Her Tentacles 1

Chapter 1: After School

5:40 PM.

In the academic building, the four long chimes of Pachelbel’s “Canon” rang out, signaling the end of class right on time. Beyond the clamor echoing from the classroom hallways, a wave of relieved sighs also swept through the faculty office.

“Quick, quick, Teacher Li, let’s head to that restaurant we were just talking about before Director Zhou ropes us into a surprise meeting—”

“What restaurant? The one that was just posted in the group chat? It sounds so familiar… Wasn’t it on the news this morning? You guys still dare to go?”

Wu Li, a male teacher standing by the water cooler, suddenly interjected. The few female teachers who had been packing their things paused, exchanging glances that were filled with exasperation.

Thinking himself humorous, he let out a couple of “ha-ha”s, his gaze shifting to the corner by the window. “Well, the news only mentioned an accident on a nearby road,” he said loudly. “Since it’s an office dinner, the more the merrier, right? Teacher Shu, want to come with?”

The person who had been called out finally pulled her gaze back from the sliver of gray sky beyond the red brick wall.

Her unconscious fiddling with the folds of her umbrella came to a halt.

Beneath the loosely styled black hair, which had been carefully arranged into soft waves, her light brown pupils dilated at suddenly becoming the center of attention.

The polite, perfunctory glances from her female colleagues and the overly eager stare from her male one caused her to involuntarily tighten her grip on the black folding umbrella.

A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her skin.

The more nervous she became, the colder her expression grew, her lips pressing together into a thin line.

Finally, she lowered her gaze to her dark phone screen and said softly, “I’m sorry, I have plans.”

—Between her gaze, which never met his, and her frosty, unsmiling demeanor, Wu Li’s expression became visibly awkward.

A strange silence fell over the office.

…

I’ve blown it.

As Shu Yao walked out of the office with her bag, her mind elsewhere, she couldn’t help but wonder: Was my rejection too blunt? Would it have sounded more natural if I’d said “my apologies” or “I’m so sorry” instead of just “I’m sorry”?

“Teacher Shu.”

“Hi, Teacher.”

“Goodbye, Teacher.”

Still agonizing over her previous blunder, the socially anxious Shu Yao, despite having lingered for five minutes, still found herself overwhelmed by the high concentration of students in the stairwell. She quickly sank into her next dilemma:

“Mm…” This one seems to be in one of my classes. What was her name again?

Teacher Shu, who never took attendance, fell into deep thought, too distracted to properly respond to the other greetings beyond a few shallow nods.

Dressed in a silk, crimson-collared blouse, she should have been the most vibrant color in the stairwell, now dim in the fading light. Instead, she was like a handful of snow on a high-mountain glacier—cold, proud, and untouchable.

The students’ footsteps on the stairs grew inexplicably lighter.

Shu Yao, noticing they were walking even slower: “…”

Thankfully, at that moment, her vibrating phone came to her rescue.

She let out a sigh of relief, her features softening as she saw the caller ID. With the foresight to lower the volume first, she swiped to answer and brought the phone to her ear. A lively, urgent voice immediately burst through:

“Yao Yao! Yao Yao! Why’d you run off mid-sentence!”

“I didn’t…” Shu Yao defended herself. “I was busy.”

Busy, for instance, writing the mandated reflection on last week’s teaching seminar, this quarter’s ideological report, and matters concerning the department students’ participation in the upcoming vocational skills competition…

Thinking of all the trivial tasks that sprouted from her supposedly stable, “iron rice bowl” job, Shu Yao’s cool expression went vacant, as if her soul had been wrung dry, leaving only an empty shell to walk the earth, radiating the weary resentment of a corporate drone.

Then, a single sentence from her friend yanked her soul back to this world:

“Then hurry up and tell me!”

“How on earth did you manage to win over that Dr. Lin!”

Shu Yao: “!”

Her heart leaped.

Like a startled rabbit, she reflexively glanced around, her blank mind instinctively thinking: This phone’s soundproofing should be decent, right? They didn’t hear that, did they?

Because she had stopped so abruptly, the nearby students who had been sneakily watching their beautiful teacher immediately stared at their own feet, as if they’d suddenly developed a profound academic interest in the golden anti-slip strips embedded in the steps.

Only those coming down from behind her could glimpse, through the light strands of her hair falling over her shoulder, the faint, bashful blush creeping up her jade-white neck.

Quickly, her figure descended the last two steps and vanished around the corner of the hallway.

Shu Yao deliberately took a secluded path that led off-campus, one lined with empty classrooms.

The sky grew heavier and darker, but the tall palm trees in the garden remained lush and green. Even the yellow and purple frangipanis blooming on their branches seemed to smile carefree at the gloom.

The tedious work, the difficult colleagues—all her troubles were swept away the moment she heard the words “Dr. Lin.”

So much so that Shu Yao didn’t even notice the faint smile reflected in the glass of a distant, empty classroom.

However, so much had happened that night that she could only manage to squeeze out a tentative answer. “Just… just like you told me to?”

Situ Jin’s voice crackled with gossip.

“Like how? Give me some details! Do you think I care about a few minutes of phone fees? That’s a director at Nanshan Hospital! The best hospital in our city! You have to book an appointment three months in advance just to see her. Do you understand the caliber we’re talking about here?”

“I just looked up Dr. Lin’s resume, and it nearly blinded me. Top-tier university for her bachelor’s all the way to her doctorate, visiting scholar in North America… The projects she’s been on and the papers she’s published, from her studies to her career, are the kind of stuff that’s beyond the scope of my wildest dreams. I heard you lesbians have a thing for highly educated women—”

“So, pray tell, my princess Yao Yao, what methods did you use to charm this super-genius? Please, I’m begging you, satisfy my curiosity!”

