Her Tentacles 11

Chapter 11: Lying

“…Lin Ran?”

Eight o’clock, in the underground parking lot of Nanshan Hospital.

Having been delayed in picking up her girlfriend due to the unfortunate incident of being followed, Shu Yao was first relieved that Lin Ran happened to be working late and had just walked out of the hospital when she arrived. Then, however, she noticed that her girlfriend seemed to be preoccupied today. She was holding the flowers Shu Yao had given her in one arm and the gift in the other, her expression absentmindedly cool.

At the sound of her voice, the person beside her turned her head. Those dark eyes rested quietly on her, the usual warmth replaced by a gaze that was almost probing.

Shu Yao started to get nervous again.

Even the hand that had been linked through Lin Ran’s elbow hesitated, wanting to pull back.

But she still forced herself to speak. “Is it… are you not done with work at the hospital yet?”

Her pale lips, like pink lilies, opened and closed.

Amidst the surrounding fragrance of flowers, the last words of that prey before it died unexpectedly popped into Lin Ran’s mind.

【So…】 Its bioelectric signal had only managed to send her this incomplete message.

But the one tentacle that had eaten it had transmitted its final, frozen thought—

‘So it wasn’t a brand, but a mark.’

This realization had, by a strange twist of fate, become its last words.

Only at the moment of death did it understand that the fragile prey on its menu, the woman with the tender white flesh who carried the predator’s scent just like him, was not, in fact, livestock branded for slaughter. Rather, she was a being intentionally marked with the powerful one’s scent as a protective warning to others of its kind not to approach.

Lin Ran certainly didn’t regret marking Shu Yao with her scent.

She was just repeatedly pondering the thought that had occurred to her on the rooftop garden.

Shu Yao is hers.

But how was she to become hers?

Human ethics and rules couldn’t define her, but the heavy weight of the gift box in her right hand told her that her girlfriend had most likely put more than one gift inside again. The end point of her collecting nine jars was close at hand.

And after that end point was a situation she had never envisioned.

…

Right now.

The predator, whose cognition had only ever consisted of “tasty food, untasty food, and jars,” was, for a rare moment, in a state of intellectual bewilderment. But before she could come up with an answer, the corners of the person in front of her’s eyes began to redden again.

Action preceded thought, wanting to touch that fragile blush.

A transparent feeler, still in its mimicry state, reached for that thin eyelid—

In the nick of time.

Lin Ran placed the gift box on the hood of a nearby car, and her fingertips touched the warm edge of Shu Yao’s eye socket first.

Shu Yao, who had been waiting for a long time for a response and was starting to reflect on whether she had asked the wrong question in the awkward silence: “!”

Her long eyelashes fluttered lightly, like a butterfly resting on the other’s snowy white fingertips.

“It’s not about the hospital,” Lin Ran’s answer came quickly. “I was just wondering if you had been crying.”

As she spoke, she took out her phone and showed Shu Yao the emergency SOS message she had received. Her tone finally returned to its usual considerate gentleness, now tinged with even more concern. “Did something happen to you earlier?”

This reason clearly surprised Shu Yao.

“Well…”

“I must have accidentally pressed it this afternoon. Maybe it was because the subway was so crowded on my way home, and it got pressed in the crush? Did I scare you? To be honest, on my way here, another uncle who got the message called to ask me about it too.”

She was clearly not good at making up excuses. As she spoke, her gaze darted from side to side, and her fingertips unconsciously tightened on the fabric of Lin Ran’s inner arm.

Even so, she still tried her best to smile, meeting the woman’s deep, dark eyes that seemed to see through everything, and added:

“Don’t worry.”

“I’m fine.”

Lin Ran didn’t reply for a long time.

She was thinking, why is Shu Yao lying?

“It—it wasn’t really a lie, was it?”

The next day, on her way to work, Shu Yao looked at the plainclothes security guards following her from a distance—the same ones who had been with her since her date yesterday—and answered her friend, who was also constantly concerned about her safety, in a low voice over the phone. “Because she lives far away from me, and she’s usually very busy with work. If I told her about this and she got involved and ended up in danger because of me, that wouldn’t be good, right?”

Situ Jin’s voice on the other end of the line sounded like she was about to die of anger.

Hearing her friend’s frantic sounds, Shu Yao inexplicably felt a little guilty.

Then, she heard the love guru—who had neglected her studies during her time abroad and instead immersed herself in romance, dating over a dozen elite boyfriends in two years—compose herself and say in a serious tone:

“Yaoyao, you can’t think like that.”

“Bringing her a gift every time you go on a date is one thing, but a relationship is between two people. She can’t just enjoy the happiness you give her and turn a blind eye to the trouble you encounter—”

“You just need to choose to tell her. Whether she chooses to risk herself for you is her choice to make. And taking a step back, now that you have the people I hired following you, if she’s the kind of person who wouldn’t even be by your side in this situation, then you should stop giving so much, right?”

Shu Yao pressed her lips together.

