Her Tentacles 37

Chapter 37: Breakfast

Shu Yao’s eyes widened, staring at Mu Qing as if she had seen a ghost in broad daylight.

Mu Qing raised an eyebrow slightly, not quite understanding why she was suddenly having such a strong stress reaction to her. She was about to approach her when another voice came from nearby:

“Yo, are you two acting as doormen here?”

Situ Jin appeared nearby, her arms crossed.

She had just run into Mu Qing when she was going out in the morning, so they had arranged to have breakfast at this restaurant together. Now, she had changed her clothes and was wearing a very slim-fitting wine-red spaghetti strap dress, with a black jacket casually draped over it.

Her gaze turned to Shu Yao’s back. “Huh, where’s that clingy one of yours?”

Shu Yao: “…”

She repeated the reason she had just given, her tone a little weak.

Compared to Mu Qing, who she seemed to have a persecutory delusion about and had randomly assigned a strange script to, it was obviously safer to be with Situ Jin at this moment. So Shu Yao, with a movement she thought was very subtle, moved to Situ Jin’s side and even linked her arm with hers.

Situ Jin gestured toward the restaurant with her chin. “Then let’s go in first?”

“I—I want to change to another one.” Even though she was already at the door, she could still feel the waiter’s gaze, which had not yet been withdrawn. Shu Yao shivered with extreme discomfort and blinked at her friend. “Since there are more of us now, how about we change to the buffet downstairs?”

“With your girlfriend’s bird-like appetite,” Situ Jin’s expression was puzzled, “are you sure you want to eat at a buffet?”

Shu Yao’s expression was firm. “Mmm!”

And Mu Qing shrugged, indicating that she was fine with anything. So after Shu Yao sent a message to Lin Ran on her phone, giving her the new restaurant address, the three of them changed their breakfast destination.

…

After getting away from that strange restaurant, her auditory hallucinations seemed to have gotten better again.

Only then did Shu Yao have the mind to look at the breakfast at the buffet restaurant.

Behind the different windows were chefs specializing in related dishes. Just the small steamers at the first dim sum stall were full, with different contents on each plate: steamed chicken feet with black bean sauce, taro spare ribs, black pepper short ribs, green pepper tripe, crystal shrimp dumplings, siu mai…

Shu Yao was in a situation where “an adult wants everything” at this step.

But Situ Jin next to her was picky.

Her gaze swept across the entire place before she slowly walked to the soup area on one side and put a tureen of dendrobium flower stewed chicken soup on her plate.

The high-quality broth, made from many ingredients, was very fresh and fragrant, but the soup was particularly clear. At this moment, a golden dendrobium flower was floating on top, reminding one of the sea cabbage flowers floating on the clear surface of Erhai Lake.

Shu Yao glanced at her tray, her eyes lit up, and she followed her to get a tureen of soup first, then she became the rich woman’s little follower, taking bird’s nest and peach gum and other supplements with her.

“Uncle Li, good morning.”

Just then, Situ Jin ran into an acquaintance, stopped, and greeted him first.

Shu Yao appropriately kept her distance. After all, it was not good to force herself into circles she couldn’t enter. At this moment, she was very interested in the golden fried shrimp that the chef next to her had just taken out, so she simply went forward and took another plate.

When she turned around, several well-dressed middle-aged men had gathered around Situ Jin, as well as some equally richly dressed second-generation rich kids.

Shu Yao passed by behind them—

【What a pity, what a pity. The real person in power of the Situ family didn’t come. Choosing him would definitely be more valuable than this woman.】

【What’s so difficult about that? Just wait until the ship docks next time, let our compatriots who descended last night land, and turn all the human dignitaries on land into our kind. Then the abyss can infect this land…】

【That’s right. Last night’s heavy rain let her escape by a fluke. Now she won’t have such good luck.】

A voice full of malice and ridicule entered her ears.

