Her Tentacles 15

Chapter 15: The Umbrella

Shu Yao was the first to react. She wiped the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, realizing she was being a little dramatic. She stood up and was about to head toward the table of succulents. “It’s—it’s okay. I just got back too late…”

“And I don’t mean to blame you. Everything on this table was something I wanted to give you. It just made me a little sad to see them blown over by the wind…”

She walked past the sofa, reached out to close the window, and was about to go and tidy up the mess when she was suddenly pulled by the person sitting there. She fell onto the soft armrest of the sofa, surprised, and turned her head—

Her cheeks were suddenly cupped by cool palms.

Lin Ran’s abyss-black eyes suddenly drew close, staring intently at the wetness at the corners of her eyes, her tone very light:

“It’s my fault.”

Shu Yao’s throat bobbed at her affectionate apology. Her gaze began to wander. Although she was sitting higher, being held by her, she was still in a passive position. The palm of her hand, clinging to the fabric of the sofa’s backrest, moved, and a teardrop that had been clinging to it slid down the back of her hand.

But it did not fall to the floor.

At the same time, Lin Ran’s closer proximity made her lose her voice just as she was about to speak.

A cool, soft kiss landed on the corner of her eye.

【Mmm?】

【Jar spirit, salty?】

Before the tear could touch her lips and soak her tongue, the tentacle that had caught the teardrop was the first to taste it.

Lin Ran’s gaze suddenly grew heated. Her moist red lips opened again. “I’ll clean it up.”

Shu Yao’s cheeks were burning up. She felt as if she were about to emit smoke from being kissed. She nodded dumbly, then nodded again, and finally shot up and rushed to the kitchen, mumbling:

“O-okay, I-I-I bought you new slippers, you can try them on, and the tape for the windows is in the bag too—”

…

Amidst the rustling of unpacking in the living room.

Shu Yao, hiding in the kitchen, fanned her face frantically to cool down. She blinked hard, and after calming down and replaying the scene in her mind, a thought couldn’t help but pop up:

If I had run a little slower, Lin Ran probably wouldn’t have just kissed me.

Her fingertip touched the corner of her eye.

The feeling of the other’s tongue, almost but not quite touching, was still there.

“!”

Shu Yao rubbed her face vigorously, trying to rescue herself from the thought of “almost having her tears licked away by her girlfriend.” She mustered up the courage to peek her head out and ask, “Do you know how to tape the windows?”

The dark-haired woman had just changed into the new, open-mouthed, colorful shark slippers she had bought. She was holding a roll of wood-colored tape and turned her head. The messy pots, bowls, and jars around her had all been restored to their original places. If it weren’t for the fine sand still on the floor, anyone would have thought the previous mess was an illusion.

“How do you tape them?” she asked.

“Oh,” Shu Yao subconsciously forgot to ask why none of the glass jars had broken when they fell. She stood at the kitchen door and gestured to her. “You just tape it in a ‘米’ shape…”

This way, the glass wouldn’t be easily broken by the wind, and if it did break, it wouldn’t fall in large, injurious pieces.

When Lin Ran came out of the bedroom and bathroom with the tape and was facing the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, Shu Yao remembered that the other woman had barely touched her food yesterday, saying she had no appetite after a failed surgery at the hospital. She poked her head out again.

“Lin Ran, what do you like to eat?”

Thinking about it now, since they had started dating, her girlfriend had never really eaten anything in front of her. This made Shu Yao gasp. “Wait, are you on a diet? The kind where you don’t like to eat at night?”

Hearing the excuse she had just provided, the other person nodded without hesitation. “Yes.”

Beauty and a perfect figure really do come at a price!

Shu Yao thought, then asked, “In that case, do you want me to make you some diet-friendly food, like boiled shrimp, which you can eat without gaining weight?”

Lin Ran, who was tired of seafood but didn’t mind chewing on it as a snack, said, “Okay.”

Knowing that her girlfriend was just conscious of her beautiful image and not that she didn’t want to eat her cooking, Shu Yao felt much more at ease. What made her even more relieved was that the typhoon didn’t affect the area she lived in, only bringing continuous rain.

The next day, she got up, washed up, and prepared for work, only to see Lin Ran sitting on the sofa in soft, white silk pajamas, holding a magazine from the bookshelf, looking so pale she seemed to glow.

“You don’t have to go to the hospital today?”

“I took a day off in lieu.” Lin Ran looked up from her book at her.

