“Sister?”
At the sight of someone who had no business being here, a flicker of surprise crossed the cold young Alpha’s face—there and gone.
Sang Ling strode up to Lin Jinxu, and worry threaded into her stern expression. “Why are you at the hospital?”
Lin Jinxu’s heart shot into her throat. Her first instinct was to fool Sang Ling with the excuse I’m sick.
But before she could get a word out, the Alpha asked, worried:
“Are you sick?”
Sang Ling was sincere—and that sincerity jammed Lin Jinxu’s lie right in her throat.
It felt suffocating, awful.
She made a strange, meaningless, strangled sound and could only say stiffly, “I’m not sick.”
A flicker of doubt crossed Sang Ling’s eyes, but she didn’t press. Instead she asked, “Did you see anyone else in the Omega restroom?”
“A woman. Baseball cap. Shorts.”
The more precisely Sang Ling described her, the faster Lin Jinxu’s heart beat and the lighter her breathing grew—like a thread stretched to its limit, dangling, not yet snapped.
“No. I was the only one in there. Do you want to go check?”
Lin Jinxu risked stepping aside, revealing the door of the Omega restroom behind her.
Sang Ling’s gaze dropped to it.
Lin Jinxu involuntarily held her breath. She’d said it only to dispel Sang Ling’s suspicion—but if Sang Ling actually went in and found the change of clothes hidden in the toilet tank, everything would be over.
Just then the security guard who had gone to search the Beta restroom came back out and shook his head at Sang Ling. “Sorry, Your Excellency. We only found short-haired Betas inside.”
Sang Ling narrowed her eyes, murmuring almost to herself, “No one in the Alpha restroom, everyone in the Beta restroom has short hair. It couldn’t possibly be an Omega…”
The young Alpha looked at Lin Jinxu again, sharpness blazing in her dark eyes.
Lin Jinxu felt as if the sword of Damocles hung directly above her head.
She knew all about the military indoctrination Alphas received from childhood. Every Alpha was nothing more than a puppet of the Alliance’s military machine, and she had no doubt whatsoever of Sang Ling’s loyalty—to the mission, to the military, to humanity.
Sang Ling had gone soft on her once already. Ever since the day Lin Jinxu had nearly been sold to the underground casino, Sang Ling had stopped being the volatile, prickly Alpha she used to be.
She had gone to work to improve Lin Jinxu’s living conditions. She had traded up to a far more expensive apartment for her safety. They had become people who could live peacefully—even a little warmly—under the same roof.
In this moment, Lin Jinxu’s mind kept replaying the day they’d moved in: Sang Ling standing on a stepladder, hanging red decorative flowers in the corner of the wall.
The young Alpha, up high, turning back and reaching out her hand to her, smiling as she took the decorations she passed up.
That gentle smiling face of Sang Ling’s overlapped with the sharp, suspicious Alpha standing before her now.
Even that Sang Ling was a soldier. She was someone who would haul her in and hand her over to the military without a moment’s hesitation.
Lin Jinxu knew that everything she was doing was pushing herself and Sang Ling toward irreconcilable opposites—toward, eventually, blades drawn against each other.
The Alpha’s sharp gaze seemed already to be tipping into suspicion. She said quietly, “Sister…”
“What exactly did you come to the hospital to do today?”
Lin Jinxu couldn’t help feeling suffocated.
She opened her mouth, dragged in a thin sliver of air, and finally closed her eyes and lied to Sang Ling.
“Little Yao’s a bit sick. I came to pick up medicine for her.”
Believe me. Please. Believe me.
You believed me once, didn’t you? This time too—please, believe my clumsy lie.
Sang Ling’s reaction was a little slow. That brief span felt like years to Lin Jinxu.
“Really?”
Sang Ling tilted her head. “But the last time I saw her she seemed pretty healthy. Rosy little cheeks and everything.”
Lin Jinxu’s suspended heart finally came down.
She covertly breathed out. “Her teacher just called. She said Little Yao got a nosebleed, so I came to buy her some vitamin tablets.”
“Oh.” Sang Ling nodded.
“Then what are you here for?” Lin Jinxu changed the subject.
Sang Ling’s brow arched slightly and she tugged at her white coat. “I’m a combat medic now. I’m training at the hospital.”
“An angel in white, saving lives and healing the wounded.”
She said it with a touch of roguish irreverence.
Angel. In. White.
Saving. Lives. Healing. The. Wounded.
Lin Jinxu recited those eight words silently, over and over.
“Then I’ll leave you to it. I still have to get Little Yao’s medicine from the pharmacy.”
She raised a faint smile, unaware of how pale her face had suddenly gone, and after bidding Sang Ling goodbye hurried away, as if fleeing while she still could.
The beautiful, slender Omega swept along in a white chiffon dress, its hem fluttering lightly like petals spinning in the wind—and the young Alpha felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Lin Jinxu walked fast. But behind her, Sang Ling suddenly spoke, striking her heart like a death knell.
“Sister.”