But from Shu Yao’s perspective, Situ Jin, who was surrounded by them, still had a decent smile on her face and was talking to them calmly. If she had heard the same content as Shu Yao, she probably wouldn’t have this expression.

Clang!

The food on the tray fell to the ground due to the weakness of her arm. The large golden fried shrimp were scattered all over the floor.

Shu Yao stood there, thinking in a daze: It’s happening again.

A few minutes later.

Shu Yao was pressed down on the hanging chair sofa in the dining area by Situ Jin, who touched her forehead and asked with concern, “Why is your face so pale? Are you seasick? Or do you have a cold?”

It was because of the noise Shu Yao had just made that half the diners in the restaurant had been attracted. And Situ Jin, noticing that her condition was not right, hastily apologized to those uncles and left first to deal with her.

Soon, a waiter came over to apologize. Not only did he clean up the mess for her, but he also whispered to her that it was okay, and that she could just get another plate of food, so she didn’t have to worry.

But Shu Yao’s pale face had not recovered at all.

Situ Jin could only send Mu Qing to get food, and then sat here with her.

At this moment, Shu Yao was reflecting on herself. She had discovered a new side of herself:

She was jealous of the rich.

It was one thing to have a persecutory delusion about the waiter just now. Now, seeing a few rich people she didn’t usually see, her symptoms had even worsened. The only consolation was that she seemed to be quite self-aware. She didn’t think that those rich people wanted to harm her, but that they wanted to harm Situ Jin…

She grabbed Situ Jin’s wrist, trying to prove for the last time that her mind was normal. Among the things that had happened from just now until now, she managed to pick something that was related to both of them:

“You seem to be hanging out with Mu Qing a lot lately?”

Situ Jin looked at her, not understanding. “Because she’s your friend, and she’s traveling alone. I’m not interested in the quality of the men on this ship. I can’t just let you leave Lin Ran and hang out with me all day, can I?”

That was true.

Shu Yao nodded in empathy.

The men who could catch Miss Situ’s eye in the past were either the good-looking heirs of the richest men in other countries, or the descendants of world-famous football stars, or they had to be elites studying for a doctorate at a top university…

Shu Yao had even sighed that Situ Jin’s ex-boyfriend group was already the highest quality group of men in the world.

No.

That’s not the point.

She wasn’t jealous that her good friend was hanging out with other new friends!

Shu Yao shook her head and asked again cautiously, “Don’t you think that Mu Qing gives people a particularly familiar feeling?”

Situ Jin thought for a moment and nodded resolutely. “Indeed, I have a feeling of having known her for a long time.”

The two looked at each other for a moment.

They said that name in unison: “Lin Jingshu.”

…

A glimmer of hope ignited in Shu Yao’s eyes.

But soon she saw Situ Jin wave her hand and say to her, “But it’s really not her. I had someone check her, and I also checked Lin Jingshu. That person left Nancheng a long time ago, on the night you came to the Blue Sky Industrial Park to find me. She drove away overnight.”

Thinking back now, Situ Jin even suspected that that person had known that the Chu Wan next to her was not right, and had started to pester Yaoyao again in order to get out of the predicament.

Hearing her words, the light in Shu Yao’s eyes slowly dimmed.

But.

If Lin Jingshu was eaten by a monster, just like Chu Wan, then it would be very normal to deceive some of the modern society’s investigation methods, right?

As if to strongly prove that her mind was normal at this moment, Shu Yao even thought very optimistically that perhaps she was like the protagonist of a novel, and had accidentally awakened some special ability that allowed her to clearly identify the humans whose bodies had been occupied by monsters, and thus hear the monsters’ thoughts—

Wait.

If according to the previous assumption, Mu Qing was the role that Lin Jingshu had changed into after her body was occupied by a monster, what was the need for her to return to Nancheng, and even go through the trouble of arranging an identity to work at Baiquan?

What, do monsters also want to experience the 996 work culture?

Besides.

