Chapter 75: The Light
Shu Yao, who was used to being fed large cakes by others, was still moved when she heard Lin Ran say, “I want to live with you.”
Although it was the end of the world, and her life was a mess because of these mutations.
But hearing her say this.
A little bit of hope for life suddenly rekindled, as if a person who had been tormented by the mortal world for a long time had accidentally caught a glimpse of that peach blossom spring.
She hastily lowered her head, casually took the chopsticks from a tentacle, and began to eat her rice. As she lowered her head, her long hair fell and covered her slightly moist eyes.
After quickly finishing her dinner, Shu Yao put down her chopsticks and said to her, “Let’s go.”
Lin Ran casually commanded a few tentacles to clean up the dishes and put them in the kitchen sink to soak. Then she had another one open the closet door and picked out two sets of casual, loose clothes for Shu Yao to wear when she went out. She held them up to her and asked:
“This set on the left is more casual, and this set on the right is a classic that can’t go wrong. Which one do you choose?”
Looking at these two colorful sets of clothes, Shu Yao couldn’t remember the last time she had cared so much about matching her clothes.
The field combat suit provided by the special department was like her school uniform when she was a student. It was comfortable, convenient, and she didn’t have to think about matching it.
So much so that she even looked at it for a while and said in a puzzled voice, “Did I buy these two sets of clothes?”
Lin Ran then made the decision for her. “Then you wear this set on the left, and I’ll wear the other one.”
It was late autumn.
The maple-colored deep sweater on the left, paired with a dark brown long skirt, was loose and comfortable. And on the right was a dark brown windbreaker paired with a beige long skirt. As long as one was tall and had long legs, and had the figure for it, a windbreaker was the most classic piece of clothing in a wardrobe.
The two sets could even be paired as a couple’s color scheme. Lin Ran thought it was perfect.
But Shu Yao frowned. “I don’t want to wear a skirt.”
Lin Ran good-naturedly found a pair of trousers of the same color. “Then this one?”
…
By the time the two had changed their clothes and were ready to go out, the tentacles in the kitchen had already put the dishes and chopsticks into the disinfection cabinet, and there were even tentacles on the balcony that had finished trimming the branches and leaves, watering, and fertilizing.
And Lin Ran was squatting in front of the shoe cabinet, tying her girlfriend’s shoelaces.
Shu Yao, who was forced to experience the life of having her clothes brought to her and her food served to her, looked at her monster girlfriend, who was suddenly so clingy and wouldn’t let her do anything herself, and said in confusion, “I can really tie my own shoelaces.”
Lin Ran was thinking about how to find a suitable reason to let her not have to walk later, and thus not find out the fact that she had done too much. Hearing this, she immediately said:
“I recently learned a very new way to tie a bow.”
Shu Yao patiently watched for half a minute.
…What’s the difference?
She thought, anyway, it’s not as secure as the double knot of a combat boot. It’s just flashy.
Just as she was about to get up from the chair in the entryway, she saw a palm extended toward her. This time, she timely avoided it.
“You’re not going to carry me out, are you?” Her eyes were filled with vigilance.
Lin Ran’s action paused.
She changed to a slightly expectant tone. “Can I have this honor?”
“No.”
Shu Yao refused her with a blank expression, and was about to get up and push the person blocking her way aside, but before she could take a single step, her knees went weak. If it weren’t for her timely grabbing the edge of the shoe cabinet, she would have had to give her neighbor across the hall an early New Year’s greeting.
Lin Ran raised her hand and held her waist. Her dark eyes looked at her with extraordinary sincerity. “It’s fine if you don’t want me to carry you. Can I give you a piggyback ride?”
Shu Yao looked up at her with a blank expression.
Sensing that her girlfriend was about to lose her temper, Lin Ran tactfully took a step back and only dared to say the last sentence, “Slowly.”
Under the strange moonlight, two figures were rarely seen walking in the Star River community after dinner. But one of them had a very foul face, as if she were out to collect a debt.
Until they reached another residential building, because Lin Ran had suggested using her special ability to paralyze the monster consciousness in Auntie Zhou’s body, Shu Yao looked at her and sneered.
She thought of how she had used this ability on her.
“Won’t it knock out the human as well?”
“No,” Lin Ran explained with her head bowed. “This was originally a ability specifically designed to deal with [Parasites]. Humans will only be slightly stained and can metabolize it quickly, but it should be effective against [Parasites] for at least a month.”
Shu Yao: “Oh? So it’s an ability specifically designed to deal with [Parasites]?”
Lin Ran: “…”
She graciously apologized. “I was wrong.”
She even extended the tentacle that had been in charge of her body before. “It was all its fault for not being clear-headed at that time. Why don’t we kill one to warn a hundred, as an example?”
The tentacle: ?
It let out a cry like an alarm and at the same time wanted to loudly accuse that its master had also continued to do those excessive things after she had woken up—
And then it was silenced.
