Sure enough, the year Qiu Chao turned seventeen, the eighteen-year-old Northwest Little Sister actually flew off the handle with one. Rumor was she’d dropped a customer’s phone and scraped together the cash to pay for it. Somehow, she ended up getting together with the guy.
Before she left, she asked Qiu Chao, “Can I give you a hug?”
Qiu Chao didn’t like getting close to people, but the girl’s eyes were red-rimmed, and who knew if they’d ever meet again after this.
She nodded.
The girl hugged her, her cheap perfume a bit overpowering.
This one had said Qiu Chao looked older, but she herself came off as endearingly immature and hickish. Her chest was too full, her hips too round— a contradictory kind of allure.
Being a country girl with little education, she was naive and innocent, occasionally downright cute.
But her hometown was a bottomless pit.
Still…
“You really are pretty,” the girl said. “You don’t look like someone who belongs in a place like this.”
The same opening line again. Qiu Chao let out a laugh. “The money’s good here.”
Her tone was straightforward, utterly shameless: “I’m pretty, so I’m always the top seller.”
The girl didn’t argue.
She was about the same height as Qiu Chao, but she already wore a shiny engagement ring.
Plenty of folks scraping by at the bottom got engaged young, rashly—some even became moms before they were fully grown.
Qiu Chao recoiled at the thought. It always brought her back to her mother, to her mother’s cold corpse and scorching ashes.
She said, “If he’s no good to you, just leave.”
The girl smiled and patted her belly. “I want a kid of my own.”
They lived together for over a year.
Sometimes on rotating shifts, sometimes working the same post. They’d had drunks spit on them, hands copped feels, rich ladies take pity on their youth and slip them pink bills.
They might not have shared sweetness, but they’d shared the bitterness.
Qiu Chao didn’t call it out. She knew saying anything was pointless for some.
Everyone had their way of chasing away loneliness—she counted cash, while the other craved someone to lean on.
Whenever Qiu Chao counted her money, the girl would say she hadn’t yet felt the comfort of sharing a bed with someone.
Qiu Chao: “It’s not that great. How do you know he doesn’t have other beds?”
The girl: “I’m talking about me. I feel pretty damn good.”
Qiu Chao just went “Oh.” She got it—bodies pressed together, trading warmth, gave that illusion of eternity.
But she hated it. Eternity was just another empty betrayal.
Look, even this hard-knocks Northwest Little Sister got sucked in by the void, convinced she’d found everlasting bliss.
That year, Qiu Chao thought: Not me. Never.
Northwest Little Sister: “I’m serious. You should get out soon. Before… “
She whispered in Qiu Chao’s ear: Someone’s been gunning for you for a while. You need to go far away.
They both had junior high diplomas at best, though Qiu Chao might’ve been a touch trendier.
That audio store, laden with all her pain and regrets, had shown her the worlds in movies.
The separations and deaths, the vast regrets she’d tasted as a teen, were enough to polish her skin, make her seem less rough around the edges—sometimes even gracefully poised.
Qiu Chao: “I’ve got to stick around at least another year.”
She pulled a gold-embossed red envelope from her pocket. The “A Hundred Years of Harmony” printed on it screamed tacky excess, and Qiu Chao’s own handwriting was a crooked mess.
“Early birth of a precious son” had originally been “precious daughter,” then scratched out.
Her fiancé probably needed a boy, and this fool needed a child who could bring her gain.
The envelope bulged at the seams; one glance told the girl it was months of Qiu Chao’s wages.
Northwest Little Sister burst into sobs, her highland flush standing out starkly.
Qiu Chao chuckled. “Don’t cry. It’s a good thing. And this isn’t that kind of place—I’m not selling myself. No need to worry.”
There was a transcendent confidence in her voice, a charm that could daze another woman even in the dim light.
As if she were meant to shine, front and center.
Qiu Chao: “If I were selling, I’d make them bankrupt first.”
But Qiu Chao had underestimated men’s malice once more.
That summer solstice, at ten p.m. during shift change.
They were running a promotion, packed house. Qiu Chao was handing off to the new girl, a total newbie, timid as could be—reminded her of that long-lost Northwest Little Sister.
Qiu Chao headed to the private room she’d mentioned, only to find herself trapped inside.
Top floor had just two suites—couldn’t even open without dropping five figures minimum, no card, no prior spend.
Her old enemies had gathered, faces just like the dead stepfather’s crew, clearly out to finish her.
She bolted, got dragged back, but after years on the grind, she knew how to slip free.
Too many against her, though, and management in on it. That Northwest Little Sister’s warning last year hadn’t come from nowhere.
Qiu Chao’s life was high-risk; she needed piles of cash for Xiao Yuan’s reconstructive surgery, for shrinks.
She couldn’t fail here.
It was brutal. Cameras off, room full of predatory stares and filthy talk.
Qiu Chao smashed whatever she could grab, fought her way out, and crashed through the door.
They yanked her leg this time too, but the door flew open.
Someone happened by.
Qiu Chao’s mind replayed the room’s chaos—no suites on lower floors like this, top had two.
The other seemed reserved ages ago.
Front desk had muttered about birthday kids, marveling at how loaded students were these days.
First thing she saw: high-top sneakers, brand spanking new, barely worn.
Logo screamed money—the latest model her coworkers had gossiped about at lunch, four figures easy.
Why were canvas kicks that pricey?
Qiu Chao bit her lip till it bled, eyes traveling up. From the sneakers to the frayed denim cuffs, higher still, locking on hazy peach-blossom eyes.
