensations of adolescence.

Halfway through, Qin Luo felt that the faint scent was not enough, so she broke the rules and leaned over. She buried her completely in her arms and then gently bit the nape of her neck.

…