Shu Yao had no time to listen to their acting. She raised her hand and pushed Lin Ran’s shoulder. “Get to work.”
Saying it was work.
It was just the monster mimicking its tentacles, slipping in through the downstairs window, locating the corresponding window, identifying the target, injecting the toxin, and then retreating. The entire process took less than ten seconds.
Seeing that no one would be out in the night now, in the desolate late night of this bustling city, which was like an economic regression of thirty years, Lin Ran once again tried to coax her girlfriend:
“The Situ family is too far away.”
“My car is still in your community. I’ll carry you back. Let’s drive out, okay?”
Shu Yao glanced at her. “Did I forget to tell you, Director Lin, that your identity has been registered as missing for several months now? Are you sure you want to continue to wander the streets with me with this face?”
Lin Ran didn’t mind. “Just for one night.”
Anyway, they were about to leave Nancheng soon.
The special department and various systems were all in a mess at this moment. She had plenty of ways to avoid these investigating eyes.
Seeing that Shu Yao didn’t say anything, Lin Ran turned her back to her and squatted down. “Come on, I’ll carry you back. Yaoyao, no one will see.”
Shu Yao, who had been struggling to walk for a while, decided to let herself go.
She jumped heavily onto Lin Ran’s back.
As if she thought she could crush her with this little bit of weight.
Lin Ran chuckled, stood up steadily with her on her back, and their shadows overlapped. In the wanton gaze of the moonlight, they leisurely passed by on the wide, empty road, which was sprinkled with a clear glow, so intimately.
…
Unfortunately, it seemed that the Situ family had temporarily moved out of that villa.
Shu Yao gave her a call and asked her how she was doing and why she wasn’t living in her original place. And Situ Jin was surprised that she actually had time to find her now, and quickly explained that because of some special channels, their family had moved to a safer place.
As for Xuan Zhu.
She was also in a very safe place.
At the end, Situ Jin sensed that her purpose in coming was not right. “Why do you have time to come and see me today? Aren’t you guys very busy lately?”
Shu Yao said selectively, “It’s just that the leader saw that I was particularly busy and was afraid that I would die from overwork on a field mission, so he forced me to take a day off. I was bored at night, so I thought of coming to see you—”
She was interrupted halfway through her sentence. “Now? Wait for me a minute. I’ll see if I can go home for a bit. Where do you want to go?”
Shu Yao chuckled.
“No need.”
She was moved that at a time like this, Situ Jin would still be responsive to her invitation to play. Her light-colored pupils became particularly gentle, and she looked at the darkness of her friend’s house, which was hidden in the night, no longer the prosperous lights of the past.
“I have to work overtime tonight. I’m going back soon. You and your family should be careful.”
Situ Jin was a little regretful. “Is that so…”
“Mmm,” Shu Yao lowered her eyelids. “You have to be well, Jin.”
After saying that, she hung up the phone, turned her head to look at the person who had been patiently waiting for her in the driver’s seat, and met those dark pupils, and said calmly:
“Now, we can set off.”
But Lin Ran sensed something from her almost farewell tone. She looked at her for a moment, then curved her lips and smiled at her. “No hurry.”
“I still have some preparations to make.”
Shu Yao: “?”
Half an hour later.
Shu Yao looked at the dark-haired woman on the sofa at home, changing the batteries for the star-shaped lights, and her mischievous tentacles around her. Some were rolling up the small light bulbs of the string lights and hanging them on their bodies as decorations. Some were pressing the rechargeable little white rabbit table lamp. With a pat, the light would flash, switching from warm orange to red, green, and also a flashing color.
Watching Lin Ran suddenly start to study these lights, Shu Yao said in a daze, “Does this have anything to do with where we’re going?”
“It does.”
Lin Ran turned her head and gestured for her to look at some of the cold dishes on the table, and also the many kinds of bread she had bought at the self-service shopping store when she came back. “Do you like these? Or should I make something else?”
Shu Yao: “?”
Is this a kindergarten outing! Why are you bringing snacks!
She sat on the side with a blank face. The tentacles seemed to see her helplessness and even pushed over a small cabinet from some corner of the room, which was filled with expired snacks.
【Yaoyao! Choose!】
Just then, Lin Ran seemed to remember something and turned her head to her again. “Oh, right. The flowers you put downstairs before, the part that no one claimed, I brought them back for you. They’re on the balcony.”
“The internet hasn’t been very good lately. I couldn’t find the type of insecticide and fertilizer they need. See if you need to bury some fertilizer or medicine in advance, or just cut the branches and let them winter over?”
The things she discussed with Shu Yao were all too mundane.
As if they had just decided to go on a trip at the last minute, and would have to come back here to live in the future.
Shu Yao was moved by her words and felt a reluctance—
But this emotion should not appear before setting off for the abyss, for death.
She squeezed out a sentence from her throat, “No need.”