Shu Yao was a little surprised. “Ah, but I only prepared one cold dish last night. If you get hungry at noon, you’ll have to order takeout?”

The person on the sofa nodded noncommittally. Just as she was about to leave, she suddenly said, “Take that umbrella with you.”

Sitting in the entryway, tying her shoelaces, Shu Yao looked to the side at her words and saw a red umbrella with faint, dark patterns standing there. She couldn’t help but be curious. “A gift for me?”

Lin Ran paused, then nodded. “A gift for you.”

She smiled faintly. “Remember to take it with you every day. It can block the sun and the rain.”

Shu Yao hadn’t expected her to give a gift so suddenly.

On second thought, it was probably because it had been raining so much in Nancheng this season that her girlfriend had specially chosen an umbrella as a gift for her.

When she walked out of the apartment building, the rain outside had stopped, but Shu Yao ceremoniously shook the umbrella in her hand and opened it with great solemnity—

The red canopy was paired with a long, snow-white shaft.

The shaft was cool to the touch, at first glance like metal, but a warmth grew after rubbing it with her thumb for a long time. The design of the canopy was also very special, a brilliant and translucent red, with black patterns like the branches of a plum tree in winter, spreading out like catkins.

Walking into the overcast day with the umbrella open, the red canopy and black ink patterns seemed to breathe. Shu Yao looked up and found that it wasn’t the umbrella breathing, but that there were overlapping, transparent heart shapes of various sizes on it.

…

Perhaps because the color of the umbrella was too high-profile, Shu Yao felt as if she were being secretly watched all the way to school.

But every time she turned around, she found nothing.

When she closed the umbrella and walked into the teaching building, she saw Fan Xin and the others walking past her with pens and notebooks. “Teacher Shu, hurry up, the administrative department is holding an emergency meeting. We have to gather in the auditorium before eight.”

“Oh, okay.”

She quickly turned and followed.

But this meeting puzzled all the teachers.

The meeting specifically emphasized the issue of water safety after the typhoon, requiring everyone to go back and check the water pipes in their homes. If they found any unexplained blockages or changes in the water color, they could report it to the newly established “Drinking Water Management Committee” in each district, and someone would come to their homes to clean it.

Also, they were to boil all raw water before drinking to ensure it was clean and safe. If they experienced any symptoms of discomfort, they were to report it to the school immediately. After the meeting, each homeroom teacher was required to convey the contents of the meeting to their students and parents.

The teachers in the auditorium began to whisper and guess among themselves.

“What’s going on, did the water plant explode?”

“I have a relative who works at the hospital. They said that the emergency room has opened an infection channel in the past two days, and the laboratory is so overwhelmed with samples that they can’t keep up. They’re guessing that some unknown marine parasites were brought ashore by the typhoon.”

“Holy crap, is that true?”

“Who cares what it is? The higher-ups will definitely issue a notice. If there really is some kind of parasite infection, can you really be at ease without stocking up on some water at home? I just ordered twenty barrels of mineral water, and I don’t even know if that’s enough for half a month…”

The panic over the crisis immediately turned into a frenzy of stockpiling water.

Infected by the atmosphere, Shu Yao also pre-ordered ten barrels of mineral water from her usual supplier.

As she walked out of the auditorium, she was still wondering whether she should call Lin Ran, who was on leave at home, to mention this.

“Teacher Shu, someone is looking for you.”

Outside the Baiquan auditorium, there was a large willow tree.

This season, the green was lush, and thousands of willow branches hung down like silk. Under the tree stood a person with flaxen-colored hair, wearing a casual gray and white suit jacket. From a distance, the metal earring on her ear bone was the most dazzling.

Shu Yao walked toward her with the crowd, and just as the reflection from the earring flashed in her eyes, she wanted to turn around.

“Yaoyao.”

From a distance, the other’s voice froze her in place.

Before more colleagues could look over, Shu Yao could only take a deep breath and walk toward her.

On the overcast day, her beige long-sleeved top, black long skirt, and the red umbrella in her hand were the most vibrant colors. They made her face, which was particularly cold when she was nervous, look domineering and aggressive, completely different from the harmless little white flower in Lin Jingshu’s memory that could be kneaded at will.

And so, just as Shu Yao approached, she heard Lin Jingshu let out a light laugh. Her gaze fell on her umbrella, and she said:

“Since when did your taste become so garish?”