Her Tentacles 41

Chapter 41: The Bar

The captured waiter’s two thin, long legs trembled violently, his fish-bubble eyes welling up with tears. The task he had been assigned from the beginning was to monitor the two of them from a close distance. In the plan, he was a cannon fodder to be sacrificed—

He was the bait used for feeding, a long-placed octopus medicine.

Even if he had escaped last time, this time he was going to die.

Lin Ran had no patience to watch this ugly fish spew tears. Just as she was about to use the simplest method, to pierce his brain and devour all his memories, she heard him crying and begging for mercy, saying that his body had already been poisoned by those adults. If she ate him, she and the human she was keeping would be in a miserable state.

“Mmm?”

The black and red tentacle stopped perilously near his temple. Lin Ran’s eyebrows twitched. “Besides Mu Qing, who else?”

“All—all the [Martyrs] have already left the abyss…” he sobbed, pouring out the contents that his fish brain could barely hold. At the end, he seemed to remember something and suddenly said, “You—you also came from the abyss. Don’t you know about this?”

Lin Ran’s expression was blank. “Why should I know about this group of jellyfish?”

Perhaps it was because compared to those terrifying [Martyrs] who would simply and brutally plant poison in a fish as soon as they caught it and force him to carry out missions, she was now willing to listen to a few more last words from her food. This moved the fish, and so the fish answered good-naturedly:

“Because this is a command that all beings in the abyss must execute.”

He said, “The [Lighthouse] is going to bring the entire abyss to descend upon this world. It needs more anchors.”

The Martyrs were its anchors.

And after seeing that group of Martyrs, even a low-level parasite like him had this command planted in his mind. From then on, even if he died, his corpse would become an anchor that could be located.

Lin Ran hadn’t expected that she would learn such news from the abyss today because of her picky eating by a strange twist of fate. Her face turned a little ugly for the first time.

And the mackerel had vaguely heard from the Martyrs about the grudge between them and this octopus. At this moment, he didn’t know why he asked:

“Are you planning to leave early?”

In the constant, same-frequency communication maintained by those high-level jellyfish, even if he didn’t want to listen, the fish’s brain was filled with a lot of information he shouldn’t have known—

For example, back then in the abyss, when this adult was first born, she had once broken into the territory of the [Martyrs], and then was surrounded, beaten, and driven out.

Lin Ran, who had no intention of escaping, twitched her eyebrows again.

Before her dangerous killing intent could ignite, thinking of the human who had grabbed this predator last time and had thus saved her from death, the grateful mackerel, with a strong desire to live, added:

“You’re still with that very beloved human, right? The other Martyrs are all gathering on this ship. She—she’s just an ordinary human. If she stays any longer, she might be in danger…”

“Because, the [Martyrs] seem to have become interested in her.”

“Achoo—”

At the same time.

Shu Yao, who was too hungry to continue lazing in bed, dragged her tired body up, wanting to see if there was anything to eat left in the fridge. But she only saw a few bottles of drinks that had been put in when she first moved in.

The rest… was just the beautiful bouquet of flowers she had received when she first came in that day. Shu Yao had put them in the fridge, but thinking that the humidity in the fridge might be a little high, she had asked a waiter for a transparent glass cover and had put the bouquet in it.

She wanted to try her best to keep the bouquet in this transparent glass cover box in its original state as much as possible and give it to Lin Ran as a souvenir of their trip together.

Seeing this bouquet again at this moment, and recalling her mood when she came on the trip, Shu Yao realized that that kind of expectation and happiness seemed to have left her for a long time.

She took this glass cover box from the fridge, wanting to open it and take a closer look at the condition of these flowers. But she didn’t know if it was because the glass surface was cold and slippery, or if the box was not sealed properly from the beginning…

Bang!

The round glass cover slipped from her palm and happened to fall on the part of the floor that was not covered by a carpet. The glass shattered everywhere.

And the bouquet in her hand, the many flower buds hidden under the flourishing surface, with her gentle touch, the petals fell off one by one.

Shu Yao stood in front of the refrigerator door, looking at the broken glass and the withered flowers, and stood there quietly for a long time.

It wasn’t until she heard her phone vibrate on the bed that she came back to her senses. She walked over and found that it was actually Lin Ran’s phone, which she had forgotten to take when she went out.

And on it, a message from the familiar avatar with the note ‘Situ Jin’ came:

“Is Yaoyao feeling any better?”

…

The inquiry from her best friend made Shu Yao suddenly realize that she seemed to have been lost in that beautiful dream for too long. She replied to Situ Jin with her own phone, asked her where she was, and then went to the closet to look for clothes.

But because she couldn’t find every set of clothes she remembered bringing, Shu Yao inexplicably stood in front of the closet and cried. But she quickly wiped away her tears. In this terrible mood, for the first time, she tried to put together a decent outfit with the clothes she had on hand.

But when she walked out of the room, she found that in her current state, she seemed to be unable to judge what others’ gazes meant.

Because her paranoia had struck again.

Ever since she went out, the first person she met, the moment they saw her, their gaze was fixed on her, as if their eyes were a surveillance camera, automatically and silently following her walking trajectory, turning their necks, until she entered the next person’s field of vision—

She didn’t know this person at all, or anyone she met next.

But she felt that the whole world was watching her, and with a malicious gaze.

“They can’t see me, they can’t see me, they can’t see me…”

Shu Yao tried to deceive her brain, as if chanting a spell. After several times, she found that they really did seem to have hit a glass wall, and began to look around aimlessly, no longer able to focus on her.