She understood her friend’s worries. Her previous relationship had not only left a shadow on her but had also made Jin worried sick, afraid that she would fall for the wrong person again.

“Mmm…”

She murmured in agreement.

But Situ Jin didn’t think that was enough and went for the jugular of the love-struck. “Besides, if she really likes you, and you don’t even give her the chance to worry about you, wouldn’t that make her sad too?”

—If she really likes you.

Shu Yao was captivated by this sentence. Amidst her suddenly cheerful heartbeat, she nodded solemnly.

…

Having decided to correct her lie and tell her girlfriend about the danger, she walked into the office and encountered an unexpected character.

“Teacher Shu, good morning.”

Fan Xin, who happened to have a classical culture class to teach today and had booked the tea room for her lesson, was dressed in a Hanfu. Her red mamianqun, embroidered with a pattern of golden phoenixes, was the most eye-catching sight in the office.

Shu Yao was completely stunned. “…Teacher Fan?”

Her usually aloof, light-colored eyes widened slightly, and she even asked subconsciously, “How are you…?”

Fan Xin was holding a stack of newly printed materials. At her words, she smiled. “What?”

Then she quickly understood. “Ah, my daughter is better now. I was originally planning to take a week off because the doctor made it sound so serious and wanted her to be hospitalized. I was so scared. But luckily, after a few days of IV drips, she’s much better, so I canceled my leave and came back to work today.”

Shu Yao nodded, still in a daze.

She had a gut feeling that something had gone beyond her expectations.

After sitting quietly in the office for the whole morning, she finally heard the full story from the gossip-loving Chen Le:

It turned out that the reason Fan Xin couldn’t be reached last Friday was because her daughter had a high fever from the flu in the middle of the night. After she took her to the hospital, the emergency room was packed, and she was so anxious and busy that she pulled an all-nighter, not even noticing that her phone had run out of battery. It was only after her parents rushed over to help take care of the child that she remembered to call and ask for leave.

Since she was absent on the two days of the sports meet, her teaching workload wasn’t heavy, and Shu Yao had slipped away on Friday afternoon, so she hadn’t noticed that no one had mentioned Fan Xin’s absence later on.

The slow-witted Teacher Shu quietly patted her chest, which had been through so much turmoil with her.

However, her attention was soon drawn to another matter:

Wu Li hadn’t come to work today.

On the third day of Wu Li’s absence.

The police came to the office, asking each of his colleagues when they had last seen him.

When it was Shu Yao’s turn, she answered quickly, because everything that had happened that day from the end of work to her journey home had left a deep enough impression on her twenty-seven years of life.

“Are you sure you never saw him again after leaving the subway station?” The person questioning her stared into her eyes, asking word by word.

Shu Yao nodded.

She obediently added, “Later, when I got home, someone knocked on my door. I thought it was him following me, so I was very scared and didn’t dare to move until my friend came over with people to check, but they didn’t find anyone else.”

To this day, she still didn’t know who had followed her and knocked on her door that day. Situ Jin had long ago arranged for someone to check the surveillance footage of her building. Wu Li was not in any of the footage.

It seemed the police hadn’t found any new leads either.

Because Wu Li’s desk remained empty for a long time, and they never came back.

A living person who had once cast a dark shadow over Shu Yao had vanished into thin air.

If there was any change in her life, it was that all the schools in Nanshan City held several consecutive meetings on improving the safety awareness of their staff, and Baiquan Vocational School even held an additional school-wide safety drill for various emergency situations.

During this period, due to the evening meetings every day and the final assignments for her online course, Shu Yao and Lin Ran, who happened to be helping with classes and attending a conference in the neighboring city, were both busy and couldn’t see each other.

…

“Typhoon ‘Sea Rabbit’ is expected to make landfall in Nancheng, Li Province, along our country’s coast at 8 p.m. tomorrow, June 2nd. Residents are advised to take precautions in advance, keep doors and windows closed, and do not go outside…”

On her phone, a short video from the weather forecast she had accidentally clicked on was broadcasting in a formal, articulate voice.

Standing in front of an empty shelf of instant noodles that only had “Spicy Beef Noodles” left, Shu Yao swiped the video away and glanced at the new notice in the group chat: “Baiquan staff to work as usual tomorrow.” Her expression was complicated.

She walked around the supermarket for two more laps.

She found that the shelves that usually held green vegetables were now only filled with various kinds of green chili peppers.

Between stir-fried chili peppers with more chili peppers and spicy beef noodles, the non-spicy-food-eating Teacher Shu chose the lesser of two evils and turned back to buy the instant noodles. As she was checking out, she received a message from Lin Ran.

She was finally back in Nancheng.

However, she said that her hospital dormitory was currently leaking, and the repairman wouldn’t have time to come tomorrow. Since she happened to be on leave for the next two days, she was planning to stay in a hotel.

Her girlfriend, whom she hadn’t seen for almost half a month, stood in front of the shelf and thought for a moment, then slowly typed out a message:

“How about—”

“You come and stay at my place?”