Shu “Has-a-Thing-for-Highly-Educated-Lesbians” Yao: “…You need to calm down.”

“Not a chance! My best friend’s new girlfriend is this amazing, how can I be calm? I’m desperate for more details so I can go brag, especially to Lin Jingshu and her little sycophants. I don’t have your good temper… Anyway, let’s not talk about that jinx. Same as always: I’ll ask, you answer!”

“Mm…”

“There were so many people at that matchmaking event at the Sheraton. I didn’t even see Director Lin on the main list. How did you two meet?”

Clutching her phone, Shu Yao stood in the garden as a storm brewed, earnestly recalling her friend’s prior instructions.

She had followed them step-by-step.

Holding the invitation to the matchmaking event and carrying her own memorable, personalized gift, she entered the floor with the most people and the flashiest lights.

And at first glance, she saw the most extraordinary person.

…

But her friend clearly wouldn’t be satisfied with such a dry summary. She had to try to pad out the story. “Just like you taught me, I took my gift and the invitation and rode the elevator to the thirteenth-floor hall…”

Situ Jin, listening with bated breath: “Mhm, mhm—huh? The thirteenth floor?”

“What’s wrong?”

The person on the other end of the line mumbled, seemingly confused about something, but knowing that prying gossip from Shu Yao was harder than shucking an oyster, she said without hesitation, “Nothing, keep going!”

But she couldn’t continue.

Because at that very moment, a new call came through.

The two characters for “Lin Ran” danced on the screen, sending a tremor through Shu Yao’s heart—a flutter entirely different from the anxiety of being watched by others.

Situ Jin was exceptionally understanding. Even though her gossipy soul was screaming for the story, she would never be the third wheel getting in the way of her friend’s romance. Hearing Shu Yao’s hesitation, she immediately wished her a happy date, vowing only to come back that night and interrogate her for all the juicy details.

Shu Yao chuckled, hung up, and began to walk out of the fragrant tropical garden. Just as she took a step, the frosted tiles of the path bloomed with droplets of water.

Plink. Plink-plonk.

It was raining.

She looked up at the sky, now completely shrouded in dark clouds, and quickly opened the umbrella she had so carefully folded earlier. Thinking of the person already waiting for her outside the campus gates, her pace quickened, eventually turning into a small run.

Beyond the red walls and white tiles of the European-style academic buildings, a line of parked cars was separated from the campus’s wide lawns by a gate, as if they were two different worlds.

The drizzling rain brought down the mountain mist that surrounded Baiquan Vocational School, making everything hazy and dreamlike. Soon, only the red and yellow glow of taillights flickered through the traffic.

By the side of the road, a figure stood silently beneath a black umbrella.

Even in the heavy rain, she commanded the attention of passing pedestrians, whose hurried glances would pause on her—

Her hair was a waterfall of black, so pure it seemed drawn from the world’s richest ink. The unique texture of her hair was distinctive enough, but below it was a face with equally striking dark eyes. Even her eyelashes were long, thick, and distinct, as if from a meticulously edited comic book panel.

Pedestrians blinked hard, as if by doing so they could see her beauty more clearly.

But the harder they tried, the more blurred she became.

The object of their stares had one hand tucked into the pocket of her gray trench coat and the other holding the umbrella. She was oblivious to their gazes, her focus fixed on the faint red lights of the gate, which flashed as faculty and students swiped their cards to enter and exit.

Beep.

When she caught the sound she was waiting for, her shadow, cast and distorted by the passing headlights on the rain-slicked road, seemed to deepen.

She watched as the person’s small run slowed to an abrupt, restrained walk. Then, as if that still wasn’t enough, the person quickened her pace again, heedless of her sleeves getting soaked by the rain.

The soles of her shoes sent up little splashes of water.

As she drew near, she parted her lips slightly: “Lin…”

But the rain had come on fast, and the terrain near the Baiquan campus gate was uneven. Shu Yao, caught unawares, stepped down from a curb toward a storm drain, her clean white shoes about to land in a rush of muddy water.

Thump.

A soft sound, the meeting of a black umbrella and a white one.

A fine spray of water droplets bounced into the air.

Beneath the umbrellas, Shu Yao was pulled by her arm by a hand with well-defined knuckles. Her gaze followed the motion upward and she fell into a pair of pitch-black eyes, feeling as if all the light in the world was being drawn into them.

—It was all just like that night in the hotel, the first time they met.

Back then, she had just entered the room when she tripped on the thick, soft red carpet and was caught just like this.

The déjà vu made her lose focus for a moment.

…

Until the person holding her exerted a gentle pressure, pulling her into the world sheltered by her own wide, black umbrella.

“Why were you in such a hurry?”

Her voice, laced with a smile, was muffled by the rain but was still captivating.

Shu Yao stood under her black umbrella, feeling embarrassed by her own clumsiness. As she tilted and closed her own umbrella, her eyelashes trembled. She answered in a small voice, “Be-because…”

“Because… you were waiting for me,” Lin Ran finished, her smile deepening.

When she smiled, the space beneath the umbrella somehow grew quieter, making her dazzling smile all the more captivating. In a world sectioned off by the curtain of rain, Shu Yao was its sole audience.

“What was that?” Lin Ran asked again.

Shu Yao’s throat moved.

Her grip on her umbrella was tight, her palm as damp as the weather outside.

Even though her voice trembled with tension and a blush like a sunset cloud crept up her cheeks, she still repeated, just as the other woman wanted:

“Because my girlfriend is waiting for me.”

Lin Ran.

That was her girlfriend.