This person was ghostly pale.
Qiu Chao clutched the pant leg, nearly dragged back in herself.
No time to dwell on how she must look like some prime-time soap opera heroine—pretty enough to be the lead, right?
Except this one wasn’t a guy.
A weird girl, hair a messy shoulder-length tangle, lip piercing jumping out.
Didn’t look like good news at first glance.
But she was a girl—in Qiu Chao’s eyes, priority one, worlds better than the rabid men behind her.
The girl seemed to freeze, squinting blearily at the beat-up woman on the floor, then at the middle-aged brute trying to reel her in.
“You came,” Qiu Chao said. “Can you take me home?”
She kept it light, voice hitching, not realizing pain shook every word—a blatant plea.
The intimacy hit home. The guy gripping her barked, “Quit pretending. Think I don’t know you’re all alone? Lone wolf brat like you.”
No telling if Qiu Chao’s words hooked the newcomer or the guy’s stung her.
Next instant, Qiu Chao was hauled up. Only then did she clock how tall this student-looking girl was.
Snowy white shirt, buttons all cockeyed, round-neck athletic tank hugging a flat belly—killer figure obvious.
Pale as porcelain, tattoos blazing: some tacky blue dragon, white tiger combo that made Qiu Chao cringe, half worried she’d get dragged in too.
But the girl’s grip on her wrist was iron.
In that moment, shielded behind her, Qiu Chao caught her perfume.
Not bad-looking, decked in designer gear—family had to be loaded.
“Why’re you here? Go sing or something,” the girl tossed out airily, then slung an arm around Qiu Chao’s shoulder and walked off.
When this person leaned in close, Qiu Chao felt as if she had plummeted into the deep sea—dangerous yet thrilling. In that instant, even the pain in her body turned into an exotic spice, and the metallic tang of blood didn’t repulse her at all.
Unthinkingly, Qiu Chao pinched the hem of the other’s clothing. The next second, her hand was seized in a tight grip that set her heart pounding.
But the man refused to let go, and even the people inside rushed out.
The looks they shot at Qiu Chao were ferocious, as if she were a premium delicacy ready to be savored.
“You wanna join the fun?”
“Where’d this kid come from? Get lost!”
“Mind your own damn business!”
Qiu Chao stayed silent. The hallway ceiling of the top-floor private room was a vast mirror, and the carpet beneath her feet was plush and patterned in a dizzying plaid.
Her lips were bleeding from her own teeth, and a dull ache lingered in her lower back from the kick.
For a fleeting moment, she even considered grabbing the decorative vase nearby and smashing it over their heads.
But she had no strength left…
With a bang.
Someone else did it for her.
The vase was porcelain, with a slender neck and a plump base, holding a few fake winter plum blossoms. In this setting, it didn’t even qualify as pretentious elegance—it just felt utterly out of place.
Qiu Chao remembered it was pricey, with the boss jacking up the marked price to fleece customers. A dozen bucks turned into thousands.
Yet this person, while pulling Qiu Chao along, simply snatched up the vase and smashed it over the head of the man in front.
The porcelain shattered, and the man laughed. “Playing rough, huh? You wanna give it a try?”
She didn’t look like an ordinary student at all. Her aura was extraordinary, laced with a wild defiance far beyond that of typical girls her age.
Qiu Chao watched as the woman’s brows arched, her smile transforming her features into something entirely different from her serious expression moments before. She even flashed a little tiger tooth and tilted her head. “How about one more? I’ll cover the medical bills—the kind where you stay in the ICU until you croak.”
Her voice carried a fearless confidence. Her smile vanished abruptly, and the glance she shot sideways was enough to make anyone scramble out of the way.
The man on the ground was bleeding profusely from his head. Her canvas shoe slammed into his leg with vicious force. Then she turned back to Qiu Chao. “Did he hit you?”
Qiu Chao nodded.
“Then kick him back. Or grab a few more vases and smash away. No big deal.”
Everyone who came here was used to throwing their weight around, and the top floor was reserved for the elite—rich or influential.
The guy who had targeted Qiu Chao thought he’d picked an ordinary night, never expecting this. He bolted faster than anyone.
The group scattered.
The girl beside her stepped down hard on the leg of the now-unconscious man while fishing her phone from her pocket.
Qiu Chao had a feeling this woman wasn’t quite right.
Her voice held a lazy drawl, though its clear timbre couldn’t be masked. Smiling faintly, she said, “I just cracked open a gourd on some dark forces. Gonna need you to clean up the mess, Uncle Zhao.”
After hanging up, she glanced at Qiu Chao through hazy eyes, as if her mind were clouded. “Xiao Miao, are you crying?”
Qiu Chao thought to herself: So she mistook me for someone else.
But the woman led her into another private room. It didn’t seem like the party had really started yet—hardly anyone was there. The few people huddled in the corner were so stunned by the commotion that they didn’t utter a word.
Yan Muyu said to Qiu Chao, “Xiao Miao, sing a song.”
The melody was one even a child would recognize.
It was “Happy Birthday.”
Qiu Chao looked utterly disheveled: her hair a tangled mess, her uniform jacket torn and left outside, her shirt smudged with dirt.
Perhaps her hesitation grated on the woman, who yanked her closer. “Sing.”
At that moment, the door swung open. Even in the dim light, it was clear that the person in Yan Muyu’s arms wasn’t Wen Miao.
Qiu Siyuan asked in surprise, “Yan Muyu, who’s this?”
Had she lost her mind already?
Kidnapping a random girl?
Qiu Chao thought: What a beautiful name.