Then she sat quietly on the side of the sofa, waiting for the moment when darkness would descend.
The clock ticked to three in the morning.
Lin Ran checked the small lights that either used batteries or had been charged in advance, and placed them in every corner of the house. She even turned off the lights to check the effect.
Even on the balcony, she hung a small grow light for the flowers and plants with fresh water droplets on their leaves.
Then she turned her head with satisfaction and asked the person in the living room, “Then shall we set off?”
Shu Yao closed her eyes.
“Mmm.”
After a long time, after she had replied.
She did not hear any more movement.
She didn’t know what this octopus was dawdling about. She frowned and opened her eyes, but no longer saw the figure who had just asked her in the room. Even the tentacles that had been chattering by her side just now had also disappeared.
A hint of confusion flashed in Shu Yao’s eyes.
Belatedly, she suddenly looked toward the balcony and found that the moonlight, which had always been very bright and overly bright before, had disappeared at some point.
No, not disappeared.
It was blocked.
Because the monster’s body was too large, and it was in the dark of night, so the red skin on this side, which was against the light, was almost hidden with the black patterns.
Just as she was puzzled as to why Lin Ran would need to change into her original body to swallow such a small person as herself, she suddenly heard a very crisp “crack” sound, like biting into a potato chip.
At the same time, it came from all directions.
…
That night.
A resident on the 33rd floor of a certain building in the Star River community was pulling his curtains tight, trying his best to hypnotize himself to fall asleep quickly, lest he be tempted by the moon in the middle of the night and turn into a mental patient.
Suddenly, he heard an extremely crisp “crack” sound from above.
As if even rebar could be bitten off.
The resident opened his eyes in a daze and directly saw the moon shining down from above his head. The moonlight wantonly sprinkled in every corner of his home.
“?!”
Just as he thought he was going crazy and didn’t remember when he had gone to the rooftop to sleep, another piece of black cloth came down from mid-air.
The unsettling babbling was all isolated under that piece of black cloth.
The world became so quiet.
However, the chill of the night wind blowing in through the completely torn-off ceiling was equally unmistakable.
But this was not something the [Monarch Slayer], who had taken the whole house and his wife on a trip, needed to consider.
Revealing a form that was about a third of her true size, large enough to eat the whole house, Lin Ran completely ate the three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment that Shu Yao lived in into that unique space.
She also took the opportunity to throw out the discarded tentacles and shed skin that had been stored inside, as a gesture to block the moonlight for the residents downstairs.
Then she used the voice of her consciousness to communicate with the girlfriend who was now living in her body:
【How about it, Yaoyao? Is there anything else you need to add?】
Shu Yao was stunned.
Although it was a dark space that was like an endless nightmare in the illusion.
Now it was illuminated by one lamp after another.
After the main circuit of the entire room was disconnected from the building, the small lights that had been arranged in advance in various places took their place and became the new light.
On the large window connecting the living room and the balcony, there was a string of warm orange tassel lights hanging like a curtain, illuminating the nearby succulent landscape stand, which had just been cleaned and rearranged, and was full of life.
In the corner, the fluffy, round-bottled lights did not take up space and would not affect people walking, but were like little elves hiding in the house, waiting to be discovered.
And the rabbit lamp by the bed in the bedroom, which was lit up by a pat, was convenient for bedside reading.
The bathtub was filled with hot water, and the star-shaped lights placed on the edge reflected a galaxy-like, fine light, illuminating the shimmering water.
The little octopus liked darkness, and it also liked bottles.
But in this space where there was only darkness, it was willing to use its favorite bottles to hold this handful of light for its beloved, to illuminate her world.
So that she would no longer be afraid of the night.
And would not be afraid of the abyss that was about to arrive.
In addition, it also carefully took care of the plants that had once been deeply loved and carefully cared for. Because their owner had later walked out of the glass cover that had protected her, to experience the wind and rain outside, so they had also been subjected to some wind and rain.
Now, having been moved back to this home, because someone was willing to patiently care for them, to make them carefree and full of joy again.
With this, it was hoped that the person who was being raised would also be like them.
And once again, in the brilliant light, she would be full of life.
…
Shu Yao walked through the rooms one by one, and finally stopped on the balcony, in front of the daisy flowers that were lush and green in the grow light.
She felt as if her world had also been lit up by these carefully arranged lights, and like these white, blue, and golden daisies, she showed a brilliant smile.
The sound of solid ice shattering came from her heart.
The deepest fears that had been like a nightmare, following her like a shadow on the cruise ship, and had been stirred up by the [Styx], the nightmares that had repeatedly appeared every night she fell asleep.
Her eaten friends, her eaten self.
All vanished at this moment.
She finally woke up from that long dream of a trip with a hesitant, uneasy, and terrible ending.
All she saw was her girlfriend, who was as deeply in love with her as ever, just as she was when they first met.
Whether in her human form or as a monster, she had always loved her, a girlfriend who had never changed.