She let out a very low, dry laugh.

She hadn’t expected that the scene presented by her illness would have a bit of comedic talent.

And so she was able to walk toward where Situ Jin was. Her friend was now in a bar a few floors below, the same bar that Situ Jin and Mu Qing had been to on the morning she had taken Lin Ran to the glass bridge for photos.

If this cruise ship was really in some kind of crisis, Situ Jin wouldn’t still be in a bar at a time like this, right?

So, it really is me who’s sick.

Shu Yao was now able to calmly accept the fact that she had a serious mental illness. But just as she turned a corner, she found that her estimation of her illness was still too optimistic.

She saw Mu Qing.

But this time, Mu Qing was different from every time she had met her before. She couldn’t see her face clearly, because her face was covered layer by layer with a gray-black light gauze.

Strangely, when she saw the black light gauze, she was like returning to the corridor in the school where she had been trapped by layers of black gauze. No matter which direction she walked, she would eventually end up in front of her.

Even her hands and feet were out of her control, wanting to lift the layers of thin gauze on her face, like unwrapping the layers of gauze on a mummy.

She suddenly had a paranoid desire to know—

The true face under this face, was it Lin Jingshu or not.

“Yaoyao!”

Just as Shu Yao was instigated to raise her hand, her fingertips about to touch the woman’s cheek in front of her, a very urgent call came from behind!

She turned her head, and only had time to hear a very displeased “tsk” from Mu Qing.

And behind her, Situ Jin, who had just arrived, put a hand on her shoulder and said with concern, “Why did you come out without telling me?”

From Situ Jin’s perspective, the moment Shu Yao turned her head, a very corrosive, very special transparent large net was shot from above the ship’s roof, just catching that “Mu Qing.” But when the net closed, only a puff of gray-black smoke was left—

By the time Shu Yao had finished greeting her friend and wanted to explain her strange behavior just now, when she turned her head, the person who had been standing there had long since vanished into thin air.

No matter how she looked at it, it seemed as if she had been staring at the air for a long time just now, and had even wanted to raise her hand to grab the air.

Shu Yao: “…”

So nice. Is this the daily life of a mental patient?

“Are you… okay?” Situ Jin thought of the person who had been ambushing on the ceiling just now.

That was after she had encountered the monster like Chu Wan in the industrial park last time, and her father, who had sensed the danger, had quietly started searching for and hiring many gifted individuals from special departments.. The one just now was a new one who had just boarded the ship, with a very strange temper, who didn’t like to meet strangers and didn’t like to reveal his identity.

So Situ Jin could only calmly take Shu Yao’s hand and lead her to the safest place on this ship at this moment, which was actually a safe house, but on the surface, it was a bar. Now this ship had stopped on the sea and was surrounded by a thick fog. Although she and her people had special positioning devices, they still didn’t know how long it would take for rescue to arrive.

Situ Jin decided to stay in the bar with her good friend today.

But after hearing her two consecutive concerned inquiries, Shu Yao’s eyes couldn’t help but dim. She subconsciously guessed, did Lin Ran tell Situ Jin about her situation?

Does her good friend also know that she’s not mentally normal?

It must be so. That’s why when Situ Jin heard that she was coming to find her, she rushed out in a hurry, for fear that she would run around, or get lost, right?

…

In the end, Shu Yao couldn’t say anything.

She just shook her head and was obediently led into the bar by Situ Jin, not even glancing at the surroundings, because she didn’t believe any of the scenes she saw. In the end, she just stared at a delicate whiskey glass in front of her.

She carefully reached out her hand, took the green glass, which had a long bridge pattern carved on the bottom and snowflake patterns all around, and which scattered the light in all directions under the lamplight. She caressed the patterns on it with her fingertips and tried to say to Situ Jin:

“This glass seems very beautiful, don’t you think?”

Situ Jin didn’t understand. “It’s okay. If you like it, I’ll give it to you.”

But Shu Yao let out a long sigh of relief.

The glass is real.

She looked at Situ Jin, then at the glass in her hand. She was a little worried that if she stayed here for a long time, she would see some strange scenes and do something drastic, which would scare her friend. So she suddenly suggested:

“Then I want to have a drink with it. Do you have any recommendations, Jin?”

Situ Jin looked at her with a strange expression. “You want to drink, now?”

But she quickly remembered what Lin Ran had said about Shu Yao’s very bad mood recently. And they didn’t know how long they would be on this ship. Even if they had to leave, Situ Jin had plenty of people who could carry her friend away. At worst, she could let her family’s Lin Daiyu carry her.

So she simply got up and walked behind the bar, which was empty at the moment. She took out a bottle of rum. The rich young lady, who was very good at finding joy in hardship, had a smile in her eyes. She tossed the bottle and caught it, immediately entering the state of a bartender, and said:

“What flavor do you want?”

Shu Yao was inexplicably infected by her good mood. She cupped her cheeks with both hands and replied in a supportive tone, “I want it sweet.”

“I know, as sweet as your girlfriend, right?” Situ Jin rolled her eyes, but still raised her hand and chose a peach juice that went well with the wine, and a tea base.

But then she heard Shu Yao say, “I want it strong.”

The shallow-haired girl let go of her hands and rested her chin on the bar. The emotions in her pupils were also shattered by the scattered light falling from above.

She said to Situ Jin in a low voice, “I’m very well-behaved when I’m drunk, right?”

That way, the people around her wouldn’t have to worry about her doing strange things, right?