Chapter 13: Threat

Zhou Yi folded her arms over her knees and gave no response to Mu Qinglin’s words, her gaze never leaving Mu Qinglin’s eyes.

Pedestrians passed along the street. The shifting shadows they cast across Zhou Yi’s face alternated between light and dark.

“Want some?” Mu Qinglin asked again.

Zhou Yi considered for a few seconds, then asked slowly: “Will you serve me?”

“Hm?” Mu Qinglin figured out what Zhou Yi meant and resigned herself. “I’ll serve you—” This girl had just learned the phrase and thrown it right back. Her vindictiveness was unmatched. Mu Qinglin could only compromise.

Mu Qinglin broke off a piece of cookie with white peach oolong filling from the pack and held it out.

Zhou Yi squinted at it, then slowly leaned in and took the cookie into her mouth.

Her chewing was slow and gentle, softening the noise of the alley and somehow stretching out time.

Mu Qinglin crouched beside her, quietly feeding the cats and dogs that hadn’t been picked yet.

After so long in the snow, no one could stand the cold.

Mu Qinglin rubbed her stiff hands and asked Zhou Yi if she wanted to head back.

Zhou Yi opened her mouth and let out two sneezes in a row, making her nose sting and eyes water. In a stuffy voice she said: “Santa Claus caught a cold.”

“Ah…” Teacher Jiu was so delicate.

Teacher Jiu sniffled and the resentment began to grow. “This afternoon at the kindergarten, you saw them bullying me and didn’t help. You even filmed me like a news subject, over and over and over.”

With each repetition, the grievance grew more pitiful.

Mu Qinglin listened and inexplicably felt that her behavior that afternoon really wasn’t something a decent person would do.

She defended herself guiltily. “The kids were playing with you.”

Teacher Jiu was displeased. “I was about to be buried alive.”

Mu Qinglin: “Only your stomach got buried.”

Teacher Jiu’s mouth clamped shut in silence.

Mu Qinglin couldn’t hold up under the pressure. “I…”

“My stomach caught a cold,” Teacher Jiu suddenly interrupted, her voice hoarse, her tone deflated.

Mu Qinglin heard this and thought: Great. It’s all her fault. Teacher Jiu rallying the kids to ambush her later was well deserved.

“Any medicine at home?” Mu Qinglin asked.

Teacher Jiu thought about it and shook her head. “Tastes bad. Threw it away.”

“…” Since when did medicine taste good?

Mu Qinglin picked up the remaining apples and stood up. “Go home and rest. I’ll buy you medicine.”

Teacher Jiu looked up at her. “Not going home. I want to pick it myself. The kind without a sugar coating tastes bad.”

Mu Qinglin stared at Teacher Jiu for a long moment and muttered to herself: “How can there be a drunk who’s this stubborn and this lucid at the same time?”

The drunk had already stood up on her own.

Probably dizzy from crouching so long. She swayed on her feet the moment she was up. Mu Qinglin kindly reached out to steady her and was met with a deadly glare. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Mu Qinglin: “Thinking of knocking you out with a stick, shoveling some snow over you right here, and seeing if a well-behaved, obedient version of you grows back in spring.”

Teacher Jiu knitted her brows and analyzed the meaning of Mu Qinglin’s words. After a long pause, she nodded and said: “No…”

“…” Her self-awareness was remarkably clear.

Teacher Jiu strode off.

Now that the crouching spot was vacated, Mu Qinglin spotted a card beneath Facai’s paw.

She bent down, flicked Facai’s paw aside with a snap of her fingers to shoo it away, then picked up the card and opened it to check if it was important.

“Are you growing roots there?” Teacher Jiu, not seeing her follower, turned back to ask.

Mu Qinglin folded the card and tucked it into her pocket at the sound. She looked up at Zhou Yi. “Yes. Whatever shall I do?”

“Break your legs and drag you out,” Teacher Jiu said sourly. She sniffled and walked over to Mu Qinglin at a leisurely pace, then raised both hands.

Mu Qinglin thought Zhou Yi was about to attack and instinctively stepped back.

To her surprise, before her foot even left the ground, the girl’s slender arms slipped around her waist from the side, locking behind her back. Zhou Yi’s body pressed close, her chin resting on Mu Qinglin’s shoulder. In a muffled voice right by her ear: “As soon as I lift you up, you’d better pull your feet out.”

Mu Qinglin didn’t move a muscle. The clean scent of fig shampoo drifted through her nose.

“Did you hear me?!” Teacher Jiu, getting no response, turned fierce.

Mu Qinglin blinked and said: “Already pulled them out.”

Being hugged by the fragile Teacher Jiu? Before her feet even left the ground, Teacher Jiu’s waist would snap. Better to avoid the situation entirely.

But Teacher Jiu didn’t believe her. Suspiciously: “But I haven’t even used any strength.”

“You have…” Mu Qinglin moved her feet to demonstrate.

Defeated by reality, Teacher Jiu mumbled: “My brain seems to be frozen.”

Mu Qinglin nearly laughed out loud.

Drunk Zhou Yi was essentially a hedgehog flipped on its back, belly soft and squishy, making it impossible to resist the urge to pet.

Sadly, Teacher Jiu didn’t give her any more chances…

Zhou Yi walked ahead in a steady stride to lead the way, and the scene was almost identical to the first time she’d brought Mu Qinglin to “Buddha Demon.” Every movement was maddeningly sluggish.