Lin Jinxu turned back in dread, her face white as paper.
“You’re really not sick? Shall I book you a checkup?”
The young Alpha asked carefully, hesitating, unsure whether she had overstepped—whether this exceeded the normal bounds of friendly concern.
“You don’t look well.”
As Sang Ling’s hesitant words fell, a sharp sourness surged up from Lin Jinxu’s heart.
That piercing ache seized her eyes in an instant, stinging them wet.
“I’m fine.”
She said it stiffly and turned away fast.
She left—fled, really. She knew that if she stayed a second longer, she would lose everything.
“Click.”
The smart lock released at the pupil scan.
Lin Jinxu pushed the door open as if beasts and floods were at her back, desperate to reach her safe haven.
The Omega flung herself onto the soft sofa the moment she entered; her thin body made even the sofa look spacious.
Lin Jinxu trembled faintly, curled in on herself like a flower closing against freezing rain, trying to scrape together some scrap of safety—and failing completely.
Because this wasn’t her safe house. This place was full of traces left behind by the beast from outside.
The red decorative flowers were still on the wall. One of the Alpha’s white shirts still hung drying on the balcony, never packed away.
The fragile, yellowing foam mat brought back from their old home in the slums now sat displayed on the living room’s curio shelf.
The Alpha’s favorite green mug still sat on the coffee table before her eyes.
Even the air was saturated with the other woman’s scent—she’d left not long ago—a faint note of mint.
Lin Jinxu shook harder.
She rose and dashed into her own bedroom, into the one space the Alpha hadn’t yet colonized.
But the cold white rabbit still lay on the desk, red eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
Angel in white. Saving lives, healing the wounded.
Those eight words surfaced in her mind yet again.
Lin Jinxu tried to force herself to forget, but her brain refused orders, compulsively repeating the phrase, again and again.
Her heart seemed to congeal. She couldn’t breathe.
The eight words circled her like a curse.
They loomed over her like some scripture, as if to suppress her.
Lin Jinxu covered her face with both hands, slapped her own cheeks hard, then dug out her light brain with shaking fingers.
Anything at all. Wasn’t the interstellar internet supposed to be incredibly advanced? Every kind of entertainment existed—countless addictive pleasures.
Anything, so long as it let her forget her situation, let her drown briefly in stupid, mindless peace.
But the instant she entered her unlock code, a notification popped down from the top of the light brain.
“You have one new voice message.”
The sender: Sang Ling.
Don’t listen. Don’t listen.
A powerful premonition surged through Lin Jinxu, screaming at her not to play it.
But her hands seemed to move on their own, and they tapped the message open.
“Sister.”
“All Alphas are dangerous. None of them can be trusted—including me.”
Even with her voice lowered, the young Alpha’s tone rang clear and bright, emerging from the light brain with perfect clarity.
So that was the call she’d declined at the hospital entrance.
But the dangerous one isn’t you. It’s me.
The one who can’t be trusted is me.
Lin Jinxu doubled over as if someone had driven a fist into her vulnerable belly. One hand clamped over her mouth, the other still clutching the light brain, and she bolted for the bathroom off the bedroom.
She was going to be sick.
Lin Jinxu knelt on the floor, gripping the toilet, and dry-heaved.
She retched until the world spun, as if trying to expel everything inside her—but she hadn’t eaten anything at noon, and in the end only yellowish bile came up.
She retched until tears poured uncontrollably from her eyes.
And still the nausea clung to her like an infection in the bone, impossible to shake.
Back in school, her anatomy teacher had once told them that the most fragile, sensitive organ in the human body wasn’t actually the heart—the heart had to maintain blood flow for the entire body and couldn’t afford to be that delicate.
The most fragile, sensitive human organ was the stomach.
Much of what people took for heartache was, in fact, the stomach aching.
Well, her stomach ached beautifully right now.
After retching for ages, Lin Jinxu finally quieted for a moment. Her skin had gone so pale it was nearly translucent, like the hauntingly beautiful female ghost of a folk tale.
She leaned against the wall behind her, utterly drained, slumped on the bathroom floor, her dress spread around her like a white flower in full bloom.
“Ding—”
The light brain chimed.
Lin Jinxu had no strength left. She slowly stretched out her hand toward the light brain she’d dropped on the sink, her pale fingertips groping for it again and again, catching only its edge.
She just lay there, dazed and stubborn, fingers straining—until finally, with one last push, she knocked the light brain off the sink. It crashed heavily to the floor.
Lin Jinxu didn’t move. She seemed to have lost all her vitality; from that same position, she looked at the light brain.
Even the locked screen showed a preview of notifications.
A message from Sang Ling.
“Sister, you left the hospital so fast today. But I’m still worried.”
“Are you really okay?”
After reading those two messages, Lin Jinxu fell heavily backward, the back of her head slamming into the cold wall.
She raised her arm and covered her eyes with her forearm. Her mouth curved into a smile, even as tears slid out from beneath her arm and down her cheeks.
I’m not fine.
I’m a disaster.