In the movies, the characters who gain special abilities, even Spider-Man, have to at least go through the process of being bitten by a strange spider, right? There isn’t even such a spider around me.

Even the green slime monsters that had caused the man-eating incident before had not even touched the corner of her clothes.

As Shu Yao thought about it, she became withdrawn again: Sure enough, no matter how I look at it, the guess that I’m a mental patient is the most reasonable.

“What’s wrong?”

A familiar gentle voice sounded from behind her. The person’s palm pressed against Shu Yao’s back from behind, and her long black hair slid down from behind her ear, coolly brushing against the tip of her ear. “You’re still unhappy even after changing restaurants?”

When Shu Yao turned her head, Situ Jin happened to say to the belatedly arrived Lin Ran, “You’ve come at just the right time. She doesn’t seem to be feeling well. See if you need to take her to the ship’s doctor to get some medicine.”

Hearing this, Lin Ran immediately sat down next to Shu Yao. The wide, hand-woven rattan chair hanging from the ceiling happened to accommodate two adults sitting in it. Next to it was a floor-to-ceiling window with a sea view, and the golden sunlight reflected from the sea surface slantedly illuminated half of their bodies.

Shu Yao looked at her girlfriend against the light. In contrast to her own light blue long dress, Lin Ran had changed into a snow-white satin open-front top. The collar on her shoulder was one high and one low, and the irregular design revealed half of her straight collarbone and rounded shoulders. Below was a short skirt of the same color as her own.

This was an outfit that Lin Ran had changed into after she had changed her clothes in the morning. Anyone who saw it would feel comfortable with the couple’s color scheme that her girlfriend had secretly changed into—

“Are you still not feeling well from last night?”

Lin Ran leaned closer to her and asked in a low voice.

Her body still only had the clean, fresh scent of sea salt, and no other smell. It made Shu Yao wonder why she had just heard some imagination about Lin Ran going out to “sneak a bite.” It couldn’t be that she had also developed a cuckold fetish, right?

Lin Ran was so considerate and gentle, so perfect. Even though Shu Yao had a problem with her sense of smell and was now trapped in a persecutory delusion and auditory hallucinations, she had never shown any impatience.

Although she was so normal, she could still be patient with her strange self.

Shu Yao heard her ask this, but her heart felt as if it were being squeezed by a hand. She couldn’t stand her own neurotic state. Why could Lin Ran still tolerate her?

“No.”

In the end, she clenched her palm on the rattan chair, showed her girlfriend a beautiful smile, and replied in a relaxed tone, “I’m fine. I was already fine when I woke up this morning, wasn’t I?”

Lin Ran was stunned for a moment.

…

Just then, Mu Qing, who was holding two trays full of breakfast, came back. She was used to the clingy state of the little couple and naturally started a conversation with Situ Jin:

“There’s a very interesting masquerade ball at the theater tonight. Do you want to go together?”

Situ Jin said without thinking, “Sure.”

Hearing her reply, the smile on Mu Qing’s lips deepened, as if she had already received the gift she wanted, and she exuded an air of happiness.

Seeing her expression, Shu Yao, for some reason, blurted out, “What ball? I want to go too.”

After saying that, she looked at Lin Ran, with a look of being very interested in this kind of occasion. “Let’s go together?”

Lin Ran nodded.

After her gaze met her girlfriend’s, she turned to Mu Qing. She had not missed the look in the other’s eyes just now, which regarded Situ Jin as a prey that had fallen into the net. Although she didn’t know what this disgusting person was up to, if something happened to Situ Jin, Shu Yao’s mental state would only worsen.

And Mu Qing also met her gaze frankly and answered Shu Yao’s words:

“Sure.”

“The more people, the more lively and fun, isn’t it?”

Her words were meaningful and only went this far, but that voice belonging to Lin Jingshu once again sounded in the silence:

【Even if an annoying person joins, it won’t affect the predetermined ending of the ball.】