The short trip took over half an hour round trip.

The moment they walked in, Tang Yuanzhou, who had been growing anxious, hurried over. “Where did you go? What took so long?”

Mu Qinglin held up the plastic bag. “Zhou Yi caught a cold. Went to buy some medicine.”

“Again?” Tang Yuanzhou frowned and looked at Zhou Yi leaning against a pillar. “It’s only been a few days since the last one.”

Mu Qinglin set the things on the table and asked Tang Yuanzhou, “Does Zhou Yi catch colds often?”

Tang Yuanzhou: “There hasn’t been a good stretch since winter started.”

Mu Qinglin was surprised. “That frequent?”

“Mm. Probably didn’t take care of herself during those growth years, and then she went through such a rough patch. Her constitution is terrible. In winter she’s constantly sick. A gust of wind down her throat and she’ll cough for half a month.” Tang Yuanzhou complained. “Don’t let the way she bundles herself up like a rice dumpling every time she goes out fool you. She falls ill at the drop of a hat.”

“In that case, maybe she should see an old Chinese medicine doctor for some treatment. It gets harder to recover with age.”

“We tried…” Tang Yuanzhou brought over water and expertly popped pills from the box. “The first year we found out, we asked around and found someone. But this one absolutely refused to drink herbal medicine. She even pulled out her own IV needle and ran while I was busy tattooing a client.”

Just thinking about it made Tang Yuanzhou gnash his teeth. “Wrapped up in a thin jacket hiding at the junkyard. Weren’t you afraid of freezing to death? And you actually dared to run from me? I should’ve beaten you senseless right there on the street!”

Zhou Yi, the subject of the tirade, tuned out the unpleasantness completely. She didn’t even spare Tang Yuanzhou a glance.

Meanwhile, a matching scene flashed through Mu Qinglin’s mind. She took a chance and asked Tang Yuanzhou: “Was the jacket Zhou Yi was wearing that day navy blue?”

Tang Yuanzhou: “How did you know?”

Mu Qinglin pressed a hand to her forehead.

So Zhou Yi’s warning that it “could get someone killed” wasn’t just an empty threat. The little note she’d left might have actually been well-intentioned.

“That was the first time I met her,” Mu Qinglin said.

Tang Yuanzhou was startled, then said grimly: “Embarrassment knows no season.” He turned to Zhou Yi and bellowed: “What are you looking at! Get over here and take your medicine!”

Even drunk, the words “take medicine” triggered Zhou Yi’s instinct to bolt. But Tang Yuanzhou’s glaring skills were too refined. She might have the will but not the courage. With a deadpan face, she pressed herself against the pillar. The rosy tip of her nose hadn’t faded. She looked utterly pitiful.

Sigh…

“I’ll do it,” Mu Qinglin said. Get it over with sooner. Consider it compensation for the misunderstanding with Teacher Jiu.

Tang Yuanzhou vetoed instantly. “Don’t. You’re still not close enough with her. She’ll save face with you, and she’s exactly the type to get a mile if you give an inch. The nicer you are to her, the harder she is to manage.”

“Is that so…” Mu Qinglin rubbed her index finger knuckle in thought. “Let me try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll see.”

Tang Yuanzhou glanced at Zhou Yi pressed against the pillar like a statue and handed the medicine and water to Mu Qinglin.

Mu Qinglin walked up to Zhou Yi and said gently: “Drink your medicine.”

Zhou Yi chose selective deafness. Her eyelids didn’t even twitch.

“Told you this wouldn’t work. Let me handle it,” Tang Yuanzhou said.

Mu Qinglin raised the water cup to stop him. Then she stepped forward, placing her toe against Zhou Yi’s while pressing her knee gently but firmly against Zhou Yi’s leg. The contact was light yet undeniable. She stood very close.

Zhou Yi was considerably shorter than Mu Qinglin to begin with. Standing loosely against the pillar made her seem even smaller. With the distance between them so close, there was no room to balance the visual gap. Mu Qinglin looking at her was equivalent to looking down.

Looking down exerted invisible pressure.

Zhou Yi was uncomfortable. She tried to shift away.

The moment she moved, the faint contact on her leg became solid pressure.

“Drink the medicine and you can go,” Mu Qinglin said with a smile. Her gaze, heavy and steady, locked onto Zhou Yi, and the knee pressing against her leg didn’t ease up in the slightest.

Zhou Yi clearly felt the threat, but the familiar surroundings kept her from feeling truly in danger.

After a standoff, Zhou Yi lowered her eyes and slowly relaxed her pressed lips.

A smile bloomed at the corner of Mu Qinglin’s lips. Like a reward, she first gave Zhou Yi a sip of water to wet her mouth, then the pill she had personally picked, the one with the sugar coating.

Tang Yuanzhou watched from the side, jaw dropped. “What is this supposed to be? Responding to softness, not force?”

Mu Qinglin pulled back the foot she’d been pressing against Zhou Yi. She looked down and saw Zhou Yi immediately yank her foot away, and her smile deepened. “It’s bullying the weak and fearing the strong.”

Zhou Yi dared to cross Tang Yuanzhou only because she knew he’d never lay a finger on her no matter how loud he yelled. But Mu Qinglin, when angry, would genuinely hit her.